The year 2024 officially marks 45 years of co-op excellence at Mount Saint Vincent University, and we’re celebrating!

For the past four and a half decades, MSVU co-op, internship and work experience students have excelled in the workplace – making lasting impacts on their own careers and the employers they’ve worked for. To celebrate this exciting milestone, we’ll be publishing videos of MSVU co-op graduates from over the past 45 years. Learn more about their experiences in co-op and how those experiences have translated into lasting and successful careers as these videos are populated throughout 2024. We hope you enjoy hearing alumni stories and feel inspired to engage in work-integrated learning – whether you’re someone contemplating going to university or an employer thinking about hiring a co-op student.

We thank these co-op alumni for joining us in celebrating a fantastic 45 years of co-op. Here’s to many, many more.

MSVU co-op 45th anniversary videos and other content will be added throughout 2024. Check back on our website, Instagram and Facebook throughout the year to celebrate.

Adam Bower, BTHM, 2003

Adam Bower’s career in the food and beverage industry has come full circle and he couldn’t be happier. Now the owner of The Grand Banker Bar and Grill and Brigantine Inn in Lunenburg, Adam worked there from 1998 to 2002 as busboy, server and eventually assistant manager, while attending Mount Saint Vincent University. That early foray in the restaurant business convinced Adam that food service was the industry for him.

After graduating from MSVU with a Bachelor of Tourism & Hospitality Management degree, Adam headed west to be a manager at the prestigious Fairmount Jasper Park Lodge Luxury Resort in Alberta. After four years out west, the call of the Atlantic brought him back to Nova Scotia, as Food & Beverage Manager at the Delta Hotels in downtown Halifax. After almost ten years working in the demanding but rewarding environment of a large hotel, and a shorter stint in a managerial role at The Halifax Club, an opportunity to purchase the landmark Lunenburg restaurant presented itself. In 2017, under Adam’s leadership, the Grand Banker was awarded the “Restaurant of the Year” by Taste of Nova Scotia.

Adam has most recently opened Lunenburg’s first craft brewing company, Shipwright Brewing Company, in 2018. In 2020, Adam purchased the Old Fish Factory restaurant on the waterfront in Lunenburg; a 250-seat restaurant which is the largest in town, located in the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. In 2023, Adam opened his third restaurant, Shipwright Brewing Taproom + Pizza, which has 25 taps with all Nova Scotia products including his own beer, and specializes in gourmet signature pizzas.

Adam employees over 140 staff in peak season. Adam is also a CAPS (Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers) trained sommelier, and sits on many industry boards, including Taste of Nova Scotia and the Restaurant Industry of Nova Scotia.  He also has been a part-time instructor at MSVU, and loves getting back on campus in continuing to be a part of the university that has done so much for his career.

Adam is a hands-on owner, with a passion for his hometown, local Nova Scotia products and the relationships with producers, and continuing to create unique offerings and experiences for his community.

Lynn Coveyduck, BPR, 1996

Lynn’s Dad would say she can’t keep a job…she says she’s just interested in too many different things. Over the course of her career, Lynn has led a non-profit, tackled media issues such as strikes and lay-offs, built new lines of revenue, and managed an economic development team’s province-wide response to COVID-19 in its early days. At the same time, she’s raised funds to build a new YMCA and the Margaret Norrie McCain Centre at MSVU, mentored students, entrepreneurs, and new Nova Scotians, been on a Chamber of Commerce task force, and helped plan provincial legs of national conferences (twice). And she’s also the only Duke MBA graduate in Atlantic Canada (as far as she knows – if you’re a Blue Devil, get in touch). Now she’s stepped into the VC realm, using her strategic management skills to align Sandpiper’s work and ensure founders and investors are given the custom, thoughtful Sandpiper treatment they won’t get anywhere else.

Amy Thurlow, BPR, 1989

Amy is Professor of Communication at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Canada. Her research is motivated by a curiosity about how humans socially construct and enact organization through processes of identity construction. Her recent work includes historical constructions of identity and the alternative histories often ignored in that process. Her 2019 book, Social Media, Organizational Identity and Public Relations: The Challenge of Authenticity, investigates identity construction in a virtual context. Her most recent book, Diversity and Business Storytelling (2023), is a collection of works exploring diversity in organizations from a variety of perspectives, co-edited with Dr. Jean Helms Mills.

Among other courses, Amy teaches Strategic Public Relations in the Master of Public Relations program, as well as the Foundations of Public Relations course in the Bachelor of Public Relations degree program, both at MSVU. She has been teaching for the past two decades and previously worked in public relations as a communications officer in the international development and health care sectors.