This issue of illuminate is devoted to the theme of literacy—after celebrating READ IN Week with partners across the city in early October, we wanted to keep the conversation going and ask our faculty members, instructors and illustrious alumni to reflect on the role literacy plays in their teaching, their research and their everyday lives.

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.

When local Cree and Métis artist Aaron Paquette was a young, rebellious teenager in Edmonton, he learned the impact words can have on someone.

“Your words create worlds,” said Paquette, 42, as he recounted how he started to believe a then-abusive family member when they would tell a teenaged Aaron, “You’ll never be anything”. Later in life, Paquette learned that this family member was so horrifically abused as a child that they had never learned to read.

Once thought of as a niche medium appreciated mostly by stereotypical middle-aged comic book collectors like Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons, the graphic novel has been steadily moving from the fringes to the mainstream since the late 1980s.

Read In Week is an annual event devoted to raising awareness about the importance of reading. Although literacy and learning events occur on campus and around the city throughout the year, Read In Week is a special time for Edmontonians to celebrate reading and plan their own reading-centred events—in classrooms, libraries, community centres, workplaces, and more.

Read In Week is an annual event devoted to raising awareness about the importance of reading. Although literacy and learning events occur on campus and around the city throughout the year, Read In Week is a special time for Edmontonians to celebrate reading and plan their own reading-centred events—in classrooms, libraries, community centres, workplaces, and more.

Before students descended on the University of Alberta for the hectic start of fall term, a small group of 10 to 16-year-old girls from the Edmonton area were on campus for a summer camp with a difference.

When Linda Cook (‘74 BA, ‘75 BLS, ‘87 MLS) started as the Edmonton Public Library’s CEO in 1997, no new libraries had been built in 14 years. Libraries were considered old and tired—full of outdated, dusty books that were quickly being replaced by digital technology.

But Cook saw an opportunity. She saw EPL’s branches as community meeting places that could benefit from new technology rather than be threatened by it. That vision led to five new libraries, three rebuilt branches, countless new programs, and a complete overhaul of the EPL brand.

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.