Academic, athletic and other forms of excellence were honoured recently at the Queen’s Law Students Society awards, as students voted for the faculty’s best teachers and shone a light on outstanding performances by their peers.

The awards, covering a wide range of areas of excellence (and detailed fully at https://law.queensu.ca/jd-studies/awards), range from the Spark Award for a first-year student demonstrating commitment to the law school to the M.A. Murray award, named for one of the school’s registrars and rewarding excellence in athletics.

Awards for groups at the law school include the Camaraderie Award, for “initiative, contribution, participation and organization of events and activities to further the Queen’s Law community spirit” (won this year by the Queen’s Law Cancer Society), and the Professional Excellence Award, which celebrates “involvement in activities and events that promote educational and professional excellence… that go beyond the status quo,” awarded in 2018 to the Queen’s Muslim Law Students Association.

The Stanley M. Corbett Awards for Teaching Excellence were presented to Lisa Kelly as the winner among full-time faculty and Dahman Kissoon among the sessional instructors. 

Kissoon was lauded in his nomination letters for his “incredible enthusiasm and passion,” balance of substantive legal instruction and current events, and overall quality of content in his course, Racism in the Canadian Legal Context.

Kelly also drew strong praise from nominees, mentioning her classroom strengths of depth of knowledge as a “vibrant and engaging” instructor and her method of encouraging and sharing legal analysis, as well as her commitment to supporting students and enthusiasm for welcoming guest speakers to her class and to the Faculty.

The full list of 2018 award recipients is:

Spark Award – Thomas Daechsel

Millennium Award – Diane Wu

Gavel Award – Stephanie McLoughlin

Spirit Award –  Marika Maksymec

MA Murray Award – Ryan Wilson

Denis Marshall Contribution Award – Andrew Hills, Sakshi Sharma & Marika Maksymec

Professional Excellence Award – Queen’s Muslim Law Students Association

Camaraderie Award – Queen’s Law Cancer Society

Stanley M. Corbett Teaching Award – Dahman Kissoon (Sessional) & Lisa Kelly (Full-Time)