Three academics with remarkably different careers and styles but who have all inspired generations of students and colleagues have been recognised in the 2017 Philippa Maddern Awards.
The biennial award was created four years ago by the UWA Academic Staff Association (UWAASA) to honour the life and legacy of historian Philippa Maddern’s leadership, her mentoring of students and contribution to pedagogy.
Dr Louise Naylor won in the 2017 Present Staff category, in recognition of her ‘many and varied positive influences on colleagues and students at UWA and in the healthcare sector of WA’.
“She’s been a leader in the establishment of exercise physiology as an allied health profession in WA where she’s applied her unique skills and knowledge to directly address the nexus between the higher education of the students she teaches and mentors, and industry,” Dr Kirkham says.
Paediatrician, academic and health care leader Professor David Forbes received the award in the category of Former Colleagues (Retired or No Longer Working at UWA) for his significant impact on the quality of health care delivery over the past 50 years.
UWAASA President Dr Nin Kirkham says Professor Forbes has contributed to direct clinical care, health policy, workforce development and research and teaching, with a lasting and positive effect on all those around him with his kindness, compassion and patience.
“His medical career has largely been dedicated to childhood nutrition, including work in indigenous health and nutritionally disadvantaged developing countries but what really stood out was David’s lifelong commitment to advocacy for social justice, in a whole range of areas,” Dr Kirkham says.
Dr Judith Maitland was honoured in the award’s Posthumous category for her ‘enormous energy, an endless enthusiasm for madcap fun and an infectious love of the classics’.
“Judith was a committed and popular teacher in Classics and Ancient History, who instilled in her students her own passion for the languages and literatures of Latin and Ancient Greek and is widely, and fondly, remembered for her dramatic productions of the classics,” Dr Kirkham says.
Read Professor Forbes acceptance speech here and the one by Mrs Rebecca Scott on behalf of her mother, Dr Judith Maitland here.