Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Sept. 11, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A long-time York University professor will join the Ivy League this fall, having been awarded a prestigious visiting professorship at Yale University.

Dawn Bazely, a University Professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, has been named this year’s recipient of the 2024-25 Fulbright Canada Distinguished Visiting Professorship, the foundation’s top Research Chair.

Bazely has taught at York for more than 30 years and met the news of the win with shock and disbelief.  

“I initially thought it was fake or their email account was hacked,” says the trained ecologist. “But once it was verified, I chalked it up to a career built on 99 per cent grind and persistence, and a decades-long personal policy of never resting on my laurels. I feel that this is evidence that I still have something to bring to the academic table.”

At Yale, Bazely will teach a course as wide-ranging as her expertise, called Canada’s Approach to Selected Global Wicked Problems. The course will cover world issues, including climate change, settler-colonialism, and public health – as seen through a Canadian lens.  

The largely anticipated American group of students will also learn about Canadian politics, the country’s relationship to the United Nations and its contributions to several intergovernmental panels, like the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), along with current topics particularly relevant north of the border, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action and the Canadian mining sector.

For Bazely, the opportunity to conduct research and teach at Yale is a platform to amplify as many voices and perspectives as possible.

“I will be bringing in guest presenters, including far more brilliant people than me from York and elsewhere, to the course each week, to share their views of the Canadian zeitgeist and how science and society are connected,” she says. “I want to grow the students’ global awareness, expose them to new ideas and have the course be as expansive and as eye-opening of an experience as possible. Not to mention, the most important part: I want the course to be fun.”

Bazely’s upcoming stint at Yale also won’t be the first time she’s taught at an Ivy League institution. In 2011, she was a Charles Bullard Fellow in Forest Research at Harvard University.

These awards add to a long list of accolades that Bazely’s received over the years, becoming one of York’s most decorated academics. She received the Sandford Fleming Medal in Excellence in Science Communication from the Royal Canadian Institute for Science in 2022, as well as the Minister of Colleges and Universities Award of Excellence for Future-proofing Ontario’s students.

Bazely first came to York in 1990 after earning her doctorate from Oxford University. As a first-generation university student herself, she was drawn to York because of its diverse student body, which includes many generational pioneers.

“York students should hold their heads up high about their education and training,” she says. “They can hold their own and compete with the best of the best students from schools around the world.”  

As a York Fulbright scholar, Bazely will follow in the footsteps of York faculty member Kent McNeil, an emeritus distinguished research professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, who won the award in 2020, and York PhD alumnus Andrew Knight, a professor of international relations at the University of Alberta, who won in 2021.  

The Fulbright Canada Distinguished Visiting Professorship is from September to April and is valued at $50,000 USD. For more about Fulbright Canada, visit fulbright.ca

Video of Dawn Bazely in York University's greenhouse  

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• Dawn Bazely headshot

Sandra McLean
York University
sandramc@yorku.ca