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liki Thomas, BSc. OT(c), erg., M.Ed., PhD) is the newly appointed Associate Director of the Occupational Therapy Program at McGill University’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. Dr. Thomas was recently awarded the Menges New Researcher Award by the American Educational ResearchAssociation at their 2011 annual conference in New Orleans. The Special Interest Group for Faculty Teaching, Evaluation, and Development established this award in 1996 to recognize outstanding scholarship by a new researcher in the areas of postsecondary teaching, evaluation, and development.

Dr. Thomas obtained a doctorate from the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University, with a major in instructional psychology and a minor in applied cognitive science in the spring of 2011. Dr. Thomas’s PhD work focused on identifying the developmental trajectory of evidence-based practice behaviors among OT students across their professional master’s entry level program relative to experienced clinicians.She hopes to use this research to continue to identify effective methods for teaching and evaluating evidence-based practice competencies in OT education. Dr. Thomas’s academic interest in postsecondary education

extends from her love of teaching. She teaches in both the undergraduate and master’s portion of the OT curriculum with a particular interest in geriatric rehabilitation and the development and refinement of students’ clinical reasoning skills. Her drive to constantly improve her pedagogical approach has also involved her in a number of educational research projects with colleagues from medicine and nursing including inter-professional education projects, faculty development initiatives and knowledge translation projects with rehabilitation researchers. As a newly appointed core member of the Centre for Medical Education these inter-professional collaborations are likely to continue and grow. Her research uses an educational psychology perspective to examine teaching and learning in complex areas such as evidence-based practice, clinical reasoning, expertise development, instructional design and assessment of reasoning and problem-solving in complex and ill-defined areas of practice. This line of inquiry is very consistent with, and will support, her role as associate director where her responsibilities will focus on the evaluation and development of the OT master’s entry level curriculum.

robust interprofessional group of 60 occupational therapists and physiotherapists gathered together for a McMaster School of Rehabilitation preceptor workshop in early May, 2011. The workshop consisted of a luncheon, networking and active learning about theory and practical application of methods of “Conflict Resolution Education for Teaching Environments.”

This workshop was expertly led by Jane Hastie, from Hamilton Health Sciences. Jane incorporated both her formal collaborative training in mediation and negotiation as her role as lawyer to activate therapists’ thinking and application of theoretical and practical knowledge and skills. Important resources were also presented, including hands-on utilization of methods to depose and manage conflict in proactive ways. The workshop received very positive feedback from the participants who highlighted their intended use of principles and practical learning in many of their professional and personal lives.The intent was to bring this very important topic to life, knowing that we face potential conflict and the need to mitigate this effectively in many of the roles in which we are engaged: clinician, academic or clinical educator, researcher, and in our general lives.

by Dr. Paulette Guitard O.T. Reg.(Ont.) O.T.(c),

director, Occupational Therapy Program A nother year has just been completed and another class has

graduated. The final presentations of the master’s and memoires projects were held on July 25, 2011. What an interesting and fulfilling day!

We would like to congratulate three students whose work was also presented in conferences: Martin Toupin and Maryève Vermette each presented their work at CAOT’s national conference held in June in Saskatoon and Danijela Subara and Janice Thériault’s work was presented at the International Conference onAlzheimer's Disease held in July in Paris, France.

The presentations were followed by the traditional award ceremonies. We would like to congratulate all the graduating students and the following award recipients:

• Isabelle Daneau, Academic award; • Josée Desbiens, Clinical filedwork award; • Marie-Josée Payant, Leadership award; • Martin Toupin, Future Scholar award;