Applause!

One of the most prestigious awards that a Canadian academic can receive is a Killam Research Fellowship.  Adjudicated under the auspices of the Canada Council, Killam fellowships are open to scholars in all disciplines, from the humanities to the natural sciences, and they provide funding for two years of full release from teaching and administrative duties, in order to allow a faculty member to focus their attention completely on a research project deemed to be of outstanding importance.  And the previous research “track record” of the applicant is of course a very significant factor that is taken into consideration. 

In a previous incarnation, I had the good fortune to be invited to serve as a member of the Killam Fellowships and Killam Prizes Selection Committee.  This is the only Committee I know that invites potential members to submit a CV, and then puts them through an interview process – in part to judge their ability to function in the other official language!  But if it was an ordeal – and it wasn’t really – it was certainly well worth it.   In each year of my term I had the opportunity to see, and a duty to come to understand, the most amazing research being done across the country in every possible subject.  In some years there were literally many hundreds of applications to review.  It was staggering, and deeply humbling, to get this snapshot of the collective research activity of Canadian universities.  And of course this was just the tiny tip of a very large research iceberg.

I came away from that period of service with two gifts.  One was tangible: a very nice framed plaque to hang on my office wall.  The second was intangible: a deep respect for anyone who is fortunate enough to win a Killam award.  In that field of superstars, it is unbelievably difficult to arrive at the top, and thus I am perhaps better aware than most of the remarkable honour that winning a Killam represents.  For this reason I was absolutely thrilled to receive the news that one of our number, Marie-Odile Junker, is being awarded a Killam fellowship in the current year’s competition, in order to pursue her work on the Cree and Innu languages.  In my years on the Selection Committee we were usually able to make about 14 or 15 awards annually.  But as the annual return on the endowment has shrunk, so too has the number of Killam Fellows.  My understanding is that there are only 8 awards being conferred this year, and that 7 of those are in the disciplines of the natural sciences and engineering.  That leaves only a single Killam Fellow from all the fields of the humanities and social sciences in all of Canada: Marie-Odile.

I hope that the entire Carleton community will join me in applauding her for this truly exceptional achievement.