The Beyond the North Scholarship encourages rural students to look outside their small towns to explore university and beyond
By Fabian Mayer • Photography by Steve Collins
Starting university can seem intimidating, but it can be downright daunting for students from rural communities with a smaller population than most universities. Recognizing the challenges such as leaving family, academic demands and tuition costs, the Beyond the North Scholarship helps students from small communities overcome obstacles to attending post-secondary education.
Established in 2021 by Chris Nyberg and Lukas Sutherland, the Beyond the North Scholarship Fund at Calgary Foundation supports an annual $1,000 scholarship. This scholarship reflects the pair’s experience growing up together in Fairview, a small town 100 kilometres north of Grande Prairie in Alberta’s Peace Country. With a population under 3,000, Fairview is about one-tenth the number of students attending the University of Calgary.
“It was a good place to grow up, but it’s a small farming community, and there’s a whole big world out there,” says Nyberg. “The idea for the scholarship was to create some incentive or support for people looking to broaden their network beyond the traditional career paths available up there.”
Primarily funded by Nyberg and Sutherland, along with smaller contributions from a few friends, the scholarship goes to high school students from the Fairview area who plan to attend university anywhere in Canada. The scholarship encourages students to consider opportunities beyond their immediate surroundings.
With oil and gas and agriculture being the dominant industries in the region, Nyberg says opportunities for a career outside of those sectors are somewhat limited. He stresses that while jobs in those sectors can provide meaningful careers — Nyberg has worked in the oil patch himself — the intent of the scholarship is simply to lessen the donor profile potential risk of pursuing an alternative career path.
“We wanted to show high school students that there are other options, and we wanted to provide support to go chase some of these opportunities,” says Nyberg, who pursued law school at the University of Saskatchewan and now practices law in Calgary. There’s a lot of value in striking out on your own, doing something different and experiencing new things.”
Sutherland has also experienced that value; in fact, he calls the decision to attend the University of Calgary one of the most meaningful of his life. “You’re interacting with professors from all over the world, students of all different backgrounds, and getting to learn and experience all of that diversity first-hand,” he says. “You wind up meeting people who are doing incredibly interesting things and collaborating with them. It’s profoundly rewarding and opens doors you never knew existed when you’re growing up in a small rural community.”
Sutherland also now lives in Calgary, where he works in mergers and acquisitions for a U.S.-focused healthcare company. During his studies, Sutherland pursued two degrees simultaneously, attaining degrees in both geology and finance.
“Sometimes students think that when you go to school, you study one topic, and you end up focused on that topic for the rest of your life. While that is true for some, there are so many different paths one can take, and our intention with this scholarship is to reduce the risk students take in exploring those paths,” says Sutherland.
Criteria for the scholarship includes academic standing, community involvement and aspirations beyond the north.
The annual application deadline is June 1.