Prof. LaViolette (’96) Receives uOttawa Excellence in Education Prize
Professor Nicole LaViolette (’96) has received a University of Ottawa 2010 Excellence in Education Prize of $10,000 for her research project to improve a transnational law course at the Common Law Section.
Since joining the Faculty in 1998, Prof. LaViolette has proven herself as a dynamic and innovative professor who continually demonstrates a remarkable commitment to her students. Bruce Feldthusen, Dean of the Common Law Section, congratulated Prof. LaViolette on behalf of the Faculty, noting, “The Excellence in Education award recognizes educators of exceptional quality who demonstrate outstanding teaching skills while maintaining a solid research record. Nicole proves—and continually strives to improve—herself on both of these fronts.”
Recipients of this prize receive $7,000 for innovative teaching development and up to $3,000 for supplementary duties associated with teaching development.
The Prize will allow Prof. LaViolette to improve an experimental course in family law which is currently offered to students from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico via video-conferencing. The course gives students the opportunity to deal with real family law issues, and exposes them to the differences and nuances of each country’s legal system.
Prof. LaViolette’s project aims to transform the current transnational teaching model, under which the course contents vary from year to year, to create a compulsory Common Law course dedicated to transnational family law. In particular, the project would create factual scenarios that would present different problems to students in each region, based on their own national family laws. The new course would also better integrate the range of multimedia resources currently available for teaching and create a comprehensive website and database of relevant articles and cases from different regions. Prof. LaViolette also envisions a greater reliance on video-conferencing, taking full advantage of a wide network of Professors and experts to present on the course’s chosen topics.
Prof. LaViolette is confident that plenty of students are interested in taking part in a practical course on comparative law. “Generally, most students don’t have a firm grasp of the fundamental differences and curious similarities that exist between countries in the domain of family law,” she says. “Most don’t tend to think of law beyond the borders of their own country.” This new course aims to expose students to foreign systems of law in a highly practical and experimental format.
Prof. LaViolette will be honoured by the University in a ceremony in the Fall of 2010.
Congratulations!