Awards for student life

 

The Concordia Council for Student Life gives awards to people who have made exceptional contributions over the past year. This year, the awards were handed out on April 8 at a reception in the downtown Faculty Club.

The Council is an advisory body that makes recommendations to improve students’ non-academic life. Chaired by the Dean of Students, it comprises six directors, two support staff members, one senior academic administrator and 10 student representatives.

The teaching award went to Christopher Gray, chair of the Philosophy Department, (top photo) who organized the first bursary program in the department, helped implement a peer tutoring program, and created a student advocacy program.

Gray said he operates on the assumption that “life is hard, always, for young people. My task is not to keep setting the bar ever higher, but to lower it as far as compatible with responsible and respectable higher education.”

Undergraduate education and its lively experiences are the centre of university education, he said, and “the SRF [Student Request Form] is as important a document as a transcript. Things go wrong. It is one of our jobs is to try and make them go right again.”

Peter Schiefke is an undergraduate student in Political Science. Last year he was VP Finance of ASFA, the Arts and Science Federation of Associations, and this year he is VP Student Life of the CSU.

Peter helped create an ASFA student handbook, and he helped organize the display of a huge Canadian flag on Parliament Hill for Remembrance Day, 2002. Now he is organizing a student volunteer project in Africa called the Concordia Volunteer Abroad Program.

Stuart Letovsky won a CCSL Award for his volunteer work. As president of Concordia Education Student Association, he oversaw the giving and wrapping of over 2,500 gifts for needy children at Christmas. He’s also an active Stingers fan.

Russell Lobo, an undergraduate student in Electrical Engineering, was VP, Activities, of the Concordia International Students Association last year. This year, he’s CISA president.

He helped organize more than 20 social activities this year for international students, and was a valuable link between CISA and the Concordia Student Union.