Eclectic group of grads to be recognized with Alumni Awards

A veterans advocate, a music entrepreneur, a philanthropic researcher, an international speaker and executive, and the CEO of the LCBO.

Every year, the McMaster Alumni Awards recognizes an eclectic group of graduates, and this year is no different. At the Alumni Awards on Wednesday, May 31, the Alumni Association will welcome five new members of the Alumni Gallery, McMaster’s version of an alumni hall of fame. The awards evening will also include four Arch Awards, which recognize the accomplishments of recent graduates, as well as the Distinguished Service Award and the induction of two honorary members to the Alumni Association.

Stay tuned to the alumni Twitter account on Wednesday evening for highlights from the celebration!

Alumni Gallery Inductees

HooJung Jones ’99 – Faculty of Business

HooJung Jones is the Project Coordinator of the Korean Veterans Association of Canada Unit 26, and co–authored “Canadians Our Heroes 1950–1953 Korean War” which was forwarded by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. She is a strong advocate for veterans, a dedicated volunteer, a community leader, a festival and special events organizer.

Steve Long ’78 – Faculty of Business

Steve Long has made outstanding contributions to Canada’s music scene and to the professional growth and support of Canadian musicians and entrepreneurs. Long & McQuade has become one of Canada’s most successful, home-grown retailers with more than 60 stores across Canada. Under Steve’s leadership, Long & McQuade focuses on music, community and the customer experience. Many years ago, Steve and the company realized the importance of giving back; each of the 70 store locations actively support their communities in their unique way.

Marcy McCall MacBain ’00 – Faculty of Social Sciences, Kinesiology

Dr. Marcy McCall MacBain has worked extensively to improve quality and provision of health care and education in several regions including rural Liberia, Canada and the United Kingdom. As a co-founder and director of the McCall MacBain Foundation, she, along with her husband, are committed to improving the welfare of humanity through focused grants in education, health and the environment. In addition to her role at the Foundation, she is a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford where she conducts research in complementary and primary care health sciences.

Patricia Moser ’80, ’81 – Faculty of Science, Psychology, Chemistry

Patricia is a true leader and an impassioned advocate for women. She is continually sought out by magazines and conferences for her dynamic presentations and prolific writing, including the inspiring book, 1 Piece of Advice. Patricia’s newest endeavour is in Copenhagen, serving as Director, Sustainable Procurement Practice Group with the United Nations Office of Project Services.

George Soleas ’83 – Faculty of Science, Chemistry

George Soleas is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the LCBO. He received his B.Sc. from McMaster University and M.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He trained in oenology at U.C. Davis and spent 11 years with the Canadian wine industry as a Director of Research and Quality Assurance for a major winery and chaired the Technical and Scientific Committee of the Canadian Wine Institute for nine years. His oenological and biochemical research has led to eight book chapters, 51 peer reviewed publications and several national and international industry and scientific presentations devoted to beverage alcohol.

Arch Award Recipients

Joanne Crawford ’04, ’08 – Faculty of Health Sciences, Nursing

Joanne Crawford has been an advocate for nursing in both oncology and community practice since graduating with distinction with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2004. Joanne began her nursing career working in critical care settings and later specialized in oncology nursing. As a public health nurse, she promoted cancer prevention and screening, and received funding for a qualitative project examining perspectives of immigrant women. Her passion for working with communities that had barriers to access information and cancer screening services grew as a result of these experiences. With the support and mentorship of a few dedicated professors, Joanne returned to McMaster and obtained her Masters of Science in Nursing in 2008, after which her work focused on a peer health educator program that facilitated access to information and education to cancer prevention and screening for four immigrant groups of women (Arabic, Chinese, Vietnamese, and South Asian). Joanne and other public health nurses received a Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation grant to assess if this peer educator program was meeting the changing needs of immigrants in Hamilton. She later went on to earn her PhD from U of T, where her research focused on colorectal cancer screening behaviours among South Asian immigrants in Canada.

Joanne received numerous awards and scholarships during her education, including the CANO/Pfizer Award of Excellence in Nursing Leadership and a Population Health Improvement Research Network Doctoral Award. She is an active member in many professional associations and is the current President of the Community Health Nurses Initiatives’ Group (CHNIG). Joanne is involved in nursing research with colleagues as an Assistant Professor at Brock University in the Faculty of Applied Health Science. She also holds an adjunct appointment as an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University (Niagara Site), where she is a non-MD facilitator in the Professional Competencies Program.

Seth Dworkin ’03 – Faculty of Engineering, Mechanical

Dr. Seth Dworkin developed his passion for mechanical systems while studying Engineering at McMaster University. Driven by that passion, he completed his Bachelor’s degree summa cum laude, and went on to pursue a Masters and PhD at Yale University. There, he developed a keen sense of environmental responsibility, and began embarking on a career to impact positive change. While working as a lecturer and NSERC Postdoctoral fellow in Mechanical Engineering at U of T, he discovered a love for teaching, and began shaping his career path through academia. Seth joined the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Ryerson University, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He manages a large research program which has trained over 40 research assistants at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels, produced 38 journal papers, delivered 80 conference presentations, and received over $3 million in research support. His work is impacting the fields of clean air and renewable energy through new techniques in high-performance computer simulation. He has developed software for the inexpensive design of geothermal heating and cooling systems, which has already penetrated the geothermal industry and is in use today. Through awards from CFI, and working with Compute Canada, Dr. Dworkin uses computational infrastructure of over three-thousand CPUs for alternative energy and emissions research, making his one of the largest high-performance computing labs in the country.

Sabrina Natasha Premji Habib ’10 – Faculty of Science, Life Science

Sabrina Natasha Premji Habib is the Co-Founder and Chief Exploration Officer at Kidogo, a social enterprise that provides high-quality, affordable early childhood care & education for less than $1 / day. Prior to Kidogo, Sabrina spent three years working with the Aga Khan Development Network in East Africa, managing an Integrated Primary Health Care Project and the Social Innovations portfolio of a $13.5 million maternal and child health grant. It was during this time that Sabrina first encountered the childcare crisis taking place in Nairobi’s slums. Dissatisfied with the status quo and traditional approaches to development, Sabrina launched Kidogo in 2014 as a sustainable and scalable social enterprise. It has since provided nearly 1 million hours of play-based, holistic childcare to children aged 6 months to 6 years, Sabrina has been recognized as an Echoing Green fellow, as Canada’s Female Entrepreneur by ELLE Magazine and as Forbes’ Top 30 under 30. Sabrina holds a Master’s in Public Administration in Development Practice from Columbia University and an Honors Bachelor of Science from McMaster University. She is also an enthusiastic writer, having authored a book, Backwards & Forwards: My Journey Through Africa, and frequently contributes to publications, including the World Policy Journal.

Tanya Walker ’02 – Faculty of Business

Tanya graduated from McMaster University in 2002 with an Honours Commerce degree, minoring in Economics. She then attended Osgoode Hall Law School, graduating in 2005 and was called to the Bar in 2006. Tanya practiced at two Bay Street firms before opening her own downtown law firm. Walker Law employs five full time employees in the area of commercial litigation.

Tanya currently serves as a board member of the Osgoode Hall Law School Alumni Association and the Canadian Bar Association Supreme Court of Canada Liaison Committee. She is also on the Gold Key sub-committee of the Osgoode Alumni Association. On August 9, 2016, she was sworn in by the Law Society to be a first black elected female bencher from Toronto in the 220 year history of the Law Society. Benchers who are elected every four years by lawyers, regulate lawyers and paralegals. Tanya has received numerous awards for her contributions to the community and appears regularly on the CTV morning show “Your Morning” as a legal expert.

Honorary Membership – H. Douglas Barber and June Barber

Doug is an engineer who co-founded the microcircuit company Linear Technology Inc. which later became Gennum Corporation. As he was building the business, however, he was also a part-time professor in McMaster’s Department of Engineering Physics, serving in that capacity from 1968 to 1994. In 2001, Doug was appointed Distinguished Professor-in-Residence in McMaster’s Faculty of Engineering. He was a member of McMaster’s Board of Governors for 14 years and chair for two and a former member of the University Senate. He recently retired as chair of the Engineering Dean’s Advisory Board and is also a past chair of the McMaster University Commercialization of Research Results Task Force. He served as a member of the board of the McMaster Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization and as a member of the McMaster International Revenue Generating Task Force. An officer of the Order of Canada, Doug also received a Doctor of Science honoris causa from McMaster in 1998 and was named an Honorary Governor.

June, a nurse and talented potter, was active in the Hamilton Potter’s Guild and founded Textures Craftworks, an artisan collective. During her time there, she was nominated for a Tourism Hamilton Award. She has been a longstanding member of McMaster’s Women’s Club, including serving as its president.

The Barbers’ philanthropic mission has included many local organizations and Doug and June have been exceptionally generous with McMaster, supporting renovations of Alumni Memorial Hall, the creation of student bursaries, the SELECT program in Engineering and the Hatch Centre where they provided one of the small number of gifts that allowed that project to gain full approval.

Distinguished Service Award – Sylvia Stockwell ‘59 Faculty of Social Sciences

Sylvia taught English in the Hamilton secondary school system before resigning to start a family. She subsequently returned to teaching as a part-time English instructor at Sheridan College, but soon became a full-time member of faculty. She retired from Sheridan in 1997.

In retirement, Sylvia and her husband Allan, have become busy travellers and community volunteers. Sylvia has been a long-time volunteer with the Art Gallery of Burlington and the Burlington Baptist Church. She was the scholarship chair on the executive committee of the Burlington University Women’s Club and even travelled with the legendary Burlington Teen Tour Band as a chaperone.

At McMaster, Sylvia was a “tracking volunteer” for the McMaster Alumni Association in the 1970s, working with then-alumni director Ken Frederick and his team to locate alumni who no longer had an active address in the Association’s records. Sylvia has also been a mainstay on the reunion committee for the Class of ’59, serving as a leader for multiple reunions of one of the University’s most engaged and active classes. Sylvia is probably best known to the broader McMaster Alumni family for her work with one of the Association’s showcase programs, the McMaster Alumni Gallery. For more than a decade, she chaired the Alumni Gallery Sub-committee, the group of dedicated volunteers that runs the award-winning Gallery program, including selecting the annual list of inductees and overseeing the Induction Ceremony.