A student-led project at Dawson has won the provincial Forces Avenir award in the category of Mutual Aid, Peace and Justice. On Sept. 27 during a gala in Quebec City, the award was presented to a group of Dawson graduates and students who founded the Mahsa Amini Initiative.
Visit the link below for the homepage news story.
Out of a record 81 entries at Dawson alone, three Dawson students were selected as semifinalists for the 2023 Quebec Writers’ Federation (QWF) College Writers Award. The 2023 award will be announced at the QWF Gala on Nov. 13.
Visit the link to find out who Dawson's winners are and to read their writing.
“The 17 Sustainable Development Goals” illustrated by students in the Illustration program at Dawson won the 2023 student art competition of Colleges and Institutes Canada.
“36 illustration students collaborated on this fanzine project along with Sustainable Dawson,” said Stéphanie Aubin, co-chair of and instructor in the program. “They had to create an illustration that would be evocative and powerful visually. Their illustration could be based on a personal experience or a researched fact. Each student's approach to their subject was different, which makes the project even more unique.”
Three of the winning students shared their thoughts about the project. Visit the link below to read the three interviews and for a link to view the two fanzines of the SDG art.
The Independent Video Game Design program hosted a very successful Indie Game Playtesting Night on Sept. 29.
Audrey Vanasse from Continuing Education and Community Services reported that:
Elaine Gusella, our Independent Video Game Design Program Coordinator, says "we are already getting a lot of interest for the next edition, which we're hoping to hold in November (date TBD). We're really looking forward to hosting more events as often as we can."
Writer Sarah Gilbert (Faculty, English) was born in the United States, grew up in Winnipeg and lived in Ottawa before moving to Montreal. For the last three decades, the Mile End neighbourhood has been her home, and she chose it as the place where she would raise her daughter.
“The Mile End is a real muse. It is a very dense neighbourhood with a lot going on,” she said in an interview with Dawson’s Communications Office. “I had acquired tons of content without noticing it.”
Our Lady of Mile End (Anvil Press, 2023) is a collection of short stories about “gentrification and displacement in a once affordable area that is feeling the squeeze of social and cultural transformation.
“The overlapping lives—of girls and women, tenants and landlords, neighbours and strangers, the old generation and the next—chart the tensions and affections among people living in a community that has turned into a destination,” reads the description on the website of Anvil Press.
Sarah wanted her daughter to grow up somewhere where she knows the neighbours. When she had her baby, she had “a free pass to talk to anyone,” she said.
The fictional book project grew out of a blog Sarah created called Mile Endings in 2008. That project was journalistic and through it, Sarah documented the endings of neighbourhood businesses and characters and some of the new beginnings of the neighbourhood in transition.
The Mile End is still a real community, Sarah says, citing density and walkability as important factors in fostering community. Neighbourhood gathering spots, like the cafés, the library, the local grocery store and the school, are also important.
“I watch the neighbourhood by walking around,” she said. “There are neighbours who know each other and send their kids to the same school up the street and there are a lot of artists. There are people you see regularly who you may not know but they are part of your personal landscape.”
In our goal to get to 1,000 species identified on Dawson's downtown campus in 1,000 days, our total is now at 810 species! Over the last two weeks, there were:
"A large contributing factor was the Nighttime Biodiversity Observation we did last week," said Brian Mader, project lead and a Biology teacher. "Two teachers, one staff member, five students and one alumnus stayed for sunset and beyond with insect traps to observe biodiversity at night.
"Students were able to observe multiple bats and a skunk! Although the photos were not great for these organisms, students were able to get some nice shots of a House Centipede (Cassiana Silva-Young, Enriched Pure & Applied Science) and a Narrow-winged Tree Cricket (Jacob Davies, Environmental Science).
North-South Studies is now rebranded as the Social Change and Solidarity profile of the new revision of the Social Science program, which welcomed its first students this fall.
Students considering the social sciences are invited to be part of a small and engaged community while making lifelong friendships, learning and working for social and environmental justice. The Social Change and Solidarity profile provides a meaningful introduction to the social sciences, giving students the theoretical and practical tools to understand and analyze the social, political, economic, and historical contexts of the world around them. The heart of the program is a project and trip to the Global South or a hands-on collaborative local project.
To celebrate the legacy of 30 years of North-South and look toward the future of the new profile, a video was made. It includes interviews with faculty, graduates and retirees.
Visit the link to see the video.
Chris shared his experiences with the Communications Office: “The 2015 trip was across the Pacific from Vancouver to Shanghai on the container ship Hanjin Geneva. The trip was part of Twenty-Three Days at Sea: A Travelling Artists Residency through Access Gallery, Vancouver. During the trip I was considered ‘in-residence’. The trip did take exactly 23…
When we share with colleagues that the Community Recreation and Leadership Training (CRLT) program is taking students from all three years to camp for their Fall Outdoor Experience, we get a lot of varied responses and encounter a spectrum of reactions, from envy to curiosity.
Most people, even those who live for outdoor activities and immersion in Nature, are not aware of the benefits and learnings which take place when the whole CRLT department, students and faculty, pack up for a five-day intensive at a sleep away camp over Labour Day weekend.
Visit the link to read Heather Martin's homepage news feature.
The Humanities and Public Life Conference took place from Sept. 18-21. The theme this year was What's the Point? Purpose, Meaning, and Value in Challenging Times. Over the span of four days, over 2,000 students attended 20 different presentations.
Our presenters explored how humanities education can help us to ask the bigger questions that guide our everyday actions, helping us to understand what to value and why. Some highlights included two former Dawson students, Silvia Ortan and Andreas Nicolaidis-Gagnon, who shared how they use what they learned in humanities in their careers (law and social work). Overall, we were reminded once again of the impact that humanities can have in helping us navigate a complex and often bewildering world. From the rise of white power terrorism to the role that AI will play in creativity, our presenters helped students understand how what they are learning in their humanities courses factors into real-world situations.
We would also like to express our thanks to the Dawson administration, FAMA, the theatre department, and David Bannout. Special thanks to Diana Rice for coordinating three peace week talks during the conference. Without your help, we would not have been able to offer our students such an enriching week!
Last Modified: October 11, 2023
