Outstanding Alumni Awards
This year’s winners (l to r) are Jo-ann Archibald (MEd ’84, PhD ’97), Aboriginal educator from the Sto:lo Nation (academic achievement); John Spinelli (BSc’79, MSc’81, PhD’94), cancer control and prevention researcher (academic achievement); Joel Bakan (BA’81), award-winning author, filmmaker, legal commentator, and teacher (professional achievement); and Svein Andresen (BA’81, MA’84), secretary general of the Financial Stability Board (public service). <www.sfu.ca/alumni/our_alumni/outstanding>
Recognition
Daphne Bramham (MA’99), Outstanding Alumni Award winner, receives the print award from Beyond Borders, Canada’s global voice against child sexual exploitation. She is recognized for her Vancouver Sun series “Polygamy in Canada: The ongoing saga.”
Giving Back
Giving Back A soccer program for the homeless founded by Dalhousie medical school student Valentin Mocanu (BSc’11) is achieving great success. A fundraising project helped pay for one teenage player to go to Mexico to play for the Canadian team in the Homeless World Cup. Mocanu has also volunteered at a soup kitchen, a swim program for disabled children, and a basketball program at the YMCA.
Stories about Us
Filmmakers Alexandra Caulfield (BFA’11) and Ryder White (BFA’12) launch Canadian Frame (lines), an interactive documentary project that tells stories of Canadians through film workshops in towns across the country. Contact them at <www.canadianframelines.com> or canadianframelines@gmail.com.
Capstone Success
Kimberley Walker (BA’12) launches the first interactive film capstone project at SIAT. Her film, His Violent Mind, is a 22-minute narrative about a disc jockey struggling with drug addiction. Viewers can bounce between multiple story lines from various characters. Capstone projects are based on student- faculty collaboration culminating in integrated learning.
Moving Around
Long-time SFU administrator Nello Angerilli (BSc’74, PhD’79) is the new associate vice-president international at the University of Waterloo. Angerilli lived in Indonesia for 10 years while working for SFU. He moves to Waterloo from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand where he was pro- vice-chancellor, student services and international.
Good Work
Jody Jollimore (MPP’09) is gaining recognition for his work on HIV/AIDS. He was instrumental in launching Health Initiative for Men (HIM), a gay men’s health organization, and he is now a senior project manager with the group. He also helped bring post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) to gay men, writing a policy paper that persuaded the provincial government to offer PEP to those in high-risk groups.
Danny Catt BSC’86, MSC’91
Danny Catt (BSc’86, MSc’91) is made a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Catt, who teach- es at BCIT, travels and lectures extensively and shares his journeys through his Catt-Trax websites. His photos have been published in Canadian Geographic, Chinese Geographic, Maclean’s, and TIME. He was inducted into the prestigious Explorers’ Club in 2011.
New Audiences
Joyce Lam (BBA’06, CLA ’06) has a dream: she wants to make Vancouver theatres more welcoming to Asian- Canadian performers and audiences. Lam receives the City of Vancouver’s 2012 Cultural Harmony Award for her work with the Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre.
New President
David Ross (MAQ’95) is chosen as president of Calgary’s SAIT Polytechnic when its current leader retires. Ross was most recently president and CEO of Langara College.
New Leader
Katherine Anderson (BSc’98) is appointed national director of naturopathic medicine by the Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA). Anderson is based at the Southwestern Regional Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. CTCA is a national network of hospitals focusing on complex and advanced-stage cancer.
New VP
John Corlett (MSc’77, PhD’80) is appointed vice- president, academic and provost at MacEwan University in Edmonton. Corlett has held positions at the University of Winnipeg, Brock University, the University of Windsor, the University of Botswana, and BCIT.
Best of the Best
Doug Schouten (PhD’11), now a post-doc researcher at TRIUMF, wins the Quirks and Quarks graduate award for best PhD thesis in the Faculty of Science. His thesis, “Determination of the QCD Jet Energy Scale and Measurement of the Single Top Quark Cross Section at ATLAS,” is based on his research at the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider at the Centre for European Nuclear Research in Switzerland.
She’s the Tops
Zabeen Hirji (MBA’94), chief human resources officer, Royal Bank of Canada, is named to the National Post ’s 2012 Hall of Fame. She has global responsibility for human resources as well as brand, communications, and corporate citizenship.
Appointed Luoping
Zhang (PhD’94) is named to the govern- ment of California’s Carcinogen Identification Committee. She has served in multiple positions at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health.
Best Debut Feature
Jason Buxton, who studied film at SFU, shares the Toronto International Film Festival Award for best Canadian debut feature for Blackbird. The film also wins the Best Canadian Feature Film at the Vancouver Film Festival. Blackbird is about a socially isolated teen falsely accused of plan- ning a school massacre in his small rural town.
Andre Wirthmann MBA’12
Andre Wirthmann (MBA’12) and his oral surgeon father have developed a new procedure for bone tissue engi- neering that uses the patient’s own cells to regenerate bone growth. It’s a process that is very expensive, but the younger Wirthmann is using his MBA to look at a number of ways of reducing costs so the procedure can be used in a clinical application. < www.incubone.com >
New Home Builders’ Head
Bob de Wit (BBA’91, MA’94) is the new president of the Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association. The 750-member association is a key lobbying group in the industry.
Riding the Bus Daniel
Pierce (BFA’12) screens his fine arts degree submission In Transit at film festivals in Vancouver, Montreal, and Seattle. The 13-minute film takes viewers into the lives of eight passengers who share a bus ride in Vancouver. He is now working on a documentary about the restoration of Stanley Park’s hollow tree, The Hollow Tree. See In Transit at <http://vimeocom/11487157>
Hitting on the Opposite Sex
Male wasps may lay claim to their harems with the flick of an antenna, according to a team of biologists led by Kelly Ablard, who will receive her PhD in May. They found that when a male targets a female he approaches her from the left side and uses the tip of his antenna to tag her antenna. This helps him find her again and deters other male wasps. The results appear in Behavioural Processes. <http://at.sfu.ca/jYvnUu>
Mary Steinhauser Recollections
In the last aq we told the story of the tragic death of Mary Steinhauser (BA’71). Mary’s sister Marg Franz is still looking for your memories of Mary for a collection to be published this year. Contact Marg at mfranz01@telus.net.
BAGS
Lindsay Belvedere (BSc’12) and Martyna Purchla (BA’12) provide employment opportunities for human trafficking sur- vivors in India. Their organization, called Better Alternatives for Girls’ Survival (BAGS), sells textile products produced by the women to Canadian consumers. An SFU-branded book bag and pencil case are for sale at the SFU Bookstore.
Capstone Health Project
Michel Yao (MPH’12) uses an existing public health evaluations model to develop strategies for assessing and improving B.C. doctors’ attitudes to universal HIV testing.
Money Man
Gavin Toy (BBA’93) is the new president and CEO of Westminster Savings. He was previously senior vice-president and CFO of the credit union, the fourth largest in B.C., with 400 employees and more than 50,000 members.
Diamond Jubilee Awards
Alumni recipients of this special honour include Mae Burrows (BA’72, MA’96), Anne Giardini (BA’80), Larry Hayes (BA’82), James Pau (EARTS’84), and Kalpna Solanki (BSc’88, MBA’00).