Goodbye and good luck to our retirees

Congratulations and best wishes to retiring Humanities professors Elizabeth Grove-White, Richard King, Karen Kai-Ying Tang, and Paul Wood, who were recently honoured at a reception for 2017-18 University of Victoria retirees. Here are bios from the evening's programs about their accomplishments. 

Elizabeth Grove-White brought her signature combination of warmth, humour, intelligence and enthusiasm to everything she did over her 22 years at the university. She held a number of administrative roles, including director of the writing program (English), executive director of co-op education and professional communication program advisor (English). She was an early adopted of instructional technology, and delighted her millennial students with her command of social media. In addition to her teaching and administrative duties, she continued her scholarly interests in digital humanities, Irish literature and theories of learning. She leaves the university to return to Toronto to be closer to family, friends and Ireland, and to continue to write and pursue her many research interests.

Richard King, professor in the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, came to UVic in 1986 as a specialist in modern Chinese literature. His wide-ranging scholarship includes collections on literature and art in the Cultural Revolution and on Asian popular Culture. His Milestones on a Golden Road: Writing for Chinese Socialism was published in 2013. He has translated and edited several volumes of Chinese fiction, including a collecting with translations by UVic students. He served as cultural counsellor for Canada in Beijing (1993-96), chair of the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies (1998-2001), and director of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (2004-2009). In addition to being a distinguished scholar and widely respected administrator, he is a highly popular instructor in courses on Chinese literature and film.

Karen Kai-Ying Tang came to the university in 1985 as a visiting lecturer, and leaves as the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies’ first full teaching professor. During her 33 years here, she has been the mainstay of the Chinese program: she has taught language at all levels, to non-native learners and speakers of non-Mandarin forms of Chinese. In addition, she has offered introductory courses in pre-modern and modern Chinese civilization, and upper-level courses taught in Chinese on film and the great novel Dream of the Red Chamber. Outside the university, she has been a leader in the Canadian Association for Teaching Chinese as a Second Language, and has developed the provincial high school Chinese curriculum and prepared grade 12 examinations.

Paul Wood, a scholar of the European and Scottish enlightenment, retired in December 2017, nearly 26 years after joining the Department of History. Over his career he was the leading figure in Scottish studies at UVic and was the inaugural director of the UVic Humanities Centre. A connoisseur of rare books, Paul will take a collection of volumes from the Scottish enlightenment to his retirement home on Pender Island which he shares with his wife, Judy, who also retired from UVic this year. More trips to Scotland are in his future.