profile | News and Releases

Keyword: profile

Alumni in Their Own Words - Nicole Richard Williams

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 @ 9:45 AM

Nicole Richard graduated from CMU in 2013 with a Bachelor of Music Therapy.

Where has your life taken you since you left CMU?

After finishing my Bachelor of Music Therapy at CMU, I worked as a music therapist in Winnipeg for about three years. During this time, I started working with many clients on the autism spectrum and noticed that doing rhythmic and drumming interventions with these folks really seemed to help them reach some of their therapeutic goals. I wanted to deepen my understanding of how exactly music therapy could help autistic children. Going to grad school had always been a dream of mine, and so I decided to take some time off working to do a Master's in Music and Health Science at the University of Toronto. During that degree, I decided I wanted to continue on and do a PhD and was accepted again at the Music and Health Science Research Collaboratory (the lab out of which the master's and PhD are based) at the University of Toronto.

Ten stories of CMU alumni (audio)

Monday, February 12, 2024 @ 2:27 PM

As an extension of the A Time of Reckoning symposium that took place at CMU in October 2023, this student-led media project is one way of reflecting CMU's story from 2000 to 2023. Every now and then, it's good to consider what we say we're doing, what we think we're doing, and what is actually going on.

Alumna explores intersection between land, people, and faith at Yale

Monday, December 11, 2023 @ 10:11 AM

Anika Reynar (CMU '17, Interdisciplinary Studies – Social Ecology) lives her life with one foot in the library and one foot in the garden—and also the classroom, the church, and around the table. She's pursuing her passions by doing not just one, but two, master's degrees simultaneously at Yale University.

Reynar is working on a Master of Arts in Religion through Yale Divinity School and a Master of Environmental Management through Yale School of Environment. She's in her third and last year of the joint program in New Haven, Connecticut. "I broadly describe what I'm interested in as being focused around land use and how communities who potentially hold different value sets negotiate how land is used."

Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Alexander Sawatsky

Thursday, October 5, 2023 @ 2:28 PM

Dr. Alexander Sawatsky is Professor and Chair of Social Work. He joined the CMU faculty in 2023.

What are you enjoying about your work here so far?

Alumnus reflects on the heart of generosity

Monday, August 21, 2023 @ 3:40 PM

"I have always been a storyteller," says Ben Borne over a Zoom call from his home in Saskatoon, SK. " And what I'm really good at is bringing people together."

Since graduating from CMU with a Bachelor of Arts in 2013, Borne's various endeavors and accomplishments—which are innumerable, but include podcast host and founding his own public relations firm—all share that similar theme: storytelling.

Unraveling the modern Mennonite story, one panel at a time

Monday, July 24, 2023 @ 11:39 AM

You may think that most books about Mennonites wouldn't dare to begin with young adults drinking, smoking, and driving a car in donuts around a church parking lot, but author Jonathan Dyck isn't so sure.

Dyck (CMU '09) is the author of the award-winning graphic novel Shelterbelts, which explores themes of Queer identity, inclusive churches, the history of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, and much more, all set in the fictional, sleepy Mennonite community of Hespeler.

CMU alumna brings climate action into the provincial election

Monday, July 17, 2023 @ 10:14 AM

In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report stating that a global average temperature increase of 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels would significantly increase the severity and occurrence of extreme weather events, forever altering Earth's ecosystems.

The World Meteorological Institute estimates we are on track to hit that sustained average temperature increase in roughly a decade. Worse yet, there is a 66 per cent chance of that occurring temporarily within the next five years. The time for climate action is now.

Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Heather Campbell-Enns

Monday, March 27, 2023 @ 11:36 AM

Dr. Heather Campbell-Enns is Associate Professor of Psychology. She has taught at CMU since 2019.

What are you teaching right now that you're most excited about?

"Identity and Intersectionality." That class has been just a pleasure. We're asking questions of identity, looking at concepts and theories of identity. Students are really wrestling with, "Who am I?" Questions around how stable is my identity and how much am I changing and who am I becoming? It's such a beautiful experience, with these students who come into this course at the end of their degree, thinking about: who have I become in this program at CMU? They come into the class with a lot of curiosity, and I see them go through this uncomfortable time of being faced with these questions. I've taught it a few times, and by the end of the course they're grounded into knowing something about themselves and accepting that they are becoming someone and that it's a lifelong journey. That has been really beautiful—including students talking about who am I in relation to the church and the God I've always known and who I am still knowing. It's been impactful for me to witness that with students because it's a journey we're all still on and to have them share that with me is pretty remarkable.

Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Jonathan Dueck

Thursday, December 15, 2022 @ 9:10 AM

Dr. Jonathan Dueck, Vice-President Academic, Academic Dean, Associate Professor of Social Science (Ethnomusicology), and of Writing, has taught at CMU since 2017.

What do you love about your work here?

I like the sense of play that we have as an institution. We invite people to do things they care about, things they're passionate about, and to try them out. As students, as faculty members, and even as an institution, we're willing to try new things in a way that is about what we love.

Faculty: In Their Own Words - Dr. Sunder John Boopalan

Thursday, November 17, 2022 @ 4:33 PM

Dr. Sunder John Boopalan, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, has taught at CMU since 2020.

Where or how do students give you hope?

I got into this business precisely because of that. Every day, students give me hope. Sometimes stuff happens in the classroom—I call it a change in plot. You walk in and you think, I know how the story is going to play out...and what I think we sometimes take for granted is that actually a person's place in the story can change the plot of the story. I think that's the place where students give me the most hope, because each of those persons sitting there with me in the classroom can change the outcome of the conversation. That open-ended plot of any interpersonal encounter gives me the greatest hope, and students do that all the time.

Newer Posts | Older Posts

Print This Article

First Name *

Last Name *

Email *