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O n November 17, 2011 the Faculty of Health

Sciences held its Annual General Meeting and its 10th Ceremony of Excellence. At the AGM, we shared the faculty's highlights for the 2010-2011 academic year. This was the last AGM to be presided by our current Dean Dr. Denis Prud’homme. We thank him for his hard work and dedication over the last 10 years as our leader. He will resume his position as full professor in the School of Human Kinetics within our faculty. A search is underway for a new Dean starting July 1, 2012.

During the 10th Ceremony of Excellence, we honoured the achievements of our best students as well as of professors and staff members who have excelled during the 2010-2011 academic year. Two OT students were recognized with the

Dean’s Award of Excellence , given to the students with the highest marks from each program of study during the past academic year - both cumulated a GPA of 9.6 (out of 10!). We would like to congratulate Justin Matthews and Marie-Hélène Sirois once again for this impressive achievement.

T he director of McGill’s School of Physical and Occupational

Therapy (SPOT), Dr. Annette Majnemer, has recently received a high honour: she has been elected to the American Occupational Therapy Foundation (AOTF) Academy of Research. According to the AOTF, this is the highest scholarly honour it confers, and one of the highest of the occupational therapy community itself. Dr. Majnemer also is the first occupational therapist to be named director of McGill’s SPOT, which is in and of itself a significant accolade. She was named as director in September 2011, following one year as interim-director.

The AOTF is a charitable, scientific and educational organization founded in 1965. It serves the public interest by supporting occupational therapy research and increasing public understanding of the important relationship between everyday activities (occupations) and health. Dr. Majnemer was rewarded with this honour largely due to her research resulting in an “outstanding contribution … to the advancement of knowledge in occupational therapy." Her research interests focus mostly on the developmental, functional and quality of life outcomes of children with disabilities and their determinants. The populations she studies are mainly preterm infants, children with congenital heart d rgery, children with cerebral palsy and mer will receive the award at the AOTA 012 in Indianapolis, Indiana.

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McGill’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy. The director of the School, Dr Annette Majnemer is pleased to introduce three new tenure track faculty members at McGill’s School of Physical and Occupational Therapy who were appointed recently. Dana Anaby is originally from Israel; she studied at Tel Aviv University and at the University of British Columbia, following up with a post-doctorate from McMaster University. Her areas of research interest include activities of daily living, participation and well-being across the lifespan with a special focus on children and youth with physical disabilities and their families. Patricia Belchior is from Brasil, studied there and also at the University of Florida. Her research interests center around cognitive rehabilitation in the elderly. Hailing from the United States, Melissa Park trained at Yale University and the University of Southern California. Most recently she completed a post-doc at Karolinska Institute, Sweden, where her main area of interest lies with transformational processes (eg. knowledge translation) and outcomes focus on participation and social inclusion.