Fall 2014 Honorary Degree Recipients

The University of Victoria will present three honorary degrees for outstanding achievements in public health, journalism and community-based leadership during fall convocation ceremonies.

Dr. Irving Rootman, Honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD)
10 a.m., Nov. 10

A leader in health promotion research, Dr. Irving Rootman has indirectly improved the health of millions of Canadians. He designed and implemented the Canadian National Health Promotion Survey in 1985, the first survey of its kind in the world. The data aided researchers and policymakers in understanding the factors that contribute to, and may improve, individual health.

Rootman helped establish the Canadian Consortium for Health Promotion Research and he developed a national program of research in literacy and health. He chaired the advisory committee for the recently established UVic School of Public Health and Social Policy.

Stephanie Nolen, Honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD)
2:30 p.m., Nov. 10

Journalist and author Stephanie Nolen won four national newspaper awards for her reporting on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa and the wars and humanitarian crises in Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone. Her book 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa won the PEN Courage Award and was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

Nolen opened the Globe’s first New Delhi bureau and her “Breaking Caste” multimedia project received the 2014 Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award for “coverage that most accurately and sensitively portrays India to a foreign audience.”

Ruby Dunstan, Honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD)

The first female chief of the Lytton First Nation, Ruby Dunstan was a dynamic leader in the fight to protect the Stein Valley, ancestral territory of the Nlaka’pamux people, from logging. She was a key negotiator in the formation of the Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Provincial Park, co-managed by the Lytton First Nation and B.C. Parks.

Dunstan was among the first to bring attention to residential school abuses in Canada, helping to mobilize a national campaign that led to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and she was a driving force behind the creation of the Stein ValleyNlaka’pamux School in Lytton.

Note: Due to personal circumstances, Ruby Dunstan is unable to attend fall convocation to accept the honorary doctor of laws she had been scheduled to receive. Dunstan, the first female chief of the Lytton First Nation and a leader in the fight to protect the Stein Valley from logging, will have her degree conferred at a future convocation ceremony.