1991-06-13. MUN Gazette, vol. 23, no. 19

              Gazette
Memorial
University of Newfoundland
Volume 23    Number 19
June 13, 1991
Outstanding
teachers, research
professors named
Shirley Stacey
Memorial University recognized four outstanding members of its academic community recently when President Arthur May presented plaques to this year's
recipients of the distinguished teaching award and researchers honored by the
rank of university research professor. Shown (L-R) are Dr. Brian Gregory,
chemistry, and Dr. Elizabeth Miller, English, winners of the President's Award for
Distinguished Teaching; and Dr. Harry Kiefte, physics, and Dr. Gordon Bennett,
biology, university research professors.
Rothermere fellowship
awarded to English
literature scholar
The 1991 Lord Rothermere Foundation Fellowship has been awarded to
Shirley L. Stacey, a master's candidate in
arts, who will undertake doctoral studies
in England this fall. "I'm excited about
the opportunity," says the student of
Memorial's English department. "The fellowship will enable me to undertake a
critical edition of the works of 17th-century writer Margaret Cavendish, the
Duchess of Newcastle."
Ms. Stacey received a bachelor of arts
in English and women's studies from
Memorial University in 1987. She is currently working towards completion of her
MA thesis on the subject A Critical Edition of a 16th-century Prose Fiction
Called Greene in Conceipt. The work involves an analysis of the text written by
Englishman John Dickenson in the late
1600s. She expects to complete the
master's thesis in the coming days.
A native of St. John's, Ms. Stacey is a
graduate of Bishop's College High
School. She is a former winner of the
British Universities Summer School Program Scholarship in 1988, which she
used to study Elizabethan handwriting at
the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford
upon Avon. As well, she has taught in the
Newfoundland school system, having
served as an English teacher at Point
Leamington Central High, Notre Dame
Bay. "I loved teaching high school and
younger students, and I'll probably end
up doing it again, but in the university
system when I complete the doctoral
studies," she says.
The Lord Rothermere Foundation Fellowship is named after Memorial's first
chancellor, Lord Rothermere, who established the award to assist Memorial
graduates in pursuing further studies in
the United Kingdom. The value of the
fellowship is £3,300 per year plus college
fees, for a maximum tenure of three
years.
Four Memorial faculty members have
received the most prestigious teaching and research awards the university
bestows on serving members of its
academic community. Dr. Gordon Bennett, Department of Biology, and Dr.
Harry Kiefte, Department of Physics,
have been named as university research
professors and Dr. Brian Gregory, Department of Chemistry, and Dr. Elizabeth
Miller, Department of English Language
and Literature, are this year's recipients
of the President's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
The awards were presented Tuesday,
June 4, during a ceremony honoring the
four recipients.
The university research professorship,
first awarded in 1984, is a distinction
above the rank of professor that recognizes outstanding Memorial researchers
who have achieved international recognition for the exceptional quality of their
scholarly work. To facilitate further research, there is a reduction in the regular
teaching load for the recipients, and a research grant of $3,000 per year accompanies the award. The title is held for a
term of five years.
The distinguished teaching awards
were established in 1988 to offer recognition to faculty members who excel as
teachers. In addition to a certificate, each
distinguished teacher received $1,000,
contributed by the Memorial University
Alumni Association.
The third of Memorial's major annual
awards to outstanding members of its
faculty, the President's Award for Outstanding Research, will be presented at a
separate award ceremony.
At the first signs of summer, the staff of Memorial's Botanical Garden were
hard at work expanding the rock garden. Curator Bernard Jackson directs a
front-end loader as it arranges the two- to three-ton rocks for the new garden
INSIDE
Treating sex offenders 3
Sciencefare 4
Grads, dropouts studied 5
Nursing school's 25th 6-7
AIDS workshop 8
Research 10
Dr. Gordon F. Bennett, university research professor
During his remarkable career, Dr. Bennett
has published approximately 250 scientific papers. His research has involved
principally, but not exclusively, the area
of blood parasites and the biology of
biting flies, and he is one of the world's
leading authorities on the blood parasites
of birds. Dr. Bennett is also an authority
on the biting flies which serve as the vectors or transmitters of these parasites to
birds.
See OUTSTANDING, p. 2
New deadline
for dropping
courses
Beginning in September, there will be
an earlier deadline for undergraduate
students who wish to drop courses
without incurring academic prejudice or
liability for tuition fees.
To minimize the waste of an estimated
10 per cent of Memorial's academic
resources, both Senate and the Board of
Regents have agreed that the deadlines
for dropping courses without incurring
financial penalty or academic prejudice
be moved to the second Wednesday after
the beginning of classes. This means that
the drop deadline for the 1991 fall
semester is SepL 18.
The change will make spaces that have
been dropped available to other students
within the two-week deadline for adding
courses. When courses are dropped after
the add deadline, other students are unable to take advantage of the spaces that
have been made available.
The university's statistics show that of
the 42,016 course registrations in the
faculties of Arts and Science for the 1990
fall semester, 4,102 course registrations
were dropped by students after the second
week of classes when adding courses is
no longer permitted. Until the recent
change, two drop deadlines existed: a
three-week deadline for dropping courses
without financial penalty, and a seven-
week deadline for dropping courses
without academic prejudice.
The Senate Committee on Undergraduate Studies will monitor the impact
of the change during the fall semester. It
will also examine whether or not first-
year students should be permitted under
certain conditions to drop courses beyond
the normal deadlines without academic
prejudice.
The new deadline will encourage undergraduate students to determine which
courses they wish to drop in time to allow
other students to add them.