Summit Spring 2015

Summit MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY

SHE WANTS YOU!

JOIN THE CHIC GEEK REVOLUTION

Where’s it STEM from?

There’s a lack of women enrolling in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) postsecondary programs across Canada. Mount Royal aims to attract more women to STEM classrooms.

Spring 2015

Chart the best course for your life in the years ahead.

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CONTENTS SPRING 2015 10

18

PARK LIFE New partnership with St. Andrews University to study sustainability in a national parks context

SAVING LIVES THROUGH COMPUTER SCIENCE 12

A Mount Royal professor is developing a new

COVER STORY: WE CAN DO IT! Where’s it STEM from? There’s a lack of women enrolling in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) post-secondary programs across Canada. Mount Royal takes aim at this nationwide conundrum

application to help diagnose and fight back against tropical diseases

TEAM TAKING A BREATHER 16 EVEREST-BOUND IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE

Professor Trevor Day furthers his research in hypoxia, as he and a group of adventurous students plan to explore Mount Everest’s base camp

12

CRETACEOUS SEAS COMES TO LIFE 26

Calgary’s largest extinct marine reptile exhibit unveiled at Mount Royal University

32

PITCHING TO INVESTORS IS SO PASSÉ

26

Crowdfunding students and alumni launch innovative projects through online community fundraising

PROMOTING THE POST-SECONDARY PUCK 36

From Bemidji Beaver to Mount Royal Cougar, men’s head hockey coach Bert Gilling is rallying alumni and taking the men’s hockey team to new heights

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THE CLASSROOM AND COMMUNITY 42 WHEN SERVICE COLLIDE

While experiential learning has become a buzzword in academic circles, it’s a methodology deeply ingrained in our DNA. Mount Royal is among the leaders of community service learning in Canada

36

FROM CASA GUATEMALA TO CALGARY AND BACK 48

Nonprofit Studies alumna battles against child poverty GIVING THEIR SUPPORT 50

There’s a lot more to community stewardship than meets the eye. At Mount Royal, we are fortunate to have supporters who back us in many ways. We introduce you to a couple of exceptional examples

MOUNT ROYAL’S 54 INTRODUCING BOARD OF GOVERNORS

Mount Royal University is served by a diverse Board of Governors. We introduce you to the people who bring their expertise to Mount Royal

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IN EVERY ISSUE: 2 Letter from the president | 4 Exceptional moments | 30 Organized chaos (office of genius) | 56 Closing words SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

H

ands down, my favourite day of the year is Convocation. It’s full of celebration, the time of each year when, with proud hearts, we send our best out into the world.

Just because they cross the stage doesn’t mean they leave us.

I relish opportunities to keep in touch with our alumni, to see where they’ve landed. There is, of course, an incredible range of industries and locations where they make outstanding contributions. It’s fairly easy to do in Calgary, where I regularly cross paths with some of the thousands of professionals who have spent time on our campus.

Travelling gives me another opportunity to connect with even more grads.

After meeting with a well-known diplomat and former Chief of Defense Staff in Ottawa, I was pleased to introduce him to one of our fourth-year students who is interested in foreign service.

I also had a great conversation with Barry Randall, a good-natured retired CFL athlete and Mount Royal

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SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

alumnus with excellent memories of the contribution Mount Royal made to his life and career. You’ll get to know him better as you make your way through this edition of Summit.

There is immense value in cultivating these connections within our community and across Canada.

In the coming years, we plan to send our own students to get to know different parts of the country with the introduction of domestic exchanges.

Yes, Mount Royal has grown and evolved over its more than 100 years as a school. Whether I’m talking to those who have upgraded courses at Mount Royal or those who hold four-year degrees, the constant is the commitment of our professors and staff to inspire bright and dedicated individuals who go out and make their mark on our community.

These are the ties that bind us, no matter where our paths take us.

Sincerely, David Docherty

VICE PRESIDENT UNI V ERSIT Y A DVA N CEMEN T Carole Simpson

Hey STEMinist, what do you think defines your “chic geek” side?

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N S Melanie Rogers

MEET THE TEAM

MANAGER, ALUMNI R E L AT I O N S & A N N U A L G I V I N G Buffy St-Amand

Summit is published in the fall and spring each year. Like this issue, its pages will introduce you to the exceptional students, faculty, staff, alumni and supporters of Mount Royal University who are, together, helping to change the face of education in Canada.

Distributed through various internal and external channels, Summit tells Mount Royal’s ongoing story to its various audiences.

Summit’s content will showcase the aspirations, achievements and contributions of Mount Royal students, faculty, staff, alumni and supporters and, in so doing, clarify Mount Royal’s profile as a Canadian leader in undergraduate education.

EDITOR-IN- CHIEF Carole Simpson “IN MY PREVIOUS LIFE/CAREER I WAS A MANUAL DRAFTSPERSON.”

PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT Deb Abramson Journalism Diploma (1977) M A R K E T I N G A N D ED I TO R I A L C O O R D I N AT I O N Mike Hwang Bachelor of Business Administration — Marketing (2012) “I GOT 98% ON MY CHEM 30 DIPLOMA EXAM. ONE QUESTION WRONG, DANGIT.”

“MY BEST SQUASH KILL SHOTS HAVE EVERYTHING TO DO WITH PHYSICS.”

Simply e-mail summit@mtroyal.ca with the following subject heading: Yes, I would like to enjoy MRU Summit by e-mail.

Same great stories — now, sustainably yours.

COPY EDITORS Michelle Bodnar Bachelor of Communication (Applied) — Journalism (2005) Andrea Ranson Public Relations Diploma (1985) Bryan Weismiller Bachelor of Communication — Journalism (2013) COVER STORY Makeup and hair: Lucy Morris Photography: Colin Way Stylist: Leah Van Loon PHOTOGRAPHY James May Roth & Ramberg Michal Waissmann Bryan Weismiller G R A P H I C D E S I G N A N D L AYO U T Christina Riches Bachelor of Communication — Information Design (2014) Michal Waissmann Chao Zhang

GET IT IN WRITING RIGHT ON YOUR SCREEN Now, you can enjoy Summit by arranging to have a digital version of the next issue delivered right to your desk or home. It’s easy and environmentally friendly.

EDITOR Theresa Tayler Bachelor of Communication (Applied) — Journalism (2005) ART DIRECTOR Michal Waissmann Bachelor of Communication (Applied) — Electronic Publishing (2007)

ISSN 1929-8757 Summit Publications Mail Agreement #40064310 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: University Advancement Mount Royal University 4825 Mount Royal Gate S.W. Calgary, AB, Canada T3E 6K6

“FOR MY B-DAY, MY HUSBAND GOT ME DESIGNER SUNGLASSES (CHIC), TICKETS TO THE UPCOMING KIDS IN HALL TOUR (GEEK) AND THREE NEW WII GAMES (CHIC GEEK).”

“ONCE WI-FI IS AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE, I PLAN TO LIVE ON A BOAT. BUT, NOT UNTIL I KNOW THERE WILL BE RELIABLE WI-FI.”

“SPREADSHEETS. CONTRIBUTORS MY WHOLE LIFE IS IN Deb Abramson A SPREADSHEET.” Valerie Berenyi Alyssa Berry Michelle Bodnar Marlena Cross Tierney Edmunds Bachelor of Communication — Public Relations (2012) Wes Gilbertson Bachelor of Communication (Applied) — Journalism (2005) Kimberly Molnar James Parsons Barry Randall “I HAVE AN ADDICTION Stacey Smith TO CBC RADIO AND AN ABILITY Theresa Tayler TO ‘CLIFF CLAVIN’ RANDOM Jacquelynn Twarzynski FACTS INTO EVERYDAY Bryan Weismiller CONVERSATION.”

FSC SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

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MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY’S EXCEPTIONAL MOMENTS

Leader in environmental sustainability recognized with year-long fellowship Mike Quinn, director and Talisman Energy chair of the Institute for Environmental Sustainability, received a prestigious yearlong fellowship in conservation science through the Seattle-based Wilburforce Foundation and COMPASS. Quinn, PhD, is one of 20 scientists from across North America to take part in 2015, with the aim of building a community of scientists working toward conservation solutions by engaging with local communities, policymakers and land managers.

Quinn was honoured to be part of the first cohort of the fellowship, saying he is looking forward to learning from “the best in the business,” with the goal of advancing the profile and

effectiveness of Mount Royal’s Institute for Environmental Sustainability (IES).

“This opportunity is really about communicating good science and seeing that science translated into on-theground solutions,” Quinn says. “This goal aligns perfectly with the mission of the IES. “It will be a challenging, but very rewarding year.”

Each fellow sets a target for engagement in a specific conservation issue for the year, and a team of trainers and mentors help them use their new skills to reach that objective. Participants will be guided by representatives from COMPASS, a group specializing in science communication.

Aboriginal youth gain hands-on science and technology experience Aboriginal youth are drastically under-represented in Canada’s universities — especially in the field of science and technology.

To inspire and deepen an interest in science and technology at an early age, the Iniskim Centre and the Faculty of Science and Technology at Mount Royal collaborated with MEG Energy to create the MEG Energy Summer Science Camp for Aboriginal youth.

Twenty high school students from Treaties 6, 7 and 8 spent a week on campus immersed in university life, participating in a variety of labs, demonstrations and field trips while also honouring Aboriginal traditions.

It was a successful first year of a five-year commitment that MEG Energy has made to this initiative. Camp will take place again this summer 2015.

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SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

McConnell Foundation donates $500,000 to the Institute for Community Prosperity Mount Royal’s newly renamed Institute for Community Prosperity (formerly the Institute for Nonprofit Studies) has partnered with the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation to strengthen the culture of social innovation on campus. The institute was granted a generous donation of $500,000 through the foundation’s initiative RECODE in support of nonprofit research, making Mount Royal the only university in Alberta to receive the funding in 2014.

“The Institute for Community Prosperity connects learning, research and change leadership to build communities and strengthen the common good,” said Director James Stauch of the forward-thinking institute, which was founded in 2000.

RECODE also offers a platform for national competition. The Institute for Community Prosperity was pleased to have three representatives — including one student — at a RECODE grantee event in Toronto this past January.

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Photojournalism students take top prize at Associated Collegiate Press Awards

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Members of Mount Royal’s Journalism program and contributors to the Calgary Journal took home first place from the 2014 Associated Collegiate Press Awards for their submission in the Multimedia Story of the Year category.

Their winning photo slideshow was the only Canadian submission chosen as a finalist in the category and featured work by fourth-year photography students Michael Chan (1), Danny Luong (2), Hannah Kost (3), April Lamb (4), Megan Bilton (5), Alyssa Quirico (6) and Scott Kingsmith (7).

The Calgary Journal is the flagship publication of the journalism program at Mount Royal and distributes 10,000 free copies throughout the city monthly. The Journal’s online version features additional elements such as the Our Calgary section, where photojournalism students are encouraged to head out into the city to discover faces and places.

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Head of the Office of Research Services selected to 2014 class of distinguished nursing fellowship Interim Associate Vice President, Head of the Office of Research Services, Vince Salyers, EdD, was selected to the 2014 Class of Fellows of the National League for Nursing (NLN) Academy of Nursing Education.

The Academy’s panel considers a number of details before recommending fellowship candidates to the NLN Board of Governors, the oversight body for the U.S.-based academy.

Evaluations take into account applicants’ sustained contribution to the field of nursing in teaching, research and leadership.

The NLN established the Academy of Nursing Education in 2007 to foster excellence in nursing education by recognizing and capitalizing on the wisdom of outstanding nurse educators.

Salyers, a registered nurse who holds licensure in the United States and Canada, says he was elated by the honour.

Mount Royal signs memorandum of understanding with WinSport Mount Royal cemented its collaborative partnership with WinSport by signing a memorandum of understanding in November 2014, providing opportunities to team up on research of mutual interest, to increase coordination of sport science services for developing athletes and coaches and to share advocacy efforts with government, business and sport organizations on shared topics of concern.

The University provides expertise in key areas of research that WinSport is conducting on human development and human experience. The partnership also provides students with workplace experience, onthe-job training and potential career opportunities.

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SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

Mount Royal’s first Bachelor of Education — Elementary and Bachelor of Midwifery grads cross the stage in June 2015 The first cohort of Bachelor of Education — Elementary, and Bachelor of Midwifery students will receive their parchments at Mount Royal’s convocation ceremonies this June. The Bachelor of Education program was launched in September 2011 as part of Mount Royal’s commitment to providing access to immediately relevant, high-quality degree programs.

The Bachelor of Midwifery was also launched in 2011 in response to a dramatic increase in consumer demand for midwifery services since 2009 when the Province announced that midwifery services would be publicly funded.

Graduates can start their careers as the newest Alberta elementary teachers and registered midwives, or seek admission to a Master of Education or a Master of Arts program at institutions across Canada.

Switzer Foundation helping single parents pursue education

Recreation staff receive Lifesaving Award from St. John Ambulance Six recreation staff received the prestigious St. John Ambulance Lifesaving Award for taking swift action to save a man’s life at Mount Royal.

The award was presented in November 2014, almost a year after Mount Royal alumnus Ayaz Kara suffered a heart attack and stopped breathing following a squash match. Recreation staff members performed CPR and used one of the facility’s four automatic external defibrillators to resuscitate Kara before paramedics arrived. Kara was rushed to the Foothills Hospital emergency room where the attending physician indicated that the staff’s actions had saved the man’s life.

The St. John Ambulance Lifesaving Awards were created more than 30 years ago and are presented each year by the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta at a ceremony in Edmonton.

Mount Royal held its 6th annual luncheon for students who received bursaries donated by the Sam and Betty Switzer Foundation.

Prominent real estate developer and philanthropist Sam Switzer joined the recipients at the affair, and believes single parents and aboriginal students should have the same opportunities to fulfill their goals and dreams as everyone else. To that end, since 2008, Sam Switzer and the Sam and Betty Switzer Foundation have donated $750,000 to Mount Royal to help single parents pay tuition costs for their post-secondary education and for emergency aboriginal bursaries.

Colette Legal, Bachelor of Education — Elementary program spoke to those in attendance at the 2014 event, saying the financial boost enabled her to pursue her education while raising a family alone.

“It’s allowed me to feel a bit less stressed about where my family’s next meal will come from,” she says. “And has provided my children with opportunities that I couldn’t otherwise afford.”

Mount Royal Conservatory receives two top honours from Royal Conservatory of Music In recognition of his extraordinary contribution to the arts and achievements in the field of music education, Mount Royal Conservatory Director Paul Dornian is now a Fellow of The Royal Conservatory of Music. Dornian, who has served as Conservatory director for 20 years, is a well-respected arts leader who is responsible for implementing many pioneering programs that have elevated the Conservatory to international status.

Another Conservatory milestone is teenage cello sensation and Mount Royal Conservatory student Mari Coetzee’s winning The Royal Conservatory of Music’s 2014 National Gold Medal for Violoncello Performance after earning the highest exam marks in Canada. She recently completed an Associate of The Royal Conservatory of Toronto (ARCT) diploma with first-class honours with distinction after also earning the gold medal for the highest national mark for all cello ARCT exams across Canada.

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Nexen donation continues to further teaching and learning at Mount Royal The Nexen Scholars program, operated by Mount Royal’s Institute for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, accepted its seventh cohort of scholars. They will spend the next year developing and conducting research projects, with the goals of understanding and improving student learning in various courses at the University.

The 2015 projects tackle topics such as the student experience, incorporating case studies in business statistics and arts-based approaches to developing leadership among nursing students.

Since its inception and thanks to a $1 million donation from Nexen, 43 scholars from Mount Royal have gone through the program. The central work of the Nexen Scholars Program is to develop course-based inquiry projects, to conduct research shedding new light on a significant aspect of student learning and to share evidence and findings publicly in an effort to influence practices in the field.

Checking in with Mount Royal alumni

James Gosse, Aviation 1988 (Mount Royal College) Q: Describe your career path in 140 characters or less...(Twitter style!)

A: From Cessna to Beaver to Beechcraft to Dash-8 to DC-9 to A320 to B767 to A340. After 26 years, now an A380 Captain for Emirates Airline in Dubai.

Q: What three words describe your student experience at MRU? A: Challenging, fun and rewarding.

Social work professors team up for reflexive photography project Associate professors Cynthia Gallup, Brian Guthrie and Brent Oliver — all PhD-holders — from Mount Royal’s Department of Social Work and Disability Studies received a grant through the TransCanada Learning Innovation and Collaborative Inquiry Research Program to work on a collaborative project with professors from two other institutions.

The study examines the learning processes that social work students experience as they participate in a reflexive photography project and looks at how this learning may contribute to their emerging professional practice. This proposed Scholarship of Teaching and Learning project is relevant to the current discourse in social work education and could have potential applications in other disciplines.

The findings will have the potential to improve student learning and teaching practices within the universities involved, as well as provide increased confidence and greater effectiveness to the practitioners graduating from these programs.

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Q: Describe how you have made a difference in your community after graduating from MRU? A: As a Captain at one of the world’s leading airlines, I am entrusted with people’s lives every day (500 plus on the 380). I try to model professionalism in all aspects of this position and therefore enhance the safety of the operation.

Q: What is the best piece of advice you received at MRU that helped prepare you for your career?

A: To put safety first.

Q: What is your claim to fame?

A: I am the youngest of two graduates of Mount Royal to fly and captain the world’s largest airliner: the Airbus 380.

Alumni class notes Would you like to keep connected with your fellow MRU alumni? Join the conversation via Twitter at @MRUAlumni or by using the hashtag #MRUClassNotes. We are eager to get to know what everyone is up to! Not on Twitter? Contact us at alumni@mtroyal.ca.

Events

MAY

5-9

Fundamentally Human Festival The Faculty of Arts is proud to present the inaugural Fundamentally Human Festival (FUNDHY), an annual five-day festival celebrating arts and ideas around the city. fundhy.ca

MAY

30

Pearls of Wisdom 6 – 10 p.m.

Triple Gym Join us for the 18th annual Pearls of Wisdom, the best down-home crackin’ lobsterfest in the West. Presented in partnership with RBC Royal Bank, this event has raised more than $1 million in support of students. mtroyal.ca/pearlsofwisdom

Wyatt Artist in Residence Concert Series: All-Star Mastery Bella Concert Hall 7 p.m.

JUNE

4-5

Spring Convocation Triple Gym Graduates and their guests are invited to attend Spring Convocation at Mount Royal. Convocation offers graduates the time-honoured tradition of celebrating their accomplishments with faculty, peers, family and friends. Ceremony times vary. mtroyal.ca/convocation

JULY

18

Wyatt Artist in Residence Series concerts present classical music as a living, breathing art form — dynamic, expressive and uncompromising.

Co-presented with Morningside Music Bridge Tickets from $60 Adults, $40 Students/Seniors/MRU mtroyal.ca/wyatt

AUGUST

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SEPTEMBER

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MRU Colour-U-Blue Walk or Run 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.

MRU Pond Get blue to show your MRU pride and join Calgary’s original colour run in this fourth year.

More paint, more music, more fun! mtroyal.ca/recreation/colourublue

SEPTEMBER

Alumni Achievement Awards 6 p.m.

OCTOBER Bella Concert Hall The Mount Royal University Alumni Achievement Awards recognize the accomplishments of Mount Royal Alumni and celebrate the spirit of community and life-long connection to the University. mtroyal.ca/alumniachievementawards

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Cougar Classic Golf Tournament Pinebrook Golf and Country Club This annual event raises money for scholarships that allow Mount Royal Cougar student-athletes to pursue their dreams while achieving a university degree.

Spend the day with supporters, alumni, student-athletes and coaches of our varsity teams.

Registration includes 18-holes of golf with a power cart, tee gift, BBQ lunch and dinner. $220 Alumni, $250 General public mrucougars.com

Wyatt Artist in Residence Concert Series: Yuja Wang Bella Concert Hall 7:30 p.m.

Often referred to as the most important artist of her generation, this world-renowned pianist and former Mount Royal Conservatory grad will be at the Bella Concert Hall, co-presented with Honens Piano Festival & Competition.

Tickets from $60 Adults, $40 Students/Seniors/MRU mtroyal.ca/wyatt

SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

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FACULTY ABROAD

Park life Mount Royal University and St. Andrews University head hand-in-hand to the Highlands WORDS BY MICHELLE BODNAR

SCOTLAND

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This little Scottish town plays an important role not only in academic history, but also in popular culture.

Known to sports fans as the birthplace of golf; movie buffs may remember it as the setting for the Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire (1981); while royal family watchers recall it as the place where “Wills and Kate” fell head-over-heels in love.

St. Andrews is, of course, the location of the remarkable St. Andrews University, an institution with an impressive 600year tenure. The university’s hallowed halls and significant stone buildings have played academic host to a number of notable historic figures, including Nobel Prize winners and several members of the British royal family, such as Prince William and his spouse Kate Middleton, now better known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

This spring, St. Andrews will gain a few more scholars in the form of 15 Mount Royal University students who will take part in the first-ever Scotland Field School: Sustainability in a National Parks Context. The field school will be led by Mike Quinn, director and Talisman Energy chair for Environmental Sustainability at Mount Royal’s Institute for Environmental Sustainability; Celeste MacConnachie, associate professor for Mount Royal’s Department of General Education; and Kathy Rettie, adjunct professor who earned her PhD at St. Andrews. On the Scottish side is Charles Warren, senior lecturer in geography at St. Andrews, and several St. Andrews graduate students. The group will undertake a handson investigative contrast-and-comparison study of sustainability between Scotland and Canada’s national parks systems.

“Collaborations with overseas universities are always stimulating because of the opportunities to discuss shared interests from fresh perspectives,” says Warren, PhD. “(This field school) will give students the opportunity to engage with the highly-charged and rapidly-evolving debates surrounding the management of the Scottish environment.”

Students will begin by studying Canada and Alberta’s parks systems at Mount Royal, including visits to Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country. They will then assemble again at St. Andrews University, where parks experts have already had their interest piqued by the Banff model.

St. Andrews University (left), Scottish countryside (right) Photos courtesy of Mike Quinn

“They see our system as being like the Cadillac of national park systems because the state has full control,” says Quinn, PhD. “Banff National Park has been in place since 1885. It’s large and intact with freeroaming populations of deer and wolves and grizzly bears. In Scotland, they’re dealing with lands that have been highly altered over 800 years or more of industrialism.”

Once in Scotland, the group will head to Cairngorms National Park, located in the Scottish Highlands. Cairngorms includes several plots of land held by single families for hundreds of years and wealthy industrialists from Europe, belonging to the royal family or under the management of the Scottish National Trust.

“It’s all owned by individual private land owners, but they agree through legislation to manage their land in a way that meets the needs of the whole country,” says Quinn.

“The students will see very different kinds of ownership and structure, different

sorts of pressure and uses all on private land,” MacConnachie adds.

Students will meet with estate owners and park rangers representing various park sections, as well as explore the royal family’s property, Balmoral Estate.

“The royal family is really hands-on when it comes to the conservation,” says Quinn, adding that during the field school’s reconnaissance tour last spring Queen Elizabeth herself was spotted beetling about in her Range Rover and inspecting her horses. Sustainability efforts are visible in the protective fences she builds around young trees and new micro-hydro developments for green energy.

Some estates are focused on maintaining their deer population, some on preserving water, while some may want to create energy and preserve the landscape. As in Canada, there is a continuous search for the perfect balance between tourism and use.

Third-year Information Design program

student Elyse Wittman is looking forward to being visually inspired by Scotland’s mystical Highlands, especially standing on the same ground where the famous Battle of Colluden was fought.

“Scotland itself has such a rich history, and if you don’t protect that, that’s thousands of years wasted. Just the fact that I could be part of looking at how they are sustaining that and how to apply it to other countries is incredibly valuable to me,” she says.

According to MacConnachie, the concept of sustainability is hugely important for post-secondaries.

“It’s not just a collection of the different disciplines, it’s how they all integrate with each other,” she says. “Sustainability is how education can continue to thrive in an everchanging world.”

SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

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FACULTY ABROAD

NIGERIA

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SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

SAVING LIVES THROUGH COMPUTER SCIENCE While the Ebola crisis wanes, diseases North Americans vaccinate against in travel clinics will continue to plague developing nations — a Mount Royal University professor is developing a new application to help diagnose and fight back against these tropical diseases

WORDS BY MARLENA CROSS PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAL WAISSMANN

Faith-Michael Uzoka’s heart is divided across two continents.

Uzoka currently calls Calgary home, where he holds a position as full professor at Mount Royal. While he was born in Nigeria, the Computer Science and Information Systems professor moved to Canada in 2004 to complete his postdoctoral fellowship in Computer Informatics at the University of Calgary.

Uzoka, PhD, has taught at various universities throughout the globe since the early 1990s.

Since summer 2014, however, Uzoka has been on an important sabbatical in Africa, where he’s proving that computer science is about much more than programming video games or finding solutions to eradicate computer viruses that threaten software systems — Uzoka is using computer science to help combat diseases that threaten humanity.

Computer science can, in fact, help save lives.

In Nigeria, Uzoka is helping doctors make faster, more accurate diagnoses

of tropical confusable diseases through a data system that aids medical professionals in accurately diagnosing and tracking these fast spreading, often deadly, illnesses.

“Tropical diseases have become global in nature. These diseases travel with the patient,” says Uzoka. “I see my work as benefiting both my home country here in Canada and the continent of my origin.”

Tropical confusable diseases, in headlines and travel warnings, have made more waves recently than ever before.

Long after the Ebola crisis is over, the diseases Calgarians vaccinate against in travel clinics will continue to plague developing nations. Yellow fever, malaria, typhoid and other hot-weather afflictions will still exist and physicians in countries such as Nigeria will continue to treat patients on the frontline.

Using the fuzzy cognitive map, Uzoka and local research assistants are currently collecting data from 235 doctors and 4,000 patients to create a system that more accurately diagnoses malaria at the first

SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

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CAUSE S OF DE ATHS IN CHILDREN UNDER 5, 2012 NIGERIA Malaria

20%

Other diseases

16%

Acute respiratory infections

16%

Prematurity

12%

Birth asphyxia

11%

Diarrhoea

10%

Neonatal sepsis

5%

Injuries

4%

HIV / AIDS

3%

Congenital anomalies Measles

3% 1%

INCIDE NCE OF MAL ARIA ( PE R 100,000 POLUL AT ION, 2013 ) Nigeria

28,710

Regional average

Global average

18,579 3,752 — World Health Organization

stage of consultation than a physician can perform without the technology.

Fuzzy logic, data that is neither true nor false but variable, is assigned a value to provide the data for a score or, in this case, a diagnosis.

“It’s all about people. It’s all about how people think. By thinking, you’re making comparisons,” explains Uzoka.

Human beings can’t necessarily describe their symptoms with accuracy and precision. The system finds patterns in inputs of symptoms and patient risk factors, creating a crisp picture from this blurry input.

“Our initial model came up with a result that is superior to the initial hypothesis of the physicians,” says Uzoka. “In this instance, the patient isn’t just getting care, they’re getting care sooner.”

When patients are treated sooner, they typically become well sooner.

The immediate therapy improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the physician and reduces the burden on the health-care system.

Once the diagnostic system is fully created and tested, an application on a

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SUMMIT – SPRING 2015

handheld tablet will assist frontline doctors to make the correct diagnosis without further tests. Drug treatments can be prescribed and traditional diagnostic tests can be eliminated, reducing steps in a system that is already strapped.

Uzoka’s research collaborator in Nigeria, Gbenga Fashoto, says the application will have lasting impacts for the nearly 175 million people living in the country and anticipates shorter wait times at clinics and hospitals in the long term.

“It will also enhance access to medical care, since it is anticipated that the efficiency of the physician in patient interrogation and disease diagnosis will be improved by the use of the decision support system,” says Fashoto.

It’s this applied computer research that has real-world impact, says Ricardo Hoar, chair of Computer Science and Information Systems at Mount Royal.

Hoar reasons that computer science professionals have a strong ability to help others in many areas including medical informatics.

“Software development gives you the opportunity to have an impact in hundreds,

perhaps thousands, of locations without ever setting foot there,” he says.

Computer science can really help people and Uzoka’s work leads by example both in the field and in the classroom.

“We’re taking computer science ideas, applying them to a particular problem area and we’re getting real results that can be brought into the undergraduate classroom and add value and a richer experience to our students,” says Hoar.

Speaking about his work as a researcher and professor, Uzoka says, “Mount Royal University gives you the ability to be whatever you want to be” and he thinks that Africa “has huge potential yet to be tapped.”

In addition to engaging undergraduate computer science students in data analysis, Uzoka works with African universities to develop the continents research capacity.

Awarded the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship in fall of 2014, Uzoka is on the path to creating lasting connections to further develop academics at home and abroad.

Thousands of supporters, like you, have made us feel on top of the world.

Your contribution to our Changing the Face of Education campaign has helped us exceed the $250 million goal to create learning spaces, opportunities and environments — impacting learners and our community for years to come.

Thank you.

EVEREST-BOUND TEAM TAKING A BREATHER IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRYAN WEISMILLER

Raphael Slawinski, PhD, faculty 16

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We first told you about Trevor Day’s research into hypoxia in Summit, fall 2012. Day is furthering his exploration in this area, as he and a group of adventurous students plan to explore Mount Everest’s base camp this May Trevor Day, PhD, faculty

When a group of Mount Royal students stop to catch their breath near the world’s tallest mountain, they will be adding to scientific research that could someday benefit generations of alpine enthusiasts.

In the latest phase of Mount Royal-based research on low-oxygen environments, six Mount Royal students and Associate Professor of Physiology Trevor Day will embark on a threeweek footslog to the southern face of Everest’s base camp (May 2015).

Day, PhD, described his objective as “multifaceted,” with a focus on developing portable diagnostic tools that would help identify acute mountain sickness resulting from oxygen deficiency in the body.

“I want our team to be able to travel fast and light,” says Day, adding that more portable tools would help enable this.

He hopes to use the preliminary data gathered on the upcoming trip for a future study on how “lowlander” children adapt to high-altitude environments in comparison to their parents — an area of study not yet forged.

“Very little work has been done on children who have a genetic background around sea-level,” Day said. “Further study could be useful for Calgarians with an adventurous streak and the means of experiencing the thin mountain air in places such as the Everest region.”

This spring, the participants will soon undergo a series of baseline tests inside a specialized laboratory classroom to prepare for the trek to 5,400 metres

above sea level. Once hooked up to a metabolic cart, Day can see how his subjects respond to changes in inspired oxygen. Once they land in Nepal, they will be making measurements all the way up to base camp.

One of the research outcomes may entail who gets sick as the air thins.

“Right now there’s no way to know who will get sick before going to altitude,” he said. “Age, gender and fitness level are not accurate indicators of susceptibility to mountain sickness.”

Day specializes in integrative cardiorespiratory and cerebrovascular physiology, which means he studies how the heart, lungs and brain talk to each other. He last visited Nepal in 2012 as part of an international research team. His innovative on-campus work has involved flipping subjects upside down on a tilt table to measure their brain blood flow and monitoring respiratory responses to low oxygen.

As an expert in human physiology, Day said there’s no better model of studying the dangerous medical condition of hypoxia (oxygen starvation) than exposing young, healthy people to low-oxygen air for a sustained period. And there’s no shortage of eager test subjects around campus — including one of the world’s most accomplished alpinists, Associate Professor Raphael Slawinski from the Department of Physics.

Slawinski, who is well-known for being the first climber to summit Pakistan’s

grueling K6 West mountain, volunteered to be a guinea pig for some of Day’s experiments leading up to the Everest trip. He recognizes the value in conducting preliminary testing, having experienced high-altitude headaches and other general unpleasantness associated with climbing great heights. Slawinski, PhD, supported his colleague’s interest in finding better ways to detect acute mountain sickness — before the symptoms kick in.

“Sometimes it’s not obvious whether you have the green light to climb higher or you should just hang out until you get better acclimatized,” he said. “It would be very helpful to have more portable diagnostic tools.”

By chance, Slawinski will be midway through his ascent of the seldomclimbed north face of Mount Everest while the student group will be heading up the opposite side (trekking to base camp, 5360 metres) which is welltravelled by recreational hikers.

For fourth-year Bachelor of Science student Kristi Wynnyk, the upcoming trip to Everest is an opportunity to apply her coursework in a real-world environment. In addition to the learning outcomes, Wynnyk is keen to soak up the culture of the Nepalese people they encounter along the way.

“It’s an opportunity of lifetime,” she said. “I never imagined being able to apply my knowledge on an expedition such as this.”

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We can do it!

Where’s it STEM from? There’s a lack of women enrolling in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) post-secondary programs across Canada. Mount Royal University takes aim at this nation-wide conundrum as a group of innovative faculty and alumnae carve away the stereotypes surrounding women’s roles in computer science, math and tech-startups.

She wants you! Join the chic geek revolution Kylie Toh, alumna

WORDS BY THERESA TAYLER PHOTOGRAPHY BY COLIN WAY

From her oversized spectacles to her stylish wardrobe and well-paired accessories, you could easily make a snap verdict that Kylie Toh is, in a word, “chic.”

She’s also a self-professed geek.

However, the conclusion about her latent nerdiness is harder to draw from first — let’s just say it, judgmental — glance. But, make no mistake, Toh is one proud chic geek.

“A nerd,” says the Mount Royal alumna, with a smile.

She is a founder of Chic Geek, a Calgary-based organization that strives to foster diversity in the hightech and startup communities by educating, engaging and empowering women. The name plays off of two stereotypical boxes that Toh often sees women lumped into — pretty or smart. The two stereotypes seldom seem to go hand-in-hand.

“Take a stand with us, discover your nerdy side and challenge the stigma around being a geek,” reads Chic Geek’s website. In addition to holding new technology workshops for girls and women (they’ve had girls as young as six-years-old attend) on everything from coding to Photoshop, they host speaker and networking events and casual-learning sessions, strive to build leadership opportunities and create connections for women in the network.

“Female enrolment in post-secondary is on the rise across Canada, yet we’re seeing a decrease in those women taking up computer science, which is really unfortunate,” explains Toh. “I grew up with a lot of girls in my life who said things like, ‘I’m bad at math. I don’t get computers. I’m bad with technology.’ You hear that kind of lexicon enough and you begin to think, ‘OK, well I’m a lot like these girls so

maybe I’m not good at math either.’ It becomes a part of the subconscious language we speak as women.”

If she could, Toh would eradicate that language from our collective common drive in the same fashion anti-malware software wipes a computer virus from a MacBook.

She’s hard-wired to help other women find career paths not only in tech-startups and computer science, but in all Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields.

She’s not alone in her concern over the lack of women enrolling in STEM studies. Encouraging university students to consider STEM program areas has long been on the agenda of government and industry leaders, as well as post-secondary institutions. Seeding Canada’s future workforce with STEM graduates is a defining outcome of national innovation strategies. The number of grads the nation produces can be linked back to how we measure up globally in competitiveness and economic prosperity.

Mount Royal has exceptional programs for students to choose from the Faculty of Science and Technology and through many of the various undergrad options across campus.

But something is happening in STEM-focused classrooms that frustrates even the most logical of problem-solving professors. There simply aren’t as many female students flocking to lecture halls and labs as there are male.

“Last semester, I had a class with one woman in it,” says Ricardo Hoar, chair of Computer Science and Information Systems at Mount Royal. “One!” According to Statistics Canada, while women

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A woman’s place is in the boardroom Patti Derbyshire, faculty

represent the majority of young university graduates, they are still under-represented in STEM fields.

A 2013 Insights on Canadian Society, Statistics Canada report, gender differences in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computer science (STEM) programs at university, notes that women accounted for only 39 per cent of university grads aged 25-34 with a STEM degree in 2011, compared with 66 per cent of university grads in nonSTEM programs. Among STEM grads aged 25-34, women accounted for 59 per cent of those in science and technology programs. Not bad, however, only 23 per cent graduated from engineering programs and 30 per cent of those graduated from mathematics and computer science programs.

So what’s it matter if there happens to be more men graduating in STEM program areas than women?

“That doesn’t create good balance. That doesn’t create good discussion. It’s simply better when you have a balance of males and females at the table,” explains Hoar. “The danger of male-dominated software development is that it can devolve to a ‘bro-grammer’ mentality, which considers only the male views. Balanced teams are forced to consider more perspectives, and produce better solutions.”

Together, Toh, Hoar and a number of other Mount Royal graduates, professors, students and other supporters are making it their mission to be part of the solution to Canada’s lack of female STEM graduates.

The solution comes not only from Mount Royal’s technology-focused faculties, it comes from across the campus. There many leaders in the Mount Royal community aiming to get more women into programs that could lead to STEM careers. There are also a number of inspiring role models in the form of faculty and alumnae for young women to look up to.

“I thought that I started Chic Geek because I wanted to be a coder. Coders build amazing things and I wanted to be part of that,” explains Toh, who graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Communication in Public Relations.

“But I realized that my skills are actually in building other types of things, such as communities.”

Toh didn’t fully flesh out her interest in technology until she was in the last year of her degree.

“I can speak the language and understand the technology enough to help communicate around it,” she says.

Which may be the first step to getting women enrolled in a STEM career field, explains Patti Derbyshire, chair of Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Social Innovation at Mount Royal’s Bissett School of Business.

“I believe one of the gateways to STEM for women is through entrepreneurial ventures, or at very least, entrepreneurial mindsets,” Derbyshire says, adding that many of the great ‘noggins’ behind successful tech-startups don’t necessarily come from science, engineering or math undergrad streams.

“If you have the basic technological literacy and you can work on a team where there are technology specialists, then you have a place at the table,” she says.

When she’s not teaching marketing, Derbyshire is busy participating in a number of innovative projects that blend business acumen, art and tech. She is a regular contributor to Calgary’s Beakerhead festival, an annual mash-up of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM)-based programming. Most recently, Derbyshire has set her sights on a new venture, building motorcycles especially engineered for women.

As cofounder of Torch Motorcycles, Derbyshire has helped assemble a team of entrepreneurs, engineers, mechanical craftspeople and even a fashion designer, who are working together to launch a company that will make craft-built motorcycles and motorcycle products specifically engineered for female riders.

She is also one of several faculty members who helped a group of Mount Royal alumni found Design4Change, a boutique-marketing agency housed at the University. Design4Change works with clients from a variety of industries, but it is keenly involved with a diverse set of high-tech startups. The Mount Royal-born agency has worked with everyone from Long View Systems (IT Services) and Anow (a webbased software company), to TLink (a golf-gadget techstartup also founded by MRU alumni).

Both Toh and fellow Mount Royal alumna Heide Calderon Ghelfi were at some point in their postsecondary careers part of the Design4Change team.

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Become a STEMinist, your country needs you Heide Calderon Ghelfi, alumna

Much like Toh, Calderon Ghelfi took a roundabout path to her current information technology-based career as an IT lead with a major energy company’s Calgary office. She started at Mount Royal as a journalism student, realized she was interested in technical writing and transferred programs in her second semester, graduating from the Bachelor of Applied Communications — Technical Writing (now the Bachelor of Communication — Information Design) in 2003. After several successful years in the field, Calderon Ghelfi was yearning to know more about the technology she was helping to translate for users.

“I was working at a software company and I just loved it so much,” she says.

“I couldn’t program to save my life, but learning about the technology and how it actually gets rolled out to the masses was extremely interesting to me. Technology is constantly changing and keeping up was challenging for me, so I decided to go back to school again.”

This time to Hoar’s classroom at Mount Royal, completing her Bachelor of Computer Information Systems in 2011.

Calderon Ghelfi says she’s never felt intimidated, discouraged or held back by the men she works with.

“It’s just that there’s not a ton of other women around — at all,” she says.

“Sure, I’ve had men treat me poorly because they see me walk into the room and the assumption is, ‘who’s this little girl with her MacBook?’ I’ve been stereotyped. But, it doesn’t happen very much and it’s not just men. Women have preconceptions as well. It’s a problem we have as a society, not as one sex versus the other.”

She adds the good news is that the information technology industry, “especially in oil and gas in Calgary,” is eager to add more women to their tech-teams.

“Females bring this different element to technology because we think differently. One of the roles I’ve had is as a business analyst and that’s about bridging the gap between people and the technology. It’s a role that requires logical skills, as well as high-level communication skill,” she says.

“I find that women tend to take on those roles more so in the technology field than programmer roles.

Maybe it’s because women have a different set of communication skills. I’m not sure. What I do know is that I don’t work with many females and I would like that to change. I think the first step starts before postsecondary, in our homes, in the way we speak to our little girls.”

She points to programs such as ExploreIT as an example.

Spearheaded in 1999 by several female technology industry leaders and academics in Calgary, ExploreIT is an initiative between Mount Royal, SAIT Polytechnic and the University of Calgary. The program cumulates in an annual interactive conference for Grade 9 girls to explore the world of information and communications technology and increase awareness of STEM career options that will inspire them to shape their potential futures.

“Females bring this different element to technology because we think differently. One of the roles I’ve had is as a business analyst and that’s about bridging the gap between the people and the technology. It’s a role that requires logical skills as well as high-level communication skill.”

Heide Calderon Ghelfi, Mount Royal University alumna “When you’re a teenager and you’re thinking of applying to universities, if you aren’t exposed enough to these kind of career paths … well, someone says ‘you can be a business analyst’ to you and it’s like, ‘That’s not sexy! What does that even mean?!’” says Calderon Ghelfi with a laugh. “Initiatives like ExploreIT show girls from a young age the possibilities in a post-secondary degree in math or computers.”

Mount Royal Mathematics associate professor Pamini Thangarajah coordinates Mount Royal’s contribution to ExploreIT. She is both an impressive role model for young women aspiring to mathrelated academic advances, as well as a passionate advocate and recruiter. This past February (2015), Thangarajah was asked by Alberta Education to be a member of the Elementary Mathematics Professional Learning Planning Group — a group that includes

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No girl left behind Pamini Thangarajah, PhD, faculty

Alberta Education, Alberta Regional Professional Development Consortia, the Alberta Teachers’ Association and post-secondary representatives.

The group provides additional teacher professional learning opportunities and implementation support for teachers related to elementary mathematics.

“From what I can tell in my own classroom, there is no difference in the way girls and boys learn math,” says Thangarajah, PhD. “The element we have to overcome is the feeling that girls don’t think they can do it. That’s the issue.”

When she was approached in 2001 to get Mount Royal involved with ExploreIT, she was happy to take the lead and eager to provide teenage girls with an introduction to subject matter she was actively discouraged from pursuing when she was their age.

Thangarajah was born and raised in Sri Lanka.

“A place where the math and science field is dominated by men,” she says. “Women doing math, well, that’s simply not heard of.”

She didn’t let that stop her. After completing her undergrad, Thangarajah received a scholarship to Marquette University (University of WisconsinMilwaukee) in 1990 to complete a master’s degree in abstract algebra.

While Sri Lankan society wasn’t keen on Thangarajah completing her post-secondary education in mathematics, she did have the strong support of her immediate family. She says this is key for any young woman pursuing a future in a male-dominated career area.

“We need to create support systems,” she says.

Thangarajah thrived in the U.S. post-secondary system, and while she says there were still very few fellow female students in her classrooms, her male colleagues were supportive of her studies. The university even fast tracked her to a PhD level.

“I fell in love and got married in 1993 and gave up my studies. It is the first thing I’ve ever quit,” she says, but adds that when she and her husband moved to Calgary, she decided to go back to school, completing her PhD at University of Calgary in 2001. She has been teaching ever since and hopes her story will help to inspire and remind her own math students that pursuing one’s

education can come at various stages in a person’s life.

“If I can help people, girls, in a way where they can determine and plan their own path, then I am happy,” says Thangarajah. “We can do it! Math, science … We can do it. We need start thinking this way and talking this way.”

When Thangarajah became involved with ExploreIT, she had no formal committee or group to help her coordinate or run the day-long programs for the 50-some Grade 9 students who would descend on campus.

“From what I can tell in my own classroom, there is no difference in the way girls and boys learn math.

The element we have to overcome is the feeling that girls don’t think they can do it. That’s the issue.”

Pamini Thangarajah, PhD, Mathematics associate professor

“We had no funding at that time or help,” she says.

“But faculty supported the initiative and helped to create numerous sessions for the girls.”

Thangarajah is proud to report that Mount Royal now hosts more than 200 Grade 9 students annually as part of the conference, offering a variety of programming on everything from designing robots to the study of DNA extraction from strawberries, all designed to encourage junior high-aged girls to set a course in high school that will give them the option to pursue STEM areas in post-secondary.

“The girls come out of the sessions feeling wonderful. Much of the time, they didn’t even realize what they could accomplish, or what fields of study were possible in their future,” Thangarajah says.

Professors such as Thangarajah and Hoar aim to attract more students to Mount Royal’s computer science and math classrooms.

“I know that our department here at Mount Royal isn’t going to solve a national STEM crisis. But we can certainly try,” says Hoar.

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Cretaceous Seas comes to life Calgary’s largest extinct marine reptile exhibit unveiled at Mount Royal University

WORDS BY KIMBERLY MOLNAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES MAY

As you enter through Mount Royal University’s East Gate, look up to see a graceful, flying giant Pteranodon — its wings expanding from wall-to-wall.

Head to the second floor of the Faculty of Science and Technology B-Wing, but try not to startle the Enchodus, a two-metre-long bony fish, nearly escaping the jaws of an Elasmosaurus turning the corner — its long neck curving around the bend to reveal a terrifying 15-metre-long body.

Around the next turn lives the second-largest marine turtle that ever was, a Protostega.

Finally, come face-to-face with Platecarpus, an aquatic lizard, swimming comfortably behind the group.

You may have seen them lurking around the University. These 82-million-year-old marine creatures have made their way from the Cretaceous Seas of Western North America to their new home at Mount Royal.

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Launched January 2015, the five casts of extinct creatures are the largest marine vertebrate exhibit in Calgary.

The fossil casts are made possible by donations from private donors, as well as sponsorship by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) that contributed over $100,000 to the total.

Fourth-year Geology student Lindsay Reynolds, who is currently working on comprehensive paleontological research, says the casts will be an inspiration to students.

Reynolds says the exhibit feels like a reward for her hard work as a student, as well as for her professors.

“It sets us apart from other universities. I can say something to my colleagues, such as, ‘Can you turn the corner at school to find an Elasmosaur versus saber-toothed herring fight scene? No? I didn’t think so…’,” she adds, with a laugh.

It’s not just about looking at the ‘pretty’ skeletons. It’s designed for current and future students who can now physically see the beasts they study and read about in real size.

Wayne Haglund, PhD, Mount Royal Professor Emeritus

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The project was championed by Mount Royal University Professor Emeritus Wayne Haglund, who has worked tirelessly to see the exhibit come to fruition. Haglund, who retired in 2004 after nearly 40 years of teaching geology, has been instrumental in supporting and raising Mount Royal’s Department of Earth Sciences’ profile. Haglund has been a steward for the unique Cretaceous Seas exhibit for the past 15 years. Now he can finally celebrate as his vision comes to life... so to speak.

“The primary objective is to give a learning experience, an educational model,” says Haglund, PhD. “It’s not just about looking at the ‘pretty’ skeletons, it’s

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designed for current and future students who can now physically see the beasts they study and read about in real size.”

While teaching at Mount Royal, Haglund, along with his colleagues, observed the empty space in the East Gate entrance and brainstormed about how unique it would be to fill the void with marine reptiles. The passionate geology professor put together a proposal to bring Cretaceous casts to the space, but as time went by projects shifted and the concept sat on the back burner. Then, in 2012, Haglund went on a university study tour through Asia, where he met the anonymous donor who helped bring the

Wayne Haglund, PhD, Mount Royal University Professor Emeritus

Wayne Haglund, PhD, faculty

exhibit to the University. Soon after, Haglund was a guest speaker at a graduation dinner for Mount Royal geology students and at the head of the table was a member from APEGA. Haglund took the opportunity to make Mount Royal’s pitch. After years of planning, conceiving and, well, hoping — he had finally secured the funds he needed to bring the impressive exhibit to Mount Royal.

Mark Flint, APEGA CEO, says they are pleased to support the installation, because it has immense long-term value, not only for Mount Royal students, but for the entire community.

“Through outreach programs and sponsorships, APEGA endeavours to inspire youth and young adults to become professional geoscientists and engineers,” Flint says. “This amazing display at Mount Royal University will educate and captivate the potential geoscientist in all of us.”

Haglund views the casts as a science lab more than an exhibit. It is an opportunity for faculty, staff, students and the public to discuss, interpret and question animals of the Cretaceous Period. He and the Department of Earth Sciences are planning to host elementary school tours of the exhibit in the future.

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Stuffed toy dog. A big animal-lover, Clark has owned 11 dogs in his lifetime, four currently Dolomite and calcite samples

Mesohippius (prehistoric horse) skull Hawksbill sea turtle skull. These still exist but are critically endangered today

Waste rock Mineral sample from the Grand Trunk Mine in Colorado

Slinky, which is used in a geophysics lab. Also involved in this particular experiment are maple syrup, ketchup and canola oil

“For the outsider [things in my office] are strange, but to me it’s all normal.”

Mike Clark, instructional assistant, Department of Earth Sciences

Dire wolf (Canis dirus). These were 20 to 30 per cent bigger than wolves today and competed with the sabre-toothed cat

“I like Mars bars,” says Clark 30-metre tape measure for surveying

Wanda’s crate. Wanda is the pet name for the sabre-toothed herring in the Cretaceous Seas exhibit

Limestone samples

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Map of the Colorado Front Range, Clark’s home state

Dimetrodon skeleton

Xenosmilus eusmilus (sabre-toothed cat). The tiara was found in a classroom, and it fit

ORGANIZED chaos

A glimpse into the minds at Mount Royal University WORDS BY MICHELLE BODNAR PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES MAY

WE Anhanguera (“old devil”) skull, which is a pterosaur

may not be able to show you a literal snapshot of the complex craniums of Mount Royal’s geniuses. However, we can give you a glimpse into their psyche through a look into their often chaotic, yet completely organized (or so they tell us), offices.

Our students will be the first to tell you, there are some unique offices on the Mount Royal campus. Some are museum-like, others are bastions of pop-culture memorabilia, while the odd few boast rich libraries of classic works. Summit magazine will continue to feature our most cherished office/think spaces in forthcoming issues!

THE SOURCE: MIKE CLARK

INSTRUCTIONAL ASSISTANT, DEPARTMENT OF EARTH SCIENCES Herrerasaurus skull, one of the earliest dinosaurs

Sediment sieves

Clark is Mount Royal’s connect for minerals, fossils, diamond crystals, pyrite, galena, quartz, igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks and a whole lot of skulls.

“I am a scrounge,” he says with a laugh. “I’m a Radar and a Klinger.”

Clark’s job is to prep for labs so students can physically interact with their subject matter. He has personally tracked down samples in the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. He occasionally puts things back together, cleaning and assembling damaged fossils, and splits things up, too, sectioning off and polishing slices of meteorite thin enough to be viewable by microscope.

Some of the weirder — and rarer — objects in Clark’s office are: prehistoric cat craniums (Xenosmilus eusmilus), silver and gold tellurides, meteorites about 3 to 4 billion years old and 1.5 billion-year-old banded ironstone from Nunavut.

Admitting to seeing the world a little differently, Clark says he organizes things visually and can always find what he’s looking for. Nominated for the Distinguished Staff Award seven times since 1989, Clark played an integral part in Mount Royal’s Cretaceous Seas Exhibit and is also largely responsible for the campus’ geological Rockscape.

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PITCHING TO INVESTORS IS SO PASSÉ WORDS BY VALERIE BERENYI

Crowdfunding students and alumni are launching innovative projects through online community fundraising — while professors mentor students towards combining sustainability and social responsibility with good old-fashioned bottom-line profit.

S

tephen Guppy could be Mount Royal University’s poster child for crowdfunding.

When Guppy, co-founder and CEO of the software company GNS3, and his partner Jeremy Grossmann launched an online fundraising campaign in November 2013 on the crowdfunding platform Tilt/ Open, they crushed their target of $35,000 in less than three hours.

“We crashed their servers, there was so much traffic,” says Guppy, a Bachelor of Business Administration grad (2014).

It gets better. When the campaign concluded, they’d surpassed their funding goal by 1,400 per cent, raising $600,000 from 13,000 donors in more than 80 countries.

Overnight success story? Not by a long shot.

“Viral doesn’t just happen, it’s created,” says Guppy. “A crowdfunding campaign is a tremendous amount of work — before, during and after.”

That cold, hard reality belies the fantasy that crowdfunding is a soft-focus Field of Dreams scenario where, if you need start-up cash, you build it (a crowdfunding campaign) and they (the contributors) will come, bringing bags of money.

Crowdfunding — the practice of raising small amounts of money online from large numbers of contributors to fund a project or venture — is taking the world by storm.

Everyone, from entrepreneurs and charities to artists and athletes, wants to get in on

the action. But for every success story — think celebrity initiatives, such as Zach Braff, who crowdfunded $3.1 million for his film Wish I Was Here — there are scads of the not-so-famous languishing on an ever-growing number of crowdfunding platforms.

Indiegogo and Kickstarter, founded in 2008 and 2009, are the granddaddies.

Now there’s an estimated 450 platforms worldwide.

“Crowdfunding sites are like massive malls. They’re conduits and they take care of the logistics,” says Ray DePaul, director of Mount Royal’s Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “But you still have to figure out how to attract people to your tiny kiosk and do all the hard work.”

DePaul’s spent 25 years successfully bringing high-tech products to market and was part of the original team behind BlackBerry. He also mentored Eric Migicovsky of Pebble smartwatch fame, who put crowdfunding on the map when he raised more than $10 million in 34 days on Kickstarter.

A successful crowdfunding campaign isn’t magic, both DePaul and Guppy say.

It’s about having a great project or product, creating a compelling, personalized video about it, offering an enticing reward to donors, connecting with your audience and, of course, great marketing.

GNS3 could be a textbook case. The company, which grew out of Grossmann’s master’s thesis, started in 2008, offering

Stephen Guppy, GNS3 CEO, Mount Royal alumnus

open-source (free) software, which replaces the physical world of computers and labs with a virtual environment in which to test, design and configure networks. It was a hit, drawing two million active users a month, everyone from students to network professionals from big companies like ExxonMobil.

By 2012, the software was almost five years old and needed re-engineering to integrate new network technologies.

Guppy, a business student, and Grossmann, a network professional, wondered if they could raise enough cash for a rebuild and make GNS3 their full-time venture.

Instead of working with a bank or approaching venture capitalists who

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would want a cut, they decided to crowdfund. “[We thought,] why don’t we ask the people who use and understand GNS3 to help us finance it to get to the next level?” says Guppy. “It’s a hell of a lot easier than going to an institution.”

He began researching crowdfunding a full year before launching their campaign.

Six months out, they collected e-mail addresses and contact information, and leaked tidbits to their users to build excitement and momentum.

Guppy’s research told him that projects with a video raise three times as much money, so they made one in his basement. “(Grossmann) is quasi-god-like in our industry, but he’s camera shy. Our users really appreciated being able to put faces to names,” Guppy explains.

Users connected with the campaign, donating an average of $50 each, which added up to that whopping total of $600,000.

Crowdfunding is a “phenomenal” alternative to the traditional approach of raising cash, says DePaul. “It takes the financial industry out of the picture. Instead of relying on single investors, you’re going to the masses. And you get money before you have to deliver the product. That’s what’s novel.”

What does the contributor get in return for his or her donation? Often, it’s a reward such as a plaque, a T-shirt or, in the case of GNS3, early access to the new software.

To avoid getting taken advantage of, DePaul recommends contributors view it as just that, a donation.

“A lot of these products aren’t developed yet and there’s no guarantee that you’re actually going to get the product,” he says, adding he’s most wary of people just at the idea stage. “Have they done a prototype?

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Students at Mount Royal don’t want to have to choose between doing good and doing well in the market. They’re asking, ‘why — when we approach our careers… wanting to build community, be environmentally and socially responsible, and have a commercial purpose — do those things have to be divided?’

— James Stauch, director, Institute for Community Prosperity

Lined up a manufacturer? What’s the developer’s pedigree? Don’t give to someone wanting to build a drone who doesn’t have an engineering degree.”

Mostly though, the reward is something far less tangible. Contributors experience a powerful sense of belonging to a community, of investing in and contributing to the greater good.

James Stauch examines this change as director of the Institute for Community Prosperity (formerly the Institute for Nonprofit Studies) at Mount Royal’s Bissett School of Business.

He points to a suite of classes about social innovation that examine the rise of the sharing economy, including Airbnb, shared tools and transportation (think Car2Go) and crowdfunding.

Increasingly, he says, the lines between charity and commercialism are blurring.

“Students at Mount Royal don’t want to have to choose between doing good and doing well in the market,” Stauch adds.

“They’re asking, ‘why — when we approach our careers… wanting to build community, be environmentally and socially responsible, and have a commercial purpose — do those things have to be divided?’ ” If the new wave of entrepreneurs want to link their prosperity with the greater good of the community, then Guppy, whose company now has 10 employees and is still hiring, is on the vanguard.

“It’s been a long, long process. We already had five years of goodwill built up with our users — five years of free use and free training. People knew the product; they felt invested in it and they wanted to give.”

THE FACES OF CROWDFUNDING Beyond business, crowdfunding supports a huge variety of activities, everything from artists’ projects and citizen journalism to disaster relief and scientific research.

Two Mount Royal students show its other uses.

Funding sport

Ashley King and Brody Butchart, Mount Royal students

Help with tuition While visiting Bali in 2012, Ashley King was poisoned by a near-lethal cocktail tainted with methanol.

Unsuspecting travellers in parts of Southeast Asia have died after sipping the illegally distilled wood alcohol mixed into their drinks — a dubious practice used to cut the cost of alcohol. King survived but was left legally blind.

Now a second-year journalism student at Mount Royal, she is fast adapting to her disability but is unable to work.

Her friend Brody Butchart, a fourth-year Bissett School of Business Marketing and Entrepreneurship student, knew of King’s plight and mounting bills. He invited her to set up a campaign on his new project, RCKTSHP, a crowdfunding site that helps Canadian post-secondary students raise money for tuition.

Within three days, 82 backers gave $9,875, surpassing the $8,000 goal.

“The messages and the positive feedback I received, as much as the money, really made the experience worthwhile,” she says.

Haley Daniels, a third-year Bachelor of Business Administration student at Mount Royal, is also the reigning Canadian white-water slalom canoeing champion. It’s an expensive combo.

The budget for Daniel’s sport — equipment, racing fees, travel — is $39,000 this year, tuition fees and living expenses are extra. Although it may be included in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, women canoeists do not yet receive Sport Canada funding.

In the spring of 2014, she put her marketing skills to work on MakeAChamp, a crowdfunding site for athletes, and launched a campaign with a goal of $6,000. She raised $6,550 in two months.

She says rewards helped — every $100 donation earned the donor a dozen healthy muffins baked

by Daniels — and she underestimated the amount of marketing she had to do beyond social media.

“I was surprised by how much I had to send personal, individual e-mails.”

Mount Royal developing crowdfunding possibility for faculty, too Mount Royal is developing a process for faculty members to raise money online.

“We’re paying attention to the students’ efforts and it’s really exciting,” says Buffy St-Amand, manager, Alumni Relations and Annual Giving.

“We are looking at this from an institutional perspective to take advantage of this new fundraising model to fill a need.”

She says the Development Office often gets requests from faculty members who have “amazing ideas” but need funding for them. “Rather than say, ‘Sorry, we can’t help you,’ we’re planning to give faculty a platform to engage their communities and crowdfund for their projects.”

St-Amand is part of a team working to develop a crowdfunding model based on USEED.org, a philanthropic fundraising platform specifically for higher education.

The University of Alberta started crowdfunding with USEED in February 2014 and runs a few projects at a time. A recent example: Play Around the World, a service-learning course offered by the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation, raised $10,000 so that 14 students can bring play and sport to children in Thailand, Cambodia and Northern Canada.

Crowdfunding is intended to enhance, not replace, the University’s existing fundraising efforts, but it does empower the donor to directly fund projects that are of interest to them.

“Each faculty has their own circle of relationships. They can tap into those people and build those circles,” says St-Amand, adding that staff will be trained and coached through the crowdfunding process by USEED and the Development Office.

“This goes beyond the context that we already know. It’s redesigning philanthropy at Mount Royal.”

The crowdfunding platform will begin piloting initial projects in the fall of 2015.

Hayley Daniels, Mount Royal student

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Promoting the post-secondary puck From Bemidji Beaver to Mount Royal Cougar, men’s head hockey coach Bert Gilling is rallying alumni and taking Mount Royal’s men’s hockey team to new heights

WORDS BY WES GILBERTSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROTH AND RAMBERG & MICHAL WAISSMANN

CROWCHILD CLASSIC INDUCES GOOSEBUMPS In two decades of involvement with post-secondary puck, Bert Gilling doesn’t recall an atmosphere quite like it.

The head coach of the Mount Royal University Cougars men’s hockey program, Gilling stepped behind the bench at the Scotiabank Saddledome, home of the NHL’s Calgary Flames, for the 2015 Crowchild Classic game in mid-January and could hardly believe his eyes — in a good way.

A Canadian Interuniversity Sport record-shattering crowd of 8,882 spectators showed up that night, including thousands of Mount Royal University students who cheered loud and proud as the Cougars’ women and men each scratched out game victories over the cross-town rival, University of Calgary Dinos.

“Everybody on our team, they had goosebumps when they took the ice. The entire side of the Saddledome was blue and white,” Gilling says. “That was as good of a college hockey or university hockey environment as anything that I’ve ever been a part of. This is my twentieth year of college hockey, either playing or coaching, but I’ve never seen so many students at a game before. It was electric. Somebody in the media says to me after the game, ‘The only thing missing was cheerleaders and a band.’ It just reinforces to me, and to everybody who is a part of this, what could be.”

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To see the pride, the excitement, the networking of different generations of Cougar hockey and to see our administration with their eyes sparkling as they were meeting people ... Again, that’s the vision of what it could be.

That was the first victory of the night for me. Everything that happened on the ice was just icing on the cake.

Bert Gilling, head coach of the Mount Royal University Cougars men’s hockey program speaking about a recent alumni gathering at the annual Crowchild Classic event

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Gilling is in his first season as the Cougars’ head coach after a 15-year stint in Minnesota as an assistant for the Bemidji State University Beavers, and his long-term vision for Mount Royal’s men’s hockey squad goes well beyond scoring more goals, winning more games or even claiming a Canada West conference crown.

In fact, the top priority on Gilling’s five-point plan of attack is to “Become relevant.” That might sound strange considering the Cougars’ past successes, but if you have an opportunity to sit down with the new skipper, you soon realize that it simply speaks to the even greater potential he sees in his program.

“Outside of the Calgary Flames, CIS (Canada Interuniversity Sport) is the best hockey in the city,” Gilling says. “Our Flames Community Arena, I call it the Cougar Blue Arena, I envision it being full. I envision a mass of students being there every game in their Cougar blues. I envision that arena just being electric to watch Cougar hockey on any given night. I think the on-ice product is there. It’s just the continual fight to become relevant.”

“Become relevant.” That’s what Gilling wrote on an easel board in a pre-season sit-down with assistant coaches Trevor Elias and Chase Fuchs and hockey operations co-ordinator Nathan Higgins. It was a key point in a slide-show he presented at the Cougars’ first team meeting.

He showed the same slide at his first alumni meet-and-greet.

“He really wants Cougar hockey to mean something,” says Mount Royal men’s hockey captain Matthew Brown, a third-year forward and Bachelor of Business Administration student from Truro, N.S. “We have an opportunity to build something special. I feel like everybody has bought into that vision and that idea. We want to mean something. We want to be the talk of the town here in Calgary and push for a national championship,” says Brown.

The Cougars men’s hockey program already has a history of on-ice success, having celebrated a dozen championships during their reign in the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) and four national titles in the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association before joining the CIS ranks for the 2012-13 season as part of Mount Royal’s transition to a university.

Of utmost importance to 40-year-old Gilling is connecting with the alumni who helped build that tradition and raise all of those championship banners.

On weekends last summer, the incoming head coach would pick up a coffee from Starbucks and then work his way through old ACAC rosters, searching the web and social-media sites in an effort to connect with players from years past.

Gilling discovered at least two former Cougars had skated in the NHL, a piece of trivia that would likely stump anybody on campus. Skilled centre Peter (Silky) Sullivan donned Mount Royal’s colours during the 1971-72 campaign and would later spend six seasons with the Winnipeg Jets, including four winters in the World Hockey Association and two in the NHL; while defenceman Mike Heidt suited up for six games with the Los Angeles Kings before joining the Cougars for the 1985-86 slate. Heidt later represented Team Germany at the 1992 Albertville Olympics.

Even when the puck dropped on the Cougars’ third

season in Canada West, Gilling continued his work to welcome back anybody who was a part of the hockey history at Mount Royal. He booked an alumni room for every home game at Flames Community Arenas, inviting former players to root for the current cast of boys in blue. There was a pre-game social at the Scotiabank Saddledome on the night of the Crowchild Classic, with about 40 alums — nearly enough to fill out two team rosters — in attendance.

“That was a victory for Cougar hockey before we even took the ice,” Gilling says. “To see the pride, the excitement, the networking of different generations of Cougar hockey and to see our administration with their eyes sparkling as they were meeting people ... Again, that’s the vision of what it could be. That was the first victory of the night for me. Everything that happened on the ice was just icing on the cake.”

“The thing about alumni is you need someone to spearhead it,” says Scott Salmond, a centre for the Cougars for two seasons in the early-90s and now

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Hockey Canada’s vice-president of hockey operations and national teams. “Everyone has the connection and wants to remain connected to their alma mater, especially if they played hockey or played sports. It’s just a matter of spearheading it. When Bert came in, he did that.” When you consider his background, Gilling’s passion for alumni involvement is no surprise. He was raised in Alexander, Man., but was recruited to play National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) hockey, patrolling the blueline for the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs for four seasons and serving as team captain in his senior year. He would spend the next 15 years as a member of the bench staff at Bemidji State, where former players are never far removed from the action.

“I don’t know what it’s like everywhere else, but at Bemidji, it seemed like there was alumni around every weekend. Even if you’re alumni, you’re still part of the team in some way,” says Philadelphia Flyers right-winger Matt Read, a standout during Gilling’s tenure at Bemidji and one of two Beavers alumni currently earning an NHL paycheque. “It’s a big family, I guess, and I think if (Gilling) continues that there in Calgary, that’s something to build on and build tradition as a university hockey team.”

Some folks argue it’s a stretch — a pipedream, even — to compare CIS sports to NCAA athletics, but Gilling doesn’t buy that. In fact, his blueprint to build the Cougars’ program is based largely on what he experienced south of the border.

When Gilling arrived at Bemidji State in the fall of 1999, starting out as a graduate assistant while working on his master’s degree in Sport Studies, the men’s hockey team was transitioning from NCAA Division II to Division I. After what he describes politely as “a couple of modest years,” the Beavers started to rack up wins.

They claimed a couple of conference crowns. They earned invites to the NCAA Championship tournament. During the 2008-09 season, led by Read and current Edmonton Oilers defenceman Brad Hunt,

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the Beavers advanced all the way to the Frozen Four national semifinals.

“We started to build a buzz in the community. People started wearing Bemidji State clothing around town. We were able to recruit better players because of the excitement about our program, and it all came to a head when we went to the Frozen Four. We were the Beatles in Bemidji then,” Gilling recalled with a grin.

“So when people say, ‘You’re a dreamer.

You can’t make it happen,’ well, I’ve already been through the evolution of a hockey program and a university. I think Mount Royal is further ahead, in some aspects, than Bemidji State was in 1999 in terms of really doing something special.”

The Flames will always be the main act in Calgary, but Gilling has grand plans for the future of the men’s hockey program at Mount Royal. The Cougars have already established themselves as a contender. In fact, they made school history by winning their first Canada West playoff series in February, ousting the University of Saskatchewan Huskies in the opening round before being eliminated by the Dinos in a three-game conference semifinal series.

And that’s just the beginning. Gilling’s expectations are lofty. His enthusiasm is infectious. The attendance record-setting night at the Scotiabank Saddledome only added to his optimism.

Whatever lies ahead, Gilling wants every Mount Royal student — past or present, hockey player or not — to feel like a part of the team.

“We had a saying at Bemidji State that I think is a great saying for alumni — ‘When you play for us, you play for us forever,’” Gilling says. “That’s a Bemidji State thing.

We’ll come up with our own slogan, I’m sure, but that one is very important to me, and I think it’s true. That’s always in the back of my mind here — when you play for us, you play for us forever. That’s the culture we’re trying to create with athletics.”

MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSITY COUGARS HOCKEY ALUMNI HAVE SKATED ON TO GREAT THINGS. Some have played professionally and performed on the biggest stages in the sport, including the NHL and the Winter Olympic Games. Others are having a major impact in boardrooms, classrooms and elsewhere. Here are just a couple of examples of Cougar alumni that Mount Royal are proud to call their own.

Scott Salmond – Former Cougars’ forward now VP at Hockey Canada You won’t find many folks in the hockey business with as much jewelry as Scott Salmond.

In his 14 years as a staff member at Hockey Canada, Salmond’s collection of championship rings has now reached double digits.

Among the highlights, the former Mount Royal Cougars forward has been closely involved with building and managing teams that have celebrated two Olympic gold medals in men’s hockey, two world championships, four world junior titles and a sledge-hockey gold from the 2006 Paralympics.

If you find the jubilant photo of Canada’s golden group from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, you will spot Salmond right behind Jarome Iginla.

In the celebratory snapshot from the 2014 Sochi Olympics, he’s sandwiched between Jay Bouwmeester and John Tavares.

“There’s a lot of work that goes behind those photos, but that’s the payoff,” says Salmond, now Hockey Canada’s vice-president of hockey operations and national teams.

“I always say if you work in the NHL, it’s difficult to win. When you work here, you get a chance to win every time, whether it’s world juniors, sledge hockey, women’s hockey, men’s hockey. You always have a chance to win because you have such great players and great staff.”

Chrissy Hodgson – Assisting on and off the ice During her playing days with the Mount Royal Cougars, Chrissy Hodgson emerged as the all-time assists leader in Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference women’s hockey action.

So it should be no surprise she pursued a career in helping others.

Hodgson graduated from Mount Royal in 2013 with a diploma in Early Learning and Child Care and a degree in Child and Youth Studies. She scored a position as a child and youth care counsellor at Hull Services, which provides behavioural and mental health services for kids and families.

The former Cougars captain is also an assistant coach for the girls’ prep hockey team at the Edge School for Athletes.

“I am getting the best of both worlds,” Hodgson says. “I am working in the field I am most passionate about, and I get to top the day off with spending time at the rink.

“One of the main reasons I’m attracted to coaching is simply for the fact of giving back. I was fortunate to have so many amazing role models in my life, with a majority of them being coaches. The idea is to be a positive influence both on and off the ice.”

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When the

CLASSROOM and COMMUNITY SERVICE COLLIDE WORDS BY BRYAN WEISMILLER

Photo courtesy of T.E.A.R.S Ministries In February 2014, Mount Royal University nursing students spent two weeks promoting health to kids at this school in the Dominican Republic.

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While EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING has become a buzzword in academic circles, it’s a methodology deeply ingrained in MOUNT ROYAL UNIVERSIT Y’S DNA. From the University’s century-long roots, Mount Royal has emerged as a NATIONAL LEADER in a strand of teaching and learning known as COMMUNIT Y SERVICE LEARNING. The University recently introduced a special citation to better recognize students who are making a difference in the heart of their communities.

W

orking under the blistering Caribbean sun, with their hands and nursing scrubs awash in fingerpaint, a group of Mount Royal students found themselves hitting a crossroad between textbook concepts and the sombre realities of one of the world’s worst slums.

It was February 2014 when the nursing students were asked to teach healthy habits to youngsters in the impoverished communities of Maria Auxiliadora and Soto barrios in the Dominican Republic. The day’s lesson plan seemed simple enough. By getting the kids to dirty their hands with paint, the student nurses were creating a fun opportunity to practise handwashing, a priority global health-promotion strategy.

But on this particularly poignant day — among many uplifting moments on their two-week partnership with T.E.A.R.S Ministries — the undergraduates recall how an electrical outage had knocked out the pump that supplied the school’s water.

School administrators offered to tap into the community’s bottled water supply to finish the

exercise. As active promoters of community health, the Mount Royal students questioned the wisdom of teaching hand-washing with scarcely available drinking water. For Megan Karmann, it was a window into the impossible choices made on the low-income island every day.

“We felt sick,” Karmann says. “But we needed to look beyond the immediate challenges to the community’s long-term goals.”

The students were learning firsthand about the complexities of global inequities, the importance of partnerships and the value of capacity building, which are essential parts of community health nursing. They endeavoured to provide sustainable life skills that would endure long after the Calgary crew returned home.

“We came in with our assumptions and it was important for us to realize what the community actually needed,” says fellow third-year nursing student Megan VanderZwaag.

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“

“Mount Royal University is among the leaders of community service learning in Canada.”

Geri Briggs, Director of the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning

What Karmann and VanderZwaag experienced last year is known to academics as Community Service Learning (CSL). This educational approach pairs credit students with partners in their chosen fields to collaborate on a community-identified issue.

Proponents draw a clear line between CSL and other experiential activities such as co-op, work-term and field school programs. CSL participants aren’t paper pushers or tourists. They’re expected to hone their academic skills, while deepening their sense of civic engagement.

It sometimes requires solving a real-life issue.

Other times it can involve data analysis in the scientific realm. The subsequent output can range from a print piece to a more formal report to a presentation.

Those who’ve experienced CSL activities stress the importance of personal reflection and growth, in addition to the professional and academic outcomes.

“We want these experiences to awaken students to a love of their discipline. We want them to take it from theoretical to real,” says Mount Royal professor Victoria Calvert, a recognized trailblazer in Canada.

The CSL model can be placed under the umbrella term of experiential learning, or more simply expressed as learning by doing and reflecting. The methodology gained traction south of the border in 1971, when the White House Conference on Youth report called for stronger ties between service and learning.

U.S. lawmakers cast a brighter spotlight on CSL activities in the early 1990s by approving legislation that linked university funding with curriculum that developed student engagement in the community and citizenship behaviours.

About the same time in Canada, many academics were discussing the best model for developing ethical students with real-world skills.

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The concept resonated with colleges and religious schools that already offered so-called “servant learning.”

In 2005, the J.W. McConnell Foundation announced funding for 10 Canadian institutions to integrate CSL within their curriculum. That initiative helped spark service learning activities at the University of Alberta, St. Francis Xavier University, Universite de Quebec a Trois Riviere and Trent University.

As a longstanding college grounded in experiential learning, Mount Royal’s specific CSL participation dates back to the mid ’90s when the business faculty grew keen on producing ethical entrepreneurs. The first graduates of the Applied Entrepreneurship degree crossed the stage in 1996, each of whom had taken three CSL courses. The concept has since flourished across the campus.

In the 2013/14 academic year alone, some 2,000 students contributed more than 200,000 hours with 350 community partners in 27 courses.

Geri Briggs, Director of the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning, reaffirmed Mount Royal’s high standing in the national landscape, citing the institution’s rich history, collaborative nature and holistic viewpoint as major strengths.

Briggs also credited the devoted faculty and staff members who have long maintained strong relationships with the community.

“Mount Royal University is among the leaders of community service learning in Canada,” she says.

At Mount Royal, CSL courses run the gamut of all academic disciplines and are available in every faculty. The scope of the projects can be sized up or down, depending on the professor’s preference, with additional work being tacked on to capstone courses in the students’ senior years.

Photo courtesy of T.E.A.R.S Ministries Undergraduate student Megan Karmann plays a game with South American students during her two-week community service learning experience.

MRU introduces CSL citation A CSL citation was developed in 2013 to better recognize what Mount Royal has been doing for decades.

The commendation is awarded to students who complete three courses for a minimum of nine credits that employ community engagement.

CSL-designated courses entail at least 20 hours of community service, which are worth at least 15 per cent of each course grade. Some courses involve CSL projects worth 100 per cent of the course grade, requiring up to 240 hours of effort.

Almost 500 students received the CSL citation when they graduated in

June 2014, with every graduate in the Nursing, Public Relations and Information Design programs being acclaimed.

For Professor Victoria Calvert, the citation finally gave voice to a modest pillar of the Mount Royal educational experience.

“It’s part of Mount Royal’s maturity that we’re now standing up to say, ‘whoa, we really do this well,’” she says. “We are leaders in this field.

We are experts in teaching it and how we’re employing it in a plethora of courses to provide a rich learning experience for our students.”

In the 2014/15 academic year

2,300+ 200,000+ 400 31

students contributed hours with

community partners in

courses

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Sue Stegmeier of the Literacy for Life Foundation — a community partner benefitting from the expertise of Mount Royal Public Relations students

“

“Mount Royal students are providing the tools we need to get bigger, stronger and better.”

Sue Stegmeier, executive director, Literacy for Life Foundation, High River

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“ Some CSL experiences transcend the boundaries of a single faculty or program. That was the case for Broadcasting student Dominique Simard, who enrolled in a Languages course as part of her general education requirements. As part of her CSL-option course, Simard signed on to co-host the French Transe en Danse weekly radio program on CJSW. Although she was a budding on-air talent, Simard was concerned her native fluency had suffered since she moved to Calgary from Sturgeon County, which boasts one of the largest populations of Francophone residents in Alberta. By immersing herself in French culture and events through her radio gig, Simard was able to reconnect with her roots.

“That experience made me realize how much I value my first language,” she says.

Another example of CSL in action is Mount Royal’s partnership with the Literacy for Life Foundation, which has used the expertise of Public Relations students to help attract longer-term volunteers through the creation of a professional-quality communications plan.

CACSL 2016 Conference Mount Royal University will host the Canadian Alliance for Community Service Learning (CACSL) 2016 conference, bringing together students, researchers, faculty and practitioners from across Canada. The first CACSL conference took place in 2012 and is held every two years. The purpose is to enable people working in Community Service Learning to gather and share their experiences with others in the field.

“Mount Royal students are providing the tools we need to get bigger, strong and better,” says Sue Stegmeier, the Foundation’s executive director. “Their help goes beyond just the front-line services being provided to our clients.”

Fourth-year Public Relations student Alyssa Briggs admitted to being “awed” to help a prairie town that’s still dealing with the stress and anxiety of Canada’s most costly natural disaster.

“Sure, you can do a communications plan for a pretend company,” Briggs says. “But it’s totally different applying those skills in real life, and helping an organization with an actual soul, vision and mission.”

At the end of the 2014 semester, Briggs and her student colleagues gathered inside an auditoriumstyle classroom to present their findings and plan to their client groups and Professor Allison MacKenzie.

Their growth was evident. Students once nervous to step on their client’s toes were now confidently dishing out advice on everything from crisis communications to social media strategies.

“I really believe in the transformative power of CSL for students' learning,” says MacKenzie.

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From Casa Guatemala to Calgary and back NONPROFIT STUDIES ALUMNA BATTLES AGAINST CHILD POVERTY

WORDS BY BRYAN WEISMILLER

Photo courtesy of Peter McDermott 48

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GUATEMAL A FAST FACTS »» »» »» »»

Population: 14,647,083 Language: Spanish (official) 60%, Amerindian languages 40% Area: 108,889 sq. km Population living in extreme poverty: 13%, with more than half of the population below the national poverty line »» Child malnutrition: Nearly one-half of Guatemala's children under age five are chronically malnourished, one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world Source: CIA World Factbook

L

ong before becoming executive director of the Casa Guatemala children’s shelter, Heather Graham would lace up her work boots at 4 a.m. to join those harvesting poultry, pigs and vegetables on a jungle farm. When she wasn’t volunteering in the field, Graham would traverse the river Rio Dulce en route to Mayan villages where she’d hawk chicken livers to the locals.

While she’d later take on more administrative roles with the non-profit organization, Graham credits her early days on the frontlines as the motivation behind her life-long fight against extreme child poverty in Central America.

“I fell in love with the work they were doing,” she says in a phone interview from some 5,700 kilometres away. “I had only planned to stay for three months, but three months turned into three years.”

Graham first arrived on the southeastern coast of Guatemala in early 2001. What started off as a volunteer excursion on the clarification farm led to a series of spin-off roles at the children’s village, the Granja De los Nino’s butcher shop and the backpackers’ hotel. However, with no official non-profit business training under her belt, Graham felt she needed postsecondary education to learn the skills necessary to bolster Casa Guatemala’s long-term sustainability. She zeroed in on Mount Royal University because its Bachelor of Applied Nonprofit Studies program (now offered as a program minor through the Bissett School of Business) provided the ideal blend of business basics and fundraising strategies specific to charities.

In 2005, she moved to Calgary and began her education at Mount Royal.

Graham excelled in her academic studies, as well as her outreach activities leading a student club for aspiring entrepreneurs.

That club eventually became part of Enactus, a global organization specializing in community sustainability through entrepreneurial-based projects.

She spread her passion for Casa Guatemala to her club mates and professors, and Enactus became involved with the children’s village. The Mount Royal contingent raised money to improve the farm’s irrigation and fertilization systems and sponsored some of the youngsters to keep them in school — one of whom is now graduating as a medical doctor. Some members also travelled to the rainforests to teach the fundamentals of financial management, using corn as their context.

Back in her Calgary classrooms, Graham took every opportunity to incorporate Casa Guatemala into her coursework.

“It was a wonderful opportunity to tie my two worlds together,” she says.

During her time at the University, Graham formed a deep relationship with a policy wonk by the name of Naheed Nenshi. Professor Nenshi (now well-known as Calgary’s mayor) described his former pupil as “one of the most brilliant students” he ever taught.

Nenshi praised Graham’s laser-like focus on returning to Casa Guatemala with the skills needed to make an even bigger difference.

“A lot of students deviate from their path, although the vast majority of my

graduates are still working in the nonprofit sector,” he says. “Very few of them are following their passion with (Graham’s) intensity and focus. That’s very cool.”

In September 2014, Graham ascended the leadership of Casa Guatemala as both executive director and chair of the board.

The riverside village evolved from its roots as an orphanage after the government halted international adoptions. Efforts have turned to helping children from local communities who don’t have access to schools or health care.

Financial uncertainty still abounds.

Casa Guatemala, which supports up to 250 students at any given time, survives solely on private donations. It needs money to keep the lights on at all the facilities and to compensate nearly three-dozen staff members, along with supporting up to 20 volunteers.

Despite the ongoing challenges, Graham says she wouldn’t trade her position for any downtown corporate office.

“It’s more than just a job,” she says.

“It’s a family.”

Graham still holds a deep affinity for the place where she earned her postsecondary credentials and forged life-long personal and professional connections.

She uses social media to connect with students from her program, as well as professors — including Nenshi from timeto-time.

“I am really grateful for all of the wonderful people that I met while at Mount Royal,” Graham says.

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Generations positively collide WORDS BY STACEY SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROTH AND RAMBERG

Sam Switzer and Erin Neal 50

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The Sam and Betty Switzer Foundation A single parent’s story Eight years ago, Erin Neal started a journey at Mount Royal University that will come full circle this June 2015 when she dons her convocation gown and crosses the stage.

Neal says she was raised in a tumultuous environment by parents who struggled with addiction demons.

“In many ways, it could have been worse. I grew up with a house, food and loving siblings, but it does not change the fact that my childhood was, frankly, difficult,” Neal says.

When she found herself pregnant at 17 years old, she vowed that she would create a better situation for her own son. The then teenager was already living on her own.

Neal says she was forced to make some difficult decisions with no parental support.

She struggled to escape an abusive relationship that took her through the system of shelters, aid agencies and public housing options.

Wanting more for her family, Neal, with the support of her maternal grandparents and her mentor, found the courage to begin a new stage in life at Mount Royal it is here she says she truly found a supportive community.

“Without the University community, I would not be where I am today,” she says.

While the smaller class sizes originally drew her to Mount Royal, it was discovering an area of study that captured her heart.

She will graduate this spring with a Bachelor of Arts, History with a minor in Indigenous Studies.

Just a few years into her academic career, Neal found herself a single parent for the second time and she began to fear she would have to abandon her studies in favour of working full-time to support her children.

Opportunity came knocking in the form of the Sam and Betty Switzer Bursary for single parent students; Neal has three times been a recipient. This award provided her with the opportunity to complete three semesters of school, while still being a hands-on mom to her two young boys.

Sam Switzer, along with his late wife Betty, created the Sam and Betty Switzer Foundation in 2007, an organization that supports education, social programs, medical research and the arts. The foundation has provided tuition-paying bursaries to single parents and emergency bursaries for Aboriginal students at Mount Royal University for seven years.

“I am so grateful for the hand up. I have found that most people are innately good, but it’s wonderful to meet someone like Sam, who truly gives back. I can see where my education has improved my communication skills and confidence to engage people at many different levels. I don’t know where I would be without it,” Neal says, adding that she vows to give back to her own community however she can.

“I can’t see myself not involved helping people. It could have easily been me using the services at the Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre as opposed to working there.”

She also finds time to volunteer as a mentor to other students at Mount Royal.

“I have broken the cycle,” she says. “I do feel that you can rise above the situation that you are dealt with. You just have to do better for yourself and your family.”

Philanthropist, businessman and life-long learner Sam Switzer, a business man, philanthropist and native Calgarian, recently reflected on his career and recognized that one of his greatest accomplishments was receiving his Honorary Degree from Mount Royal University, a Bachelor of Business Administration — Entrepreneurship.

Switzer says his formal education didn’t take him past Grade 9, but he believes that through hard work and his love of learning he was able to propel his successful career as a builder. Switzer contributed to the Calgary landscape by building everything from large-scale apartment buildings and hotels, to shopping malls.

“If I could pass anything along to the next generation, it would be my philosophy of ‘would’ve, should’ve, could’ve’,” Switzer says. “If you don’t take advantage of opportunities presented, you could miss out on something great.”

Switzer says he learned to read people, places and situations and see opportunities that others would easily dismiss. Whether it was selling ice as a child, delivering prescriptions as a teenager, retail sales, property management or construction, Switzer thrived on continuous learning and the challenge of new prospects.

He credits much of his success to his late wife Betty, who he lovingly describes as his mentor. His face radiates when he speaks about her.

“She changed my life,” he says. “I trusted her implicitly and she made me a better person.”

Switzer first met Betty when she worked the front counter at the YWCA. Even then, as a single mother herself, she was helping women get a new start on life. Switzer recruited Betty to work for him at one of his hotels. Mutual respect and admiration as work colleagues morphed into a deeper commitment and they married in 1981.

“Betty could see beyond just making money,” Switzer says. “She saw how we could make a difference.”

Wanting to share their good fortune, the Switzer family created the Sam and Betty Switzer Foundation in 2007. Switzer says both he and his wife believed that “it’s not how much you have but its how much you give back.” Since 2008, their foundation has helped over 87 students at Mount Royal change their lives and achieve their dreams.

Throughout his life, Switzer created a balance of giving not only monetarily, but also with time. A long-standing member of the Rotary Club, the Al Azhar Shriners, the Masonic Lodge and the Skäl International Travel Club, volunteering was a large focus of his efforts. He relinquished many of his volunteer positions but still sits as the Chairman of the Sam and Betty Switzer Foundation.

“I have seen the positive results and I get from giving back, it’s a great sense of satisfaction,” he says.

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Doug Dirks Jenny Howe WORDS BY TIERNEY EDMUNDS PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROTH AND RAMBERG

Just as you’re hopping in the car at the end of the day to drive home from work or heading out to pick up the kids from school, these two Mount Royal University alumni are gearing up to start the workday as the hosts of CBC Calgary’s The Homestretch.

If you don’t recognize them by name, you may find Doug Dirks and Jenny Howe’s voices familiar. The two journalists deliver the news, as well as that ever-imperative rush-hour traffic report each weekday evening from 3-6 p.m. on Radio One 1010 AM. Both Dirks and Howe are proud Mount Royal grads and each give back to the University annually through their time and talent as hosts of the Alumni Achievement Awards, Mount Royal’s annual celebration to recognize alumni and students who have made significant contributions to their community and achieved remarkable accomplishments.

Howe graduated in 2006 with a Broadcasting diploma, while Dirks 52

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“

I’m thrilled that MRU has evolved into one of the top teaching universities in the country, but still manages to maintain the friendly personality I fell in love with as a student more than three decades ago … I loved studying and working at Mount Royal. Hosting the Alumni Achievement Awards was the least I could do to support one of my favourite alma maters.

”

— Doug Dirks, CBC Calgary, Radio One 1010 AM host of The Homestretch and Mount Royal alumnus

set his sights on a Sport Management diploma, graduating in 1983. He went on to complete a Bachelor of Education at McGill University. Dirks is not only a Mount Royal grad (he took a semester of Broadcasting before switching to Mount Royal’s Sport Management program) but also a former employee. From 1985–1987, he worked in the Athletic Therapy department as assistant athletic director.

“Part of my job at Mount Royal was pitching story ideas about Cougar Athletics to the local sports reporters,” says Dirks. “It looked like broadcasting was a lot of fun, so when my wife took a job in Toronto, I took a one-year post graduate certificate program in radio journalism at Humber College.

“I originally hoped to play in the NHL, but realized I might be better off talking about the NHL than actually playing in it.”

He started his broadcasting career in 1987 as a news and sports reporter at a small station in Newmarket, Ont. Dirks has been at CBC Calgary now for more than 20 years, not just on The Homestretch, but also as host of the local TV news as well as shows on CBC News Network.

Howe didn’t have any NHL dreams but, much like Dirks, she did take a roundabout way to her current broadcasting career.

Before attending Mount Royal, she

studied Zoology with a minor in Botany and Anthropology at the University of Alberta. After graduation she landed a job at a lab in Fort McMurray testing raw oil and oil products, but says she never felt it was the right fit.

“I love to talk and the laboratory environment didn’t really allow for that,” says Howe, with a laugh. “There was a rule that I wasn’t allowed to speak until 9:30 a.m. I’m a morning person and everyone else wasn’t. I’d walk in all chipper and my colleagues would sigh, ‘Ahh Jenny stop talking!’”

A close friend, who works in media, told her he thought broadcasting would be a perfect fit for her and recommended Mount Royal. She felt drawn to journalism and was accepted into the Broadcasting program in 2004.

“One of my instructors told me to apply for a position as a traffic reporter for CBC and I was hired,” she says. Howe has been reporting traffic for Calgarians on CBC ever since.

Both Howe and Dirks express their love for Mount Royal and credit the great experience they had as students as to why they continue to volunteer to host the Alumni Achievement Awards year after year.

Each has hosted four times since 2010 — three times together and once each apart.

They will once again host the 2015 awards.

“I’m thrilled that MRU has evolved into one of the top teaching universities in the country, but still manages to maintain the friendly personality I fell in love with as a student more than three decades ago,” says Dirks. “I loved studying and working at Mount Royal.

Hosting the Alumni Achievement Awards was the least I could do to support one of my favourite alma maters.”

So what’s their favourite part about hosting the Alumni Achievement Awards?

Both agree — it’s the award winners.

“Last year I was so impressed with the Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award winner Rick Smith. He’s so down-to-earth and the coolest guy. When I think my plate is full, I watch the Alumni Achievement Award winner videos and I see all they’re doing — it’s inspiring,” says Howe.

Howe still feels connected to the University as an alumna.

“I love Mount Royal. Even when I walk into Mount Royal today, I see that there’s a great sense of community,” she says.

“I made some great lifelong friendships there. I really connected with my professors, there’s a personal atmosphere there.

Dirks also volunteers at Mount Royal as the chair of the Broadcasting Advisory Committee.

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INTRODUCING MOUNT ROYAL’S BOARD OF GOVERNORS

1 1 BRYAN D. PINNEY (Board chair) Bryan Pinney has an extensive and distinguished career with Deloitte Canada, currently serving as vice-chairman. His community involvement includes the United Way, Heritage Park Foundation, Kiwanis Club and Board roles at the Calgary Petroleum Club and chair of Junior Achievement of Southern Alberta. Pinney earned an Honours degree in Business Administration from the Ivey School of Business. He was honoured as Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and is a graduate of the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors.

2 JIM CAMPBELL (vice chair) Jim Campbell is vice-president, Government and Community Affairs at Cenovus Energy.

His expertise in government relations, public affairs and strategic communications has evolved through experience with the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, GPC Government Policy Consultants and BP Canada. Campbell holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Alberta and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Calgary.

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INNOVATION. GROWTH. STRENGTH. Mount Royal University is served by a diverse Board of Governors. We introduce you to the people who bring their expertise to the table and support our leaders in making Mount Royal a front runner in undergraduate education in Canada.

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3 ELEANOR CHIU

5 DARYL FRIDHANDLER

Eleanor Chiu is chief financial officer at Trico Homes/Trico Developments. She is also one of the founders of the Trico Charitable Foundation. Her substantial community leadership includes roles with Bow Valley College, the Immigrant Access Fund, Leighton Art Foundation and Alberta Children’s Hospital. Chiu served in several roles on Mount Royal’s Foundation including vice-chairperson. Chiu is a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors and a Chartered Accountant. She also holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Finance and Accounting from the University of Calgary.

As a respected lawyer and partner at Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP, Daryl Fridhandler was admitted to the Alberta Bar in 1984, granted Queen’s Counsel in 2004 and has received commendations in his field. Fridhandler has served on numerous boards across the public, private and political spectrum. Currently, he is chair of the Contemporary Calgary Arts Society. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University and Bachelor of Laws from Dalhousie University. This fall, Fridhandler is returning to school at New York University (NYU) to pursue a Master of Laws (LLM).

HAMILTON

4 DAVID DOCHERTY David Docherty is president of Mount Royal.

Docherty is an accomplished academic, author, administrator and a recognized expert on parliamentary democracy in Canada. He obtained an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Wilfrid Laurier University, Master of Arts in Political Science from McMaster University and PhD in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining Mount Royal, he served in several roles at Wilfrid Laurier University, including senior advisor on multi-campus initiatives and dean of the Faculty of Arts.

6 SARAH HAMILTON Sarah Hamilton is an academic advisor at Mount Royal, with previous roles as an academic advisor for the Bachelor of Nursing program and a records evaluator within the Office of the Registrar. She has presented research at several conferences, including the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services conference, and the Alberta Advising Symposium. She earned degrees in Political Science and History from the University of Calgary.

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7 PAUL KUNDAN

9 ALYKHAN NANJI

11 ERIK QUEENAN

Paul Kundan built his Calgary-based home building business, Stone West Homes Inc., from the ground up after many years in the real estate industry as a professional realtor and mortgage associate. As co-founder and board member of the Canadian Sikh Network and founder of the Dashmesh Mission, Kundan’s entrepreneurial determination is matched with his leadership initiatives in the Sikh community for positive impact and change.

Dr. Alykhan Nanji is a general internal medicine specialist and founder and director of C-era, a cardiovascular evaluation clinic in Calgary. He has served and educated communities in Africa and India. He received the Distinguished Service Medal from the Alberta Medical Association and the Immigrant of Distinction Award from Immigrant Services Calgary. Dr. Nanji holds a Master of Public Health from Harvard University and Master of Business Administration from the University of Pennsylvania.

Erik Queenan was elected president of the Students’ Association of Mount Royal in March 2014, representing the University’s learners and bringing their perspectives to the table. Queenan is pursuing a Bachelor of Business Administration. He previously served with the King’s Own Calgary Regiment as a reservist. Queenan fosters his educational and professional goals with diverse experiences, including opportunities to study abroad at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville, Spain and FH Joanneum, a University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria.

10 JENNIFER PIERCE

12 PAUL ROSSMANN

Jennifer Pierce is vice-president, Commercial Management at TransAlta.

She has held executive leadership roles at several energy companies, providing expertise in communications, strategy and planning. She was co-chair of Mount Royal’s Changing the Face of Education Campaign Committee. Pierce holds a Master of Business Administration from Rice University and a Master of Political Management from The George Washington University.

Paul Rossmann is an independent management consultant focused on strategy, stakeholder relations and corporate governance projects in the financial services industry. He previously had a long career with Credit Union Central Alberta, most recently as vice president, Strategy and Corporate Development. His depth of experience includes strategic planning, human resources, communications, government relations, financial reporting and corporate administration.

Rossmann holds an ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors and has extensive board experience. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Calgary and a Master of Management Studies from Carleton University.

8 ELAINE MULLEN Elaine Mullen joined Mount Royal in 1969 and has actively and consistently contributed to the growth and transformation of the institution. During her tenure in the English department, she has taught a variety of courses, and has worked on curriculum and program development. Currently, her areas of focus include language and learning, brain-based pedagogy and evaluation of teaching. As well, Elaine has served on numerous committees at all levels.

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CLOSING WORDS WORDS BY BARRY RANDALL

I

remember watching the Calgary Stampeders play at Mewata Stadium, just a short walk from the dorms of my alma mater, what was then Mount Royal College. This was when the campus was still downtown, across from Mewata Park.

It was 1960 when I started at Mount Royal. The school I attended in Dorothy, Alta. only went up to Grade 11, so I moved to Calgary to finish senior high at Mount Royal. After graduating a year later, I stayed at Mount Royal and took two years of Business Administration. Eventually I transferred to Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Wash. where I completed my degree.

Mount Royal was a great place to learn — very friendly. I loved my instructors and the classes were small enough that I could get to know my teachers and my classmates as friends — we were even on a first name basis with W.J.(John) Collett, the principal at the time, who was known for being warm and approachable. He used to always say that “it was important to teach the student, not the subject.” David Docherty, PhD, Mount Royal’s current president, reminds me of Collett in his

approach to students. Both Docherty and Collett are “people-first” leaders.

Those classes laid a foundation for me — I went on to a long career in the stock market, eventually becoming a branch manager at Nesbitt Burns in Ottawa.

But the biggest impact Mount Royal had on my life came from the creation of the Mount Royal Cougars football team. The coach was John Borger (he had recently retired from the Stampeders) and he ran tryouts the first year I was there. I’d never played football before and thought I’d try something new. I had no idea how transformative it would be.

Borger was a good — but tough — coach. That first training camp was so hard that of the 105 guys that started, 70 dropped out. We had just enough to start the team and I played with them until it disbanded in 1964. I earned a scholarship and went on to play football with Eastern Washington University, then came back to Calgary to play for the Stamps. I was traded to the Montreal Alouettes just before my first season and stayed there for 11 years until 1977. That first training camp really set me up for success. It was the

BARRY RANDALL PASSIONATE ALUMNI

toughest camp of my career — after that, everything else seemed easy.

I have a lot of fond memories of Mount Royal, so when I was called by Alumni Relations to see if I would like to have coffee with president Docherty, I jumped at the chance. He was coming out to Ottawa and wanted to meet with alumni in the area. We talked about Mount Royal; the way it used to be, how it’s changing and what’s on the horizon. He mentioned that he’s talking to alumni across Canada as a way of reaching out and uncovering some of the great stories our alumni have. It was a great way to reconnect.

It’s easy to say that my short time at Mount Royal was a turning point for me.

What started as a way to finish high school ended up pointing me in a completely unexpected direction. Thanks to Mount Royal, I found something that would come to change my life.

BARRY RANDALL’S FOOTBALL CAREER AT A GLANCE Barry Randall is a three-time Grey Cupwinning former Canadian Football League (CFL) offensive lineman who played 11 seasons for the Montreal Alouettes. He is a proud Mount Royal alumnus of the former Business Administration program (1961-63), as well as the defunct Cougars football team. Randall, born in 1943, credits Mount Royal with having a major impact on his formative years.

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#54

Mount Royal Cougars (1960-1964) • Played offensive guard • Won the Alberta inter-provincial championships in 1960, but lost to Saskatoon in the Western finals

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Eastern Washington University Eagles (1965-1966) • Played defensive end and offensive guard • Counted among the Top 100 for 100 All-Time Team, 2008

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Montreal Alouettes (1967-1977) • Played as an offensive lineman and was a captain 1972 through 1977 • Won three Grey Cups in four trips to the CFL’s championship game • Missed only one game in 11 seasons

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