April 17, 2003 - The University of New Brunswick in Fredericton will graduate more than 1,400 students, install a new chancellor and grant seven honorary degrees during its 174th Encaenia celebrations.

This year’s spring graduation ceremonies will be held on May 28 and 29 in the Aitken University Centre. The public is welcome to attend.

Ceremony A

On Wednesday, May 28, at 2 p.m., UNB will award an honorary doctor of letters degree to Natalia Voskresenskaya, a Russian educator and advocate for democracy. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell, lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, will receive a doctor of laws honoris causa and give the Encaenia address to graduates in the faculties of administration, kinesiology and education. The valedictory address will be delivered by Michael Mazzuca, a bachelor of kinesiology graduate from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

Ceremony B

On Thursday, May 29, at 10 a.m., Elizabeth May, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. Daniel O’Brien, president of St. Thomas University, and author Wayne Johnston will be presented with honorary doctor of letters degrees. Mr. Johnston will deliver the Encaenia address. Graduates in the faculties of arts, law, nursing and Renaissance College will receive degrees and hear a valedictory address by law graduate Paul Sampson of Sydney, N.S.

Ceremony C

The final Encaenia ceremony will take place on Thursday, May 29, at 2 p.m. Richard J. Currie will be officially installed as chancellor and freshwater biologist Noel Hynes will be granted an honorary doctor of science degree. Journalist Allan Fotheringham will be presented with a doctor of letters honoris causa and will give the Encaenia address. Students will graduate from the faculties of science, engineering, forestry and environmental management, and computer science. An electrical engineering graduate, Levi Hargrove of Bath, N.B., will deliver the valedictory.

Natalia Voskresenskaya is a world leader in human rights and democracy education. As co-director of the CIDA-funded Spirit of Democracy Project, which is based at UNB, she has become a mentor in Russia to a new generation of teachers interested in democratic development. Dr. Voskresenskaya is head of the comparative education division of the Institute of Theory of Education in the Russian Academy of Education. She is also vice-president of the Russian Association for Civic Education and the expert in citizenship education for the Council of Europe. Throughout her career she has fostered understanding of Western educational policies and practices in Russia, and has been influential in helping Western educators understand Russian educational approaches.

The Honourable Marilyn Trenholme Counsell is New Brunswick’s 28th lieutenant-governor. A doctor by profession, she practised medicine in Toronto and Sackville, N.B., before running for public office. She was elected to the New Brunswick Legislature in 1987, and re-elected in 1991 and 1995. As the province’s first Minister of State for the Family, she played a leading role in organizing the first Atlantic Symposium on Community Action for Children and Youth. In 1995, Dr. Trenholme Counsell received a United Nations award for her work on behalf of family life. Installed as lieutenant-governor in 1997, she has championed the cause of literacy and supported more than 75 volunteer, community and cultural organizations as patron, honorary patron or chair.

An internationally recognized advocate for the environment, Elizabeth May has affected change as a lawyer, activist, professor and author. Since 1993, she has been executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada and was the first holder of a chair in women’s health and the environment, named in her honour, at Dalhousie University. Appointed by an Order in Council to the National Round Table on Environment and Economy in May 1994, Dr. May also served as senior policy adviser to then federal Minister of the Environment Tom McMillan. Her many awards and honours include the International Conservation Award from the Friends of Nature and the Sierra Club’s 2002 International Earthcare Award.

Daniel O’Brien has served as president of St. Thomas University, which shares a hillside campus with UNB Fredericton, since 1990. Under his guidance, STU has developed its niche as a small, student-centred liberal arts institution. Dr. O’Brien’s leadership and vision contributed to the university’s unprecedented growth in enrolment — which has doubled since 1990 — and an expansion in program offerings. He has influenced the enhancement of student support services and strengthened the university’s ties with the community. A past chair of the Fredericton United Way Campaign cabinet, he has also served as a member of the Region 3 Health Authority Board of Trustees, the Greater Fredericton Economic Development Council and the Team Fredericton Advisory Board.

Award-winning author Wayne Johnston graduated from UNB Fredericton with a master of arts in creative writing in 1985. Since then he has taken the literary world by storm, publishing six major novels and one book of non-fiction. All have received significant awards. The Divine Ryans, his third novel has been adapted into a film and his critically acclaimed fifth novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, was short-listed for the most prestigious fiction awards in Canada. It won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors Association Award. The Navigator of New York, Mr. Johnston’s latest novel, was nominated for the 2002 Giller Prize, the 2002 Governor General’s Award, and the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book.

Noel Hynes is a world-renowned freshwater biologist and a distinguished emeritus professor at the University of Waterloo. Referred to as “the father of running water ecology,” he has published extensively and is the author of the definitive textbook on river ecology, The Ecology of Running Waters. Dr. Hynes has held six visiting professor appointments on three continents and conducted research around the world. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he holds honorary degrees from his alma mater, the University of London, and from the University of Waterloo. In 1998, Dr. Hynes was awarded the Naumann-Thienemann Medal, the highest award available to an aquatic biologist, by the Societas Internationalis Limnologiciae.

An award-winning journalist, Allan Fotheringham is best known for his weekly column which ran on the back page of Maclean’s magazine from 1975 to 2002. Over the last 48 years, he has written columns for the Vancouver Sun, Southam newspapers, The Financial Post, The Globe and Mail and Sun Media. Mr. Fotheringham has published eight books, including Last Page First and Fotheringham’s Fictionary of Facts and Follies. Described by Time magazine as “Canada’s most consistently controversial newspaper columnist,” he was the first winner of the National Newspaper Award for Column Writing. In 1999 he was inducted into the Canadian Newspaper Hall of Fame and last year received the Bruce Hutchinson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Jack Webster Foundation.

University of New Brunswick - Fredericton School Profile

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