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Paul Sobey presents awards to Devon Bate and Daphne Wallace

This past year, Rowe School of Business students Devon Bate and Daphne Wallace each won a Frank H. Sobey Award for Excellence in Business Studies. The students, who both describe winning as “surreal,” accepted the awards in December.

 “I am so grateful to the Board of the Frank H. Sobey Fund for selecting me as a recipient of the award,” says Wallace, who has just finished her Bachelor of Commerce degree. Wallace majored in finance and is interested in corporate finance and economics. She has many interests outside the classroom: “Being involved in extracurricular activities has arguably been the biggest source of my personal and professional development.” Wallace competed on Dalhousie’s women’s soccer team for

four years, with many awards and most recently as team captain. During the past year, she was Co-President of the Dalhousie Investment Society (DALIS), a 150-member student society that manages a $100 million mock portfolio. Wallace competed with great success in the JDCC case competition in Toronto, and has volunteered for multiple charitable efforts, including the Relay for Life for the Canadian Cancer Society and the Inside Ride Charity event for children with cancer. She was also a Scotiabank Global Banking and Markets Student Ambassador. “I acted as a liaison between Scotiabank and the Rowe School of Business,” she explains. In this role she was able to help other students get a head start on their careers in finance.

With this résumé, it’s not difficult to see why Wallace was selected for the Sobey award. “The recipients had very diverse experiences and accomplishments,” says Wallace. When asked why she thinks she was chosen, Wallace responds, “I believe it was largely because of my varsity athletic career, my involvement in the Rowe School of Business and my academic record.”

Bate, like Wallace, is a finance major poised to graduate from the BComm program. “I have a large variety of academic interests,” he says; he is drawn to money management, valuations, consumer behaviour and internet marketing. Bate has been involved with a number of extracurricular activities during his time at Dalhousie. He has organized an intramural basketball team every term for four years, and has volunteered for events organized by the Dalhousie Commerce Society. He has also been involved in DALIS and has contributed to events run by Enactus Dalhousie, an international social entrepreneurship organization for university students. Bate has worked to help other students in the Commerce program: “Peer mentoring and peer tutoring have been a big part of my undergrad,” he explains. In terms of community involvement, Bate has volunteered for the Terry Fox Foundation and the AIDS Coalition of Nova Scotia, and participated in events including Relay for Life and Light the Night, which supports the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada.

Bate cites his passion for entrepreneurship and success in starting businesses as a possible reason he was selected for the Sobey Award. He was humbled to receive it: “Obviously everyone hopes to hear good news and I thought I had a chance, but no one ever expects it. … Hearing the biographies of the other recipients was unbelievable. It was incredible to hear the amazing things everyone has accomplished and to be recognized among them was an incredible honour.”

Dr. Lorn Sheehan, professor of Strategy and Associate Director of the Rowe School of Business, attended the awards ceremony in December and speaks positively of the experience. “It was wonderful to see the Sobey family, a leader in the Canadian business environment, recognize some of Atlantic Canada’s brightest business students,” he says. “It was particularly rewarding to see Dalhousie Commerce students receive two of the ten awards—we were the only university to receive two.”