Department of Mathematics and Statistics

The University of Ottawa established the annual Excellence in Teaching award to recognize educators of exceptional quality, driven by their passion to advance and share knowledge. These leaders in university education are outstanding in the classroom, in the laboratory and in the field.

This year, the committee selected Dr. Victor Leblanc, of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, for his outstanding work in the classroom and graduate student supervision. He was originally nominated by a petition from the students in his course MAT2322: Calculus III for Engineers, who summarized "Dr. Leblanc's enthusiasm and positive attitude is very contagious ... He truly inspires students to strive to success through hard work."   This sentiment was echoed in countless letters of support from his colleagues and students.

Congratulations on a well-deserved award!

The winner of the Peter Rodney book prize, given for the best student talk at the 2015 Ontario Combinatorics Workshop, is Elizabeth Maltais, for her talk “Covering Arrays with Alphabet Graphs”.  “She very successfully made a complex result accessible to a broader audience, by use of examples, colorful diagrams and beautiful slides handwritten on a tablet,” notes Lucia Moura. “The slides are just a part of her interesting 20-minute talk but they give the reader a flavor of her style of communicating mathematical ideas and joy

Elizabeth is currently completing her PhD in our department, working with Profs. Mike Newman and Lucia Moura. She was also recently distinguished as the Department of Mathematics and Statistics Teaching Assistant of the Year 2014-15, at the Faculty of Science Awards Ceremony in November.

Congratulations, Elizabeth!