Carl Shen calls track and field one of life’s fairest endeavours. The amount of effort you put in equals the amount of success you get out. And Shen has proven that sentiment true not only in athletics but in all aspects of his Western career.
On Thursday, June 14, Shen graduates from Schulich Medicine & Dentistry’s BMSc program with one of Western’s highest honours – the Honorable Howard G. Ferguson Award. The award recognizes a student who has shown the highest achievement during his/her university career in athletics, scholarship and university life. He is also the recipient of the Ontario University Association’s Male Community Service Award given to those demonstrating outstanding achievement in track and field, academics and community service.
Shen is not only one of Schulich’s top students academically, but was a silver and bronze medalist in triple jump as part of the Mustangs Men’s Track and Field team. And when not studying or training, he volunteered his time at Parkwood Hospital, in the research lab at Robarts Research Institute and Sunnybrook Hospital and served as an active member of the Chinese Student Association and resident advisor at Delaware Hall.
“I have found having the right outlook makes all the difference,” Shen said. “You will never find enough time in the day for everything, but finding opportunities I was passionate about made finding the time a lot easier.”
One of those passions is medical sciences. Shen worked with Caroline Schild-Poulter in her Robarts lab looking at the molecular biology of cancer. He joined her lab in second-year after earning an undergrad student research award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) giving him the opportunity to work for four months in the lab through the summer. The following year he continued as a volunteer student.
“He was juggling his classes, track and field and was coming to the lab to do experiments. And with all of that, he never appeared stressed out and was always able to do meaningful things in the lab,” Schild-Poulter said. Shen’s work in her lab led to a summer job at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Even with all his successes, Shen says one of the biggest highlights for him personally was being part of the men’s team that won the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) championship this year for the first time ever. “It was the perfect way to top off a four year career. I still can’t believe it happened,” he said.
Track and field head coach Vickie Croley called Shen a “champion student-athlete” and described him as one of Western’s finest ever. “Carl’s contributions and achievements are exceptional. Because of his modesty you would never know he has accomplished even half of what he has,” she said.
After graduation, Shen is off to medical school, and credits his decision to his experience at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry.
“The BMSc program gave me the chance to draw from all the disciplines across the medical sciences and figure out my interests from there,” he said. “That freedom and chance for discovery is really what undergrad should be all about.”
