Sarah Shorten Award winners Patricia Baker (second from left) & Janice Dodd (centre) receive their awards from CAUT president Greg Allain & CAUT Women's Committee chair Wendy Robbins during a ceremony in Ottawa on Nov. 25.
Janice Dodd and Patricia Baker were honoured at CAUT’s November Council meeting as recipients of the association’s 2006 Sarah Shorten Awards.
The award is presented to women who have demonstrated leadership, served as models and mentors, developed innovative programs and contributed significantly to the advancement of women in Canada’s post-secondary community.
Dr. Dodd, cross-appointed to women’s studies and physiology at the University of Manitoba, is recognized as a leader on gender, science and health issues by her colleagues in both the faculty of arts and the faculty of medicine. She has enhanced women’s advancement at the university for more than a decade and is one of the most active academics in the province lobbying for action promoting equality for women and has worked on behalf of women in science on many fronts.
“This award recognizes Dr. Dodd’s leadership and major and extensive contributions to the advancement of women in the academy and to the community of women scientists,” said CAUT Women’s Committee chair Wendy Robbins, in presenting the award. “She is a scholar, a leader, a champion of women in science, and a role model that we might all aspire to.”
Dr. Baker is professor of sociology and anthropology and women’s studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax and former president of the MSVU faculty association. Since the beginning of her appointment to the faculty at Mount Saint Vincent, she has worked tirelessly to advance knowledge of women’s lives and women’s labour and her research has been shared in many parts of the world.
According to Robbins, Dr. Baker was cited for her “courage, integrity, selflessness and stamina" in working towards a more equitable world. “But above all,” said Robbins, “Dr. Baker’s nominations by fellow faculty at Mount Saint Vincent commend her for her long and generous term of union service to the Mount Saint Vincent University Faculty Association and elsewhere.
“Dr. Baker, as a feminist academic, exemplifies the characteristics which the Sarah Shorten Award was established to recognize.”
Dr. Dodd and Dr. Baker are the 15th and 16th recipients of the award since its establishment in 1990 to honour the late Sarah Shorten, who served as vice-president and president of CAUT in the 1980s.