{"id":101459,"date":"2025-05-09T16:26:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T20:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=101459"},"modified":"2025-05-12T09:11:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T13:11:20","slug":"brock-mourns-the-passing-of-applied-linguistics-prof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/05\/brock-mourns-the-passing-of-applied-linguistics-prof\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock mourns the passing of Applied Linguistics prof"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brock community is deeply saddened by the passing of Professor Gary Libben<\/a> on Wednesday, April 30.<\/p>\n

Flags were lowered in his honour on Monday, May 5.<\/p>\n

The Professor of Applied Linguistics and Associate Faculty Member in the Department of Psychology came to Brock in 2011 after his appointment as the University\u2019s Vice-President, Research, a role he held until 2016. He also served as Chair in the Department of Applied Linguistics from 2017 to 2020.<\/p>\n

Dawn Zinga, Acting Dean in the Faculty of Social Sciences, says Libben will be terribly missed by his colleagues, friends, family and students.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Libben\u2019s contributions to Brock and to the field of Linguistics were many,\u201d says Zinga. \u201cGary was an amazing mentor to many, famous for sharing stories and always making time for colleagues and students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Libben recently received a King Charles III Coronation Medal<\/a> for his contributions to Canadian research excellence as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, which he was elected to in 2008 and was serving as its Secretary. The Mental Lexicon,<\/em> a journal he co-founded in 2006, recently published a special double-issue in his honour with a poignant tribute<\/a> to his pivotal role in his research field over the past 30 years.<\/p>\n

Lynn Dempsey, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences and long-time colleague of Libben\u2019s, describes him as \u201ca brilliant scholar\u201d who, as a psycholinguist and neurolinguist, \u201cadvanced understanding of how words are represented in the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s impossible to overstate Gary\u2019s contributions to the field of linguistics,\u201d says Dempsey. \u201cThe innovative experimental methods he developed will be used to explore language processing in a wide range of populations long into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

She adds that students \u2014 or, as he called them, \u201cjunior colleagues\u201d \u2014 could sense Libben\u2019s care, compassion and his genuine interest in helping them succeed.<\/p>\n

Ron Thomson, Chair of the Department of Applied Linguistics, agrees, saying he always admired Libben\u2019s commitment to family, students and colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis dedication to his family was one of the things that really inspired me about Gary, and that passion carried over into his concern for students,\u201d says Thomson. \u201cOn the mentorship front, he recognized many diamonds in the rough and helped shape them into fantastic scholars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Psychology Professor Emeritus Sid Segalowitz says Libben was \u201cdeeply knowledgeable about foundations central to his own specialty field of the linguistics of compound words\u201d\u00a0but\u00a0who was also always \u201cready and eager to discuss developments in many other fields of scholarship, from physics to history to literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Segalowitz points to Libben\u2019s leadership in the\u00a0SSHRC\u00a0“Words in the World\u201d\u00a0Partnership Project<\/a>, which attracted many dozens of collaborators from around the world, as exemplary of his strength in building relationships.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our 14 years of friendship and collaboration, I was most impressed with the universal appreciation of his warmth, support and interest in his students and colleagues,\u201d says Segalowitz. \u201cHis scholarly enthusiasm and caring for others was apparent until his final days as he put finishing touches on his latest book and concerned himself deeply with the ongoing well-being of his students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acting Vice-President, Research Michelle McGinn says that over a long and distinguished career, Libben \u201capplied his creativity, technical skill and passion to advancing the field of psycholinguistics and promoting the next generation of scholars and research leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond his scholarly contributions, he will forever be remembered as a thoughtful\u00a0and gentle soul,\u201d says McGinn. \u201cWhether leading an international research team, Brock\u2019s research administrative offices or a trek across Montr\u00e9al for a favoured bagel, he could be counted on to listen attentively and propel the group forward in a positive direction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Brock community is deeply saddened by the passing of Professor Gary Libben on Wednesday, April 30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":101467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,1,38],"tags":[7948,522,3582,1753],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101476,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101459\/revisions\/101476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}