Media releases

• Chancellor’s Reception highlights how awards create meaningful change in students’ lives

  Friday, November 21, 2025 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE — November 21, 2025 — R0137

  For Isabelle Hill (BKin ’22, MSc ’24), receiving an award from Brock University was about much more than financial support.

  While the monetary boost of the Laura Sabia Entrepreneurial Award had a significant impact, it was the meaning behind the honour that resonated most with the PhD student specializing in Behavioural and Population Health.

  Speaking to a room of University leadership and community supporters, Hill shared that the award emphasized others believed in the work she was doing as the co-founder of Healthy Habit Coaches, an organization dedicated to breaking down barriers to a healthier lifestyle. 

  “It meant that others saw the potential in what we were building, and it gave me the confidence to bring it to life,” she said. “That kind of belief changes everything — especially as a student.”

  Hill was among the guest speakers at Brock University’s Chancellor’s Reception, held Thursday, Nov. 20 in celebration of donor impact on student success.

  “I am just one example of what your support makes possible,” she said. “I know I speak for so many students when I say your generosity does more than ease financial pressures; it helps students build the confidence to continue to take their ideas to the next level; it builds community; and it creates opportunities for students to step forward and become the future leaders who shape meaningful change.

  Held at Jackson-Triggs Niagara Estate, the evening was hosted by Brock University Chancellor Hilary Pearson, who has invested in the next generation through student awards supporting women entrepreneurs and those pursuing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education.

  In 2023, Pearson and her husband Michael Sabia made a generous $500,000 gift to the University to create student awards honouring the legacy of Michael’s mother Laura Sabia, a noted Niagara politician, journalist and women’s rights leader. 

  During a fireside chat with Brock President and Vice-Chancellor Lesley Rigg, Pearson reflected on the vital role awards play in helping students to reach their full potential.

  “Awards can be life-changing for their recipient: removing financial barriers and empowering students from all backgrounds to not only pursue their education, but also thrive in their university experience,” Pearson said. “They can unlock opportunities students may have believed were out of reach and even open their eyes to new possibilities they did not know existed.”

  Fourth-year Sport Management student Tina Nguyen knows this all too well.

  The first-generation university student is thankful for the doors awards have opened for her, offering relief from financial pressures while she built the future her parents, who immigrated from Vietnam to Canada, always believed she deserved.

   “Student awards have profoundly shaped my journey, allowing me to honour the sacrifices my family has made while giving me the chance to grow into the person they worked so hard for me to become,” Nguyen said. “Student awards have given me the privilege to fully pursue my education and to build a life shaped not by struggle but by possibility.” 

  Each donation toward student awards is an investment in a reimagined tomorrow led by inspiring students determined to break through and create change in their professions and communities, said President Rigg.

  “One of the greatest privileges in leadership is meeting student award recipients and hearing their stories of gratitude, resilience and success — powerful reminders that these awards often make the critical difference in turning the dream of a university education into a reality,” she said. 

  “Brock is grateful for all of its donors, who each contribute to a shared goal: fostering the next generation of changemakers whose curiosity, creativity and courage will lead us to a better future for all.”

  Join Brock in creating a stronger Niagara and reimagining a better tomorrow by donating at brocku.ca/donate

   

  
  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  *Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University [email protected] or 289-241-5483

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  Categories: Media releases

• Research tackles AI bias against Pidgin English

  Wednesday, November 19, 2025 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE — November 19, 2025 — R0136

   “I wan chop. Come chop.”

   In Pidgin English, spoken by 140 million people in West Africa, these sentences express a friendly invitation to have a meal. But as Brock University Assistant Professor of Computer Science Blessing Ogbuokiri explains, artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to put a negative spin on the words because of inherent biases in its models against African English dialects from Nigeria and around the world.

  “When AI misinterprets the real meaning of Pidgin English and other underrepresented languages, it puts a toxic meaning or interpretation on the language, resulting in what we call amplification of bias,” he says.

  This negative bias can pose risks to Pidgin English speakers’ health and well-being, Ogbuokiri says. Individuals may be locked out of medical chatbots or other vital online services, have accounts censored or shut down, and encounter other forms of discrimination in service-delivery systems. 

  Ogbuokiri and York University Assistant Professor Laleh Seyyed-Kalantari are co-directing a new project that seeks to remove biases against Pidgin English by reforming the dialectic preferences of large language models (LLM).

  They will conduct this work through the new Mitigating Dialect Bias Solution Network, created by the Canadian AI Safety Institute Research Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which is funded by the Government of Canada. Ogbuokiri and Seyyed-Kalantari’s project is also receiving additional funding from the International Development Research Centre.

  “This highly innovative project will boost AI accuracy not only for those living in West Africa but also among immigrants and Indigenous communities in Canada who use non-standard English varieties in their communications,” says St. Catharines Member of Parliament Chris Bittle. “It’s exciting to know that Dr. Ogbuokiri and his lab at Brock have such specialized knowledge.” 

  In his work, Ogbuokiri describes Pidgin English as a type of dialect that uses abridged versions of words, different ways of pronouncing words and a few local terms.
  

  Because LLMs are trained on standard English, they don’t recognize Pidgin English and tend to interpret some words incorrectly, he says.

  Ogbuokiri explains that a sentence written in African American English dialect may read as “these ppl irking my nerves,” for example, compared to “these people are getting on my nerves” in Standard English dialect.

  LLMs would assign a negative sentiment to the African American sentence and a positive sentiment to the Standard English sentence, he says, even though the content is the same.

  Ogbuokiri and Seyyed-Kalantari’s team aims to create benchmarks for Pidgin English, audit LLMs to identify biases and develop a tool that will reduce these biases in these models.

  A benchmark is a standardized dataset or evaluation framework that enables AI models to be trained and tested, much like how humans learn and adapt when they become familiar with a language, says Ogbuokiri.

  “If someone is chatting with you using that kind of language, you might not understand what the person is saying at first,” he says. “But if you stayed with this person for some time, you get to know the person’s dialect and you’ll no longer struggle to understand the language.”

  The research team of Canadian and African academics plans to work with industry officials, linguists, policy-makers, end users and other community members in Nigeria to create and use the new training model.

  “We believe this project will ensure that speakers of underrepresented dialects have a true voice in the future of AI, promoting safer, more accountable and more equitable technologies for all, including Canadians who rely on AI systems that understand and respect their diverse linguistic identities,” Ogbuokiri says. 

  
  For more in formation or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  *Sarah Ackles, Communications Specialist, Brock University [email protected] or 289-241-5483

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  Categories: Media releases