"Innovation can only be sustained in an environment where
innovative thinking is nurtured"
Claude Legrand, entrepreneur

Ultimately, the university is only as strong, creative, and excellent as its people. Since our founding in 1925, we have tried to create an environment that fosters imagination, innovation and creativity. In June, Professor Shane O'Dea was named one of only 10 recipients in Canada of the prestigious 3M Teaching Fellowships for 2002, in recognition of his three decades of outstanding teaching and educational leadership at the university. Our alumni, more than 45,000 strong, make their mark in Canada and around the world in numerous fields. Among them are novelist and poet Michael Crummey, whose novel River Thieves was nominated for Canada's Giller Prize, one of the country's most prestigious literary awards.

Our students, numbering more than 17,000, regularly make their mark nationally and internationally. This past year, our undergraduate students were again highly successful at the national Intercollegiate Business Competition. Memorial's teams brought home first-place finishes in accounting (Troy Stanley, Christine Thomson), debating (Tom Dunne, John Whelan) and management of information systems (Linda Cole, Jason Greenland), and a second-place finish in labour arbitration (Janice Finlay, Rose Marie Fulford).

Our faculty and staff are acclaimed for their contributions to their scholarly fields and professions. For example, Dr. Peter Hart, History, is an international authority on Irish identity and politics in the 19th and 20th centuries and holds a Canada Research Chair in Irish Studies at Memorial. Dr. Hart's latest publication, British Intelligence in Ireland, 1920-21 The Final Reports, is an in-depth look at the Irish revolution which ended in a military and political stalemate, and challenges the traditional views of this subject.