After teaching music in an elementary classroom for 35 years, all it took to reignite the spark of learning for Irena Szmihelsky was an open studies music education course.

“It was an eye-opener,” says Szmihelsky of that first course. “It’s almost shameful for me to say how little I know in music after teaching it for so many years. I thought to myself, ‘I’m doing myself an injustice by ignoring the possibilities before me.’”

For some students, school can feel like the furthest thing from a “safe space.” As anyone who has gone through the K-12 system can attest, school is sometimes a site of persistent anxiety and antagonistic social interactions that can follow students from the classroom to the home—especially in the age of social media.

Our Faculty has long known that our graduates excel in diverse and exciting careers locally, nationally and internationally. You are teachers, psychologists, librarians, policy-makers, counsellors, consultants, professors, research directors, and the list goes on. You hold leadership positions in many areas of education, public and governmental institutions, NGOs, and corporate sectors.

By the time Niga Jalal landed in Canada with her family in 1999, she had survived three wars in Iraq and a year and a half of living as a refugee in Turkey. Arriving in her adopted homeland, the once straight-A student wanted nothing more than to go to school. 

A two-part professional development workshop focused on integrating First Nations, Métis and Inuit music and culture into elementary music education had a successful launch at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education this June and is expected to return to campus in the fall 2016 term.

For the second year in a row, the University of Alberta Alumni Association’s gift to new graduates at convocation will be an art print created by a Faculty of Education alumnus.

Last year, popular local illustrator Jason Blower (’03 BEd) was commissioned to create two different prints: an illustration of the core buildings on North Campus for students in Edmonton and a print of Founders’ Hall on the Augustana campus for students in Camrose.

“My identity as a teacher has been within me from a very young age,” says Faculty of Education sessional instructor Robyn Shewchuk. “Teaching is not what I do; it is who I am.”

Her former students would no doubt agree with her.

Before Clive Hickson, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Programs and Services, presented Shewchuk with the 2016 Sessional Undergraduate Teaching Award at the recent Faculty of Education Awards Gala, he read out some glowing testimonials from undergraduates.

A question often pondered by education researchers and scholars is what impact technology has on teaching and learning. But a researcher in the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Education says teachers’ beliefs and attitudes toward teaching and technology may be just as important as the technologies used in teaching.

An 80,000-word thesis would take about nine hours to present. Gruelling, right? Now imagine distilling those 80,000 words into a three-minute presentation.

In 2015, the University of Alberta was listed in Times Higher Education’s ranking of the top 100 “most international” universities, moving up nine spots to number 87. Now, a visiting scholar from the United States is probing the policies and structures that support international students at UAlberta.