McMaster University Faculty Association Service Award presented to Michelle Dion
Michelle Dion is this year’s recipient of the McMaster University Faculty Association (MUFA) Award for Outstanding Service. Reviewing her dossier, the Selection Committee was unanimous in its endorsement. Dion, an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, has established a sterling reputation for engagement within and without McMaster.
No issue demonstrates this more clearly than gender pay equity. When the issue was first raised in 2013 by MUFA with the university administration, the study commissioned by the Provost, delivered in 2014, claimed that there was no statistically significant gender pay divide. It was Dion who corrected this mistaken conclusion, demonstrating through rigorous statistical analysis that a meaningful pay differential existed that was attributable to gender. Her work convinced the university administration that remedial action was necessary, leading in 2015 to an across the board pay increase for female faculty. This outcome was beneficial, conveying McMaster’s willingness to embrace a basic gender equity principle. From the CBC to the Globe and Mail, to Inside Higher Education, to the Ministry of Labour, the University of Toronto Faculty Council, and the Canadian Association of University Teachers, there was understanding that McMaster had taken a welcome, if overdue, step. Recognition that this work came in the form of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) decision in 2016 to bestow upon her the Status of Women Award of Distinction.
Dion has also been involved in other noteworthy projects. The first concerns her role at the Centre for Research and Empirical Social Science (CRESS), where she serves as the Acting Director. CRESS is designed to help faculty and graduate students improve their research methodology, through training workshops, promoting networks of understanding provincially, and aiding in the development of a rigorous, effective, research culture in the academy. The second is her involvement in Visions in Methodology (VIM), aimed at assisting women in the field of political methodology. Through conferences and an on-line portal funded by SSHRC, Dion has bolstered the diffusion of resources to foster improvement in the teaching of research methods in the university and in secondary schools.
All of this in addition to her years of dedicated service on behalf of MUFA is worth acknowledging. To her successive responsibilities on the Executive, from Grievances and Special Enquiries, to Vice-President, President, and then Past President, she brought tenacity, purpose, and an overriding desire to make the university a better place. In this aim she succeeded, enriching the faculty experience across the campus.
