The Department of Mathematics and Statistics would like to congratulate our staff member, Dorothy Levay who is the recipient of the 2024 Brock President’s Distinguished Staff Award. This award is to recognize staff who, in addition to their normal duties:

• Demonstrated exemplary service and/or make a significant contribution in his/her unit

• Done something exceptional to advance Brock’s reputation

• Made a significant contribution to the University and/or community

• Provided a valuable service to the broader community at Brock University outside his/her own unit 

Dorothy has for many years contributed to the success of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Brock University. She voluntarily took on a leadership role for the Department of Mathematics and Statistics’ teaching assistants years before it was officially added to her job description. She mentors the Department’s part-time instructors and teaching assistants, including observing lectures for first-time instructors and serving as chair of the Department’s Sessional and ILTA Teaching committee. As part of this, Dorothy reviews applications, makes recommendations to other committee members, conducts interviews and provides workplace references to part-time instructors and teaching assistants as requested.

She also steps up when needed to assist with the the Department’s teaching, including rearranging her teaching deployment on short notice when, for example, sudden enrollment required a second section of Math 1P06 (Calculus II for Scientists). While regular teaching is a part of her job description, Dorothy goes above and beyond to provide exceptional instruction to our students, as recognized by her recipient of the 2015 FMS Distinguished Teaching Award as well as the 2001 Making a Difference Award, by the Brock Centre for Students with disABILITIES (now called Student Accessibility Services)

Dorothy has contributed to advancing Brock’s reputation, by being the principal organizer of the tribute event in recognition of Professor Emeritus Eric Muller on October 3rd, 2024, officially announcing the newly renamed ‘Eric Muller Math & Stats Learning Centre.’ She also served as the co-chair of the local organizing committee of a 4-day Professional Development and Symposium, titled Coding, Computational Modeling, & Equity in Mathematics Education from April 26-29th 2023.

She has served the university and the community by participating on the external Best Practices Recognition Advisory committee from 2001 to 2010. Dorothy also coordinated from 1996 to 2000 the First Nations Science Camp  during summers.

She has been involved for many years with the Department of Mathematics and Statistics’ continuous development of its large service courses Math 1P97 and Stat 1P98, which serve close to 3000 students annually. As part of this, she volunteered to join the team responsible for updating the online course modules for both courses. Dorothy took the initiative to consult client departments such as Business, Health Sciences, Biology, Computer Science and Economics) to create program-focused examples as way to make the course contents explicitly more relevant to students. She has also lead the Department’s Service Course Committee when it redeveloped the assignments for Stat 1P98 to include a group case study including real-world data. She has been involved in the creation of the original online modules for the Math 1P97 online course. This commitment to these courses dates back to much earlier times, when she supported the (at the time, innovative) integration of Minitab in STAT 1P98 and of Maple in MATH 1P97.

We are so happy that Dorothy’s exceptional contributions to the student experience and the Brock Community have been recognized by President Lesley Rigg and the University. Congratulations again Dorothy!