George Lamont

Extension: 46875
Office: HH 156
Email: glamont@uwaterloo.ca

Biography

Whether I learn or teach, I believe in considering multiple ways of looking at a question. For my undergraduate studies, I attended UBC, where I studied English literature, the English language, and several other languages that contextualize the formation of English, such as Latin, Greek, French, and German. I then brought my thinking about studying literature from multiple perspectives to teachers’ college and my Grade 8-12 English classrooms, where I surprised my students with the notion that there really is no one correct interpretation of a text, but a set of well-reasoned possibilities.

That combined approach brought me to the University of Toronto for my Master’s degree, where I focused on how the idea of translation underpins a lot of what we do in any kind of communication or discourse. One particular sentence in a book caught my attention and exploded into my Ph.D. dissertation: how larger syntactic units and basic statistical analysis can  help us distinguish one author’s writing from another’s.

My teaching has taken many interesting turns. Naturally, I have taught in a variety of literature and writing courses, and I have embraced the chance to teach courses about the history and structure of English. However, I also deeply enjoyed teaching rhetoric, writing, and professional communication to students in business and STEM disciplines. Since I have a teaching licence, I have also taught secondary-school English and history here in Ontario, and grown to see the larger issues that students face when they come to university. At the University of Waterloo, where I started in 2017, I teach courses in rhetoric and writing across the disciplines.

Selected publications

Mercer, K., Weaver, K., Lamont, G. “Critical appraisal of information.” Book chapter. In Science + SciComm + Work: Effective Communication in Science Programs. A Practical Guide for Students and Teachers. Springer Nature Books. 2022. 

Weaver, K., Mercer, K., and Lamont, G. “The RADAR framework for evaluating sources of information.” Book chapter. In Science + SciComm + Work: Effective Communication in Science Programs. A Practical Guide for Students and Teachers. Springer Nature Books. 2022. 

Lamont, George; Mutch, Stephanie; Ohaegbu, Chimdindu; Butt, Hamza; Mercer, Kate; Weaver, Kari. "Examining in-person and asynchronous information-seeking behavior instruction among first-year engineering students." Proceedings 2021 American Society for Engineering Education.

George Lamont, Hamza Butt, Chimdindu Ohaegbu, Jessica Macri, Mayuri Punithan, and Steve Lambert. "Thinking 3d in 2d: Teaching three-dimensional analysis and engineering technical writing online during COVID-19." Proceedings 2021 Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG21) Conference.

Kate Mercer, Kari Weaver, George Lamont, and Christine Moffatt. "First year communications classes: Applications of critical evaluation in a problem-based learning framework." Proceedings 2021 Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG21) Conference.

George Lamont and Stephan Lambert. "Teaching First-Year Students to Communicate Problem Analysis and Investigation with an Engineering-Specific Writing Model." Proceedings 2020 Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG20) Conference.

Lamont, George; Figueiredo, Rachel; Mercer, Kate; Weaver, Kari; Jonahs, Andrea; Love, Heather; Mehlenbacher; Brad; Neal, Carter; Zmetana, Katherine; Al-Hammoud, Rania. "Information-seeking behavior among first-year engineering students and the impacts of pedagogical intervention." Proceedings 2020 American Society for Engineering Education.

George Lamont and Stephan Lambert. "Deploying Engineering Cases to Facilitate Problem-Based Thinking in Communications." Proceedings 2019 Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA-ACEG19) Conference, 2019.

Fellowships and awards

• President's Excellence in Teaching 2021
• Faculty of Arts Teaching Excellence Award, 2020, University of Waterloo
• University of Toronto, TATP Teaching Excellence Award
• University of Toronto, Department of English Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
• Ontario Graduate Scholarship
• University of Toronto Fellowship

Current research

My current research is divided into three projects. I am attempting to convert my dissertation work into a book about authorship attribution and how we can synthesize traditional and non-traditional methods to create a more sophisticated set of markers for such studies. I am also working to complete an ongoing project that examines how Shakespeare may have deliberately varied word sets of competing etymological sources to signal specific emotional shifts in his plays. My most recent undertaking is to explore how communications and writing pedagogy can more accurately describe, measure, and report the outcomes of such teaching to demonstrate significant shifts in students’ communications skill sets.

Areas of Expertise

• Translation theory
• Structure of the English language
• Rhetoric
• Communications in Engineering and the sciences