Student Scholarships and Bursaries

The Ronald M. Keeble Undergraduate Scholarship supports the advancement of planning education and recognizes undergraduate student members who are making a positive contribution to their communities. 

All applications are reviewed against this assessment criteria. 

Eligibility Criteria: 

• Must be a student member of OPPI 
• Must be enrolled in a full-time, undergraduate planning program for the 2026-2027 academic year

This scholarship recognizes graduate planning students who demonstrate commitment to the planning profession and make positive contributions to their communities. 

All applications are reviewed against this assessment criteria. 

Eligibility Criteria: 

• Must be a student member of OPPI 
• ​Must be enrolled in a full-time, graduate planning program for the 2026-2027 academic year

This scholarship recognizes undergraduate or graduate planning students who face systemic barriers to education and actively contribute to their communities. This award reflects OPPI’s commitment to expanding equitable access to the planning profession and reducing barriers faced by individuals from Indigenous and/or equity-deserving communities. 

All applications are reviewed against this assessment criteria.

Eligibility Criteria: 

• Must be a student member of OPPI 
• Must be enrolled in a full-time, undergraduate or graduate planning program for the 2026-2027 academic year 
• Must self-identify as Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, or Métis) and/or as a member of one or more equity-deserving groups 

The 2026 Claire Basinski Chair Scholarship is a one-time award recognizing a graduate student member who has demonstrated leadership in the field of integrated mobility planning, with particular emphasis on engagement practices. This scholarship is to be awarded exclusively in 2026 in honour of the past OPPI Chair, Claire Basinski, RPP. 

All applications are reviewed against this assessment criteria. 

Eligibility Criteria: 

• Must be a student member of OPPI 
• Must be enrolled in a full-time, graduate planning program for the 2026-2027 academic year 

This new award recognizes undergraduate or graduate student members whose research advances diversity, equity, inclusion, reconciliation, or social justice in planning. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Reconciliation, and Social Justice (DEI-RSJ) reflects OPPI’s commitment to building a planning profession and organization that is fair, inclusive, and responsive to the people and communities of Ontario. It acknowledges the full range of human diversity, including race, Indigeneity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, neurodiversity, socioeconomic status, culture, and lived experience, as well as the ways these identities intersect. 

DEI-RSJ recognizes that people experience the planning profession and its outcomes differently due to historical and ongoing barriers, and that equal treatment does not always produce fair results. This work focuses on creating accessible pathways into the profession and ensuring that professional standards and processes are inclusive and responsive. It also acknowledges the distinct rights of Indigenous Peoples and the importance of supporting self-determination through respectful and accountable relationships. More broadly, a social justice lens recognizes that planning and professional regulation shape access to opportunity, resources, and well-being, and calls on planners and organizations to consider who benefits, who is burdened, and whose voices are centred in decisions and practices. 

All applications are reviewed against this assessment criteria. 

Two awards, each valued at up to $5,000, are available under this scholarship.  

Eligibility Criteria:  

• Must be a student member of OPPI 
• Must be enrolled in a full-time, undergraduate or graduate planning program for the 2026-2027 academic year 
• Applicant’s research must address topics related to diversity, equity, inclusion, reconciliation, and/or social justice in planning 

Beginning in 2026, OPPI is thrilled to announce a new bursary program, designed to support planning students who can demonstrate significant financial need. 

All applications are reviewed against this assessment criteria. 

Eligibility Criteria: 

• Must be a student member of OPPI 
• Must be enrolled in a full-time, undergraduate or graduate planning program for the 2026-2027 academic year 
• Must be able to demonstrate significant financial need 

This award recognizes a Full (RPP) Member of OPPI who has demonstrated excellence in mentorship and made a meaningful contribution to the growth and development of others in the planning profession.

The recipient of the Thomson Rogers LLP Mentorship Award will be honoured at OPPI’s PlanON Awards ceremony, held during the annual OPPI Conference.

This “Pay It Forward” award celebrates the importance of mentorship by recognizing one outstanding mentor. In turn, a financial gift is provided to the mentor’s current mentee(s) to support their early career(s). If there are multiple mentees, the gift is shared equally among them.

All applications are reviewed against this assessment criteria. 

Dean Orr is the recipient of the Gerald Carrothers Memorial Graduate Scholarship

Dean Orr is a full-time farmer from King City, Ontario, producing organic and conventional grains, pasture-raised poultry, and maple syrup. Dean is an advocate for responsible land use planning and farmland protection; Ontario is shockingly losing 1% of its farmland, the best in Canada, every year to urban growth! He has published articles in the Ontario Farmer, delegated to numerous GTA municipal councils, and contributed as an expert witness to the recent soil health report prepared by the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry.

He is currently working towards his MSc in Rural Planning and Development at the University of Guelph. Dean’s thesis aims to calculate the minimum farmland requirements necessary to support a population and explore methods for communities to achieve this minimum through measures like agricultural preserves. Dean’s work will examine the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve, Ontario’s first and only agricultural preserve, as a model.

Sam is the recipient of the Ronald M. Keeble Undergraduate Scholarship

Sam Goncalves-Horton is a third-year undergraduate planning student at the University of Waterloo. During his time in the planning program, he has made a concerted effort to contribute to and lead activism efforts within Kitchener-Waterloo. As a student and aspiring planner, he strongly believes that students have a responsibility to contribute positively to the communities that they call home during the course of their studies.  

Through his interests in transportation planning, grassroots activism, and municipal politics, he has sought to improve outcomes around public transportation throughout Waterloo Region, working with various groups both on and off campus. Some of his notable achievements include heading campaigns to stop cuts to the ION LRT, stopping cuts to GRT bus service, advocating for the GRT Business Plan, and co-writing a motion to council that led to the creation of the Route 91 Night Bus.  

In the future, Sam wishes to continue to explore as many sub-disciplines of planning as possible, and eventually hopes to zero in on a research question and earn a PhD. 

Venus is the recipient of the OPPI Opportunity Scholarship

Venus Cheung is a Master’s candidate in Planning and Urban Development at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). Combining her planning education and architectural background, Venus is interested in how participatory design approaches enhance multicultural planning policies and practices, ultimately contributing to the well-being of diverse urban communities.  

She has assisted in research about social and built care networks of immigrants living with dementia, their care partners and care workers, informal immigrant entrepreneurship and its role in strengthening equitable food system infrastructure, and the dynamics of transnationalism and mobility justice. She also focuses on overlooked narratives of the Filipino community and their network of care, agency, and resilience, both in Hong Kong and Canada. Building on her community activism work back in Hong Kong, she researched the Filipino diaspora in Canada and co-led 2025 Jane’s Walk Little Manila.  

Entering her final year at TMU, her Major Research Project aims to integrate community-based knowledge into food system planning, to explore alternative narratives of resilience, and to spark spatial-oriented conversations about an integrative resilience approach for immigrant food insecurity. Her long-term goal is to work at the intersection of theory, research, and applied community work, enabling care, creativity, and collaboration in the city-making process.