To say Kristopher Wells (’94 BEd, ’03 MEd, ’11 PhD) is a busy man is quite an understatement.

Co-director of the University of Alberta’s Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services (iSMSS) and assistant professor in the Faculty of Education, Wells is a leading researcher and advocate for sexual and gender minority youth across Canada.

Now more than ever, his expertise is in demand.

As a child, Mary Pinkoski (’99 BA, ’06 BEd) didn’t know she was going to be a poet when she grew up. She didn’t compose couplets in her journal, didn’t write rhymes in her head, but she was always putting pen to paper.

“I’ve always done writing of some sort,” says Pinkoski. “In high school, and when I was doing my bachelor of arts degree at the University of Alberta, I wrote for the Sherwood Park News. I’ve always been interested in telling people’s stories.”

Edmond Levasseur’s (’67 BEd) lifelong philosophy has been to engage completely and give himself over to the causes about which he cares the most. That’s been reflected in his dedication to both his teaching career and his volunteer work.

Levasseur graduated with an undergraduate degree from the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education in 1967 and had a long career as a teacher before going into private consulting. He spent much of the latter part of his career working on language education policy and second-language education in schools across the province.

Growing up in rural Germany, Vera Caine (’98 BScN, ’02 MN, ’07 PhD), was inspired by her mother—a kindergarten teacher—and her aunt, who worked with the many refugees arriving in the country.

Giving back to the community was a family value, and Caine carried it forward at an early age. When she was just 13, she worked in a nursing home, and then at 17 she took a year off school to volunteer in a psychiatric hospital.

“It’s not easy to change the inertia of an education system,” says Frank Jenkins (’66 BEd, ’71 MEd, ’87 PhD).

It may not be easy, but the Edmonton chemistry teacher, textbook author, and science education advocate has devoted his 45-year career to doing just that.

It all started with baking soda

Frank discovered his preference for practical chemistry in high school, learning about the chemical industry, how blast furnaces produce iron, and how baking soda can be used to make cookies, extinguish fires, or clean people’s homes.

Fern Snart is not one to slow down. It is near the end of her final term as Dean of the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education, and her schedule is busier now than it was the day she started her deanship in 2005.

There are delegations of visiting scholars to host, faculty meetings to chair, awards to present, and many initiatives to wrap up. And right now there is the small matter of a photo shoot to do for the faculty magazine.

Over the past decade I have composed many messages for inclusion in our Education publications, and the words have come easily and swiftly based on my extreme pride in the achievements of our faculty, students and alumni, and my ongoing excitement about our innovations in scholarship and practice.

Brent Saccucci has a vision of how his future classroom will look. He pictures a massive piece of paper on one wall of the room, with a heart painted in the middle and this question written underneath: “What makes this classroom a place for you to be heard and accepted?”

All around the heart, Brent imagines there will be quotes from his students (or, as he calls them, “my kids”), saying what makes that room a place in which they can be present, a place in which they want to learn.

It’s early March, and I sit with a group of undergrad students in EDPS 401: Sexuality, Gender, and Culture in Education.

I feel like I’m taking part in history: it’s the first year the course has been offered in the Faculty of Education, and it happens to be the week Bill 10 was passed in Alberta’s legislature, allowing gay-straight alliances to form in any school where students want them.

The course was created by professor Kristopher Wells, one of Edmonton’s most prominent voices for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) rights.

Patricia Boechler has an office and a lab in the Education North building, but the Faculty of Education’s Associate Dean, Research, is gradually being pulled in more and more directions.

“The work we do in the field of educational technology reaches beyond our walls, it has become completely interdisciplinary,” she explains. Educational technology research has applications across campus, and the Technology and Learning Sciences Lab (TALS) in the Faculty of Education has become a hub of expertise regarding changes in how we learn and teach.