the Portico
“Our mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promoted pride and commitment within the University Community.”Convocation, Dialogue, Summit: It Was a Big Week
Former Canadian governor
general Michaëlle Jean
During five days in February, the University of Guelph responded to president Alastair Summerlee’s assertion that “universities should be the moral and social conscience of society and must play a leadership role in resolving problems that oppress the world’s most vulnerable citizens.” Hunger was the topic addressed by honorary degree recipients at U of G’s winter convocation, by participants in a special President’s Dialogue and by attendees of a three-day hunger summit that drew 400 people ─ aid workers, politicians, social activists, faculty and university students from several countries.
Former Canadian governor general Michaëlle Jean was among five recipients of honorary degrees. U of G also honoured ecologist Daniel Janzen, anti-poverty advocate June Henton, health advocate Quentin Johnson and Ken Knox, former Ontario deputy minister of energy, science and technology.
Alan Meek, former dean of the Ontario Veterinary College, was named an Honorary Fellow of the University, and more than 900 degrees and diplomas were presented to graduating students on Feb. 23.
Jean received her degree at a special ceremony held during the Feb. 25 President’s Dialogue, which opened the sixth annual Universities Fighting World Hunger (UFWH) summit. Summerlee moderated a discussion of complex issues that see close to a billion people going hungry in the world today.
The panellists were U of G graduate Kwadwo Asenso-Okyere, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Africa; Ramiro Lopes da Silva, deputy executive director of the World Food Program in Rome; Canadian senator and U of G chancellor Pamela Wallin; Johnson, an international consultant on food supplementation; and Henton, UFWH founder and dean of human sciences at Auburn University.
Jean, who is now UNESCO Special Envoy to Haiti, spoke forcefully about conditions in her country of birth. “If I agreed to campaign tirelessly in support of Haiti, it is because I can no longer bear to hear about the resilience of the Haitian people. It sounds as if they were put on this Earth only to recover from one crisis, one tragedy, one ordeal after the other. Resilience is but the last resort before dying.”
She told the audience that combating hunger must not focus on short-term, piecemeal initiatives for immediate relief. Instead, she urged adoption of a new ethical standard of sharing that includes “everyone, everywhere.”
During the hunger summit, a new international award was named in Jean’s honour. The Michaëlle Jean Emergency Hunger Relief Award will be presented annually to a student, from any country, who has demonstrated outstanding leadership in fighting hunger during emergency relief. The award is sponsored by U of G and Universities Fighting World Hunger, an alliance of more than 150 higher-education institutions.
Gavin Armstrong
Guelph was the first Canadian university to join the organization and hosted its first conference outside the United States, co-chaired by Summerlee and U of G undergraduate student Gavin Armstrong. The fourth-year commerce student received the annual President William Jefferson Clinton Hunger Leadership Award during the event to recognize his efforts to increase UFWH membership and influence.
Armstrong is the first Canadian to receive the international award, which honours the former U.S. president’s commitment to humanitarian causes. The Clinton award is presented by the organization Stop Hunger Now and the Centre for Student Leadership at North Carolina State University.
At U of G, Armstrong serves on the Board of Governors and The BetterPlanet Project steering group. He has been a member of Senate and is co-president of the undergraduate chapter of Net Impact, an organization that promotes leadership in business; he also serves on the board of directors of the Masai Project.
