Honour Roll: Awards & Recognition Spring 2024

As part of the University of Alberta’s best showing ever in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, 2024 saw the Faculty of Education ranked 80th among the 420 institutions surveyed, placing seventh among institutions in Canada! 

Congratulations to the Education faculty and graduate students who were presented awards for their research and teaching at the Celebrating Socially Transformative Research and Teaching event on March 28, 2024. 

Larry Beauchamp Senior Researcher Award: Greg Thomas
Coutts-Clarke Research Fellowship: Melissa Tremblay
Martha Cook Piper Research Prize: Okan Bulut
Alberta Advisory Committee on Educational Studies (AACES) Grant: David Chorney
Alberta Teachers’ Association - Kule Institute for Advanced Studies Grants:
Science & Literacy Learning with Interactive eBooks (SaLLIE) — Jerine Pegg (PI); Co-investigators Jason Jefferies, Kent Lee; Emile Moacdieh; Chris Sudyk; Melissa LaRue.

Teacher Education up to the Task: Second Language Teachers’ Experiences Implementing Task-Based Instruction in their Everyday Practice — Xavier Gutierre (PI); Co-Investigators William Dunn; Gregory Ogilvie; Leila Ranta; Amy Leavitt; Mais Helwah; Ron Sperling; Andrés Sánchez.

Graduate Student Teaching Awards: Danielle Gardiner Milln; Amy Domenique Gadsden; Stephanie Schuurman-Olson; Sean Groten; Gillian Robinson.

View a gallery of photos from the event. 

On January 23, U of A Bachelor of Education students gathered for the Celebration of Excellence, which recognized qualities such as learning, leadership and professionalism among pre-service teachers.

In total, 293 Certificates of Excellence were awarded to 247 students for demonstrating the qualities that will make them great classroom teachers! Recipients were nominated by instructors in their 100- through 400-level Education courses.

View a gallery of photos from the event.

Congratulations and heartfelt gratitude to the following Education faculty and staff on being recognized for their long service by the University of Alberta!

• Dr. Jose da Costa, Educational Policy Studies (30 years) 
• Dr. Leila Ranta, Educational Psychology (25 years)
• Sophia Sherman, Dean's Office (25 years)

Congratulations to Education researchers Heather Brown, Okan Bulut, Dwayne Donald and Mijung Kim on receiving 2023 Insight Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council!

 Congratulations to music education professor Tom Dust and the U of A Marching Band on receiving a grant of  $4,267 from the Emil Skarin Fund. Preferred objectives of the fund include projects having an interest or value to the public as well as value to the University of Alberta, with an emphasis on the arts and humanities.

Learn more about the U of A Marching Band.

Congratulations to Dr. Cathy Adams on receiving a grant of $50,000 for the project Aligning Generative AI, Ethics and Teachers’ Values through the Research Partnerships Program of Alberta Education's Research Branch.

The Research Partnerships Program facilitates opportunities for research connections between post-secondary research institutions and school authorities. This program is intended to support collaborative research projects that focus on research questions most relevant to Alberta’s education system.

Congratulations to Dr. Darryl Hunter on receiving a Kule Institute for Advanced Study Cluster Grant of $75,000 for the project Reading/Interpretation of Financial Information. Kule Research Cluster Grants support sustained activities of an interdisciplinary research team in the social sciences, humanities and fine arts that have the potential to be recognized as excellent at the national or international level. 

Congratulations to Mehdi Purmohammad, PhD student in Special Education, on receiving an Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship of $12,000! The Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship recognizes outstanding academic achievement of students pursuing graduate studies in Alberta. It was established to incentivize the best and the brightest students, including international students, to study in Alberta.

Congratulations to MLIS students Mikaela LeBlanc and Myles Shingoose on receiving the 2023/24 Indigenous Student Award from the Council of Prairie and Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL)! This award provides $22,000 in financial support to library, archival or information science students who are Indigenous to Canada and reside in Western Canada.

Additional congratulations to Myles on being awarded the Indigenous Student MLIS Education Bursary, valued at $5,000, from the Saskatchewan Library Association! The bursary is open to any person of Canadian Indigenous Ancestry accepted to or enrolled in a part-time or full-time ALA-accredited Master of Library and Information Science graduate degree program or equivalent.

Photo caption: Educational psychology professor Dr. Cheryl Poth presented Assessment Ambassador Awards from the Centre for Research in Applied Measurement and Evaluation (CRAME) to Wyatt Russell (left) and Selassie Drah at the Faculty of Education’s Celebration of Excellence on January 23, 2024 (photo: Laura Sou).