News & Notes from FIMS Alumni

Awards & Accomplishments

Roxanne Beaubien, MA'96 (Journalism), was awarded the IABC Gold Quill Award of Excellence for her work with the London Police Service's 'Stronger than you know," campaign.

Nicole Dalmer, LIS PhD'19 (now at Trent University), and Professor Pam McKenzie, were awarded the "Best Information Behavior Conference Paper by the 2019 SIG USE Awards for their work titled, Noticing the Unnoticed: Lines of Work in Everyday Life Information Practices.

Nicole Dalmer (LIS PhD'19) and Professor Pam McKenzie received the Best Short Paper award at the ASIS&T Conference, October 19-23, in Melbourne, AU.

Andrew de Waard, MIT alumnus, was hired as new faculty in the Department of Communication at UC San Diego in November 2019.  

Melissa Kargiannakis, MHIS'15, was named among Canada's 100 Most Powerful Women for 2019. Kargiannakis is the CEO/Founder of Skritswap, a tech start-up that uses AI to transform complex language into more understandable language, according to the viewer's reading level.

Five FIMS alumni all received Western Staff Awards in November 2019, including Andrea Legato (MA'06, Journalism), Julaine Hall (MIT’02), Shawn Foster (MIT’10), Adam Pypstra (MIT’13), and Ramon Sanchez (MIT’15). The Western Staff Award is the top-level honour staff members can receive at Western.

Max Martin, MMJC'19, has been nominated for multiple Ontario Newspaper Awards for work that he did with the London Free Press during his MMJC internship. Randy Richmond, who has previously taught for FIMS and who has presented a Clissold Lecture, was also nominated.

Arthur McClelland, MLS'84, received a 2020 Mayor of London Honour. A recipient in the Heritage Category, McClelland is lauded for his tireless promotion of historical events that have taken place in London. For more than six years, he has organized joint trips of Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (London Branch) where he gives a detailed history of villages and hamlets in Middlesex and surrounding counties.

Amber Silva and Nick Sokic, both MMJC'19, have been named finalists in both the Couch Film Festival and the Alternative Film Festival for their film Living for the Risk. This film was produced as a component of their final project in the MJCOM 9201 Integrated Storytelling course. 

James Steinhoff, PhD’19 (Media Studies), accepted a Postdoctoral Researcher position at the eScience Institute and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at The University of Washington in Seattle. He began his new position in January 2020.

Publications & Presentations

Zahra Khozema, MMJC'19, published the intensely personal article, "I underwent FGM. It doesn't define me," on the broadview.org website on February 5, 2020.

In the Media

Adrienne Arsenault, MA’91 (Journalism), was featured in an article titled, “CBC making changes to four-host format of flagship news program ‘The National’,” published by the Canadian Press on January 22, 2020.

Gayle Garlocks, MLIS alumnus, was featured in an article titled, "Gayle Garlock's love of reading led to his own tome about Canada's book trade," published on the Globe and Mail website on December 10, 2019.

Chuck Howitt (MA'79, Journalism) was featured in an article titled, "Book dials up RIMS's rise, fall and legacy," published by Western News on October 23, 2019.

Melissa Kargiannakis, MHIS'15, was featured in the Western News article, "Alumnae named among Canada's Most Powerful," published on November 27, 2019.

An interview with Paige Martin, MMJC alumna, was featured in an article titled, "Why hockey culture needs more women holding top jobs in junior hockey: Paige Martin," on the CBC News website on January 10, 2020.

Cliff Van der Linden, MA’05 (Journalism), was featured in an article titled, “The people have spoken. And this man is listening,” published on McMaster University’s Brighter World blog on November 4, 2019.

Kelcey Wright Johnson, MA'14 (Journalism), was featured in an article titled, "Western University journalism graduate's travels take her to Memphis, with NBA's Grizzlies," published in the London Free Press on January 21, 2020.