UPEI faculty members honoured for teaching and research excellence
Three UPEI faculty members were recently recognized for
their outstanding teaching and research achievements at a reception and awards
banquet sponsored by the UPEI Faculty Association and the Office of the
President.
Dr. June Countryman, Department of Music, won the Hessian Award for Excellence in Teaching, and Dr. Donna Giberson, Faculty of Science, and Dr. Malcolm Murray, Faculty of Arts, received UPEI Merit Awards for Scholarly Achievement for their exceptional accomplishments as researchers.
The Hessian award is given to a faculty member who has shown outstanding competence in teaching, and the merit awards to faculty members who have made significant and continuing contributions to scholarly research.
Countryman has been with the music department for only two years, but she has already made an indelible mark upon the program and her students. Since arriving on campus, she has been responsible for new courses such as elementary music education methods, philosophy of music education and aural skills. Last year, she introduced a new course in global music, which exposed students to ethnic musical traditions beyond western music. This year, she pioneered a musicianship course to help students develop crucial skills in structured and unstructured musical improvisation. Her students describe her as extremely compassionate, and she is a mentor to other faculty members.
A full professor in the biology department, Giberson received her BSc in Environmental Biology from the University of Calgary, and MSc in Aquatic Entomology and PhD in Aquatic Ecology from the University of Manitoba. She researches aquatic entomology, focusing on biodiversity in Canadian ecosystems. Her research is well published in peer-reviewed journals, books and conference proceedings. In 2007 alone she published five peer-reviewed articles. She supervises MSc graduate students and BSc honours undergraduate students, and is active in several professional organizations. She has worked with the P.E.I. Department of Health to identify mosquito species and their breeding areas on the Island. This is her second Merit Award for Scholarly Achievement award; the first was in 1996.
Dr. Malcolm Murray, associate professor of philosophy, received his honours BA in Philosophy and Psychology, MA in Philosophy and PhD in Philosophy from the University of Waterloo. He specializes in social and political philosophy, game theory, contractarianism, and 20th-century ethics. Murray has published four scholarly books within five years, as well as chapters in books and articles in refereed philosophical journals. He currently serves as chair of the UPEI Research Ethics Board and is a member of the Scholarly Publications Programme Committee of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Aid. He is a regular reviewer for the Journal of Value Inquiry and the Ethical Theory and Moral Practice journal.
Photo (left to right): Dr. Malcolm Murray, Dr. Donna Giberson and Dr. June Countryman
