Research Analyst students present findings to major industry partners

Research Analyst students presented the results of their major research projects to industry partners from Ipsos Canada and Environics Research Group in October of this year. As part of the program’s curriculum, the purpose of these projects is to enable students to gain practical experience in how to conduct applied research to meet the needs of an external client organization, as well as how to manage a full research process from proposal development to project implementation and delivery of the final results.

Client organizations for this year’s projects included Napoleon, County of Simcoe, MRT Automation, Rural Ontario Medical Program, Association for Bright Children of Ontario, and Plug n’ Drive, among others.

Each year, students who do an exceptional job on their major projects are invited to compete for the John H. Fryer Award (sponsored by Ipsos) and the Environics Award in Social Research, each of which is valued at $2,000. Winners are selected by a panel of judges from the two sponsoring organizations. Six teams from the fall 2015 and winter 2016 cohorts competed in this year’s competition.

This year’s winning teams, announced at the awards ceremony in December, were:

• Seana Dwyer, Yuka Sugiura and Emily Stefanac, who were awarded the John H. Fryer award for the customer profile and marketing strategy developed for OK Friday Farmer’s Market at Burl’s Creek in Oro-Medonte
• Lucas Beal, Biya Sha and Kiko Chen, who were awarded the Environics Award in Social Research for their research on employee satisfaction at Oro-Medonte municipal township

Many thanks to Ipsos and Environics for their generous support of these awards. All students who participate in this annual competition greatly benefit from the opportunity to present and discuss their work with leading industry researchers, senior managers and executives.

Congratulations to all of this year’s participants!