Mary Kay and Frederick Lowy to be honored at Alumni Recognition Awards
Mary Kay Lowy and Frederick H. Lowy, LLD 08, will be honoured by the Concordia Univerity Alumni Association at this year's Alumni Recognition Awards. Both have been exemplary champions of Concordia University for more than 15 years.
Mary Kay is a psychologist-psychoanalyst, scholar and author. She holds a BA from the University of Western Ontario, a Master's of Social Work from the University of Ottawa and a PhD from the University of Toronto, where she was also a faculty member for more than 25 years. She has been a visiting scholar and research associate in Concordia's Department of Psychology since 1996.
She was director of the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis (Quebec-English) from 2009 to 2011 and a North American representative on the Board of the International Psychoanalytical Association. She also taught at a number of institutes and conducted research primarily on young adult development and sole-support mothers.
Among her many community activities, Mary Kay consults for the Residence Project Chance, a support program for single mothers involved in post-secondary education and was a member of Concordia's Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery's advisory board.
Frederick Lowy served as Concordia's president and vice-chancellor from 1995 to 2005 and returned to the same positions in January 2011. He led Concordia through tremendous growth in its academic programs, enrolment and faculty core. He also oversaw significant building renewal and great achievements in education, research and community partnerships.
Born in Austria, Fred earned a medical degree from McGill University in 1959 and began his psychiatry career in Montreal in the 1960s.
He arrived at the University of Toronto in 1974. Over the next 21 years, he was a professor and department chair in the Department of Psychiatry, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and founder of the Centre for Bioethics. Recently, he has consulted for universities and served on the boards of the Sauvé Scholars Foundation, the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Jewish General Hospital.
In 2000, Fred was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Toronto, McGill and Concordia.