FASS Professor Wins Dean of Graduate Studies Leadership Award

Margaret Linley, professor of English, has won this year’s Dean of Graduate Studies Award for Excellence in Leadership. The university presents this award to individuals who have made significant contributions to leadership in graduate student development and the graduate student enterprise at SFU.

Margaret was chosen for her vision and hard work in spearheading a transformation of the English Department’s graduate program during her tenure as Graduate Chair 2004-2007.

View Margaret’s profile.

Read more about the award.



Shadbolt Fellowships 2012

Shabolt Fellowships provide release time from teaching duties for two semesters to enable faculty to focus on research/creative projects. 

Dara Culhane began her academic career with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at SFU in 1994, after serving as deputy director of the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples from 1992–94. She has held positions as a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California, and the National University of Ireland/Galway.
Her work has concentrated on historical and contemporary relations between Aboriginal peoples and the Canadian Nation State; politics of indigenous women's health; collaborative research methodologies; and urban studies.
Dara receives the Shadbolt Felowship for her project: "Encore! Travels with the Ghost of Margaret Sheehy"

Gerardo Otero is Professor of Sociology, an Associate Member of the Latin American Studies Program and of the School of International Studies at SFU, and he is an Adjunct Professor in the Development Studies Doctoral Program at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, in Mexico.(Sociology and Anthropology).
His work has focused on social movements, rural sociology, political economy, state-society relations in semiperipheral nations, neoliberal globalism and agricultural biotechnology in Latin America.
Gerardo receives the Shadbolt Felowship for his project: "Empowerment Theory: Political-Cultural Formation and Social Movements from Below"

André Gerolymatos Wins President’s Media Award

André Gerolymatos went to extraordinary lengths to meet the media’s needs during the Arab Spring insurrections. For his efforts, Gerolymatos has been recognized with this year’s President’s Award for Service Through Public Affairs and Media Relations.

The annual award is given to one or more faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding service to the university by contributing their knowledge and understanding through media and other public relations activities.

Says SFU President Andrew Petter: “The university recognizes their valuable contributions to the on-going work of enhancing the public profile of the university through sharing their expertise with the greater community.”

Read more.

2011 Dean's Medals

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dean’s Medal recognizes excellence in academic research, teaching, and service. Up to three candidates are awarded the medal each year as recommended by an independent review committee to the Dean. The recipients of the 2011 Dean’s Medal are:

Ralph Mistlberger, Department of Psychology

In nominating Professor Mistlberger, his Psychology colleagues said he "has excelled at all aspects of his discipline, from his extraordinary dedication to and success in scholarly activity on the topics of chronobiology (the relationship between circadian clocks and animal biology) and sleep, to the teaching of students, and to his service to the community and profession." Professor Mistlberger is a popular supervisor, and one large course he teaches regularly provides some of the most positive teaching evaluations in Psychology. His research is also exemplary, with his work cited in scientific papers and proceedings at a rate of some 300 citations annually.

Learn more about Ralph Mistlberger.

Krishna Pendakur, Department of Economics

Professor Krishna Pendakur's nomination from the Economics Department described him as "working with the best economists in the world in his fields" on topics that "range from the most applied to the most theoretical". Professor Pendakur makes significant contributions to important policy debates in Canadian topics including poverty, homelessness, cost of living,immigration and integration. In addition, he is a senior supervisor for PhDs, and teaches a large first year undergraduate economics course. Professor Pendakur is also Co-Director of Metropolis BC, an interdisciplinary policy research center which connects academic researchers with policy-interested people in both government and NGO communities.

Lean more about Krishna Pendakur.

Mary Lynn Stewart, Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

Professor Mary Lynn Stewart was nominated by her colleagues in the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, who describe her as a "champion of interdisciplinarity". As one of Canada's leading European feminist historians and a prize-winning author, Professor Stewart has written numerous books on topics such as female journalists in France between the two World Wars and the business and marketing of fashion in France in the early 20th Century. A pioneer of women's studies, Professor Stewart is a Fellow of the Royal Society, past-President of the Canadian History Association, and she received SFU's 2007 Excellence in Teaching Award.

Learn more about Mary Lynn Stewart.



2011 Cormack Teaching Awards Announced

Dean John Craig is delighted to announce the winners of the 2011 Cormack Award for Teaching Excellence in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.  They are:

Alison Ayers, Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Alison Ayers is an assistant professor cross appointed to Political Science and Sociology/Anthropology.  She is renowned among students for her innovative teaching methods and lecture presentations that include everything from cartoons to role playing to standard bullet points.  Her experience working for European NGOs, the United Nations, and her research and program work in Latin America and Africa gives her a base of practical and diverse experiences that she shares with her students.  She is also famous for providing arguments for and against all theories, a mark of the intellectual flexibility and open mindedness that her students have come to respect and admire.

Learn more about Alison Ayers.

David Cox, Department of Economics

David Cox is a senior lecturer in the Department of Economics.  Over the past two years, he taught 15 courses to 2,160 students.  David’s average teaching evaluation score over those courses was an amazing 3.53, and it has never been below 3.28.  Students in his large classes sing his praises saying “he’s the best prof I ever had”; “interesting relevant lectures,” and “great prof, hard course.”  He brings energy and clarity to a wide diversity of classes at all levels, from first to fourth year, while still finding time to mentor students in their academic and career goals.

Learn more about David Cox.

Alexander Dawson, Department of History/Latin American Studies

Alexander  (Alec) Dawson is an associate professor in and director of the Latin American Studies program.  One of the challenges he has faced in his teaching at SFU is lower division courses in which he had to survey the history of some 30 different countries in 13 weeks.  Recognizing that students emerged from such courses with only a vague overview of the subject and few tangible skills, he decided to do something about it: he created a new teaching text, Latin America Since Independence: A History with Primary Sources (Routledge 2010).  With this innovative text in hand, he rearranged his classes so that students  had to draw their own conclusions from primary materials, to collectively analyze texts and other materials, and write as historians.

Learn more about Alexander Dawson.
 


In 2010, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences established the Lesley B. Cormack Award to recognize excellence and innovation in teaching within FASS. The awards are decided through an annual nomination and review process that begins following faculty reviews each year. Part of the process also requires recipients to present, in a public forum, highlight areas of their particular expertise. The awards and presentations allow faculty to inform and engage their colleagues. The 2011  award winners will be formally honoured at a reception in the Fall.  

Shadbolt Fellow Wins Poetry Prize

The West Coast Book Prize Society has named SFU English associate professor Stephen Collis the winner of its 2011 B.C. Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for his latest publication, On the Material (Talon Books, 2010).

Collis has also won SFU’s 2011/2012 Shadbolt fellowship, which he’ll use over the coming year to a finance new book entitled A History of Change.

The new work will be “a hybrid book, somewhere between poetry and philosophical essay, on society’s changing ideas about change,” says Collis, who has published four books of poetry.

Read More

Arthur Robson - 2011 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

The Department of Economics is very pleased to announce that Arthur Robson, Canada Research Chair in Economic Theory and Evolution, has been awarded a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for a 12 month period starting in January 2012 for a project entitled `Biological Basis of Economic Behavior'.

The Guggenheim Fellowships have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation  in New York City. The Foundation was established by former United States Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim as a memorial to their son who died in 1922. This year, the Foundation has awarded 180 fellowships out of a pool of about 3000 applicants.

This prestigious fellowship is awarded `to men and women who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts'. Since 1925, the foundation has awarded a total of 5213 fellowships in Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Humanities and Creative Arts.

In Social Sciences, the Foundation has awarded 597 fellowships in the US and Canada since 1925. They include 70 Fellows in Economics with 22 of them subsequently winning the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Arthur is thus joining an exceptionally distinguished group of Fellows especially as the past recipients in each field rank applications and make recommendations regarding the new Fellows of the Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Website of the Guggenheim Foundation
List of 2011 Guggenheim Fellowships


Carole Gerson Receives the 2010 Gabrielle Roy Prize

The Department of English is proud to announce that Dr. Gerson's book, Canadian Women in Print, 1750-1918, has been awarded the 2010 Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian literary criticism. The jury praised the book for its exhaustive research and contribution to our understanding of women's participation in Canadian book history and the development of Canadian literature. Congratulations, Carole!  Read more.

Tiffany Werth Awarded the 2010 English Literary Renaissance Best Essay Prize

Dr. Werth has been awarded the 2010 English Literary Renaissance best essay prize for “The Reformation of Romance in Sir Philip Sidney’s New Arcadia."

She has published articles on Spenser (edited collection 2006), Shakespeare (Shakespeare International Yearbook 2008) and Sidney. Her book manuscript, The Fabulous Dark Cloister: Romance in England after the Reformation (Johns Hopkins University Press 2012) investigates how post-Reformation English authors sought to discipline romance, appropriating its popularity while simultaneously distilling it of its alleged Catholic taint. Her current research explores the nonhuman Renaissance, focusing on the lithic - human continuum in 16th century literature and philosophy .

Liz Elliott Receives Justice Award

The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has honoured associate professor Liz Elliott for her work as “a driving force” behind the country’s restorative justice movement.

The SFU criminologist received the 2010 Ron Wiebe Restorative Justice Award Nov. 15 in Regina at a symposium marking National Restorative Justice Week.

The award recognizes her “passion for and dedication to restorative justice,” an approach to crime that focuses on the victims’ and offenders’ needs instead of the need to satisfy legal principles or the community’s need to exact punishment.

Elliott co-founded SFU’s Centre for Restorative Justice in the School of Criminology and established its first restorative justice course, now taught at all three campuses. She has spent more than three decades teaching, researching and providing outreach to prisons.

Well known in corrections circles for her outreach, she contributes to numerous community organizations and has developed strong ties between those groups and SFU.

In addition, Elliott coordinates and participates on a host of panels, dialogues and workshops and tirelessly promotes the events among her students and the wider community.

“This is a richly deserved and long overdue award,” says School of Criminology director and colleague, Robert Gordon. “With all due respect to the other RJ luminaries, I cannot think of a more deserving recipient at this time.”

The award recognizes Canadians who have demonstrated, through their work or lifestyle, ways of transforming human relationships by promoting communication and healing between people in conflict, including victims, offenders, colleagues, families and neighbours.

2010 Dean's Medals

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dean’s Medal recognizes excellence in academic research, teaching, and service. Up to three candidates are awarded the medal each year as recommended by an independent review committee to the Dean. The recipients of the 2010 Dean’s Medal are Martin Andresen, Leith Davis, and Luke Clossey.

Martin Andresen, School of Criminology

Winner of the Assistant/Associate Professor Dean’s Medal

In nominating Dr. Andresen, his colleagues described him as an “incredibly dedicated, conscientious and productive junior colleague who has made substantial and invaluable contributions to the School”. Dr. Andresen’s reputation with his students is exemplary. Since his first term, no less than 94 percent, and sometimes 100 percent of his students have rated his courses and teaching as either very good or good. He is an extremely popular supervisor of graduate students and is developing a significant following amongst those interested in environmental criminology. His research areas also include spatial crime analysis as well as crime and economics.

Learn more about Dr. Andresen

Luke Clossey, Department of History

Winner of the Assistant/Associate Professor Dean’s Medal

Professor Luke Clossey was nominated by his peers who described him as a “deeply committed and highly effective teacher”. He was recently awarded the 2010 Canadian Historical Association's Wallace K. Ferguson prize for best book with non-Canadian subject matter. Dr. Clossey won this coveted honour for his book Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. He is a productive and innovative researcher as well as a creative teacher. His contributions to the Department of History have been described as extraordinary.

Learn more about Dr. Clossey

Leith Davis, Department of English

Winner of the Full Professor Dean’s Medal

Dr. Davis was described by her peers as a “highly regarded teacher and an outstanding scholar whose record of research and service represents a major contribution to both SFU and the wider academic and social community.” She has developed a stellar international profile as an expert on the historical relationship between literature and national identity in the British Isles during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Director of the Centre for Scottish Studies, Dr. Davis has fostered a seamless integration of scholarly and community interests, culminating in the recent establishment of the David and Mary Macaree Graduate Fellowship for SFU graduate students in FASS who are doing primary research on approved Scottish topics.

Learn more about Dr. Davis



Lara Campbell - Sir John A. Macdonald Prize Honourable Mention

Lara Campbell, Honourable Mention, Respectable Citizens: Gender, Family, and Unemployment in Ontario's Great Depression. The Canadian Historical Association, Sir John A. Macdonald Prize, for the best non-fiction work of Canadian history judged to have made the most significant contribution to an understanding of the Canadian past.

As a carefully constructed and solidly documented work, Respectable Citizens focuses not only on the economic difficulties experienced by Ontario families during the Great Depression and the survival strategies and social protests engendered by these difficulties but also on how the redefinition of citizenship and the development of the liberal State were affected. This book, located at the crossroads of several historiographies, proposes an original interpretation of this dark period of Canadian history by stressing the interrelations between the public and private domains. It shows  that domestic arrangements and the demands placed on the State on an  individual or more organized basis grew out of a broadly accepted conception of gender relations founded on the breadwinner/housewife  ideal and on a vision of individual rights related to membership in the Anglo-Celtic culture.

With diverse sources eloquently supporting its argumentation, Respectable Citizens posits, first, that in the name of their family duties defined in terms of gender, of their respectability as citizens of British descent, and of their belief in the work ethic,  Ontarians demanded increased services and economic support measures from the State, and, second, that these considerations were incorporated into the implementation of social policies, starting  with the Second World War. Based on the rich and nuanced analysis proposed by Lara Campbell, the 1930s appear to represent a  transitional period leading to the establishment of the Canadian welfare state, with the Canadian public itself contributing to this process. These conclusions appear all the more relevant because the  study is not limited to urban realities but also examines the  conditions present in rural and remote areas. This work, which builds on a wide variety of sources and a series of concepts  developed through feminist research and the new political history, constitutes a major addition to our knowledge of the 1930s and will certainly become a standard reference in understanding this decade and the one that followed.

Congratulations Lara!

Luke Clossey, History, Receives Prize for Best Book with Non-Canadian Subject Matter

History professor Luke Clossey has been awarded the 2010 Canadian Historical Association's Wallace K. Ferguson prize for best book with non-Canadian subject matter! Luke won this coveted honour for his book Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions.

Born at the edge of the Colorado Desert, Luke Clossey has studied and taught world history for the last decade, near the San Francisco Bay, the Danube, and the Yellow Sea. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley, awarded him the doctorate in history in 2004 for his dissertation on early Jesuit networks linking Germany, Mexico, and China. He joined the SFU History Department later that year.

Lesley B. Cormack FASS Teaching Awards

Lara Campbell, Assistant Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies

Lara is praised as a “passionate, committed, and skilled teacher”. Undergraduate evaluations for her courses give her an average of 3.91 as an instructor, 4.0 in her graduate courses.  She has designed four new courses for GSWS, all of which are now central to the program. Lara has her students engage in public intellectual work and social causes. One student said she “encourages students to think for themselves and outside the norms”.

Nicky Didicher, Senior Lecturer, Department of English

Nicky is famous for her innovation, both in course design and the use of technology in teaching. She designed English’s first upper-division writing-intensive CODE course, and the English Department’s only “Q” course, a course of metrics and prosody. Many of her courses are designed to allow students to choose an assignment and assessment path that suits their interests. A long time user of Web CT, Nicky has begun to promote collaborative learning through the use of course wikis.

Yue Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics

Yue is famous for the interactive nature of her teaching and lecturing, the use of student-oriented classroom activities, and the collaborative learning environment she creates. She is praised for integrating her own research into graduate and undergraduate teaching. Her graduate research methods course receives special praise for the clarity of research project cycle she gives her students and the clear guidelines she provides students for pursuing their ideas through the research process to finished project. Her enthusiasm for teaching and student research has actually raised the level of research intensity across the department.

Jennifer Spear Wins the  Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History

Congratulations to Jennifer Spear, winner of the  Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History. Dr. Spear will receive the Williams Prize for her book, Race, Sex, and Social Order in Early New Orleans (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

In her analysis of the major conflicts that influenced New Orleanian culture, Dr. Spear brings together archival evidence from three different languages, and the most recent and respected scholarship on racial formation and interracial sex, to explain why free people of colour became a significant population in the early days of New Orleans, and to show how authorities attempted to use concepts of race and social hierarchy to impose order on a decidedly disorderly society.

The Williams Prize, offered annually by The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Historical Association since 1974, recognizes excellence in research and writing on Louisiana. The prize is awarded each March at the LHA’s annual meeting.

See Dr. Spear’s webpage for more information.

FASS Recipients of the 2009 Teaching Excellence Award

SFU’s 2009 Excellence in Teaching award winners, chosen by a committee of faculty, alumni and students, bring enthusiasm, innovation and passion to their teaching, and clearly care about their students’ learning and achievement.

Read More

2009 Faculty Awards Archive

Distinguished Contributions Award

The American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41 of APA) announced that Professor Ron Roesch, Psychology Department, will be awarded the Distinguished Contributions Award, an honour bestowed upon an individual who is recognized as having made ”distinguished theoretical, empirical, and/or applied contributions to the field of psychology and law.” The award is not granted each year but only on occasions when sufficient merit is recognized. Accordingly, only nine previous awards have been made: the list of awardees is truly prestigious, from Justice H. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and former US Attorney-General Janet Reno to researchers Professor Elizabeth Loftus and Professor Gary Wells.   SFU, and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, is honoured that one of its faculty will receive this award. The award will be presented to Ron at the Annual conference, next year in Vancouver (and first time in Canada), in March.

Royal Society Honours SFU Economist

We are pleased to announce that Arthur Robson has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada, Academy II (Social Sciences). Arthur Robson is an international leader in theoretical and evolutionary economics. His pioneering research asks how evolution influences human economic behavior, and what implications this holds for economic theory. He has published influential articles in the top journals of the profession, and continues to break new ground with research on how evolution has shaped the links between longevity, intelligence, and aging. By bridging biology, anthropology, and economics, he has produced unique insights into the origin of economic preferences that are transforming how scientists look at economic behavior and economic theory in general."

Bank of Canada's Research Fellowship

We are extremely pleased to announce that David Andolfatto has been awarded the 2009 Bank of Canada's Research Fellowship. Please see the official press release from the Bank of Canada below. David belongs to a very select group of economists in Canada who are currently holding this prestigious fellowship; it includes Paul Beaudry of the University of British Columbia (2005), Gregor Smith of Queen's University (2006), Jean-Marie Dufour of the Université de Montréal (2007), Michael Devereux of the University of British Columbia (2008), and Shouyong Shi of the University of Toronto (2008).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bank of Canada Announces Recipients of 2009 Fellowship and Governor's Awards

OTTAWA — The Bank of Canada today announced that Professor David  Andolfatto of Simon Fraser University is the recipient of the Bank's Research Fellowship for 2009.

Professor Andolfatto is known for his work on business cycle theory, labour market policy, and the theory of money and banking. His current research focuses on bank sector stability and policies designed to avert major financial crises.

"Professor Andolfatto's outstanding work contributes to excellence in monetary policy research in this country," said Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of Canada. "The Bank is delighted to recognize such a valuable contributor to this field." The Bank's Fellowship Program is designed to encourage leading-edge research and to develop expertise in Canada in a number of areas critical to the Bank's mandate: macroeconomics, monetary economics, international finance, as well as the economics of financial markets and institutions, including their financial stability. Each Fellowship can last for a period of up to five years, subject to an annual confirmation by the Bank's Governing Council.

Dean's Medal Recipients 1999-2009

2009

Jeff Derksen, English
Steve Easton, Economics
Helen Leung, Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies

2008

Greg Dow, Economics
Jack Little, History
Barbara Mitchell, Sociology and Anthropology / Gerontology

2007

Ray Corrado, Criminology
Peter Dickinson, English
Trude Heift, Linguistics

2006

Mark Leier, History
Paul Warwick, Political Science

2005

Anil Hira, Political Science / Latin American Studies
Stacy Pigg, Anthropology
Betty Schellenberg, English
Jacqueline Viswanathan-Delord, French

2004

Marianne Ignace, Sociology and Anthropology / First Nations Program
Meredith Kimball, Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies / Psychology
Murray Munro, Linguistics
Gordon Myers, Economics

2003

Stephen McBride, Political Science
Marlene Moretti, Psychology
Michael Roberts, Geography

2002

Karlene Faith, Criminology
Carole Gerson, English
Neil Watson, Psychology

2001

Tina Loo, History
Owen Underhill, School for the Contemporary Arts
Andrew Wister, Gerontology

2000

Douglas Allen, Economics
Marjorie Cohen, Political Science
Charles Crawford, Psychology

1999

Dara Culhane, Sociology and Anthropology
Martin Kitchen, History
Simon Verdun-Jones, Criminology