Matt Chuipka: Health Promotion Graduate, and Special Projects Coordinator at Laurentian

A Laurentian Health Promotion graduate, a former Sudbury Junior Wolves hockey player, and now currently working at Laurentian in the advancement department as a Special Projects Coordinator; Matt Chuipka is an inspiration to all Human Kinetic students. I had the privilege of interviewing Matt to find out about his experiences at Laurentian, and his career path post graduation. He also shared some inspiration and insight about the endless possibilities there are in the workforce, and how versatile a Human Kinetics degree is.

Matt enrolled in a bridge program with Cambrian College and Laurentian University. He started his first three years studying Physical Fitness at Cambrian, and then attended Laurentian for two years in the Health Promotion program. After graduating from Laurentian, Matt moved to Toronto to attend Sheridan College for their Athletic Therapy program. Matt quickly learned that Athletic Therapy wasn’t something he wanted to pursue, and moved back to Sudbury to work as an Examination Coordinator at Laurentian. He explained that having a Human Kinetics background, and having to take mental health classes, psychology classes, and physiology classes, created a good foundation and a decent understanding of physical ailments, disabilities, or any type of challenges and barriers that some students might face while having to do evaluations and exams. Matt has a great sense of empathy, and was able to apply his learnings from the Health Promotion program to take a different and more beneficial approach to exam coordination. Whether its converting students textbooks to alternate formats so they can have a program read it for them, or setting up alternate times for their exams and dealing with professors, Matt would do anything he could to help students.

This then lead Matt out to British Columbia where he worked at Simon Fraser University as a Disability Services Officer, where he could apply very similar skills. After working in British Columbia for a couple of years, Matt moved back to Sudbury and got the position that he’s working at now in the advancement department as a Special Projects Coordinator. Through working as a Special Projects Coordinator, Matt has been able to apply so many different skills, and work on a variety of different projects. One project that Matt worked on was Laurentian's "One Million Hours of Volunteerism" project. This project included students, staff, faculty, and donors to all come together to meet the goal of one million hours of volunteer work. One of the main goals of this project was to be able to show the world that Laurentian can do more than education, and that we’re making impacts in communities of our Alumni and students around the world.

Another topic I got to cover with Matt was about his favourite memory from Outdoor School while he was a student at Laurentian. Matt explained that his favourite experience was just paddling around Lake Laurentian in the canoes. He didn’t know the people in his canoe, so this gave him the chance to meet new people and make some new friends or even potential lab partners. He pointed out how unique the experience of Outdoor School is, and how lucky we are as Human Kinetic students at Laurentian to be able to participate in it.

Ending our interview, Matt was able to share some amazing advice and insight through his experiences as a student as well as being part of the workforce. Matt explained that even though working in public relations is not directly working with the body, to say that Health Promotion hasn't prepared him for a job in public relations would be false. Everything that he’s learnt through doing research and gathering information, and even just understanding how everybody’s personalities are different has prepared him for his past jobs and current job. Matt also told me that the best advise for anyone in a health related field is that it’s good to have a plan but to also be open to other possibilities, because you never know how far your education can actually take you.