VIU Scholarship, Research, and Creative Activity

2018 Provost's SRCA Award Recipients

VIU is pleased to announce the recipients of the inaugural Provost’s Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity Awards for 2018.

Collaborative Research Award

This is a university-wide award given to recognize faculty members who have demonstrated excellence in collaborative projects and research undertaken as part of a multi-disciplinary or multi-institutional team. This award will be granted to a researcher who excels at creating and maintaining collaborations with industry, university and/or community partners to facilitate research that effects positive changes in their respective field.

Recipient: Dr. Lindsay McCunn, Faculty of Social Science - Nominated by Ms. Deborah Matheson

Dr. Lindsay McCunn is a Professor of psychology at VIU and Director of the Environmental Psychology Research Lab. Her research concerning sense of place, organizational commitment, and other psycho-social constructs has been published in numerous interdisciplinary journals; she is also on the Board for the Journal of Environmental Psychology and is the Commissioning Editor for the journal Cities and Health. McCunn also serves as Chair for the Environmental Psychology section of the Canadian Psychology Association and co-chairs VIU’s Sustainability Advisory Committee.

Recipient: Dr. Paige Fisher, Faculty of Education - Nominated by Dr. Rachel Moll

Dr. Paige Fisher is Director of the Centre for Innovative Educational Leadership at VIU and is active on a number of advisory boards such as the Nanaimo Aboriginal Centre, Nacu Mat Tatalut (Collaborative Professional Learning for SD68) and the provincial Rural Education Advisory. Her research projects include the six Campus Communities of Pedagogical Inquiry Project – a learning partnership among the BC Ministry of Education, six BC Faculties of Education, and school districts across the province. Her other practice and research interests include global education and she has led field schools for pre-service teachers in Ghana, Belize and India.

Distinguished Researcher Award

This is a university-wide award given to recognize faculty members who have achieved exceptional scholarly achievement and impact on advancing knowledge in science, engineering, health, education, the arts, the humanities, social sciences, or other academic fields of study. Recipients will have demonstrated exceptional ability to convey the significance of scholarship and creative activities to their discipline and the public.

Recipient: Dr. Cheryl Warsh, Faculty of  Arts and Humanities - Nominated by Dr. Tim Lewis

Dr. Cheryl Krasnick-Warsh has been a member of VIU’s History department since 1994, teaching in the fields of women’s, medical, family, and cultural histories. She held Fulbright and Hannah fellowships, and has published seven books with an eighth forthcoming. While at VIU, she has served for 13 years as Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, and is now co-editor of the journal of Gender and History. Warsh became a Fellow in the Division of Arts and Humanities in the Royal Society of Canada in 2017.

Recipient: Dr. Chris Gill, Facutly of Science and Technology - Nominated by Dr. Don Noakes

Dr. Chris Gill is a Chemistry professor at VIU and co-director of the Applied Environmental Research Laboratories (AERL), which is moving into expanded space in the recently completed VIU Health and Sciences Centre. The AERL’s pure and applied research has lead to numerous advances for direct environmental, industrial and more recently, bio-analytical measurements. Dr. Gill’s current research interests continue to involve the development of direct MS instrumentation and applications for direct, real-time chemical measurements, including the development of rapid, on-site drug testing strategies for use in the opioid crisis.

Recipient: Dr. Lev Idels, Faculty of Science and Technology - Nominated by Dr. David Bigelow

Dr. Lev Idels began teaching in VIU’s mathematics department in 2001 after immigrating from Russia in 1995. Idels is passionate about VIU’s place on a scientific world map, and spearheaded the university’s first international math conference in 2004. His research has focused on developing new mathematical models for use in a variety of applications. Idels has published more than 70 papers and was awarded a prestigious pilot grant from NSERC, along with more than 15 VIU research grants. Idels is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Mathematical Modelling.

Early Career Research Excellence Award

This is a university-wide award given to recognize faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers who have demonstrated significant promise in their research program. The award is presented to an outstanding researcher in the first five years of his or her academic career, and who has made an outstanding contribution to scholarly, research and creative activity in their area(s) of expertise.

Recipient: Dr. Jamie Gorrell, Faculty of Science and Technology - Nominated by Dr.’s. Tim Goater, Caroline Josefsson, and Joslynn Affleck

Dr. Jamie Gorrell teaches in the biology department at VIU and since 2016 has enlisted the help of 491 students to conduct research on regional issues including Garry Oak trees, black-tailed deer, wolverines and Vancouver Island marmots with support from the VIU Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity office. Most recently, he was awarded a five-year NSERC Discovery Grant to study the ecological and evolutionary impacts of genetic bottlenecks and captive breeding on the slow recovery of marmots since their rapid decline that almost drove the species to extinction.

 Graduate Research Mentor Award

This is a university-wide award given to recognize an individual who has demonstrated excellence in mentoring and supporting graduate student researchers.

The recipients will have demonstrated excellence in their ability to guide graduate student research, creative projects and development helping VIU learners to move from directed to independent research and creative work.

They inspire, motivate and support student learning, maintain open communication and accessibility to students. They will have encouraged and supported students to share the results of their work as appropriate to the discipline (i.e. publications, presentations, performances) and their efforts will have resulted in transformative learning experiences for VIU graduate students.

Recipient: Dr. Mary Ann Richards, Faculty of Education - Nominated by Dr. Rachel Moll and Ana Vieira

Dr. Mary Ann Richards has been a member of the Faculty of Education at VIU since 2010. Her opportunities to instruct and supervise graduate students in research methods through the lens of education, and to serve with VIU’s Research Ethics Board, have enabled her to continue her exploration of human experiences, especially related to literacy and learning. That investigation began during her own graduate studies and fostered a fascination with research as a tool for understanding and meaning-making.

Deans’ Scholarship, Research and Creative Activity Award

This award is given to recognize individual faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding scholarly, research and creative activities (SRCA) achievements and impact on their disciplines during the previous academic year. The Deans in each Faculty can nominate one faculty member each year for this award.

Recipient: Dr. Allyson Fleming,Faculty of Education - Nominated by Dr. David Paterson

Dr. Allyson Fleming teaches in both the Teacher Education program and the Master’s of Educational Leadership program in the Faculty of Education. She works at both the Cowichan and Nanaimo campuses and is the co-ordinator for the Faculty of Education in Cowichan. Her research interests include ways in which teacher educators identify, understand or interpret factors that enable or constrain them in teaching for social justice in teacher education, and the catalytic potential of inhabiting the ‘tragic gap’ between the binaries of social justice theory and practice.

Recipient: Dr. Cathryn Spence, Faculty of Arts and Humanities - Nominated by Dr.’s Tim Lewis and Ross MacKay

Dr. Cathryn Spence teaches in VIU’s History department. She is the author of Women, Credit, and Debt in Early Modern Scottish Towns, co-editor of the Edinburgh Housemails Taxation Book, 1634-6, and co-editor of the North American office of the international journal Gender & History with VIU history colleagues. Her monograph, Women, Credit, and Debt, won the 2016 Women’s History Network (UK) Book Prize for the best first book in the field of women and gender, and her research has received funding from SSHRC, the Strathmartine Trust, and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.

Recipient: Dr. Lindsay McCunn, Faculty of Social Sciences - Nominated by Dr. Elizabeth Brimacombe

 Dr. Lindsay McCunn is a Professor of psychology at VIU and Director of the Environmental Psychology Research Lab. Her research concerning sense of place, organizational commitment, and other psychosocial constructs has been published in numerous interdisciplinary journals; she is also on the Board for the Journal of Environmental Psychology and is the Commissioning Editor for the journal Cities and Health. McCunn also serves as Chair for the Environmental Psychology section of the Canadian Psychology Association and co-chairs VIU’s Sustainability Advisory Committee.

Selection committee: Nicole Vaugeois, Chair, SRCA; Joslynn Affleck, Faculty of Science; Mark Williams, Faculty of Social Sciences; Micki McCartney, Student Affairs; Elliott Marchant, Faculty of Social Science; Louis Mattar, Faculty of Education; Michael Ribicic, Student representative; Susan Juby, Faculty of Arts and Humanities.