| Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada |
|
2022 SWAAC GRADUATE AWARD OF MERIT WINNERS
Liza DiCecco
|
Joline Guitard
|
Devon Lynn
|
Foroogh Mohammadi
|
Madeline Power
Nicole Doria is a dynamic researcher, award-winning advocate, and dedicated change-maker. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Guelph, a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Health Promotion from Dalhousie University, a Master of Arts in Health Promotion from Dalhousie University, and is currently a PhD in Health Candidate at Dalhousie University. Her research and community work largely focuses on improving the health of marginalized and vulnerable populations. Nicole is a Vanier and Killam Scholar and has been recognized with numerous awards for her academic and civic contributions.
Nicole’s doctoral work is the first of its kind to explore dating app facilitated sexualized violence against women in a Canadian context. As dating moves online and the number of dating app users continues to grow, she is examining how sexualized violence is also moving and being (re)produced online. To date, there is a scarcity of research examining dating app-facilitated sexualized violence against women, with nearly no qualitative studies on the phenomenon. Her research employs feminist thematic analysis to explore how the intersection of dating apps, gender, and sexualized violence are (re)producing and facilitating sexualized violence against women both on and offline.
Nicole is honoured to receive a SWAAC Graduate of Merit award. She strongly believes that female leadership is vital and fully supports the SWAAC initiative to develop, mentor and recognize female leadership in Canadian universities and beyond.
Joline Guitard is a Ph.D. candidate in experimental psychology at the Université de Moncton, campus de Moncton. Her thesis work focuses on positive psychology and attentional processes, more precisely, on how positive dispositions such as gratitude and mindfulness can impact attentional processes and biases. Moreover, Joline has been a leader on various research projects including international collaborations with professors from the University of Melbourne. Her research interests and experience are varied as she has been collaborating on projects related to gratitude, wellbeing, leadership, psychometry, education, affective forecasting, emotional facial expression recognition, covid-related stress, and the cognitive processing of taboo words in bilingual individuals. She has also been the recipient of a SSRHC scholarship at the master level and a SSHRC stipend at the doctorate level.
Over the course of her graduate studies, Joline has been highly involved in the supervision, mentoring and training of undergraduate and graduate students as a way of sharing her passions for research, learning, and psychology. These passions have also led her to be a lecturer for three different psychology courses and to win the award of lecturer of the year in 2020 for the Université de Moncton’s School of Psychology.
Joline is currently the student ambassador for the Société Québécoise pour la recherche en psychologie at her university. She is also a member of the Université de Moncton’s School of Psychology recruitment committee and is the representative for graduate students at the School’s Assembly. Joline has been an administrator for Prisme, the university’s LGBTQ2S+ association, and a representative of her grade in the student council of the School of Psychology.
Joline is deeply honoured and humbled to be a recipient of a SWAAC Graduate Award of Merit and hopes to continue sharing her passion for psychology through a career in academia.
Devon Lynn is a Ph.D. student of Environmental Sciences at the University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI). She specializes in the effect of light pollution on local indigenous and invasive crustaceans on Prince Edward Island. For this research she was awarded the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral Program along with 14 other scholarships. She has published five peer-reviewed journal articles during her graduate studies with two more in the application process.
Devon is also involved in her campus and local community on many levels. She is the student representative for the university’s Academic Planning and Curriculum Committee, the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution, and the Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee. She has recently been working on outreach projects such as volunteering with a local high school to provide students with field experience in marine science, volunteering with New Student Orientation for incoming students at UPEI and working towards the establishment of a non-profit Marine Conservation group focused on removing litter and debris from the ocean surrounding PEI. She has also attended numerous conferences where she presented her work in neighbouring Atlantic provinces and Quebec.
Devon is passionate about the environment and the ocean; she is an enthusiastic SCUBA diver and hopes to be a positive impact on future marine conservation in Canada. She is truly grateful to be recognized by SWAAC and can only try her best to be worthy of the 2022 Graduate Award of Merit.
Foroogh Mohammadi is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador (MUNL). She is a qualitative researcher specializing in the sociology of space and place, immigration and symbolic interaction. In her Ph.D. dissertation, Foroogh investigates how Iranian immigrants create, develop, or resist a sense of belonging through a symbolic interaction perspective. She compares the Iranian immigrants’ experiences in the Atlantic provinces with experiences in Ontario. This comparison helps assess Atlantic cities’ current function in attracting immigrants as the region seeks to retain more immigrants. Foroogh’s research engages in conversations on developing a transnational social context for immigrants in Canada to facilitate their social cohesion and integration within society. It promotes an understanding of the dialogue between Canadian-born citizens and immigrant/refugee citizens, impacting how we construct the idea of what it means to be Canadian. The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) has awarded her a fellowship supporting her doctoral research.
Foroogh had been involved in various committees, including the Graduate Student Union. She is currently the Graduate Student Representative on the Sociology department’s committee. She also advocates in a student-governing community in her department as a Communication Director to promote a sense of support, equity, diversity, and inclusive learning. Foroogh received the “WAMUN” Graduate Scholarship in 2018. She is now on the “38th Annual Qualitative Analysis Conference” organizing committee, which will be held in June 2022 in St. John’s, NL.
Foroogh is honoured to be a recipient of the SWAAC Graduate Student of Merit Award. She appreciates her community and the SWAAC committee for their trust in her academic and community contributions which she believes will immensely advance her efforts to become a stronger scholar and leader in her community.
Madeline Power (she/her) is an MSc student at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where she explores how nutrients in our food interact with cell membrane proteins to influence health and disease. Her goal is to showcase the biological importance of nutrients and food additives, contributing to their potential in drug therapies and ability to inform safe food guidelines. She has presented her work at numerous conferences, where she was a finalist at the 2020 NBHRF Research Week, and her abstract was published as part of the Canadian Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual conference in 2021. She is a coauthor of a paper currently under review and expects her work to lead to the publication of two articles as the first author and several future co-authorships. Above all, the most rewarding part of her master’s degree has been the opportunity to mentor many undergraduate students. She is passionate about helping these students pursue their goals and remains dedicated to supporting them in unveiling their potential.
Alongside her academic commitments, she competed internationally in the sport of taekwondo representing Canada on the senior national team, becoming ranked 21st in the world. Madeline has also participated extensively with youth in her community and works as a reservist in the Canadian Armed Forces. She has served in multiple domestic operations, outreach projects in local and northern communities, and programs supporting girls pursuing careers in maledominated industries.
The quality of her academic and research contributions was recognized with numerous awards: the Robert Lewis Rice Memorial Fellowship, New Brunswick Innovation Fund STEM Graduate Scholarship, and NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s.
Madeline is incredibly honoured to receive the Senior Women Academic Administrators of Canada Graduate Award of Merit and would like to thank the organization for this recognition. She is excited to continue being a scientific leader in Canada and inspire future generations of scientists.
