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Every year, KPE students receive numerous awards for their academic and extra-curricular achievements. In showcasing a snippet of our accomplished students, we extend our congratulations to them all.

Roxy O’Rourke

Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) to Honour Nelson Mandela

A prestigious Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) to Honour Nelson Mandela has been awarded to KPE doctoral student Roxy O’Rourke for her work on understanding parasport athletes’ mental health experiences. O’Rourke hopes to better understand how to foster conditions for positive mental health and to co-create a mental health intervention for para-athletes and others.

Aarohi Pathak

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Doctoral Award

KPE PhD student Aarohi Pathak received an NSERC Doctoral Award for her research into the cognitive science behind learning two similar but opposite tasks – for example, mastering an action with both left and right hands. Pathak has discovered that cognitive strategies can overcome the interference that naturally occurs when attempting to learn two contrasting skills, an insight with potential implications for rehabilitation protocols and athletics.

Willson

Connaught PhD for Public Impact Fellowship

Erin Willson’s research into abuse in sport has earned her the prestigious new Connaught PhD for Public Impact Fellowship. The former Olympian is working on assessing the rates of maltreatment among young athletes and understanding the factors that influence the reporting of abuse. Her work also explores what constitutes good behaviour in sport, viewing this as essential to creating a safe environment.

Margaret MacNeill says she is not really retiring but “retreading” to pursue other passions. First arriving to the Faculty in 1980 as an undergraduate student in Physical Health and Education, she later returned after completing a Master’s in Sociology of Sport and Film Studies at Queen’s and a Ph.D. in Communication at Simon Fraser.

“I came back to U of T for a contract teaching position in 1991 which led to a tenured position in the social-cultural sciences stream,” says MacNeill, who’s been teaching in FKPE for 32 years, is cross-appointed to the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and is a founding executive member of the graduate specialization in women’s health.

For her, teaching and research about how activity, health and media intersect are her greatest passions. “I’ve investigated the ways the media tells the story of health… and the implications of those stories.”

For example, MacNeill says athletes were prominently featured in the news during the pandemic because of their concerns about traveling to Tokyo for the Olympics and becoming vectors for COVID 19. “My research looks at