Dedication to student life celebrated
Toasting their Concordia Council on Student Life Awards are (from left) Noah Stewart-Ornstein, Tina Montandon, Jesse Tomalty, Rosemarie Schade and Carlo Guillermo Proto. They were fêted at a reception on April 5 in the Hall Building.
andrew dobrowolskyj
No one was left out at this year’s annual Concordia Council on Student Life (CCSL) Awards. As Louyse Lussier, Director of Student Life Relations, pointed out, this year’s honorees represented both graduate and undergraduate students, as well as faculty and staff.
What united all five recipients was a dedication to improving conditions for students within Concordia.
Tina Montandon, Graduate Program Assistant for Religion, expressed that dedication when receiving her award from grad student John Bilodeau. “I’ll do anything for my kids, and they are all my kids, whether they are older or younger than me. I’ll fight tooth and nail for them.”
Bilodeau, in presenting the award, thanked the Dean of Students and the Concordia Council of Student Life. The CCSL sponsors the event every year for the opportunity to publicly acknowledge “what is just a recognition of fact that Tina has made an outstanding contribution to the student life in our faculty.”
Arianne Shaffer, educator at the Multifaith Chaplaincy, was no less enthusiastic when she presented an award to Carlo Guillermo Proto, who has overseen the preparation and service of between 100 and 140 meals for students at the chaplaincy every Thursday evening for the last two academic years. (See an article in the Journal, Oct. 12, 2006).
The program, Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard, offers students a warm meal and opportunity to discuss spiritual issues that preoccupy them. “Proto is a film student, and he brings all kinds of people together through his food. He nourishes them on more than a physical level.”
Proto accepted the award joking that he had never expected to receive anything from the Dean’s office worth celebrating. “It’s too bad the Dean and the President aren’t here. I would tell them how important the chaplaincy is.”
Lussier hosted the April 5 reception because Dean of Students Keith Pruden was forced home ill just an hour before the event.
Josie Christensen presented an award to Rosemarie Schade, her boss at the Loyola International College, because of Schade’s dedication to her students. Schade accepted, adding that with her two daughters now studying at Concordia, she felt that they completed the circle.
Leah Del Vecchio presented an award to past and future student representative Noah Stewart-Ornstein. He brought the ASFA accreditation campaign to an impressive victory, garnering 95 per cent of the vote, although the measure had been defeated in two earlier attempts. He worked on both AIDS Awareness Week and the recent Youth Action Summit. Del Vecchio summed up her presence by saying, “as a friend, I’m truly proud, and as a student, I’m truly grateful.”
The final award went to Jesse Tomalty, a philosophy grad student who worked over the last two years to revive a number of programsfor students in her department: including revamping the graduate journal of philosophy, Gnosis, after a dormant period, heading the Graduate Philosophy Students Association and working on their annual colloquia.
When she received the award from fellow student Jonathan Singh, Tomalty remarked that “philosophy is an inherently discursive discipline. That is why fora for conversation and discussion are so important.”