This column welcomes the submissions of all Concordia faculty and staff to promote and encourage individual and group activities in teaching and research, and to encourage work-related achievements.

Graham Martin (Computer Science, Co-op, retired) was recently awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for his work on the national and local scene for children and adults with disabilities, as well as other volunteer work in the community.

Congratulations to veteran animator Christopher Hinton (Cinema), whose film Flux has been nominated for a Genie. Hinton is also mentoring director for a new program at the National Film Board, called the Animation Hothouse. This intensive 12-week program will provide tools and support to six promising young filmmakers from across Canada, to use to make animated works of 10 to 30 seconds’ duration.

Ron Mackay (TESL, retired) published “Evaluating Organization Capacity Development” in the autumn issue of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation. He has just completed a participatory six-month assessment of 22 ministries of the government of Guyana for the Governance Network, Ottawa, and the InterAmerican Development Bank.

Paul Cholmsky, a recent MA graduate of Educational Technology at Concordia, has won a substantial U.S. National Science Foundation grant. Cholmsky is director of multimedia development for ExporeLearning, a content creator for educational programs, based in Virginia.

A paper by Clarence S. Bayne (Decision Sciences/MIS, DIA/DSA) entitled, “Cohésion sociale dans une économie d’échange à plusieurs cultures,” has been published by L’Editions de l’IQRC in the proceedings of the conference Transmission de la culture, petites sociétés, mondialisation, which was held at Université Laval in May 2001. The conference was organized by the Chaire Fernand-Dumont sur la culture, for INRS Urbanisation, culture et société. Dr. Bayne also attended the Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI) Assembly and Roundtables in Ottawa in October. The VSI is a partnership of the federal government and the voluntary sector in Canada.

Steven Appelbaum (Management) has recently published a number of papers, including “A Cross-Method Analysis of the Impact of Culture and Communications upon a Health Care Merger: Prescriptions for Human Resources Management,” with J. Gandell, accepted for publication in the Journal of Management Development; “The Early Retirement Incentive Program: A Downsizing Strategy,” with E. Patton, accepted for publication in the Journal of European Industrial Training.

Ira Robinson (Religion) was a panelist at a mini-colloque de dialogue interreligieux: une approche communautaire et interpersonnelle, sponsored by the Institut Interculturel de Montréal.

Philip Spensely (Theatre) is playing the role of Howard Safir, New York City police chief under former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in the feature film Rudy! , shot in Montreal. The film will be shown on television soon. Also in the film, with major roles as part of Giuliani’s inner circle, are former Concordia theatre students Marc Comacho and John Bourgeois.

Robert Tittler (History) has been elected chair of the executive board of Records of Early English Drama, a Toronto-based international research and publication project involving over 40 scholars in four countries, now in its third decade of work.

Khaled Soufani (Finance) was awarded the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry Prize for best policy methodology paper at the 25th ISBA National Small Firm Policy and Research Conference in the UK. The paper is entitled “A Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Taxation on the SME Economy: The cases of the UK and the US.” The paper is a product of an ongoing research with academics in the University of Manchester Institute of Technology, and the Manchester Business School in the UK on the effects of Fiscal Policy on the finance and economic affairs of small businesses in Europe and North America. The paper was co-authored with researchers at the University of Manchester, U.K.

Stéphane Brutus (Management) was one of two presenters for the first seminar for the Chaire en gestion des competences de l'ecole de gestion de l'UQAM. The seminar, held Dec 6, was titled L'évaluation multi-sources comme outil de gestion des compétences.

Suresh Kumar Goyal (Decision Sciences/MIS) has accepted an invitation to join the editorial advisory board of the new International Journal of Six Sigma.

Lt.-Gov. Lise Thibault is now the honorary patron of the Quebec Association for Adult Learning. The QAAL has offices in Concordia’s J.W. McConnell Building in close proximity to the Education Department, with which it frequently collaborates. Mme Thibault is herself a former adult educator, and gave an encouraging speech to a QAAL conference here last fall (see CTR, Nov. 21, 2002).