He’s unsure how or when his quest for knowledge began.
Dylan Collins, the latest Rhodes Scholar out of the University of Victoria, only knows that he was always someone who asked a lot of questions.
“I don’t come from a background of academics or scholars,” he said. “But my parents always supported me to do what I was passionate about.”
That foundation has served Collins well over the years.
The 21-year-old son of a carpenter and a businesswoman, he won a prestigious Loran scholarship out of high school and will graduate with an honours degree in biochemistry from UVic next June.
He’ll then head off to the University of Oxford in England as the seventh UVic student to win the Rhodes Scholarship in the past 12 years.
The award is worth more than $100,000 and covers all travel, study and living expenses.
“He is an outstanding student who has pushed himself in the classroom, the lab, the community and the workplace to get a well-rounded perspective and hands-on experience in his chosen field of study,” UVic president Jamie Cassels said in a statement. “His determination to make a difference in the world is remarkable.”
Collins, who has developed a passion for public health, hopes to research ways to make access to health care more equitable and put more focus on primary and preventative medicine.
His interest in the area grew after stints working with the Foundation for Sustainable Development in Kenya and the B.C. Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver, as well as his time on the board of AIDS Vancouver Island.
While at the centre for disease control, Collins worked on a program to help prevent drug overdoses.
“So, to me, being able to work with a small team and develop that sort of population-health intervention and have it affect such a large amount of people is something that appeals to me,” he said.
He’s also witnessed the importance of access to health care in his own family.
Collins spent the first four years of his life in the village of Tlell in Haida Gwaii. But when his mother fell ill with cancer, the family moved to Peterborough, Ont.
“Our family had to move for health care reasons, and we didn’t just move to Vancouver; we had to move to Peterborough, Ont., because that’s where my parents’ parents were and we needed that support system.”
Collins received his primary and secondary schooling in Peterborough but still considers Haida Gwaii his home. He spent his summers there, and his parents have since moved back.
In the past year, Collins has been working with UVic’s Centre for Aboriginal Health Research and a Haida Gwaii community, examining barriers to harm reduction for aboriginal people who use illicit drugs.
He plans to study at Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Population Health. In his spare time, Collins hopes to take up rowing, a sport for which Oxford is famous.
