Creativity. Technology. Business.

Congratulations to Dr. Noorin Manji for receiving the Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching! Dean Alexie Tcheuyap and the Arts Honours and Awards committee are pleased to announce the results of the 2025 Arts Awards for Excellence in Service, Teaching, and Research. The awards recognize outstanding contributions from faculty and staff, with Dr. Manji being honored for her exemplary teaching over the past five years. The awards will be presented this Fall at the annual Celebration of Arts event.

Researchers at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business challenge the belief that Virtual Reality (VR) inherently fosters perspective-taking in their article, “Seeing Is Not Thinking: Testing capabilities of VR to Promote Perspective-Taking.” They argue that VR's potential as an "empathy machine" relies on intentional design that promotes active cognitive engagement. Through experiments, they found that perspective-taking is enhanced when users are prompted with specific tasks, encouraging them to consider the character's viewpoint. This study, which received the Best Paper Award at IEEE VR, underscores the importance of purposeful VR design to effectively harness its empathetic capabilities.

Because of the Stratford School Student Initiatives Fund supporting student-led activities, Gaurav was able to grow as a leader and community builder, whether it was through coding for a local non-profit or reviving the GBDA On Air podcast to reach incoming students.

Learn more about the Stratford School Student Initiatives Fund, and join us on May 15th for Giving Day, encouraging donations to support educational initiatives.