Free Press columnist wins award for bridging the gap between academia and community

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This article was published 12/06/2018 (2669 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg Free Press columnist Shannon Sampert is being recognized for her work in bridging the worlds of academia and community.

Sampert will be honoured with the Marsha Hanen Award for Excellence in Creating Community Awareness at the University of Winnipeg’s spring convocation Friday. Named after the fourth president of the U of W, the award recognizes faculty and staff for activities that create awareness about the university, and increase the public’s understanding and respect for the institution.

“I guess there’s value in being the big mouth and this opinionated person that I have been,” Sampert said with a laugh Tuesday.

Sampert, who researches how media, politics and gender intersect, started teaching at the University of Winnipeg in 2005. The academic took a three-year leave (2014-17) to work as the first female op-ed editor at the Free Press. She now writes a biweekly column for the newspaper.

When she returned back to her position as an associate professor in the department of political science, she also picked up a new role as the executive director of the Evidence Network. She publishes op-eds on policy stories, connects journalists with policy experts, and goes to conferences across Canada scouting for academics whose research would make for an engaging feature.

“Academics really need to engage by using op-eds with the media, to let the public know what it is they’re researching,” she said.

“Universities cannot be these microcosms that operate in ivory towers by themselves. We have to be important contributing members of the community (because) the community supports us through tax dollars and through charitable contributions.”

She said academics given funding grants are often required to do “knowledge mobilization,” meaning they have to educate others on what they’ve learned in their research. Many scholars see it as “getting dressed up and going to presentations,” she added.

Five years ago, she said she, too, dressed up, and meticulously chose colours and fonts for a PowerPoint presentation for a conference she and a colleague were attending in Florida.

“We had flown all the way from Canada to Tampa Bay, and one person or two people had come to the conference to hear us speak,” she said. “But when I do an op-ed, I instantly get thousands of people reading about what I’m talking about.”

Jino Distasio, the vice-president of research and innovation at the University of Winnipeg, nominated Sampert for the award. He called Sampert both a “public scholar” and “community voice,” and said her ability to take complex issues and translate them into simpler terms in her writing is “a skill that not enough people have.”

“We need to be able to take often complex issues, whether they’re social, political, economic, and be able to really make an impact with that work,” he said.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie