UBC Reports | Vol. 47 | No. 03 | Feb. 8, 2001

Justice, engineer among 13 to earn honorary degrees

Ten of the degree recipients UBC graduates or faculty

Madam Justice Louise Arbour, Mechanical Engineering Prof. Emerita Martha Salcudean, and alumnus Leonard Marchand, the first status Indian to be elected to the House of Commons, are among the 13 individuals who will receive honorary degrees from the University of British Columbia this year.

Twelve honorary degrees will be awarded during Spring Congregation, May 23-25 and 28-30. Arbour will receive her honorary degree during Fall Congregation in November.

Ten of the recipients are current or former UBC faculty members or graduates of UBC.

Recipients are recognized for their distinguished career achievements and for their contributions to UBC and to Canada.

Arbour, elevated to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1999, is one of Canada's most eminent jurists.

In 1996, she was appointed by the Security Council of the United Nations as prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, a position she held until 1999.

Salcudean, the former head of the UBC Mechanical Engineering Dept. and one of Canada's most distinguished engineers and scholars, is world-renowned for her research contributions in the area of heat transfer and fluid flow.

In 1998, she was one of three Canadians to receive the prestigious Killam Prize in recognition of her outstanding achievements in the field of engineering. In 1991 she was awarded the Science Council of B.C.'s Gold Medal in the Applied Science and Engineering category.

Marchand is being honoured for his lifelong work in aboriginal and national causes. In 1984, he was appointed to the senate and named honorary chief of the Okanagans.

Other honorary degree recipients include Fine Arts Prof. Emeritus Gordon Smith, one of the Canada's leading artists; UBC alumnus Jack Blaney, president of Simon Fraser University from 1997-2000; former Surgery Assoc. Prof. Haile Debas, an outstanding surgeon, researcher, teacher and academic administrator who is currently dean of the University of California's School of Medicine; David Hardwick, a leading pediatric pathologist at UBC; novelist Joy Kogawa, best known for her writings about the Japanese experience in Canada; UBC alumnus Ian Hacking, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto; Microbiology Prof. Julia G. Levy, president and chief executive officer of QLT PhotoTherapeutics Inc.; Tom Schnackenberg, sailing design co-ordinator and the navigator behind Team New Zealand's America's Cup victories; UBC alumnus Tricia Smith, an Olympic medallist in rowing; and UBC alumnus Paul Williams, a biologist who developed the `fast plants' system, which is used worldwide as a research model in basic plant research and crop improvement.