Celebrating Excellence in the Faculty of Arts

On Thursday, May 2, the Faculty of Arts held its annual Faculty of Arts Awards and Celebration of Excellence, in the lobby of the EEEL building, located on the main campus.

This event honours a few of the faculty's best and brightest teachers, researchers, staff members, and champions of internationalization, along with outstanding alumni and offers a chance to observe the diversity and scope of learning and innovation in the Faculty of Arts, while also reflecting back on another year of remarkable achievements (McCoy, Heath. Faculty of Arts Awards and Celebration of Excellence 2019. Faculty of Arts. University of Calgary. 2019. https://news.ucalgary.ca/news/faculty-arts-awards-and-celebration-excell...).

Please join us in celebrating and congratulating all of this year's amazing Faculty of Arts Award recipients generally, and the below members of the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures specifically.

 
Faculty of Arts Awards and Celebration of Excellence 2019:

Below is a list of this year's award winners from the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures (for a complete list of winners and to view photos from the awards ceremony, please visit the Faculty of Arts website):
 

• Established Scholar Research Award - Dr. Elizabeth Ritter
  Dr. Ritter’s work in syntax has earned her respect around the world and she is regarded as one of North America’s leading theoretical syntacticians, her renown based on her investigations of nouns and noun phrases. In the last two years she’s focused on the syntactic structure of speech acts, imperative sentences and Blackfoot phrases and sentences.
  
   
• Emerging Teacher Award - Dr. Rachel Friedman
  As an instructor of Arabic Languages and Muslim Cultures Dr. Friedman has been truly innovative. By establishing valuable contacts abroad she has created new opportunities for exchange programs with students in the Middle East, in particular in Morocco. On campus, meanwhile, she’s created a wonderful sense of community as her students can participate in a bi-weekly Arabic coffee hour.
  
   
• Emerging Teacher Award - Dr. Ben Whaley
  As an assistant professor of Japanese culture and literature Dr. Whaley has greatly enhanced the Japanese program, both in content and enrollment. His courses on Japanese popular culture, video games, and critical approaches to Manga and Anime have been hugely popular with students and he brings tremendous insight to every course he teaches examining issues of race, ethnicity and Japanese national identity.
  
   
• Leadership in Internationalization - Dr. Wei Cai
  Since joining the University of Calgary in 2006 Dr. Cai has been a true champion of internationalization, both globally and locally. Among her many achievements she established a group study program for UCalgary students in China. She also fostered an important research collaboration between the University of Calgary and the Beijing Language and Culture University which is expected to create opportunities for students and faculty on both campuses. All the while she’s been a prominently published international researcher in the field of Chinese applied linguistics.

(Taken from the Faculty of Arts website - written by Heath McCoy, Faculty of Arts)