She rose to the top. About 60 students apply each year for three or four fellowships. It's an enormous honour. Coming from a small university, it's a dream come true. Wood's success is a strong indication that Malaspina's independent degree program is highly respected and equivalent to big city universities, says MacGillivray, a UBC professor for 20 years.
Class sizes are smaller, and students have more personal contact with instructors.
The instructors get to know students very well and can evaluate them better than at larger institutions. My experience is that students who transfer to UBC after two years or four years of study at Malaspina are highly competitive. While at Malaspina, Wood carried out research on a cancer-causing gene under the supervision of Dr. Allan Gibson and worked in a lab for a year as a student assistant with Rob Wager, molecular biology lab demonstrator. Her dissertation research will involve the protein transferrin, a major iron transport protein in human blood. She was employed in a molecular biology laboratory at UBC during the summer of 1999 and 2000.