Excellence in academic supervision is a hallmark of the 皇冠体育鈥檚 graduate student experience. Productive supervisory relationships promote a thriving university research culture where students are supported to make meaningful contributions to their field of specialization and address pressing challenges facing our communities and society. The Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision recognizes those supervisors who demonstrate outstanding excellence in advising, monitoring, and mentoring graduate students. The following graduate faculty members have demonstrated exceptional graduate supervision and have been recipients of the Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision.
Dr. Asha Varadharajan
2022 Award Recipient
Associate Professor of English
Department of English
Asha Varadharajan is Associate Professor in the Department of English. She is the author of Exotic Parodies: Subjectivity in Adorno, Said, and Spivak. Her recent publications focus on Caribbean poetry and fiction, trauma and narrative, decolonizing pedagogy, postcolonial temporalities, humanitarian intervention and the legacy of the Frankfurt School. Her books in progress are titled How to Kick Ass When Life's a Bitch: The Story of (Non)Human Rights and The Dasein of the Displaced: Towards a Historical Ontology of Refugeedom. She was the recipient of The Principal's Promoting Student Inquiry Award in 2021.
Dr. Varadharajan has supervised 16 PhD dissertations, 3 MA theses, 4 postdoctoral fellows, and served on more than 40 examining committees in a range of departments at 皇冠体育's and as external examiner on several committees in Canada, India, Australia, the U.S. and Europe. Her supervision is founded upon respect for the intellectual autonomy of students, awareness of disciplinary demands for critical excellence and professionalization, and acute attentiveness to student needs and aspirations. She has supervised projects across historical periods, deploying a range of cross-disciplinary methodologies, and traversing geographical and cultural boundaries. Her emphasis throughout has been on erudition rather than expertise, so that her students can translate what they know in contexts and constituencies that would otherwise be alien to them. She insists on the pleasures of the intellect as the best antidote to the pervasive culture of anxiety and strikes a delicate balance between pragmatism and idealism to ensure her students thrive rather than merely survive. Her students have been awarded the A.C. Hamilton Prize for the best dissertation in the English department, have been recipients of SSHRCC and Banting fellowships, have secured permanent academic positions in Canada, the U.S., the UK, and Macau, and established careers in diplomacy, finance, web design, secondary education, and sustainable energy solutions. Her students commend her intellectual rigor, humor, optimism, dedication to their well-being, and ongoing investment in their accomplishments after graduation. She has collaborated and continues to collaborate with them on publications and conference papers.
Dr. Varadharajan's supervision ensures that her students' questions and curiosities are framed contrapuntally such that the imperial, ethnocentric, or Eurocentric dimensions of their inquiry are constantly foregrounded and addressed or at least bathed in a defamiliarizing light. Her commitment to self-fashioning, to the soul-making power of the Humanities, ensures that her students can function with power and vision in any profession because they understand themselves and their place in the world. Her aim is to cultivate true cosmopolitans rather than simply global citizens. Dr. Varadharajan has been blessed with an array of remarkable students. Their ardent spirits, incisive intellects, omnivorous curiosities, and fearless irreverence have been her joy and privilege to nurture and challenge.
Dr. Heidi Ploeg
2022 Award Recipient
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Mechanical & Materials Engineering at Smith Engineering
Heidi Ploeg, PhD, FASME, FORS, PEng is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and Smith Engineering Chair for Women in Engineering at 皇冠体育 at Kingston. She directs the 皇冠体育鈥檚 Bone and Joint Biomechanics (Q-BJB) Lab, in the Centre for Health Innovation. Her Q-BJB Lab鈥檚 objective is to understand the human musculo-skeletal system better, in order to aid the development of biomechanical and safe solutions for the care and treatment of diseased or injured systems. Her research interests include studying the nature of bone, bone adaptation to mechanical loading, and joint biomechanics as they relate to orthopaedic and dental implants. Including ten years in research and development in the orthopaedics industry, she has over 30 years of experience in orthopaedic biomechanics. Dr. Ploeg received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2000 from 皇冠体育 at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Dr. Jeffery Brison
2021 Award Recipient
Professor of History
Department of History
Dr. Brison is the author of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Canada: American Philanthropy and the Arts and Letters in Canada, a study that explores the influence of private American philanthropy on the making of a national culture in Canada. A founding member of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative (NACDI), he is currently co-authoring a series of articles exploring the history of Canada鈥檚 use of 鈥渃ulture鈥 in advancing its foreign policy initiatives and global orientations.
Over two decades, Dr. Brison has supervised more than 40 graduate students and two postdoctoral fellows and served on dozens of supervisory committees in the Departments of History, Art History, the Faculty of Education, and the Cultural Studies Program. Additionally, Brison has been a host supervisor to visiting graduate students from Mexico and Scotland. He is the 2014 recipient of the Department of History鈥檚 Faculty Teaching Award. In 2021, the Faculty of Arts Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching recognised his teaching, supervision and mentoring work.
Students under his supervision have garnered provincial and federal awards as well as support and recognition from the International Council for Canadian Studies, MITACS Accelerate and Globalinks Research Fellowship programs, the Fonds de recherche du Qu茅bec, the Canadian-US Fulbright program, the Embassy of Canada (U.S.) Internship Program, and the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fund for Advanced Studies. At the end of the day, Brison measures 鈥渟uccess鈥 in the terms his students set. His happiest moments at 皇冠体育鈥檚 are connected to his collaborations with the outstanding group of graduate students with whom he has been fortunate to work.
Dr. Mohammad Zulkernine
2021 Award Recipient
Professor of Computing
School of Computing
Dr. Zulkernine was the Canada Research Chair in Software Dependability from 2011 to 2021. He leads the 皇冠体育鈥檚 Reliable Software Technology (QRST) research group and is currently focused on building secure software for cyber-physical systems such as connected and autonomous vehicles and other IoT applications. With the support of Canadian provincial and federal agencies and industry, Dr. Zulkernine has led more than 30 research projects on software security and reliability. Additionally, he collaborated in several multi-university and international research initiatives.
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