Building the ideal education

Every spring and fall, we profile just a few of our amazing graduates in our convocation handout. We proudly feature these stories here on Dal News. Congrats to all our new graduates!

As a man with tattoos adorning most of his upper body who enjoys body building in his (very limited) free time, Michael Groenendyk does not fit the stereotype of a Master of Library and Information Studies graduate.

“People don’t believe me when I tell them I’m in library science. But I find I almost have more success making connections [because I] stand out a little more,” says the Regina, Sask., native.

Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management allowed Groenendyk to take a personalized approach to his education and create a program as unique as he is. “I was really interested in business and I liked Dal because I had the opportunity to enrol in the library program and take business courses as well. It’s a mixed degree,” he says.

Groenendyk credits this flexibility, along with assistance from professors, for his success in taking home top prize at this year’s APEX Business Competition. As the only library and information studies student competing against others from across Canada and around the world, that’s quite a feat.

“I was trying to write business plans right when I came in [to the program], and they were terrible. Two years later, I’m winning a national competition. That just shows how much of a strong education you can get from close work with professors,” he says.

Of all his accomplishments at Dalhousie, Groenendyk is most proud of his work on a 3-D archive using 3-D printing and scanning technologies to document artifacts and specimens for preservation and educational purposes. He hopes the project will become an open-access catalogue, allowing people 24-hour access to the items.

Now that he’s graduating, Groenendyk says, “I’m looking for a position where I can do research, so specifically a university library, and if I can’t find that, I’m definitely going into business: competitive intelligence or marketing, probably within the 3-D printing/3-D scanning industry.”