The Faculty of Education is on the agenda Wednesday for the third day of Brock University’s Spring Convocation.
Delivering the Convocation address in the 10 a.m. ceremony will be Louis Volante, Professor of Education at Brock and an affiliated researcher at the United Nations University in the Netherlands. With more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and reports encompassing diverse cultural contexts, Volante is an internationally recognized scholar in educational policy analysis.
Graduating in the morning ceremony will be Darcy Belanger with a Bachelor of Education in Aboriginal Adult Education. Removed from his Indigenous family at two years old and placed in a non-Indigenous home, Belanger has overcome mental health issues, addiction and homelessness. He is now a respected volunteer and community member, serving as Vice-President of the Niagara Regional Native Centre, a Council member of the Three Fires Community Justice Program, and a member of the Niagara Regional Pow Wow committee. In 2017, he received the Aboriginal Achievement Award at Brock.
In the 2:30 p.m. ceremony, Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education, Hilary Brown, will deliver the Convocation address. Brown, who was the first Canadian woman to finish the Ironman Triathlon in 1982 and raced in the first-ever Women’s Tour de France in 1984, was the 2017-18 Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching recipient.
Among the many highlights of the day will be the afternoon graduation of Nicole Chirichella in the Concurrent Teacher Education program. Although she was diagnosed with cancer at the end of her first year, that’s not what defines her University experience. She describes her time at Brock as transformative, telling people she’s almost unrecognizable from the person she was six years ago.
All of the Convocation ceremonies are free to attend and no tickets are required. Parking is free for guests throughout the week. Free Wi-Fi is also being provided to guests throughout Convocation week. The BrockEvents Wi-fi network can be accessed using the username: BROCKGRAD and password: welcome2brock!
For those who can’t make it to the Brock Campus for Spring Convocation, all of the ceremonies will be streamed at brocku.ca/livestream
