With pleasure, we announce the 2017 recipients of the Peter T. Millard Award and the Peter C. Dooley Legacy Award.
The 2017 Peter Millard Award goes to Dr. Lee Murray from the College of Nursing.
Through her involvement as the Faculty Association Representative (FAR) in the College of Nursing, Lee Murray has assisted and supported USFA members in her college. She regularly responds to requests from her colleagues for assistance and guidance with matters related to and ranging beyond the Collective Agreement. Lee is a well-known and widely respected mentor in her College who makes use of USFA resources and personnel to ensure her advice to colleagues is as current and cogent as possible. It is in her capacity as FAR that Lee took up the challenge of informing, encouraging and mobilizing her colleagues to push back against the inclusion of prescriptions and “scenarios” for research performance and an apparent undervaluing of clinical practice in her College’s Guidelines for the Assignment of Duties. Lee led a notable effort in her college to bring home the message that the USFA is vigilant and willing to assist its members whenever collegial procedures are threatened or violated.
The 2017 Peter C. Dooley Legacy Award goes to the University of Manitoba Faculty Association.
Through both its cumulative contribution to the promotion of collegial governance and its recent actions to fight back against university administration’s attempts to redefine or subvert collegial governance and the quality of decision-making that form of governance alone enables, the University of Manitoba Faculty Association has been a champion of collegial governance in Canada.
Since its establishment in 1975, UMFA has exercised responsible stewardship of academic values and the public interest. It has maintained a long and distinguished tradition of defending collegial processes and values. Three times UMFA members have taken job action, most recently last fall in response to an intransigent, authoritarian administration and unsympathetic provincial government. When the Pallister government interfered in collective bargaining, UMFA’s portion of a joint response with U of M administration illustrated once again that UMFA is both an expert and articulate defender of collective bargaining and also an able and tenacious advocate for collegial governance, and the academic mission and integrity of their institution. Staying true to its slogan “Our working conditions are your learning conditions,” UMFA built connections from negotiations through teaching and research to collegial governance, and documented the ways in which unilateral actions by administration imperiled both the quality of education and research at the university, and the U of M’s commitment to academic integrity and “excellence” in all its activities. UMFA exposed damage done, and threatened, as a result of arbitrary and substantial workload increases, and the imposition of rigid performance metrics ill-suited to many of the core disciplines and activities on which the academic reputation of U of M continues to rest.
The awards will be presented at a celebration dinner on Wednesday, April 26 at the University Club. Please join us in honoring this year’s recipients. Cocktails will be at 6:00 p.m. with dinner at 7:00 p.m.
As there is limited seating for the dinner, to accommodate all those interested in attending, we would appreciate it if you would RSVP, including whether or not you will be bringing a guest, by replying to Tammy Stieb at tammy.stieb@usask.ca on or before April 20, 2017.