Carol Ann Page says she always had a love of learning and dreamed of becoming a teacher. She was the first person in her extended family to attend university. While relying on student loans and working part time, her determination and strong work ethic resulted in a superior academic standing in her first year, and she was selected as a candidate for a foreign exchange scholarship. The opportunity was dismissed at home.

Congratulations to the following Education faculty members, students and staff who have achieved distinction and have recently been acknowledged for their impactful work, both within and beyond the academic community.

2020 Alumni Awards

Congratulations to Education's 2020 Alumni Award recipients, who were honoured with a virtual event on February 24. Click on their names below to read more!

We asked Faculty of Education alumni to reflect on their teacher journeys, offer advice to their younger selves, and salute the educators who had an impact on them professionally and personally. Here’s what they told us.

Leith Campbell (‘73 Dip(Ed), ‘78 MEd) says there wasn’t much research to fall back on when he began working in the early 1970s as a counselor with students from the Enoch Cree Nation who were attending Edmonton schools. In fact, he felt like he was starting from scratch.

“I had no list of children, I had no files, and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do,” Campbell recalls.” There was nothing on paper at all about how to work with Indigenous children at all when I started.”

One of the first lessons Karen Barnes (’93 MEd, ’03 EdD) learned when she took a job at Yukon College in 2008 was that the North didn’t need assistance to become self-sufficient. It needed tools.

And, as vice-president of academics, she knew education was the key to that tool box.

Danielle Skogen says she just wanted to see a bit of the world and work on her Spanish when she decided to take a short break from her new career as an elementary school teacher in Calgary to travel to Guatemala. “I thought I’d follow that passion for six months, get it out of my system, and come back to Alberta ready to settle down and move forward as a teacher,” said Skogen, who completed her bachelor of education degree at Campus St-Jean in 2011.

Audrey Ochoa was already establishing herself as a working musician in high school when her parents sat her down for the talk.

“Both my parents were adamantly like, ‘Play music, have fun, but we really need you to get a real education, Audrey,’” Ochoa recalls. “The U of A has a BMus/BEd combined degree, it’s a five-year program and you end up with a music degree and an education degree, so it was like a no-brainer. And it was a good idea.”