Certificates, Degrees and Awards

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Infor­ma­tion about the var­i­ous Cer­tifi­cates, Degrees and Awards that I have accu­mu­lated over the years can be found here, just in case you were inter­ested

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Tutor Train­ing Certificate:

My first job as a Tutor/Teaching Assis­tant was at Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­sity in Welling­ton, New Zealand. In order to improve the ben­e­fit stu­dents received from Tuto­ri­als, Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­sity required that all of their Tutors attend a Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram. The Cer­tifi­cate on the right was awarded to those who attended and par­tic­i­pated in the program.

Since then, I have attended numer­ous Tutor/Teaching Assis­tant train­ing work­shops at both Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­sity, and at York Uni­ver­sity in Toronto, and devel­oped a num­ber of pro­fi­cien­cies in teach­ing Aca­d­e­mic Study Skills to Under­grad­u­ate students.

The Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­sity Tutor Train­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram was the begin­ning of what is now my Aca­d­e­mic Skills Coach­ing Services

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Cer­ti­fied Pro­fes­sional Retire­ment Coach Certificate:

I first became inter­ested in the con­cept of pro­duc­tive aging through a Social Pol­icy course that I stud­ied as an under­grad­u­ate stu­dent, and then Tutored. The idea of a period of time in one’s life where a per­son could explore and pur­sue their life’s pur­pose, and design an authen­tic lifestyle around it, was enchanting.

Need­less to say, over the years I con­tin­ued learn­ing more about how Baby Boomers were deal­ing with retire­ment, and finally decided to become Cer­ti­fied as a Pro­fes­sional Retire­ment Coach.

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Mas­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, with Distinction:

I had orig­i­nally intend­ing to build on a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Social Pol­icy that I had received, but became fas­ci­nated by a new Mas­ters pro­gram in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions that was being offered at Vic­to­ria University.

The pro­gram was strongly influ­enced by Mar­shall McLuhan’s media the­o­ries which focuse on explor­ing the impacts of media on soci­ety. As a result, this Mas­ters Degree Pro­gram com­bined Com­mu­ni­ca­tions The­o­ries with an overview of the impacts of new media on soci­ety to pro­vide a fas­ci­nat­ing view of how new media was (and still is) chang­ing inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships (how we relate to each other), soci­ety in gen­eral, and var­i­ous social institutions.

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Bach­e­lor of Arts, Social Policy:

After spend­ing years as an under­grad­u­ate Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Water­loo in Water­loo, Ontario I moved to Welling­ton, New Zealand where I fin­ished off my Under­grad­u­ate Degree in Social Policy.

In New Zealand, Social Pol­icy is affil­i­ated with both Pub­lic Pol­icy (Gov­ern­ment Pol­icy) and Soci­ol­ogy so pro­vided a unique per­spec­tive on social issues — includ­ing the aging of the pop­u­la­tion, poverty, edu­ca­tion, wel­fare, etc. In Canada, Social Pol­icy courses are asso­ci­ated with Social Work, which, although sim­i­lar to the New Zealand per­spec­tive, offers a sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent approach to the devel­op­ment of Social Policies.

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McMas­ter University’s President’s Award for Out­stand­ing Performance:

Every year, McMas­ter Uni­ver­sity in Hamil­ton, Ontario cel­e­brates its employ­ees by bestow­ing the President’s Award for Out­stand­ing Per­for­mance. Recip­i­ents are nom­i­nated by fel­low employ­ees, and then selected by the University’s Pres­i­dent from the nominees.

I had the great good for­tune of work­ing on an 18 month con­tract as a Stu­dent Advi­sor for the Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Nurs­ing pro­gram the year we were nom­i­nated and am proud to share this award with the two other  Stu­dent Advisors.

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