Dear STLHE Members,

As your President, I, like many of our members, have been devastated by the horrific racist events in recent days in the United States.  As much as we may like to think of these as isolated events, we know that such events are happening all over the world, including here at home in Canada.

STLHE espouses as its vision that we:

strive to be the pre-eminent national voice, and a world leader, for enhancing teaching and learning in higher education. The Society supports research, its dissemination, increased awareness, and application of research through scholarly teaching and learning.

In seeking to achieve this vision it is important that we use our collective voice to challenge racism in all its forms.  Racism has no place within STLHE, at our post-secondary institutions and within our larger communities. These recent events provide a stark reminder that racism is a learned behaviour and not something we are born with. As educators, we must therefore devote our energy, talents, and resources to raising awareness about its history and destructive impacts and learning ways of eliminating this scourge from our institutions and communities.  

STLHE is a place that I have in the past described as being a home, and within our family, I like to think that we will take care of one another, respect, genuinely care, and value all people.

STLHE individual and institutional members have done much work on inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism. But much more needs to be done. We have created a series of pages on the keepteaching.ca site for our community to share relevant resources. It is important as educators that we use our collective voice to speak out against racism and to stand together with our Black colleagues and the entire Black community in fighting anti-Black racism and striving for racial justice and equality.

Take care,

Denise Stockley, Ph.D.
President
Queen’s University, June 2020–June 2023 (second term)