John Weeren finished Foundation Year Program (FYP) in 1982, yet still spends his days on a campus that reminds people of Hogwarts. But it’s not King’s. It’s Princeton. As an undergraduate student, Weeren’s first encounter with collegiate life was…
Tamara Franklin faces a conundrum in her research. “We are limited by the thing we are trying to understand,” she says. That “thing” is the human brain. Think about that. Tamara is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and…
Working in fisheries governance in Labrador may seem like a world away from studying Contemporary Studies and Classics at King’s – however, for Rachael, it was fairly logical progression. Rachael’s goals as an undergraduate at King’s were simple;…
“It’s something I wish I had known existed when I was in university,” says Georgia Carley with a laugh. “I didn’t find out about it until after my PhD graduation!” But that didn’t stop Georgia from leaping into a career as an instructional…
Scott Christensen did a little time travelling in 2019. He had enrolled in a program to teach creative writing offered at the University of Cambridge in England. “I walked around King’s College at Cambridge,” Scott says, “and it took me back to my…
Temma Frecker is pretty clear about her teaching philosophy. She says, “Empowerment is foundational for me—giving the students the tools and the confidence to help them delve into whatever is important to them.” It’s a philosophy and a teaching…
For Eyo Ewara, philosophy is much more than a profession. “Philosophy asks a lot of the questions people have been asking themselves for centuries. Philosophy should help us work together to make worlds together. It gives us tools to work things…
Shannon Brownlee discovered a kind of academic freedom when she went to King’s. “I never felt like I was, what’s the word? Grade grubbing? It was never about the grade,” Shannon says. “It was about the material and the learning—learning for the joy…
Dorian Stuber has a corner office with two, count them, two windows looking out onto the campus of Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. There are books everywhere, but he says, “it’s controlled chaos.” Hendrix is a private liberal arts college,…
It was mid April in 2011. Laurel Collins was walking through the market in the Northern Uganda city of Gulu. She was working with the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees—her field placement as she finished up her Masters degree at Royal…
Ask Michael Da Silva what he does, and he will say, “I’m a teacher and a writer.” Ask him about what and you get a snapshot of a man who has embraced academia. “I am a lawyer by training, but I have done graduate work in philosophy and I continue…
When Johanna Skibsrud was just 18, she felt restless. Part of it was being a teen wanting to get on with life and to become a writer. But there was something else. She had finished the Foundation Year Program (FYP) at King’s and it had been, well,…
There are gap years and then there’s Anna Bishop’s gap year. Anna took a year off after King’s. She had graduate studies in mind and, in fact, before the year was up she was accepted into a program at the University of Alberta studying wetland…
It was the summer of 2015. In a mountain pass high up in the Alps between France and Italy, Coren Pulleyblank was using a small shovel to dig into the muck and mire, collecting samples. Forty centimeters down there was a layer of churned up mud, a…
Every Sunday afternoon Duncan McCue walks into a metaphorical corral. It’s actually a CBC Radio studio in Toronto. But Duncan knows he’s in for a ride hosting Cross Country Checkup, a national call-in show. “I’m on the air live for two hours with a…
A twenty million dollar University of Calgary project was on the line. The ship carrying the equipment, an incoherent scatter radar, was in California. It had to get to Resolute, Nunavut before winter ice started to build in the Northwest Passage.…
“It’s a mouthful,” Tatiana (Tanya) Kunwongse says. “Get ready for it.” Tatiana is about to describe her job in Bangkok, Thailand. It’s a job that has taught her the difference between a sea bass and a red snapper. “People have been using the same…
“I may not be the best example of getting a quick PhD,” says Gwenith Cross with a laugh. She’s right about that. Gwenith began her program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Kitchener-Waterloo in 2009. Her thesis defense didn’t happen until the…
Take a stroll through David Herbert’s lab in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg (wearing safety glasses, of course) and you’ll be walking through the playground of a synthetic chemist. You’ll spot an X-ray…
David Hugill didn’t set out to pursue life as an academic. But something happened during his time at King’s in the Contemporary Studies Program (CSP) that propelled him through a Master’s degree at Trent University, a PhD at York and into a…
Standing in an airport on her way home for the holidays, Stephanie Dick heard two men talking about their families. “They seemed like really good people. Really good dads,” she says. “And then one of them said, ‘It’s a shame, though. Jessica…
Wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, he moves to the front of the stage, his fingers working the frets of his electric guitar. It’s solo time and he’s in a zone. This is George MacLean, lead guitarist for the Fredericton rock ‘n roll cover band Van…
In a verse penned some time ago, Shauntay Grant writes, ”My mother says when I was young I’d follow her, room-to-room, asking the same question: ’Why’? I think that ever since I’ve been asking. I hope I never find the answers. It’s the questions…
Barry Craig will embark on a new chapter in his career this summer, as Principal of Huron University College. “To be able to lead an institution very similar to King’s, nothing could be a greater cap to my professional life than that,” he says.…
Natalie Meisner is both thoughtful and eloquent when she talks about her craft as playwright. “I do think of the play as a kind of exquisite blueprint. It is still a work of art but it isn’t really breathing, it isn’t alive until people inhabit…
When Cassie Hallett DaSilva arrived at King’s, which for the BAH ’91 graduate now seems a lifetime ago, she had a law career in her sights. Well, rarely does life’s path follow a straight line. She quickly realized that her place was in the…
For Laurelle LeVert, Associate Vice-President of the University of New Brunswick, Saint John, it all comes back to service. “My priority,” she says, “is to keep that engine running – to keep students thriving and learning, to support the faculty so…
Dr. Jennifer Corcoran says that like many research scientists, she’s interested in how things work. For the past year and a half she’s run her own lab at Dalhousie University, where her team is currently studying virus-induced cancers like Kaposi’s…
On a special shelf in Ian Kenny’s room at the University of Amsterdam sit three letters. He treasures them. They are glowing letters of reference from three of his professors at King’s that helped him win the prestigious Amsterdam Merit Award. It…
Wilson Bell loves being in the classroom. The father of two is an Associate Professor at Thompson Rivers University, but growing up in rural Nova Scotia, he says he “didn’t know what a thesis statement was” before attending King’s. “A lot of (my…
In her final year of high school, Roberta Barker saw the reading list for King’s Foundation Year Program (FYP) and knew she had found the right program. As a teenager, Barker had trained in classical music and opera. While the FYP lecture hall…
Trevor Adams is happy to talk weather. “It’s sunny right now,” he says from his Florida home, “but we have a broad low moving north of us that’s been giving us rain for the last few days.” Trevor has been talking weather professionally, as a ‘TV…