Nov. 2014 Honorary degree recipients

The University of Victoria will present two honorary degrees for outstanding achievements in public health promotion and journalism when it conducts fall convocation ceremonies on Nov. 10 and 12 in the University Centre Farquhar Auditorium.

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.

Journalist and author Stephanie Nolen won four national newspaper awards for her reporting on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa and on 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 and Mail’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.”

Updated Nov. 4: 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.

Honorary degree presentations:

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

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

Watch a live stream of fall convocation ceremonies at uvic.ca/convocation.
Follow the #UVic2014 hashtag on twitter.
 

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