A tale of two Edmontons seen at awards

By Lethbridge Herald on October 4, 2024.

Dan O’Donnell

I was up at the Edmonton Convention Centre last week for the annual awards of the Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA).

This is a great event, and if you ever happen to be up in Edmonton this time of year, it is worth going to see: the awards showcase some of the best of Alberta’s post secondary researchers and teachers, from the province’s most distinguished professors to its most exciting part-time instructors.

This year was interesting because it turned out that all four winners were interested in community engagement — on getting their research and teaching out of the Ivory Tower and into the hands of regular people.

The winner of the precarious academic award (for instructors who teach on short-term contracts) was Dr. Kristine Nutting. Dr. Nutting teaches drama at the University of Alberta’s Augustina campus, and was recognised for the way she uses her classes to break down students’ sense of isolation — even going so far as to hold classes in a darkened classroom so they can realise how connected they are to each other.

The winner of the early career award was Dr. Janelle Baker of the Athabasca University. Dr. Baker grew up on a farm in Sundre and discovered ethnobiology — the study of how people interact with nature — on a childhood trip to Mexico. Since earning her PhD, Dr. Baker has worked with Indigenous groups across Canada and around the world to understand how industrialisation impacts the land and traditional practices. One of her studies looked at how the oil sands are affecting fish and other wildlife down river.

The winners of the two senior awards were Lethbridge’s own Professor Robbin Gibb (Distinguished Teacher) and the University of Alberta’s Professor George Georgiou (Distinguished Academic). Dr. Gibb is a professor of Neuroscience and acclaimed public speaker, well-known throughout the province for her public lectures on the brain, early childhood development, and women in science. 

Dr. Georgiou is a professor of educational psychology who works with school boards across Alberta and around the world to help students who struggle with reading — an issue that can affect children for the rest of their lives if not addressed early on in their school careers.

The best thing about the CAFA awards is the passion these researchers and teachers bring to their work — and the passion with which Albertans return their interest and are willing to learn from them and our province’s other great researchers and teachers.

In fact, this passion for learning is what struck me the most when I first moved to Lethbridge from Toronto almost 30 years ago. The Kiwanis festival. Public lectures in the library. The shows of the New West Theatre company. The Word on the Street Festival. 

I was amazed at just how engaged people from all walks of life in this city were with education, the arts, and the world around them.

I was sitting at the CAFA awards with Kevin Wirsta, a cattle farmer and councillor from St. Paul’s who is also on the Board of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta.

 At CAFA we’ve been working the RMA for a couple of months now on recent government initiatives to micromanage (or worse) how things operate in this province, from Bill 18 — which allows the province to veto federal grants to cities and universities — to Bill 20, which forces political parties and big money into city politics while driving up our tax bills by requiring municipalities to hand count ballots.

The difference between what we saw on the Convention Centre stage and what we talked about during the breaks was huge. At the awards ceremony, we saw people being recognized for their openness to and engagement with the world around them. During the breaks we discussed a government that doesn’t trust its own citizens to know what’s best for their home towns. On the stage we saw the best our universities have to offer; in the legislature across town they have done almost everything they can to starve what used to be the best post-secondary system in the country.

“Can do” or “Can’t be trusted.” Two visions. One province.

I know which I prefer.

Dan O’Donnell is Professor of English at the University of Lethbridge and Past President at CAFA, where he helped judge this year’s competition. The opinions in this piece are his own.