Award of Excellence
The Award of Excellence recognizes specific, recent accomplishments of University of Alberta graduates.
2011 Award Winners
Trevor Anderson, ’95 BA, is gaining international attention as an independent filmmaker, and his work is screened at festivals around the world. His recent short film, The High Level Bridge, premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival and was an official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The High Level Bridge, an independently produced tribute to the people and events surrounding Edmonton’s 48-metrehigh landmark, also received an honourable mention in the live action short film category at the American Film Institute’s 2010 AFI Fest. This selftaught filmmaker is also a theatre director, playwright and musician with the band The Wet Secrets, whose song “Secret March” was named as one of the best songs of the decade by CBC Radio 3 in 2010.
Shannon S. D. Bredin, ’96 BPE, ’96 BEd, ’98 MSc, has quickly established herself as a leader in the field of physical activity and health, where she is conducting pioneering research. A leader in community-based initiatives, she was the project lead in the innovative telehealth program, the Physical Activity Line (www.physicalactivityline.com), Canada’s free resource for evidence-based physical activity information. She was a principal investigator on the Getting Games Fit program for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, and she is the founder and director of the Cognitive and Functional Learning Laboratory at the University of British Columbia. In recognition of her many contributions, this assistant professor at UBC has received many honours, including the prestigious Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology Health and Fitness Program Recognition Award in 2010.
Todd Cherniawsky, ’93 BFA, is an accomplished production designer who has worked on numerous Hollywood blockbusters. He has been a member of two Academy-Award winning teams for art direction, including Avatar in 2010 and Alice in Wonderland in 2011, where he created the entire digital environment. Alice in Wonderland was also nominated by the Art Directors Guild for Excellence in Production Design for a Fantasy Film. A graduate of the American Film Institute with an MFA in production design, he has been creating behind-the-scenes movie magic for the past 15 years, and his work can be seen in Splice, Beowulf, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Ocean’s 13. He is currently working on Disney’s Oz: The Great & Powerful as the art director, Emerald City.
Christopher Opio, ’94 PhD, is a University of Northern British Columbia professor making a difference in the lives of people living in Uganda. Compelled by his own personal experience (he was born and raised in povertystricken northern Uganda), he decided to put his academic and scientific training to work and help those from his home country. In 2007, he and UNBC colleague Tony Donavan founded the Northern Uganda Development Foundation (NUDF) to provide safe drinking water and locally managed projects for Ugandans. To date, NUDF has opened 42 wells, providing more than 50,000 people with access to clean water, and local farmers are now earning incomes from sustainable projects. In recognition of his humanitarian work as co-founder and chair of NUDF, he was named one of Canada’s Top 10 Champions of Change in 2010.
Nathan Whitling, ’93 BCom, ’97 LLB, is an Edmonton lawyer regarded for his expertise in civil rights law. In 2010, he received the Harradence Prize from the Criminal Trial Lawyers’ Association in recognition of his dedication to the principles of fundamental justice and fairness. Known for taking on controversial cases, he is lauded for protecting the rights of imprisoned persons as demonstrated in his work with Omar Khadr in Guantanamo Bay. A Harvard University Master of Laws graduate, he has appeared as a lead counsel before all levels of court in Canada and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Human Rights Medal from the Canadian Human Rights Institute in 2009 and the Canadian National Pro Bono Distinguished Service Award in 2008.