The Faculty of Science is pleased to announce that Associate Professor from the School of Land Use and Environmental Change, Dr. Stefania Pizzirani is this year’s recipient of UFV’s Faculty Service Excellence Award!
Faculty Service Excellence 2023: Stefania Pizzirani infuses service into teaching, research, and community work
by Anne Russell, UFV Today
For Dr. Stefania Pizzirani, her duties as an assistant professor at UFV don’t fall into strict silos of teaching, research, and service. They all blend together.
Her teaching includes service components. Her research is often based on grassroots community needs. And her service activities feed off her teaching, her research, and her relationships with students, fellow faculty, and community members.
For the dedication she brings to her vocation Pizzirani, an assistant professor in the School of Land Use and Environmental Change who joined UFV in 2019, is this year’s recipient of the Faculty Service Excellence award.
Jennifer Martel of UFV’s Office of Sustainability, who nominated Pizzirani for the award, had a hard time narrowing down which category to nominate her for.
“Stefania embodies a service mindset in everything that she does. This is seen in her teaching and interactions with her students, and the incredible effort, dedication, and care that she puts into her research. While Stefania is worthy of all of the faculty excellence award categories, the service award seems most fitting since her service shows up in all areas,” says Martel.
“The genuine care that Stefania has for the students, their well-being, and their futures, is demonstrated through her dedication to offering students opportunities and networks beyond the classroom that they will be able to utilize upon leaving UFV.”
Pizzirani’s service mindset shines through in her research, which is mostly community focused. Through her internal and external research partnerships she extends across disciplines, applies a justice and equity lens in her environmental research, and involves local regions and communities in projects aimed at fostering sustainable resiliency.
