GAC® Service Awards
Distinguished Service Award
The Distinguished Service Award is awarded to recognize an outstanding contribution to GAC® through volunteer work. The award consists of a plaque with the GAC logo, the name of the winner and the particular contribution being recognized.
Distinguished Service Award - Karen McFarlane
Citation
I would like to nominate Karen MacFarlane for the Geological Association of Canada®'s Distinguished Service Award for her work as Geolog Editor. Karen edited the newsletter for 6 years, chasing and assembling contributions from members and laying out each issue. During her tenure she demonstrated excellent organizational skills, ensuring contributors had abundant advance notice of deadlines and reminding them gently and with good humour when they were missed.
As editor, Karen did more than simply merge the documents received from contributors every three months. She read each contribution and made efforts to bundle the articles into issues that were timely, thematically consistent, and visually appealing. Her tongue-in-cheek editorials were entertaining to read, and gave readers some insight into what life as an editor is like.
In a number of her editorials, Karen talked about the value of the contributions that volunteers make in an organization, and she encouraged GAC® members to step up and "give back" to the association. She's not just talking the talk: if we all committed half the time that Karen did to producing Geolog - contributing to publications, running a field trip, or organizing sessions at annual meetings - GAC® would be a more thriving, dynamic organization.
Distinguished Service Award - Reg Wilson
Citation
I am pleased to nominate Reg Wilson for the Geological Association of Canada Distinguished Service Award. Even with his day job with the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources, he has been very active with outreach work in New Brunswick, national professional registration committees, and the Atlantic Geoscience Society. However, he has also found the time to serve the GAC in a variety of volunteer positions. He joined GAC Council in 2004, and in his first year was a member of a special committee on Marketing, as well as serving on the Awards, Finance and Publications committees. His thoughtful involvement in council discussions led to him being asked to take on the Communications and Awards portfolio in 2005. As Chair of these committees over the following two years, he helped to streamline the awards nomination procedures, essentially taking them from a complex bureaucratic process to a simple online procedure without affecting quality of candidates.
Since finishing his term on Council in 2007, Reg continued his distinguished volunteer activity by accepting the position of Geoscience Canada Editor, a role in which he has excelled. He has actively solicited articles for new series, and comments on the Canadian Earth Science scene, difficult accomplishments in a time of contracting membership and changing geoscience landscape. Reg Wilson is fully deserving of the Distinguished Service Award.