Have You Met… Tyson Lazaruk?

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Have you met Tyson, recruiter, and proud parent? Spend the next 2 minutes getting to know him a little better.

Where is your favourite place on campus?

I’m going to say SUB because I go there once a day, probably for a latte at Daily Grind. It’s fun. It’s where all the students are sitting.

Tablet or paper?

That’s tough. I go back and forth but I’m going to go paper. I still like being able to make notes really quickly.

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Name one thing you’ve brought to work from home.

There’s my Father’s Day gift that I received from my wife and my newborn son. It’s a mouse pad with pictures.

What is the one thing you can’t live without?

Coffee. That’s probably a pretty standard answer. Maybe I should give something different but I’ll stick with coffee.

If you won airfare to anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I’ve always wanted to go to Europe; I’ve never been. So anywhere in Europe, I’d love to go to Europe.

You can invite anyone — alive or dead, real or fictional — to dinner. Who would it be?

Ah, there are so many people. I don’t want to exclude anyone. I’m going to say Steve Jobs. I read that book a few years ago — the Walter Isaacson book. He’s a very interesting guy and I’d be interested to hear what he’d have to say. But I’m sure in thirty minutes, I’ll come up with a new name, and if you ask me tomorrow, and I’ll come up with another new name. I’ll go [with] Steve Jobs.

If you could switch jobs with someone else on campus for a week, what would you do?

I think it would be someone who works for UAI, internationally recruiting. I think that would be interesting … to see what it’s like to travel to multiple countries and be able to interact with students … who are not from Canada. It’s a different context around post-secondary. I think it would be very interesting to do something like that.

What does “uplifting the whole people” mean to you?

It means a lot of things. To me, it means that the goal of what we’re trying to do here is to educate, in a grand scope, many, many students and bring them to a higher level of understanding, make them lifelong learners, develop core skills and critical analysis, and everything around that to a greater degree. Not necessarily only skills specific to their learning, but greater life skills and [to] make them better citizens.

If you could solve any problem in the world, what would it be?

The first one that comes to mind is poverty. I think that would be the one that I’d like to see eliminated the most.

What 3 words best describe your U of A experience?

Dynamic, exciting, challenging.

About Tyson Lazaruk

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Tyson Lazaruk is the Recruitment Coordinator/Academic Advisor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta. He has worked in recruitment at the university for the past six years, split between the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation and Augustana Campus in Camrose. He completed an undergraduate degree at Augustana Campus and an After-Degree in Elementary.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.