Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

Joel Trudeau has taught in the Physics Department at Dawson College since 2004. His background is in Theoretical Cosmology but his interests and activities involve ideas across a range of knowledge domains. In 2007 he founded SPACE (Sciences Participating with Arts and Culture in Education), an initiative that seeks to expand academic discussion and collaboration across and within disciplines at Dawson College and beyond. He is also the project lead of the Dawson AI Artificial Intelligence initiative, part of a team building the infrastructure and curriculum needed to implement a comprehensive plan for AI education. His work lies in the domain where sciences, arts and technology overlap. Over the years he has been involved with Physics and Science Education research with a special focus on design-based, active and experiential learning. With colleagues at Dawson, he is involved in the enterprise of creating next gen curriculum that develops the critical technical and transversal skills needed for solving the pressing, emerging and potential future problems we all share.

Andrew Katz grew up in Montreal. After graduating from McGill medical school he went on to complete his Masters in English and Creative Writing at Concordia, and since 2006 he has been teaching English and Creative Writing at Dawson College, where in 2013 he won the Director General’s Award for Teaching excellence. He has been involved as a SPACE coordinator and fellow since 2008, and he uses his background in both the sciences and the arts to help students across the disciplines explore connections within and beyond their primary fields of study. He is also a published picture book author; his first picture book, How to Catch a Bear Who Loves to Read (2018), published simultaneously in French as Comment attraper un ours qui aime lire, was nominated for the 2020 Prix Peuplier, an Ontario Library Association Forest of Reading award. His second picture book, I Just Want To Be Super! (Je suis Super Nino!) was published in both English and French in 2020 and won an Independent Press Distinguished Favorites Award. His next picture book, A Starlit Trip to the Library (Voyage de nuit à la bibli) will be published in Fall 2022.