President’s Distinguished Graduate Student Award
teacher and her students in 2007 in order
to address this egregious situation.
The study was guided by grounded theory
methods and the findings suggest that
while Project of Heart did not achieve
“transformation” in its participants
as assessed through teachers’ lack of
completion of the social justice requirement,
teachers indicated that both students and
teachers benefited greatly because of the
relevance of the learning.
Defended: April 2017
Supervisor: Dr. Marc Spooner
External Examiner: Dr. Cindy Blackstock,
McGill University
Thesis committee members:
Dr. Ken Montgomery, University of Windsor,
and Dr. Carol Schick, University of Regina
President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Regina, Dr. Vianne Timmons (B.A., B.Ed., M.Ed., Ph.D.) with Sylvia Smith
(M.Ed.), Founder of Project of Heart, who received the President’s Distinguished Graduate Student Award at the 2017 Fall
Convocation.
Sylvia Smith, founder of Project of Heart
(www.projectofheart.ca), received the
President’s Distinguished Graduate Student
Award at the 2017 Fall Convocation. This
award recognizes outstanding academic
performance and is granted to a student
whose graduating thesis, exhibition, or
performance and the corresponding defense
was deemed meritorious by the examining
committee. says it feels great to be finished. “I can’t
believe it’s actually finished. I’ve never
really thought of myself as an academic
and certainly, with ‘life’ intruding the
way it tends to, I never thought I would
finish.... I’m just so lucky to have had a
wonderfully supportive spouse and thesis
committee (Dr. Carol Schick actually came
out of retirement to help out) because they
certainly didn’t have to do what they did.”
In an interview for an earlier issue of
Education News, Sylvia discussed the
obstacles she had faced that had delayed
the completion of her Master’s degree. She
had started her degree in 2011 and was
interested in finding out about teachers’
perceptions of Project of Heart, an inquiry-
based learning project that examines the
history and legacy of Indian residential
schools in Canada and commemorates
the lives of former students who died
while attending Indian residential schools.
The project had grown out of students’
demands for more information on this
neglected aspect of Canadian history. Sylvia
had finished interviewing her participants
when, she says, “we had an illness in the
family and I became very over-stressed.
My work suffered.” Sylvia had to put her
thesis work on hold, and by the time she
came back to it, Sylvia says, “the landscape
had changed so much. When I’d started,
materials on Indian residential schools
were almost nil...And Project of Heart had
grown exponentially!” Her initial vision,
which was to be a “snapshot in time,” had
become much more, and she had to face
the challenge of figuring out how it would all
come together. What excites Sylvia about her thesis, she
says, “is that my findings have already been
referenced to support work being done
around reconciliation and the necessity of
teaching *for* justice and more practically,
*doing* it.”
Despite the challenges, Sylvia finished
her thesis and was the recipient of this
prestigious graduate student award. Sylvia
Awards
Sylvia’s master’s thesis is called: Teachers’
Perceptions of Project of Heart, An Indian
Residential School Education Project
Abstract: The purpose of this study was
to gain insight into how settler teachers
took up an arts and activist-based Indian
Residential School Commemoration
Project called Project of Heart. More
specifically, it sought to assess whether
or not the research participants were led
to transformation, demonstrated through
disrupting “common sense” (racist)
behaviours of teachers and students as
well as through their engagement in social
justice work that Project of Heart espouses.
Since 2007, Ontario school boards have
been required by Ministry policy to teach
the “Aboriginal Perspective” in their high
school courses, yet at the time of the study
(2010), there were still very few resources
available for educators to do so. There were
even fewer resources available to teach
about the Indian Residential School era.
Project of Heart was created by an Ontario
Read more about Sylvia and the Project
of Heart here: http://www2.uregina.ca/
education/news/disrupted-studies-a-
teacher-researcher-success-story/
The Bachelor of
Education After
Degree Convocation
Prize
The Bachelor of Education After Degree
(BEAD) Convocation Prize was established
by the Faculty of Education to encourage
and recognize BEAD students. The prize
is awarded to the most distinguished
graduate, with an overall internship rating
of “Outstanding” and the highest grade
point average in the program.
The Faculty of Education is pleased
to present the 2017 Fall Convocation
BEAD Prize to Adam Maurice Laforet,
a distinguished graduate in the Faculty
of Education. Adam graduated with a
Bachelor of Edu