GAC® National Medals & Awards
E.R.Ward Neale Medal
E.R. Ward Neale Medallist –
Eileen Van der Flier-Keller
Citation
Eileen Van der Flier-Keller is one of those rare professional geoscientists who has taken up the task of educating the next generation of Canadian Earth scientists.
Perhaps living on the western edge of North America sharpened Eileen’s sense for nature and the geological environment. The spectacular views on clear days across the Straits of Juan de Fuca toward the Olympics must have helped inspire her early foray into popular writing. This took place in 1987 in a joint publication with W.J. McMillan on The Identification of Common Rocks. A decade later she created the popular South Vancouver Island Earth Science Fun Guide and in 2006 Eileen produced the widely acclaimed publication, A Field Guide to the Identification of Pebbles. This has had enthusiastic reviews all over North America.
Remarkably - and unlike most other geologic texts – the “Pebble Guide” has been cited on the Canadian Best Sellers listings for the Paperback Non-Fiction category and in Canadiana, whilst in British Columbia “The Pebble Guide” has topped the Children’s Best Seller List throughout 2007 and 2008.
However, Eileen has also been remarkably active in promoting, organizing and re-invigorating EdGEO, the teaching arm of the Canadian Geoscience Education Network. Assuming the leadership of EdGEO, 2002-2008, Eileen and her colleagues embarked on a series of initiatives that saw EdGEO workshops being introduced to more and more GAC/MAC Annual Meetings. Under her watch the first Nunavut workshops for teachers were held and there has been a record-breaking expansion of workshops across Canada. These have reached over 1,500 teachers and at least three quarters of a million students will benefit from this exposure to the Earth sciences.
Eileen’s talents also assisted in elements of Geoscape, in the teachers’ explanatory guide to the west coast section of CBC’s “Geologic Journey” and have been most recently re-directed to the co-directorship of NSERC’s Pacific CRYSTAL initiative as she continues to expand interactive science experiences for K-12 students and their teachers.
The Earth Science community owes much to the recipients of the E.R. Ward Neale medalists and Eileen Van der Flier-Keller is a most worthy member of their ranks.