Connie Crosby, is the creator and co-instructor of our Introduction to Social Media course, and the author of a well-received book on the subject published for use by professional Librarians. Students not only praised her ability to cover extensive amounts of ground in the course ? a common comment was “this should be two days, not one!”, due to the wealth of information shared – but students also leave with their social media presence established and ready to use in their business or employer’s interests
From our students "the material was presented so clearly and logically it was like little light bulbs going on in my head throughout the entire course! Thanks for making it interesting engaging and very benefitial from start to finish"

Ulla deStricker offered two different programs during the past year, and in both worked with co-instructors, helping to grow the instructor community at the Institute. The student bodies for Ulla’s course on Information Entrepreneurship, and on Information Audit, were very different, but both had the same strong positive feedback to offer. Ulla also published a professional book in the past year, and frequently spends time throughout the academic year working with the Masters’ students in the Faculty of Information to help them prepare for the search for work.
Ulla's students commented that "she delighted the entire class with her enthusiam and incredible nowledge of the topic - don't let her go anywhere she is a great teacher!"

Stephen Abram, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships and Markets, Gale Cengage This year, our Instructor of the Year, Stephen Abram, edged out his peers to be recognised by the Institute and its students for his work during the preceding year – and the many years before it.
Stephen’s course, Designing Information Products and Services, remains a top course for people in the information professions charged with establishing products, services and institutions (e.g. special libraries within other organizations) to stay current with the leading edge of this part of the field. Typical of the comments received by his students are such quotes as:
"I wish I could soak up more! I have so many new ideas, I hope I can communicate them all to my colleagues!"
"I always learn the most from Stephen’s tangents and stories gleaned from his many industry contacts (and how does he instantly recall so many great statistics, with sources)".
"I thoroughly enjoyed this course because he related all the material to real-life business experiences."
Stephen is just one of the many leaders in the information professions who take the time to share their experience and knowledge as instructors at the Institute – and one we’re glad to have! Congratulations to our Instructor of the Year 2009-10.

Janet de Guzman, Senior Consultant
is the Team Leader for CGI’s GTA Information Management Practice (IM) and has over eight years experience in the records and information management working with her clients to assess IM compliance, develop IM programs, strategies, policies, and change management plans. Janet has extensive experience in electronic information management (EIM) system implementations including conducting readiness assessments, defining business requirements, developing business rules development and conducting post-project evaluations. Janet is a dynamic instructor and effective focus group facilitator. She has a proven ability to work closely with client users, management and steering committees to develop a solid understanding of the current and desired future state of their information management environment. As co-director of the current IM program she was instrumenta in researching and designing the new package of course offerings.

Deirdre Grimes BA MLS
is Manager, Office of Information Management at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario where she oversees a team of information professionals responsible for information standards and policies, business and user research to support information product and service development, and the Assembly’s corporate information resources. Deirdre brings over 25 years’ experience as an information professional in the private and public sector. She is an experienced instructor who has taught for several years in the former Information Management certificate program. As co-director of the current IM program she was instrumental in researching and designing the new package of course offerings.

Sheila Taylor, a Certified Records Manager, has always been active in ARMA serving currently as an Area Director of the ARMA Southwestern Ontario Chapter and previously on the Board of Directors of the ARMA Toronto Chapter. It was her work with ARMA that led her to being one of the developers of the PLC/ARMA Records Management certificate programs and has been an instructor of the classroom and online courses ever since. She also reviewed the certificate program a few years ago - all significant undertakings and incredible contributions to the PLC. Thank you Sheila!

Outside the PLC Sheila is the General Manager - Southern Ontario of CONDAR Consulting Inc., a product-independent information management consultancy; she keeps up to date with the latest in Records Management and brings this to her teaching.

Paul Fisher

Patrick Donoahue

Patrick teaches Website Implementation & Management, Photoshop, Dreamweaver: An Introduction and Dreamweaver: Advanced Features.

Most recently Patrick has been investigating how PLC can move forward with more online courses that are relatively easy and cheap to develop and deliver. In fact, his website implementation course is on the web for his students to refer to and to further explore related links. His enthusiasm is contagious and I'm sure I'm frustrating him with my somewhat slower pace on this - but with his professionalism, he would never show it.

Patrick is a computer graphics graduate of the Academy of Design and a founder and director of Studio Annex Inc. He creates web sites as part of an organization's overall marketing strategy, integrating websites with the organization's logo, advertising, and other branding publications.

Keith Shengili-Roberts

Keith teaches Information Architecture and Open Systems Web Development.

An Information Architect at ATI, Keith brings his extensive practical knowledge of Web best practices and management strategies, and blends it with his ability to easily convey complex subject matter to the delight of his students. Keith's by-line could be "excellent instructor" since it is written so frequently on the evaluations. He is known for his knowledge, flexibility, and ability to "create a wonderful atmosphere of learning through discussion with the whole group."

A pioneer in the Web development and management fields, he is also the author of several books on Web technologies, his most recent being Core CSS, 2nd Edition (Prentice Hall, 2003). In his career he has worked as a Web Manager and Webmaster at Digital View, Sitraka, Symantec and Delrina, concentrating in recent years on Open Source development projects.

Jean Dryden

"Articulate", "knowledgeable", "organized", "informative", "engaging", "approachable", and "funny". These are some of the ways Professional Learning Centre students describe the 2004 recipient of the PLC Outstanding Teaching Award.

Jean Dryden is the PLC's copyright expert. Currently she teaches three workshops on the topic in Toronto and Ottawa - Copyright Demystified, Copyright in Photographs, and Copyright in Moving Image Materials. Whenever Jean runs one of her courses, she receives an enthusiastic endorsement from the class. They appreciate her patience, her ability to reduce a complex topic to manageable proportions, her organizational talent and, most of all, they appreciate her deep understanding of the topic.

She played a lead role in successful lobbying for exceptions for libraries, archives and museums during the discussions leading to the 1997 amendments to the Copyright Act.

Ryan McRonald

Ryan is a Manager with BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting) working in IT security, architecture, system integration, system administration and privacy. His previous experience was in the higher education, public, and financial services sectors. Ryan likes to teach. Since 1994 he has developed and delivered courses for continuing education programs at Humber College, Seneca College, and Sheridan College as well as the several courses he has developed for the University of Toronto. Currently, he teaches Internet/Intranet Security Issues, Part I: Business Perspectives and Part 2: Technical Perspectives.

Outstanding Teaching Award, 2002

Caroline Werle

Caroline is a Certified Records Manager and president of Records and Information Management Services Inc. RIM is a consulting firm in records management, information and library services. It is also a well-known placement agency for records managers and librarians.

Outstanding Teaching Award, 2001

Gwen Harris

One of Canada's foremost Internet trainers and instructional designers is the recipient of the Professional Learning Centre's first Outstanding Teaching Award.

Gwen has been with the Professional Learning Centre since 1994. Her speciality is mastering the many facets of the Internet. Her first course was Internet Basics. Today she teaches the classroom course Advanced Web Search Strategies.

Gwen received her MLS from FI in 1994. She also has an MBA from Queen's University.