The University of Windsor will confer degrees on more than 3,300 graduating students during six sessions of the University’s 99th Convocation ceremonies June 12, 13, and 14 at the St. Denis Centre.

• 10 a.m. Wednesday, Faculty of Education (BEd, Technical Studies Diploma, MEd and PhD)
• 3 p.m. Wednesday, Faculty of Engineering (BASc, MASc, MEng, PhD); Faculty of Science (BA in Economics, BA in Mathematics, BMath, BOR, BSc, BCS, certificates, MSc, DCC, PhD); and Inter-Faculty Programs (BA-Forensics and Crim, BArSc, BES, BFS)
• 10 a.m. Thursday, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (BFA, BMA, BMT, BMus, BPA, BSW, BA Honours and BA four-year majors)
• 3 p.m. Thursday, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (certificates and BA-General in all majors, MA, MFA, MSW, PhD); Faculty of Human Kinetics (BHK, MHK)
• 10 a.m. Friday, Odette School of Business (BComm, BBS, business certificates, MBA, MM); Faculty of Nursing (BScN, certificates, MN, MSN)
• 3 p.m. Friday, Faculty of Law (JD, dual JD, JD/MSW)

The ceremonies will be webcast live by the Centre for Teaching and Learning at convocation.uwindsor.ca.

The University of Windsor will confer honorary degrees during its 99th Convocation ceremonies on six individuals who have made outstanding contributions to science, media, the performing arts, labour relations, transportation and hospice care.

Receiving honorary doctor of law degrees are:

• Mary Louise Fallis, opera singer, actor, broadcaster and university teacher;
• Douglas M. Stocco, internationally recognized biologist and UWindsor alumnus;
• John Stackhouse, editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail newspaper;
• Carol Derbyshire, executive director of the Hospice of Windsor and Essex County;
• Claude Mongeau, president of transportation company CN; and
• Ken Lewenza, national president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union.

Mary Louise Fallis will be honoured during the 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 12, session of Convocation. She is a soprano who is well-known for making classical music accessible to all Canadians and is beloved for her comedic character Primadonna.

Fallis has had an international career in opera, and has performed in a variety of roles around the world. She hosted CBC Radio’s This is My Music and Diva Diaries and was host of CBC-TV’s Showcase, a nationally broadcast Sunday arts journal. Among her many awards and honours, she is a member of the Order of Canada; received a Gemini Award as producer for Bathroom Divas for BRAVO! TV; and received an ACTRA award for best musical performance in radio for her performance as the Primadonna character with the Toronto Symphony.

Douglas M. Stocco (BSc 1967, MSc 1969) will be honoured during the 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 12, session of Convocation. Dr. Stocco is a faculty member at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Centre, where he is a professor and interim chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Biochemistry. His research career has focused on the mechanisms involved in the regulation of steroid hormone biosynthesis. During the course of this research, his laboratory identified and characterized the novel protein, Steroidogenic Acute Regulatory, its discovery solving a five-decade long mystery as to the nature of the factor regulating the production of steroid hormones.

Among other awards, Stocco has received the National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award and its MERIT Award, and was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

John Stackhouse will be honoured during the 10 a.m. Thursday, June 13, session of Convocation. Stackhouse is editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail. He was previously editor of Report on Business and has also served as the newspaper’s national editor, foreign editor, correspondent at large, and from 1992 to 1999 was the development issues correspondent based in New Delhi. He has worked for Report on Business Magazine, the Financial Times, London Free Press, and the Toronto Star.

Stackhouse has won five national newspaper awards, a national magazine award and an Amnesty International award for human rights reporting. He is the author of two books, “Out of Poverty” and “Timbit Nation: A Hitchhikers Guide to Canada,” and was a contributing author to “The Bre-X Fraud,” “Travels with My Laptop,” and “Foreign Correspondent: Fifty Years of Reporting South Asia.”

Carol Derbyshire will be honoured during the 3 p.m. Thursday, June 13, session of Convocation. Executive director of the Hospice of Windsor and Essex County since 1985, she has been involved with Windsor’s Hospice movement since 1979.

Under her direction, Windsor’s Hospice program has grown to include more than 47 wellness programs which provide services ranging from lifestyle support to social work, community nursing and spiritual care to the community, with no cost to users from the time of diagnosis. In 2007, Hospice opened an eight-bed palliative home for patients and their families, following an extensive capital campaign and assistance from the Ministry of Health & Long-Term Care.

Derbyshire is past chair of the University of Windsor’s Board of Governors and has served on boards and committees for a number of community agencies.

Claude Mongeau will be honoured during the 10 a.m. Friday, June 14, session of Convocation. He has served as president of the transportation company CN since 2010.

He began his career in Paris with American consulting firm Bain & Company and later served in the business development unit of Imasco. Prior to joining CN in 1994, he was a partner with Groupe Secor, a Montreal-based management consulting firm providing strategic advice to such Canadian corporations as Bombardier and Bell Canada. He has served directorships with the Canadian National Railway Company, SNC-Lavalin, the Railway Association of Canada, and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. In 1997 he was named one of Canada’s top 40 executives under 40 years of age by the Financial Post, and was selected in 2005 as Canada’s CFO of the Year by an independent committee of Canadian business leaders.

Ken Lewenza will be honoured during the 3 p.m. Friday, June 14, session of Convocation. He is national president of the Canadian Auto Workers Union and has been a member of CAW Local 444 since he started work at Chrysler Canada in 1972.

He has been lauded for his efforts to lead the union at a time of global economic crisis and a fundamental shift in the Canadian economy. Since taking on his current role in 2008, he is noted as a rank-and-file leader who believes the union’s success is based on an engaged and active membership, and one who champions outreach into workplaces with a predominance of people of colour, first-generation immigrants, youth and others who have not traditionally had a voice in their places of work.

Philip Dutton says that the development of his style of teaching drew on his experience in martial arts: “Observe good demonstrations, practice observed techniques, and if you remove all of the mistakes, what is left is not only correct, but is efficient.”

A former head of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Dr. Dutton has observed speakers and instructors to figure what to do—and just as importantly, what not to do. The technique came to him as a graduate student watching a visiting scientist present a seminar, he says: “I promised myself never to do what he did.”

Honing his skills has paid off for Dutton’s students, and earned him the Alumni Award for Distinguished Contributions to University Teaching, which he will receive at the Wednesday, June 12, afternoon session of Convocation.

In letters supporting his nomination for the award, current and former students praise Dutton’s passion for his material and commitment to his charges.

“Dr. Dutton’s enthusiasm helped me rise above my obstacles and strive for excellence,” wrote Sara Ghoneim. “He always challenged his students and engaged us in his lectures in ways that made the course material unforgettable.”

His colleagues tout his versatility, teaching courses in a variety of subjects, including large introductory classes, and helping to develop a redesigned undergraduate curriculum.

At the root of his commitment is what Dutton calls the true reward of the teacher: “There is nothing more satisfying than watching students move through the training of their undergraduate and graduate carers and go on to be successful contributors to society.”

The awards, established by the University of Windsor Alumni Association in 1987, recognize excellence in all areas of teaching, including classroom presentation, curriculum development, versatility, teaching methods, and student support. In addition to Dutton, education professor Kara Smith and English professor Dale Jacobs will receive the honour during the University’s 99th Convocation ceremonies this week. Click here for a list of past recipients.

Hearing about the trials of Felicia Zanella has made Brian Belanger proud to ride in her name.

Belanger, a member of the UWindsor maintenance staff, will set out Friday on a seven-week bike ride from Vancouver to St. John’s, NL, as a way to raise funds and awareness in support of the Windsor-Essex County Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Society.

Zanella died of the disease in February 2011. Her husband Elio is one of five cyclists riding alongside Belanger in her memory, with the goal of raising $40,000 for the society.

“Without the support of the society, Felicia’s family would have been financially devastated, on top of the emotional toll this disease already took on them all,” says Belanger.

He has been collecting pledges and donations, and says the campus community has been supportive, including his own department, which allowed him to add an unpaid leave to his allotted vacation time to complete the journey.

“The University is my second home,” he says. “I’ve been here 25 years.”

Learn more about the project, including how to make a donation, on the society’s website.