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20th Annual Alumni Awards Banquet

Contributions to university recognized by Concordia Alumni Association
May 16, 2011
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Source: Concordia Journal

For the 20th year, the Concordia University Alumni Association (CUAA) honours those who have made significant contributions to campus life and enhanced the university’s reputation in the broader community. This year’s honorands are:

Alumnus/a of the Year Award
Gina Cody

Gina Cody is president and principal shareholder of Construction Control Inc., a Toronto-based firm of consulting engineers and building scientists. Cody earned a BSc in structural engineering at Aryamehr University of Technology in her native Iran in 1978. At Concordia, she completed a master’s degree in 1981 and a doctorate in Building Engineering in 1989. She joined the Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in 1986. Shortly afterwards, she became a partner in Construction Control Inc. and was named its president in 2004. In 2010, Profit magazine named Cody one of Canada’s Top Women Entrepreneurs and cited Construction Control Inc. as the ninth most profitable company in Canada owned by a woman.

She recently won the Ontario Volunteer Service Award, the Certificate of Fellowship from Engineer Canada, the Canadian Standards Association Award of Merit and the 2010 Professional Engineers Ontario Order of Honour at the Officer level.

Humberto Santos Award of Merit
Rosalind H. Wolfe

Rosalind H. (Roz) Wolfe is the Senior Officer Communications and Advocacy at the Canadian Consulate General in Los Angeles, where she’s enjoyed a long and successful career promoting Canadian film and culture.

Wolfe earned a BA from Concordia (after starting at Sir George Williams University) in 1975 and an MA from Carleton University in Ottawa in 1976. In 1981 she was recruited as Public Affairs Officer to the Canadian Consulate General in Los Angeles. By 2008, she had advanced to her current position, which includes responsibilities to develop and implement all the communications strategies and media relations for the consulate in Los Angeles and the satellite offices in San Diego and Phoenix, as well as New Mexico and Nevada.

Among her many duties, Wolfe is responsible for organizing events to celebrate Canadian nominees for the annual Academy and Emmy Awards. In 2004, she received the Deputy Minister’s Award acknowledging her work with the media.

Outstanding Student Award
Jameson Jones-Doyle

Jameson Jones-Doyle has already left an indelible mark on Concordia as a student and volunteer. The Montreal native earned a BA in psychology, with a minor in business, from Concordia in 2008 and is now pursuing an MSc in Administration at the university’s John Molson School of Business (JMSB). He is also founder and president of BioBalance.

In 2009-10, among many achievements, Jones-Doyle served as a Graduate Career Ambassador with the JMSB’s Career Management Services, for which he was named Ambassador of the Year. He also received an Outstanding Contribution Award from the Concordia Council on Student Life, the Brian T. Counihan Scholarship for Outstanding Contribution to Student Life and the Ann Kerby Scholarship for Students with Disabilities.

Jones-Doyle’s extensive volunteerism includes serving with the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law at McGill University, coaching minor hockey and delivering motivational presentations for Canada’s Stuttering Association.

Benoit Pelland Distinguished Service Award
Paul M. Levesque

Paul M. Levesque has exhibited remarkable commitment to Concordia and amateur sport. Paul earned a BA in 1957 from Loyola College, one of Concordia’s founding institutions, and skied for its varsity team. He competed with the Canadian bobsled team that captured gold at the 1962 Commonwealth Games and at several international competitions over the next four years. Levesque fielded, coached and competed for Canada’s inaugural Olympic luge teams at the 1968 Winter Olympics.

He received the Canadian Centennial Medal from the Governor General of Canada in 1967 and the John F. Kennedy Sports Memorial Medal from the United States Amateur Athletic Union the following year. He was inducted into the Concordia University Sports Hall of Fame in 1983.

Levesque is currently senior advisor to the international investment banking firm Coady Diemar Partners. In 1977, he launched and remains chairman of the Canadian Association of New York’s Annual Hockey Achievement Award Dinner and is a founding member of the CUAA’s New York Chapter.

MBA Alumnus/a of the Year Award
Jean-Marc Trottier

Jean-Marc Trottier is a leader in the aviation management field. Trottier is president of the Ottawa-based aviation company Relations Solutions International and executive vice-president of Aviation Strategies International, an aviation consulting firm based in Montreal.

Trottier holds a certificate from the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Montreal and graduated from Concordia’s Global Aviation MBA program in 2002. He taught transportation policy at McGill University, and earned a certificate in Studies on International Terrorism from University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

He co-developed the Airport Management Professional Accreditation Programme for the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and Airports Council International. He also worked on the Aviation Security Training Professional Management Program for the ICAO and Concordia and has delivered the programs in many countries and online. In 2008, with a group of graduates from Concordia and other universities, Trottier created the World Aviation MBA Association.

Honorary Life Membership Award
Rita Lc de Santis

Rita Lc de Santis is a partner at Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP in several divisions, specializing in international law. She has accompanied clients on trade missions to Africa and advised the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank.

In 2009, she was named by the Women’s Executive Network as one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women, was recognized in The Best Lawyers in Canada and was repeatedly recommended as a leading practitioner in the area of property development in Lexpert.

De Santis holds a BSc in Biochemistry and a Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill University. She has volunteered for several community organizations and boards, including the Canadian Italian Business and Professional Association, St. Mary’s Hospital Center, Investissement Québec and the Business Development Bank of Canada. De Santis has been a member of Concordia’s Board of Governors since 1999, serving as vice-chair from 2005 to 2009.

Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching
Steven High

Steven High is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Public History at Concordia. High co-directs Concordia’s groundbreaking Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling and is building Canada’s first state-of-the-art oral history research laboratory, making Concordia the country’s foremost centre in the field. The lab provides a vibrant research space for technological and methodological experimentation and collaboration.

He is also the principal researcher of the Montreal Life Stories project, which conducts and compiles interviews with Montrealers displaced by war, genocide and other human-rights violations. The project, involving community partners and researchers across a range of disciplines, integrates these interviews into animated film, online digital stories, radio programming, live performance, art and pedagogical resources.

High earned a PhD from the University of Ottawa and arrived at Concordia in 2005. He is especially interested in how oral history relates to sudden transformative economic change, such as mill closings.

Outstanding Faculty/Staff Award
Frank Chalk

Frank Chalk is a Concordia professor of history and director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. He earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and began teaching at Sir George Williams University, one of Concordia’s founding institutions, in 1964.

Chalk’s research interests include the role of radio broadcasting in the incitement and prevention of genocide, genocide and international law, modern American foreign policy, and the history of Africa. His publications include The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (with Kurt Jonassohn) and Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities (with retired lieutenant general Roméo Dallaire, Kyle Matthews, Carla Barqueiro and Simon Doyle). He is currently writing a book on radio broadcasting and genocide, and papers on the United Kingdom Genocide Act of 1969 and American foreign policy and genocide prevention.

In 2000-01, Chalk served as a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Tribute to Henri P. Habib

Henri P. Habib is a renowned Middle East scholar who has been associated with Concordia’s Department of Political Science for more than 50 years.

Habib received his PhD from McGill University and began teaching at Loyola College in 1960. He founded the Department of Political Science a year later and served as its chair for nearly 25 years. He retired in 1997 but continues to teach at universities in Montreal and Ottawa.

Habib received the John W. O’Brien Distinguished Teaching Award in 1985 and an Honorary Life Membership Award from the CUAA in 1991. He was named a Concordia Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 1999.

He was a long-serving member of Concordia’s Board of Governors and is now a Governor Emeritus. He has three endowment funds named in his honour at Concordia, including one that supports the Henri Habib Distinguished Lecture Series on Peace, Conflict and Global Politics. Habib was instrumental in establishing the Global Forum on International Cooperation, to challenge Concordia students to “adopt greater concern for their world.”

Related links:
•   Concordia University Alumni Association



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