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SHANTELLE BROWNING-MORGAN
BA ’00, BEd ’01, MEd ’08
S
hantelle Browning-Morgan is a Windsor teacher
who received the nation’s highest teaching honour for
transforming her high school classroom into a vehicle for
learning about local history.
Her course, “The History of Africa and Peoples of
African Descent”, illuminates the history of a unique group
of people who settled in the local region to escape slavery
and won her recognition with the 2011 Governor General’s
History Award.
Working with the Essex County Black Historical
Research Society and the Essex County District School
Board to develop materials that highlight the history of
African Canadians in the region, Browning-Morgan served as a lead researcher, writer,
and editor for the project. In her class, students acquire an understanding of the cultural,
social, economic, and political contributions from Africa and the diaspora in local and
global contexts.
As a child, Browning-Morgan listened to her father’s stories about their rich African
heritage but did not learn about it in school. She says that she struggled with her identity
during her teens, feeling discomfort in her own skin.
That changed when she joined the Essex County Black Historical Research Society
at the University of Windsor. “When I think about what my African ancestors endured, I
ought not to be here,” Browning-Morgan told
Professionally Speaking
magazine. “It’s my
responsibility, my purpose, to share their stories with children of all origins. As relatives
in the human family, we all benefit when we learn about one another. It’s the best way to
fight racism.”
Browning-Morgan is also a 2012 recipient of the UWindsor Alumni Association
Odyssey Award.
WANDA JURICIC
BASc ’01
T
he engineering
profession
traditionally is
a tough sell for
women.
“We can’t
really pinpoint
what the reason
is,” says UWindsor
alumna Wanda
Juricic, an electrical
engineer at Stantec
Consulting and member of the Windsor-
Essex chapter of Professional Engineers
Ontario (PEO).
However, as part of PEO, “We’ve been
trying a lot of initiatives to get women to
consider engineering as a career, but a lot
of them are going into the more nurturing
roles of teaching or nursing.”
In her position as an engineer at Stantec
Consulting in Windsor, Ont., Juricic has
nurtured the environment by devising
processes that treat large amounts of
wastewater on a continuous basis to improve
the quality of water before it’s released back
into the environment.The UWindsor grad
has co-ordinated the power requirements to
ensure that wastewater treatment equipment
run properly at all times. She designs and
approves instrumentation and control
systems that monitor the process.
Juricic is also involved in subdivision
designs that provide the power, telephone
and cable infrastructures operating in local
homes. “All renovations and new designs
revolve around the reduction of energy
usage—performing to higher standards yet
keeping costs down.”
She credits her co-op work experiences
during university with showing her that,
“you can’t work alone. You need to work
as a team to come up with a feasible and
functioning product, no matter if it’s
drawings or an automobile.”
