Gala honouring teachers to be held at Algonquin

By Timothy Kim

kim0023@algonquincollege.com

Algonquin will be hosting this year’s Capital Educators’ Award gala event again in May, in partnership with the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI).

The Capital Educators’ Award is an event hosted by OCRI to honour educators in the Ottawa region in an evening gala.  The award was conceived in response to OCRI’s belief that local educators needed positive attention after being on the end of a lot of negative press. 

Although OCRI is an organization that brings together technology companies together to compete both locally and worldwide, there are no real pre-requisites for nominees either than being an educator with one of the partner education institutes.

Christine Lauzon-Foley, manager of Education Initiatives at OCRI, calls the Capital Educators’ Award a “celebration of all educators.”

As a former recipient, Professor Alan Fleming of Algonquin’s School of Hospitality and Tourism says he extremely honoured and proud.

“It’s not something that everyone is recognized for,” says Professor Fleming who attended the gala with his daughter.  He says he teared up before accepting the prestigious award.  “I was overwhelmed.”

Professor Fleming is just one of many instructors at Algonquin who has received the award.  Algonquin’s recipients come from a wide variety of fields from culinary arts to hospitality management.

Former professor and now manager for the Centre for Organizational Learning, Rebecca Volk recalls her experience receiving the award after being nominated by her colleague.

“It was very humbling to be nominated by who I saw as my mentor.” 

Anyone can nominate the teacher of their choice as long as the instructor is teaching at the time of nomination at one of the partner institutions.  After the nominations are received by OCRI, the institutions and instructors are notified. 

OCRI is already accepting nominations for the award for local teachers at their partner schools and applications for this year are due Feb. 25 at 5 p.m.