TENURED FACULTY PROFILES
There are multiple dimensions to the role of a tenured faculty member. Teaching is perhaps the most visible of the roles but it accounts for less than half of the professorial responsibility. Faculty also engage with students as advisors, and supervisors of research initiatives such as preparation of Honours and Masters theses. Professors are also responsible to create the knowledge that is taught in the classroom through research and other scholarly pursuits, for which they need to secure funding, which can often be in the tens of thousands of dollars for a single study. Then they need to make the work accessible through the creation of articles, resource manuals, and textbooks, which frequently are subjected to a rigorous peer review process. This material is shared with colleagues through conference presentations and scholarly publications. In addition to creating scholarly materials, faculty must keep abreast of the work of fellow academics through attending conferences and scholarly forums, as well as reading the published works. In a rapidly growing field such as Leisure Studies, keeping abreast of the current work is time consuming.
Faculty also bare the collective responsibility of creating and running the professional associations that put on the conferences, symposia, congresses, and colloquia where scholarly work is presented. A good deal of effort is also expended by professors in academic journal production including the rigorous article adjudication process. In a discipline such as Leisure Studies that informs the professional practise of Recreation, faculty have the additional responsibility to ensure that the research and scholarly work is accessible, at an appropriate level, for consumption and use by practitioners. As the primary knowledge producers, dissemination of the knowledge extends far beyond what is taught to students in the classroom. Another significant, but often invisible role, is that of service to the profession, to one’s academic community, and to the university. This role manifests itself through serving on boards and committees, assuming administrative roles, and being a consultant/advisor/mentor. Collectively, these roles are categorized as teaching, scholarly activity, and service and in order to be promoted through the ranks to become as Full Professor, one must demonstrate acceptable performance in all three areas over a significant period of time, and excellence in at least one of the three, as judged by one’s peers. Below are brief summaries of the nature of the work carried out by the tenured/permanent faculty members who have served in the Recreation Management program, and primarily reflects the period 1969-2012.
Faculty also bare the collective responsibility of creating and running the professional associations that put on the conferences, symposia, congresses, and colloquia where scholarly work is presented. A good deal of effort is also expended by professors in academic journal production including the rigorous article adjudication process. In a discipline such as Leisure Studies that informs the professional practise of Recreation, faculty have the additional responsibility to ensure that the research and scholarly work is accessible, at an appropriate level, for consumption and use by practitioners. As the primary knowledge producers, dissemination of the knowledge extends far beyond what is taught to students in the classroom. Another significant, but often invisible role, is that of service to the profession, to one’s academic community, and to the university. This role manifests itself through serving on boards and committees, assuming administrative roles, and being a consultant/advisor/mentor. Collectively, these roles are categorized as teaching, scholarly activity, and service and in order to be promoted through the ranks to become as Full Professor, one must demonstrate acceptable performance in all three areas over a significant period of time, and excellence in at least one of the three, as judged by one’s peers. Below are brief summaries of the nature of the work carried out by the tenured/permanent faculty members who have served in the Recreation Management program, and primarily reflects the period 1969-2012.
JAMES BAYER 1975 - 1985
Jim was recruited to come to Acadia from the NS Government to serve as Dean of Physical Education and Recreation (PER), the Director of Athletics, as well as an Associate Professor. His degrees in Physical Education were from UNB (BPE) and Springfield College (MSPE). In addition to his paid employment, Jim was always quick to take on other leadership roles such as President of the Acadia Faculty Club, President of the NS Branch of the Red Cross, Chair the Nova Scotia Sports Heritage Center Board of Directors, and President of the Atlantic Universities Athletic Association. Jim had strong ties with the Recreation Association of Nova Scotia; Sport Nova Scotia; the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association; and the Canadian Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation which were useful to him in the development of the Physical Education and Recreation Academic program. He worked tirelessly to establish strong partnerships between the academic and professional communities with one example of an initiative being to spearhead a committee made up of Acadia faculty and staff, as well as practitioners, to prepare a bid to host the Canada Games. Although not a scholar himself, given the enormity of his administrative responsibilities, Jim was supportive of the scholarly activities of the PER faculty. Jim battled cancer which ended his life at the age of 47.
GLYN BISSIX 1974 - 1978, 1981+
Glyn is an environmentalist, keenly interested in fostering responsible use of the outdoors for recreational purposes. His early work had an outdoor recreation focus which evolved into natural resource and environmental management. This was the focus of his doctoral work which he pursued throughout the 1990s at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Policy and planning are other areas of interest and expertise, which he contributed to curriculum development and delivery. Much of his more recent work has focused on community design for active living which integrates resource and environmental management, outdoor recreation, health inequalities, and the pursuit of more physically active lifestyles. As an avid cyclist, he has been a tireless advocate for the development of active pathways, both in the Annapolis Valley and elsewhere. Glyn has served on the Boards of the Kieran Pathways Society, Greenways Nova Scotia, and Valley Life Cycle. The management of national park and open spaces is another long standing area of interest, and he has worked in partnership with Parks Canada, Trossachs National Park in Scotland, the Las Cuevas Research Station in Belize, the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh, and the Nova Scotia Nature Trust. Glyn continues to serve as a professor in the Department of Community Development in 2020.
WENDY BEDINGFIELD 1970 - 1973, 1987 - 2012
Wendy’s first contact with Acadia came in 1970 when she accepted a position as the volleyball coach and an instructor in the Physical Education and Recreation program. She went on to pursue a PhD and became a highly respected bio mechanist at the University of Alberta, responsible for an active and well funded research program that supported the research of a number of doctoral students. She was seconded by Acadia and returned in 1986 and replaced the late James Bayer. Her extensive knowledge and experience in the Canadian sport and recreation systems, leadership, social change, and gender equity equipped her well to contribute to curriculum development and delivery in the Recreation program as well as Physical Education. For most of her tenure at Acadia, she served in leadership positions including the Director of the School, Dean of the Faculty of Management and Education, Dean of Graduate Studies, Chair of the Recreation Resource Centre of Nova Scotia Board, President of the Faculty Union, and member of the Acadia Board of Directors. She was also engaged in various leadership positions with groups including Coaching Association of Canada, International Council on Coach Education, National Coach Certification Council, Federal/Provincial-Territorial Sport Coordinator’s Working Group, Canadian Interuniversity Sport, Nova Scotia Council on Higher Education, and was a founding member of Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women in Sport, and of Women Active Nova Scotia. The knowledge and experiences that she garnered from such positions she was able to bring into the classroom. Her resume contains a very lengthy list of national and regional professional groups for whom she has been an invited keynote speaker. She has been the recipient of many awards, including Nova Scotia Progress Women of Excellence Award, Most Influential Women in Sport and Physical Activity from Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport, and the Women Active Nova Scotia TrailBlazer Award. She retired in 2012.
JOHN COLTON 2001+
John’s disciplinary background is geography, more specifically human geography, and his interests focused on exploring the connection between people and place. His areas of scholarly interest at Acadia have included sustainable tourism development and Aboriginal tourism development, sustainable community development, and work in renewable energy. John has been involved in leadership roles with a variety of groups such as the Fundy Energy Research Network Socio-Economic Committee, Acadia Tidal Energy Institute, Atlantic Canada Sustainability Initiative, the Nova Scotia Steering Committee for Renewable Energy, Sustainable Tourism Association of Canada, and Earth Wild International. John’s dissertation work focused on sustainable tourism, and one area of his work for which John is particularly recognized relates to Aboriginal tourism and Indigenous ecotourism. He has worked with groups such as the northern Canadian Cree community, the Taku River First Nation in British Columbia, the Acadia First Nation, and the Lennox Island First Nation as well as with the Atlantic Canada Aboriginal Health Research Partnership. He has motivated some of his students to engage in similar work in their Masters program. John is an avid outdoor enthusiast and he has worked during summers for National Geographic as a wilderness guide for their writers and photographers in northern Canada and Alaska. He also served as their sustainable tourism evaluator for eastern Canada, for the World Legacy Awards program. John continues to guide northern wilderness river expeditions where he enjoys introducing people to the beauty and splendour of Canada's northern wilderness areas. All these experiences help inform his teaching and scholarship. John continues to serve as a professor in the Department of Community Development.
JUDE HIRSCH (DEGUERRE) 1977 - 1996
Jude graduated from the BRM program and was hired immediately to teach outdoor recreation/education courses at Acadia. From 1979-82 she pursued a Masters in Outdoor Education at Dalhousie, and from 1984-89 pursued her EdD in curriculum and instruction in experiential education with research focused on conceptions of outdoor education that underlie academic programs at Canadian universities. She continued to teach at Acadia while engaging in her graduate work. Jude’s major contributions at Acadia focused on the development of the area of outdoor recreation. These included significant curriculum development, acquisition of equipment and storage space, development of partnerships within the field of practise to support the program, development of infrastructure including a permanent challenge course and interpretive trails on campus, creation of multifaceted spring camp model, building a highly qualified resource team to support the deliver of various aspects of the curriculum, and establishing a national reputation as a high quality outdoor recreation/education program. The national reputation assisted with the recruitment of students from various parts of the country to the program. She established working relationships with a number of professional groups, a sampling of which included Project Adventure, Association of Outdoor Educators, Toronto YMCA, Nova Scotia Outdoor School, Heartwood Association, Ledgehill Centre for Human Resource Development, Annapolis Valley School Board, Canadian Camping Association, and the Outdoor Recreation Council of British Columbia. Jude Hirsch (formerly deGuerre) left Acadia in 1996 to assume a position at Georgia College where she served as Chair of the Department of Kinesiology, and later as Chair of the Department of Outdoor Education until her retirement in 2016.
BRENDA ROBERTSON 1983 - 2012
Brenda served as a faculty member for 29 years and as Director of the Centre of Leisure Studies/Recreation Resource Centre of Nova Scotia for 14 of those years. As Director of the Resource Centre, she and her staff provided a variety of information generation and dissemination services to the professional and scholarly communities throughout Nova Scotia and beyond. These services included resource collection, creation, and dissemination; provision of a broad range of research related services; and the development and delivery of a comprehensive system of professional development offerings. Brenda pursued her PhD in Leisure Studies through the University of Oregon from 1990-1993. Her contributions to curriculum development focused mainly of leisure behaviour, sociology of leisure, leisure education, crime/justice and leisure, youth development, and leisure for disenfranchised populations. Her research shed light on a variety of diverse topics such as crime and leisure, leisure education and literacy, at risk youth, inside the social circus world, and constraints to female participation in recreation and sport. She was frequently called upon to present her work throughout North America, as well as in such diverse locations such as Kenya and Hong Kong. Her professional alliances included Recreation Nova Scotia (served a term as President), Canadian Parks and Recreation Association (Magazine editor), Society of Park and Recreation Educators, and the World Leisure and Recreation Association (served as Program Manager). Awards recognizing her work include: Associated Alumni of Acadia University Excellence in Teaching Award, Recreation Nova Scotia Lifetime Achievement, Association of Atlantic Universities Anne Marie MacKinnon Instructional Leadership Award, Society of Parks and Recreation Educators Excellence in Teaching Award, Canadian Parks and Recreation Award of Merit, and the World Leisure Education Scholar Award.
SUSAN MARKHAM-STARR 1987 - 2012
Susan was the first hire after the PER program review raised dire concerns about academic credibility. She was a solid scholar and the first person to receive a PhD in Leisure Studies in Canada. Her educational background, which also included a Masters degree in Leisure Studies, meant that she could contribute greatly to core curriculum development, as well course creation and delivery, in a broad range of topics. Her contributions included the introductory and cap stone courses, as well as such areas as agency administration, community recreation, planning, and management which incorporated her employment background as well as her education. Susan was a widely renowned scholar on aspects related to the history of parks and recreation which was also reflected in her course offerings. She built an impressive curriculum vitae reflecting 25 years of scholarly contributions, most focused on her interest and expertise in historical inquiry. Another important contribution she made to the field was the creation of extensive research bibliographies on topics such as women as invisible pioneers in the field, and pressure groups and Canadian recreation delivery system. She is well known locally for her work on the history of the Halifax Commons. She has an extensive and impressive list of service work for the university and the field, which includes having served 2 terms as President of the Canadian Association of Leisure Studies, and a term as the Chair of the Recreation Canada Editorial Committee. Other professional affiliations included organizations such as Ontario Research Council on Leisure, North American Society for Sport History, Academy of Leisure Sciences, Society of Park and Recreation Educators, and the World Leisure and Recreation Association. In 1987, she received the Ontario Research Council on Leisure, Marion Miller Award.
ALAN WARNER 2003 - 2019
Alan’s academic background and training was in community psychology. For over 3 decades, he had a strong interest in the benefits of experiential education, which was the focus of his dissertation work in the early 1980s. His work in this area has been recognized by him having been named Canadian Environmental Educator of the Year. Alan has had a long standing partnership with the staff at the Halifax Regional Adventure Earth Centre, where he has been involved with the development, delivery, and assessment of innovative environmental education programs as well as youth staff leadership training. He has involved students in his work, including those engaged in Honours and Masters research. Others areas of academic interest include environmental sustainability, community youth leadership, and international community development. Alan has lived and worked with the Van Gujjars Nomadic herders in Northern India. He has also taken small groups of senior students live and work with Arawak peoples in the rainforests of Guyana, and with Indian villagers in the remote Himalaya, on a three-week field experience. A significant contribution made by Alan, was spearheading the development of a limited enrollment program in Environmental and Sustainability Studies (ESST). Students entering the program could pursue either a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Recreation Management. The purpose was to produce innovative problem-solvers who could address the environmental and sustainability challenges the world is facing. Focusing on one of the following areas: advocacy, education & activism; sustainable community development; environmental thought and practice; or innovation and entrepreneurship, students select courses from a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, political science, economics, education, and business. Alan continued to serve as a professor in the Department of Community Development until his retirement in 2019.
BILL WHITE 1973 - 1995
Bill came to Acadia to replace Wendy Bedingfield as volleyball coach and Physical Education Instructor. While at Acadia, he earned a PhD degree is Leisure Services Administration from Boston University. He was an elite athlete (basketball and tennis) with a keen interest in sport and sport management. His undergraduate degree was in commerce and his Masters in Education. His knowledge and interest in management, education, and leisure meant he could teach a myriad of courses. It also positioned him well to work with Masters students and to teach at the graduate level. A significant portion of Bill’s contribution to Acadia came through his service as the Director of Continuing Education, and the inaugural Dean of the Faculty of Management and Education. He did much to raise the profile of Recreation within the university. Bill contributed greatly to the development of the sport and recreation field having served as chair of the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame, President of the Recreation Association of Nova Scotia, on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Volleyball Association, Chef de Mission for the 1969 Canada Games, and founder and president of Volleyball Nova Scotia. His contribution to the development of the field have been recognized in a variety of ways including being made a Life Member of the Recreation Association of Nova Scotia, an Honourary Life Member of the Atlantic Provinces Association for University Continuing Education, and having been given the Award of Merit from the Canadian Recreation Association, the Honour Award from Physical Education Nova Scotia, and the Service Award from Sport Nova Scotia. Bill left Acadia in 1995 to work for the provincial government as Executive Director of the Sport and Recreation Commission.
ALEX WRIGHT 1979 - 1997
Upon completion of his EdD at Boston University, Alex who was originally from Scotland, accepted a faculty position at Acadia. He was a true scholar in the sense that he was highly intelligent, well schooled in the discipline of leisure, and an avid reader who had an insatiable thirst for knowledge. He loved learning and engaging in academic discourse, and had a passion for sharing knowledge, and working with students on the generation of knowledge. Although Alex was well versed in research methods, he was not actively engaged in research himself. Rather, he devoted his time to working with his graduate students, ensuring that they possessed the research knowledge and skills required to produce high quality work. He supervised graduate research projects on a wide variety of topics including Physical Education Instruction Methods; Work, Leisure and Wellness; Social Structure and Anomie, Park User Market Segmentation, Volunteer Training; Soccer Development; Program Evaluation, Financing Trends; Greek Immigrant Experience; Travel Motivations; Avowed Boredom; Alcoholic Lifestyle Patterns; Vacation Imaging; Community Festivals; and the Lifestyles of Older Women. As Coordinator of the Masters program, he was involved in curriculum development and delivery (e.g. Leisure Theory, Leisure Research, Integrated Seminar) marketing and student recruitment, and personally supervised the thesis process for most students in the program. His undergraduate teaching included a number of the core theory courses, and he developed and taught a number of elective courses with a tourism development focus (e.g. Tourism and Commercial Recreation, Destination Studies, and Community Tourism Development). He also served as coordinator for the tourism concentration. Alex assumed temporary administrative duties on numerous occasions such as Acting Director for the School, including at the time that Jim Bayer passed away. Alex passed away suddenly in 1997 at age 59.