Four School of Communication Faculty Receive FCAT Excellence Awards

"Receiving the Graduate Student Mentorship Award is a deeply meaningful honour. It highlights the importance of fostering support and guidance for graduate students as they navigate their academic and professional journeys. To me, mentorship is far from one-sided—it’s a shared experience that challenges and inspires me every day. Our graduate students in the School push me to see the world through fresh perspectives, to stay curious, and to embrace the discomfort of not having all the answers. Every conversation, question, and challenge remind me that I am just as much a student as I am a teacher. Mentorship is about creating a space where students feel valued, supported, and empowered to thrive—whether that’s through research, publications, conference presentations, or coursework.

"It is an honor to receive an award for teaching so early in my career as it confirms that my pedagogy has been influential to students at SFU. It brings me great joy to know that my colleagues and students recognize my work. 

Because we are in a moment of low enrolment globally, cultivating a learning environment that is inclusive, exciting, and challenging for my students is essential to my learning goals. As an interdisciplinary researcher, I utilize scholarship from Gender and Sexuality Studies, African American Studies, Media Studies, and Performance Studies to guide my students in appreciating the richness and diversity of the Humanities. My teaching and researching practices model engaged pedagogy to create students who can connect intellectual labor to social problems and civic responsibilities."

"I am very happy to receive this award. My past five years of working at SFU have been genuinely pleasant and rewarding, despite the challenges posed by the pandemic and global political turbulence. I feel deeply grateful to be part of a group of colleagues and students in our School who are dedicated to critical, interdisciplinary scholarship and fostering an inclusive community.

My research focuses on the inequalities and injustices faced by marginalized and underprivileged groups, particularly women and migrant workers. I also examine feminist and labor movements in local, national, and transnational contexts."

"While this award is immensely meaningful to me, I feel greatly undeserving of it because service awards should go to all those who do in the invisible labour of making our work purposeful and impactful. From the staff to the contract workers, we are all part of a community to whom this accolade is best directed. But if I must accept it on behalf of so many others to whom I am indebted, I am nevertheless grateful for its timing. During one of the most cataclysmic periods in the contemporary history of post-secondary academic institutions, and in light of the convulsions of activism demanding that SFU live up to its idealized mantas of decolonization and justice, this award is immensely reassuring.