University College chef MICHAEL KOBAYASHI was honoured with the University of Toronto’s COVID-19 Recognition Award for his leadership during the pandemic and his outstanding commitment to the safety of students and his team of frontline workers in UC food services.
First-year University College math student EUAN POUND and his teammates captured the top prize at the Digital Inclusion Challenge 2020. They beat 150 teams from 30 countries to win the prize for a concept for a low-bandwidth video conferencing software that could improve access to mental health resources in remote communities. Called Face to Face, the software records movement from points on a person’s face and transmits the data to an avatar, enabling non- 1 verbal communication without the bandwidth required by video.
IAN RADFORTH, a professor of history and former vice-principal of University College, published Jeannie’s Demise: Abortion on Trial in Victorian Toronto (Between the Lines, 2020). A real-life Victorian melodrama, the story centres on Jeannie Gilmour, a minister’s daughter whose body was discovered in a ditch along Bloor street after a botched abortion. The book brings to life an era in which abortion was illegal, criminal proceedings were a spectator sport, and coded advertisements for back-alley procedures ran in the margins of newspapers.
Congratulations to the UNIVERSITY COLLEGE ADVANCEMENT team, who were honoured with three awards from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. UC Perspectives on COVID-19, a special digital publication that documents the UC community’s response to the pandemic, was honoured with a silver award in the publications pivot category. The virtual event Have Your Cake and Eat It Too, which brought UC alumni together online to bake a treat in the comfort of their own homes in the early days of the pandemic, received a silver in the special events pivot category.
Finally, the team received a silver in the donor relations and stewardship category for a publication that follows former scholarship recipients to show the impact of donations on their lives and careers.