U of C Associate Professor receives CAFA Distinguished Academic Early Career Award

University of Calgary Associate Professor Dr. Yvonne Poitras Pratt (pictured centre) has been awarded the 2018 CAFA Distinguished Academic Early Career Award. Also pictured are Hon. Marlin Schmidt, Minister of Advanced Education and Dr. Mary-Ellen Tyler, CAFA President, U of C Faculty Association Vice-President and Treasurer, and Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design.

The Confederation of Alberta Faculty Associations (CAFA), the provincial organization comprised of academic staff associations from the Universities of Alberta, Calgary, and Lethbridge as well as Athabasca University recently announced the recipients of the CAFA Distinguished Academic Awards for 2018.

The CAFA Distinguished Academic Awards recognize academic staff, who through their research and/or scholarly, creative or professional activities have made an outstanding contribution to the wider community beyond the university.

The Faculty Association of the University of Calgary is very pleased to announce that Associate Professor Dr. Yvonne Poitra Pratt was chosen as the recipient of the 2018 CAFA Distinguished Academic Early Career Award recognizing her leadership in developing community based teaching and learning strategies for further reconciliation between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples of Canada.

Since joining the faculty at the University of Calgary, Dr. Poitra Pratt has consistently lead the way with respect to education and the reconciliation process. She has initiated a number of collaborative research and community engagement projects at the Werklund School of Education. She has taken the lead on a major collaborative research project on the transformation of teaching practice through “difficult learning” and in 2016 Dr. Poitras Pratt and her colleague, Dr. Patricia Danyluk, were the recipient of a highly competitive U of C Teaching Scholars Grant for an action-oriented research project exploring a multi-faceted approach to building stronger connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, schools and communities.

Although early in her career, Dr. Poitra Pratt’s influential community-based research is making an impact beyond the University and the Faculty Association congratulates her on this distinguished award.

Dr. André Grace, Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Canada Research Chair in Sexual and Gender Minority Studies at the University of Alberta, was chosen to receive the 2018 CAFA Distinguished Academic Award.

The awards were presented at an event hosted by CAFA in September. More information on the CAFA Distinguished Academic Awards can be found here.