Category: Alumni

by Glen Kirby
A lifelong Manitoban, career educator and tireless volunteer has been awarded Brandon University’s 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award for Community Service.
Bruce Macdonald grew up in Flin Flon, earned Bachelor Degrees in Science and Education from Brandon University (BU).

BRANDON, MB – With “I do so promise”, Dr. Gervan Albert Fearon was installed as the 15th President of Brandon University (BU) before a crowd including students, staff, provincial and federal politicians, Aboriginal leaders, and academics and University administrators from across Canada.
Cloaked in the grey and blue robes of office, President and Vice Chancellor Fearon thanked the audience for the opportunity to serve and to lead, noting, “We are all here with the sense of a brighter future for the University, and that spirit binds us.”
University Chancellor Michael Decter introduced Dr. Fearon as someone “who can move people in the direction of positive and constructive change”, a theme repeated by the province’s Minister of Education and Advanced Learning.

BRANDON, MB – A globally-recognized entrepreneur is returning to Brandon University (BU) this weekend to speak about his revolutionary new business venture in which citizens would be rewarded by the Canadian government for making healthy or responsible lifestyle choices.
Andreas Souvaliotis is an expert on social responsibility and a best-selling author who graduated from BU in 1984 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Science.

An eclectic mix of paintings and prints, including works from international artists who flourished in the 1700s and 1800s, is on public display for a limited time in the Glen P. Sutherland Gallery of Art at Brandon University (BU).
The Dr. Viola Lobodowsky Art Collection contains 19 pieces with an appraised value of more than $100,000, donated to BU over the past 20 years by Dr. Viola Lobodowsky, a retired Toronto dentist and native of Sandy Lake, MB.
The exhibition features works by British painter George Morland, Dutch artist Bernard de Hoog, and Canadians Frederic Marlett Bell-Smith and Frederick Arthur Verner, among others.

BRANDON, MB – Dr. Jim Parrott has known hardship. Raised in Oak Lake, MB, in the years following World War ll by a single mother on social assistance, he persevered to graduate from Brandon College (now Brandon University) in 1964, becoming a distinguished heart surgeon, medical teacher and politician.

BRANDON, MB – The Dean of Brandon University’s internationally-renowned music programming has accepted a new challenge – alumni engagement, fundraising, and partnership building. Dr. Michael Kim, Dean of the School of Music, has been named Acting Associate Vice-President (External), and will oversee the University’s community campaigns including the current Score a Seat initiative to raise the final dollars for the Healthy Living Centre.

BRANDON, MB – The untold stories of the men and women from Brandon College (now Brandon University) who took part in World War l are chronicled in a new public exhibition, Brandon College and the Great War, on display at Brandon University (BU).
Suyoko Tsukamoto prepares exhibit
“500 students, staff and alumni, including two from the very first year of classes at the College in 1899, joined the Great War effort,” says exhibition creator Suyoko Tsukamoto, a BU alumna who started the project in 2012 in preparation for archeological research at Camp Hughes, the WWl training base east of Brandon.

BRANDON, MB – Brandon University (BU) supporters now have the unique opportunity to purchase their very own seat in the Richardson Gymnasium with Score a Seat, a new campaign launched today to raise the final dollars needed for the Healthy Living Centre (HLC).
BUILD Campaign Chair, Dr. Tom Breneman, during Healthy Living Centre construction
“I urge both individuals and businesses to consider joining me in supporting this incredible facility,” says Dr. Tom Breneman, Chair of the BUILD fundraising campaign which helped to build the HLC, a community sports and recreation complex on the BU campus featuring 2 gymnasiums, a state-of-the-art fitness room, sports medicine centre, and the largest indoor track in the Westman area.