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Accolades 

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Wayne Larsen teaches in the Journalism Department and is editor of the Westmount Examiner, but he’s also a painter. Now he is the author of a book, James Wilson Morrice: Painter of Light and Shadow (Dundurn Press). Morrice (1865-1924) was a Montrealer and a pivotal figure in the emerging field of Canadian art.

Look for at least three Concordia students in the Beijing Olympics this summer, namely water polo player Rachel Riddell and wrestlers David Zilberman and Martine Dugrenier.

Tu-Quynh Trinh, who is in the French-to-English translation program, won the Mary Coppin Prize from the Ordre des traducteurs, terminologues et interprètes agrées, or OTTIAQ. It’s the second time in a row a Concordia translation student has won this prize.

Concordia staff won two Circle of Excellence Awards from CASE (Council for the Advancement and Support of Education). Competing against 33 of the major U.S. universities and several European ones, Concordia’s main website, developed by Internal and Web Communications, took a bronze. The university’s first Family Fair Day, held as part of Homecoming 2007 and developed by Advancement and Alumni Relations, also won a bronze.

Members of the Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science gathered May 27 to celebrate eight new awards. Pattern recognition pioneer Ching Suen and composites expert Suong V. Hoa were given lifetime research achievement awards. Suen was also awarded the Lifetime Citations Award as the faculty member with the highest number of citations in the Science Index. The Doctoral Guidance Award for 2008 was presented to Omair Ahmad, and Masters Guidance Awards were given to Mamoun Medraj and Amir Aghdam. Young Researcher Achievement Awards were given to Muthu Packirisamy, Amir Aghdam, Zhi Chen and Ali Dolatabadi. Dean Nabil Esmail also announced the establishment of the M.N.S. Swamy Chair in Electrical Engineering.

The James Saya Memorial Bursary is given to the student in a Contemporary Dance program who shows the biggest improvement over the course of the year. This year it went to two second-year students, Lesley Anne Smith and Bruno Gagnon, who has a circus background.

President-elect Judith Woodsworth was invested into the Fellowship of Georgian College at a convocation ceremony in Barrie, Ont. The honour, given for outstanding contributions to education in Ontario, had previously been given to only 12 people, including two premiers and two ministers of higher education. She is currently ending her term as president at Laurentian University, in Sudbury, which supports Georgian College, in central Ontario.

Ian Irvine (Economics) wrote an essay published in The Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen on the current crisis in world food prices. He said it is not caused by higher demand in emerging countries or by speculation, as some have charged, but in large part by poor policy, namely, the U.S. ethanol program and protectionism/subsidies in the developed world. The world can certainly produce enough food if prices are allowed to find their own level, unused land is developed for agriculture (for example, in the former East Bloc), and technology is harnessed to improve performance.