Next week will mark a special occasion for Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook. The west coast campus of Memorial University will see graduates cross the stage for the first time at a fall convocation. On Friday, Oct. 12 at the Corner Brook Arts and Culture Centre, just under 40 graduates will receive degrees in arts, business administration, education, nursing and science.

“We felt it appropriate to allow those who’ve met the requirements to graduate to do so in a timely fashion,” said Dr. John Ashton, principal of Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. “In particular, our students in the fast-track nursing and education programs, who finish their coursework during the spring semester, will benefit from this addition.”

As usual, there will be a webcast of the ceremony. The convocation ceremony can be viewed on the Grenfell College and Memorial University websites, www.swgc.mun.ca and www.mun.ca respectively, at 4 p.m., Oct. 12. It is also videotaped for future broadcast on local cable television, and copies of the DVD are made available for sale at the college bookstore.

For her contribution to the development of traditional music in this province, singer/songwriter Pamela Morgan will be awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree.

In addition, two convocation sessions will be held in St. John’s on Oct. 19. Honorary graduates will be Dr. Linda Hutcheon and Dr. Shirley Tilghman.

For more information about convocation at Grenfell College, contact Shauna Hewlett at ext. 6275 or shewlett@swgc.mun.ca.

Pamela Morgan, former lead singer for and one of the founding members of folk/rock innovators Figgy Duff, has been a leading performer in the Celtic music scene for the past 30 years. For 17 years Ms. Morgan and Figgy Duff grew famous for their strikingly original and beautiful arrangements of traditional Newfoundland/Celtic material as well as their equally impressive and powerful original material.

Figgy Duff's album Weather out the Storm was nominated for a Juno award in 1991.

Since then, Ms. Morgan has been spearheading her own independent record label, Amber Music, producing music for Newfoundland and Labrador's finest roots artists, including three of her own solo CDs, and licensing tracks to various labels worldwide.

The Colour of Amber, by Ms. Morgan and Anita Best, was named East Coast Music Association's Roots Traditional Album of the Year in 1993.

Ms. Morgan has produced albums for the Conne River Mi'kmaq, singer Vicky Hynes, singer/songwriter Mark Bragg, and most recently, the 2007 release of The Hare, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the March Hare. She has also self-produced two additional albums, Seven Years (2002), and Ancestral Songs (2006).

Over the last few years, she has represented Canada at Expo in Japan, toured extensively in England, Canada, the U.S. and Europe, and overseen productions of two original scores for live theatre, including her own folk opera, The Nobleman's Wedding. She continues to write, arrange, perform, and tour, in her own highly original and hauntingly beautiful style.

 

For her work as an exceptional scholar, teacher and member of the academic community, Dr. Linda Hutcheon will be awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree during fall convocation in St. John’s on Friday, Oct. 19. A specialist in postmodernist culture and in critical theory, on which she has published nine books, Dr. Hutcheon holds the rank of university professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto and has been a visiting professor in Italy, Puerto Rico and parts of the U.S. Her many books on literary subjects have established her as a major literary theorist in North America. Born in Toronto, she obtained both her bachelor of arts and PhD degrees from the University of Toronto, as well as her MA from Cornell University. Dr. Hutcheon has spent much of her career examining, teaching and publishing in the field of Canadian literature and has translated the work of Quebec writers Félix Leclerc and Madeleine Gagnon. Her scholarly achievements have been recognized through several awards and honours. Among her research grants and fellowships, she has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Killam Research Fellowship. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Dr. Hutcheon was elected the 117th president of the Modern Language Association of America in 2000, making her the third Canadian to hold this position and the first Canadian woman.

 

For her contributions to higher education, Dr. Shirley Tilghman will be awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree during fall convocation 2007. Dr. Tilghman is the president of Princeton University, the prestigious institution’s 19th president since its founding in 1746. Dr. Tilghman is a native of Canada who holds a B.Sc. (hons.) in chemistry from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and a PhD in biochemistry from Temple University in Philadelphia. She did postdoctoral studies at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, participating in cloning the first mammalian gene. A member of the National Research Council’s committee that set the blueprint for the United States effort in the Human Genome Project, she also was one of the founding members of the National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project Initiative for the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Tilghman was appointed to the faculty of Princeton University’s Department of Molecular Biology in 1986 and served as founding director of Princeton’s multidisciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics. She assumed office as president of Princeton University in June 2001. She is a member of the American Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the Royal Society of London. She also serves as a trustee of the Jackson Laboratory, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Google Inc. She will receive her degree at the Oct. 19 session of convocation.

For further information, please contact Pamela Gill, communications co-ordinator, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland, at pgill@swgc.mun.ca, or (709) 637-6200 ext. 6134.