Alumni achievement awards go to Political Science alums

The department of Political Science would like to congratulate Jud Whiteside and Benjamin Ries for their outstanding achievements!

Alumni Achievement Award    

Jud Whiteside (BA 1970, Honours Political Science) is the recipient of the 2014 Arts Alumni Achievement Award. “Waterloo as a whole, and Arts in particular, has been such a large part of my life and our family, that to be recognized by my Faculty is very special,” says Jud, who holds a Juris Doctor from the University of Western Ontario, and also completed executive programs at both Harvard and Stanford universities.

Jud is a senior partner of Miller Thomson, one of Canada’s leading business law firms. From 1992 to 2007, he served as the firm’s Chair and CEO, and throughout his career he held directorships at Arise Technologies, MI Developments, and Tesma International Inc. He has balanced his career success with community outreach, such as Markham Stouffville Hospital and Foundation, the Canadian Cancer Society, and Juvenile Diabetes.

Jud is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Markham Board of Trade Tony Roman Award as business leader of the year, and the University of Waterloo’s 50th Anniversary Alumni Award. In 1992, he was inducted into the University’s Athletic Hall of Fame. His dedication to a broad education led him to create the Whiteside Family Scholarship which supports student athletes enrolled in Arts. Jud has served the University in several senior roles, including Senate, the Board of Governors, and Vice-Chair of the Arts Talent Trust Campaign.

Young Alumni Award

Benjamin Ries (BA 2006, Honours Political Science/Applied Studies Co-op) is the recipient of the 2014 Arts Young Alumni Award.

While at Waterloo, Ben’s studies in law and politics, along with his co-op work experiences, led him to pursue a career in law. In 2009, he received his Juris Doctor, and in 2011, his Master of Laws, both from the University of Toronto. As a graduate student, he received a Faculty Graduate Fellowship, the Houlden & Morawetz Scholarship, and the Albert S. Abel Award, while studying the legal theory and economic analysis of Ontario’s low-income housing policies.

Ben has dedicated his career to the problems of homelessness and inadequate housing. “From my very first month as a law student, I was most attracted to the student legal clinic as a place where I could immediately apply what I was learning in my classes to real world problems that affected ordinary people,” says Ben. His interest took him from policy work in government to graduate research and teaching. Until recently, he worked as a staff lawyer at Neighbourhood Legal Services in Toronto, while he continued to train new law students and intervene in housing rights litigation at the Ontario Court of Appeal.

This past July, Ben changed jobs and is now review counsel at Downtown Legal Services in Toronto, a teaching clinic operated by the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, where he teaches and supervises law students.