Professor Gary MacGillivray to receive the 2018 CMS Excellence in Teaching Award

OTTAWA, Ontario — The Canadian Mathematical Society (CMS) is pleased to announce that Professor Gary MacGillivray (Victoria) has been named the 2018 recipient of the CMS Excellence in Teaching Award. Professor MacGillivray will present a prize lecture and receive his award at the CMS Summer Meeting at the University of New Brunswick, June 1-4, 2018.

MacGillivray's boundless energy, his love of teaching, his strong commitment and dedication to the success of his students have earned him the respect of his colleagues. His colleagues describe him as a great and effective teacher who is truly involved in his community and by his students as master of explaining hard topics and a very approachable professor.

“Dr. MacGillivray has an ability to positively impact people’s lives all around him. His love and passion for Mathematics and Mathematical education is clearly contagious, influencing many students and colleagues alike,” says CMS Education Committee Chair Joseph Khoury. “Gary’s students say he gives remarkably clear lecturers, he motivates and inspires them to think hard, makes difficult concepts easy and fun, and cares deeply about them,” says professor Jane Ye from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Victoria.

MacGillivray’s style of teaching, his dedication and commitment to his students’ success have certainly left a long lasting impact on the path many of them take. As a result of following his inspiring courses, some of his students followed his footsteps and became teachers themselves; and some have been inspired to change their University major to Mathematics or mathematical education. He also seems to be among the few Canadian mathematicians who realized early in their career the value of exposing undergraduate students to the value of research in Mathematics. MacGillivray has worked tirelessly on supervising and guiding research projects for many undergraduate students throughout his career.

Professor MacGillivray’s dedication and commitment to students’ success did not go unnoticed by his colleagues and students. He was awarded the University of Victoria Faculty of Science Teaching award in 2010 and the Harry Hickman Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2011.

Gary MacGillivray earned a Combined Honours BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics from University of Victoria in 1985, and a Masters in Science in Mathematics from University of Victoria in 1986 (supervisor: Ernie Cockayne, area: graph theory). MacGillivray earned his doctorate in Mathematics from Simon Fraser in 1990 (supervisor: Pavol Hell, areas: algorithms and complexity). His entire education was half mathematics and half computer science, and the same is true of his research to this day. He held positions at Capilano College and the University of Regina before arriving at the University of Victoria in 1992 where he has been a faculty member ever since. In 2003 McGillivray was promoted to Professor.

During his time at the University of Victoria Professor MacGillivray has continually been the organizer of the Discrete Math Seminar, and the coordinator of the Logic and Foundations course.

Over the course of his career, Professor MacGillivray has supervised 48 undergraduate research projects, and 39 graduate students or post-docs. He has written more than 100 papers, more than half of which are collaborations with students or post-docs.