New Associate VP (Graduate Studies)
Martha Crago, Associate Professor in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has been appointed to the position of Associate Vice-Principal (Graduate Studies) for a five-year term commencing June 1, 1997. The appointment was announced by Vice-Principal (Research) and Dean of Graduate Studies Pierre Bélanger.
Dr. Crago has had a long-standing and broad range of experience with graduate studies at McGill. She obtained her BA in Sociology and Anthropology at McGill in 1968, followed by a Master's (Applied) degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Beginning in 1970, she taught graduate students as a faculty lecturer and served as her department's Clinical Administrator. Since the completion of her doctoral degree in 1988, Dr. Crago has become an associate professor and an active social science researcher who has been very involved in the supervision of masters' and doctoral research students. Her research is focused on language acquisition and cultural patterns of language use in First Nations and Inuit communities in Quebec. In addition she studies developmental language impairment in children speaking English and French.
Dr. Crago is a member of several multidisciplinary research teams from a number of faculties and a variety of departments. She has served on a range of departmental committees as well as on the Graduate Faculty Council and Senate. Dr. Crago is a member of the Aboriginal Subcommittee of the Joint Board of Governors and Senate Equity Committee and was one of the primary drafters of McGill's 1993 Report to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People.
Fluently bilingual, she has been the president of the Le comité des femmes en milieu universitaire de la Fédération Québécoise des professeurs et professeures d'université and has supervised theses and served on orals and comprehensive examination committees for graduate students from the Université de Montréal.
Dr. Crago has indicated that her priorities in her new position include:
- recruiting high quality graduate students and making fellowships, travel money and fee waivers available to them in a time of budgetary constraint,
- working to develop multidisciplinary options that will attract graduate students to McGill's particular areas of strength and build critical supervisory mass in these areas in a time of shrinking professorial numbers, and
- developing methods for sharing graduate teaching resources and course offerings across faculties and departments.
Professor Crago succeeds Lydia White, who was appointed the first Associate Vice-Principal (Graduate Studies) in 1993.
