About

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Journalism Background

I was trained and began my career as a journalist. I worked as a reporter, editor, copyeditor, and fact-checker for a variety of Canadian media, including Canadian Business, MoneySense, Saturday Night, Canadian Geographic, Quill & Quire, National Post Business Magazine, and the Financial Post. I was also the listings editor for the first edition of the Time Out Toronto travel guide and the inaugural editor of Bankrate.ca, the Canadian offshoot of the popular US personal finance website. In 2003, I was part of a team that won a gold medal at the National Magazine Awards in the personal finance and business category for “A Survival Guide to Family Finance,” edited by the late Stephen Trumper.

I have published three edited collections of personal essays about the changing nature of the family in the 21^st century: Nobody’s Father: Life Without Kids and Somebody’s Child: Stories About Adoption, both co-edited with Lynne Van Luven, and A Family By Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships, which won a silver medal at the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards and was a finalist at the 27^th annual Lambda Literary Awards.

Teaching and Learning

I began teaching as a contract faculty member in the journalism school at what is now known as Toronto Metropolitan University, teaching courses about magazine and feature writing and freelance writing.

Since 2010, I have been a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, where my teaching focus is digital media and journalism and user experience design. I have designed and taught a wide variety of courses about news writing and reporting, feature writing, literary journalism, fact-checking and copyediting, digital and social media, media law and ethics, interviewing, and media studies. I also designed Laurier’s Certificate in Digital Media Production for Digital Media and Journalism majors, which involved the creation of six new hands-on, workshop-style courses in digital imaging and editing, video, and audio storytelling, and two Digital Media Skills Certificates as a way for non-majors to upgrade their degrees with in-demand media production skills.

In 2018, I published News Writing and Reporting: An Introduction to Skills and Theory with Oxford University Press, which is used in university and college classes across Canada.

In 2017, I was named a Laurier Teaching Fellow, an honour that recognizes exceptional contributions to teaching and learning and an exemplary record of achievement in educational leadership.

Leadership

I am an experienced leader who values collegiality, collaboration, and inclusivity with a strong commitment to student success and well-being. Between 2018 and 2022, I was the coordinator (chair) of Laurier’s Digital Media and Journalism program. In this role, I was able to put my passion for student-centred teaching, curriculum (re)design, and innovation into action. I led the program through a cyclical review, sole-authoring our self-study and then managing a revisioning of our curriculum in response to the reviewers’ recommendations. I fostered new relationships with on-campus partners, such as engaging the university’s Community and Workplace and Partnerships staff in helping to support students on practicum placements.

Since 2015, I have co-led a Community of Practice focused on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at Laurier’s Brantford campus. In 2020-21, I was elected by my peers to chair the review committee for our campus’s core curriculum, which involved facilitating discussions with a group of 50 students, staff, faculty, and administrators.

Outside of the university, I was the editor-in-chief of J-Source.ca between 2013 and 2016, leading a nation-wide collaborative effort of journalism faculty, students, industry partners, and one full-time staff member to report on and critique journalism in Canada.

Service

I am an active member of the Laurier community, having served on a wide variety of faculty-based and university-wide committees, including search committees for the first associate vice-president: academic (2021-22) and the associate vice-president: teaching and learning (2016-17). I am a member of the Senate Academic Planning Committee and its Program Review Subcommittee. I also served on the executive of the Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association (2021-22) and am currently a member of the WLUFA-Laurier Joint Liaison Committee. I have been a reviewer, internally and externally, for cyclical reviews as mandated under the province’s Quality Assurance Framework and have also served as an external examiner for tenure and promotion reviews.

Between 2018 and 2012, I was a member of the Wilfrid Laurier University Press editorial board. Since 2012, I have been a judge for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction, administered by Laurier.

I have also served as a judge for a wide variety of media awards, including the RTDNA Canada Awards, National Magazine Awards, Western Magazine Awards, Atlantic Journalism Awards, and Digital Publishing Awards.

In 2020, the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities recognized me with a Minister’s Award of Excellence for my work keeping the Laurier Brantford community connected through the One Market podcast, which I created and produced with Tarah Brookfield in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Find me on LinkedIn. Email me at infoatbrucegillespie.com

Illustration by Jake Tobin Garrett.