Honorary Degree Books 2026
Lorna Crozier
Lorna Crozier is a pre-eminent poet and award-winning professor who has made enduring contributions to post-secondary education and Canadian literature. Born in Swift Current, Sask., she completed her bachelor of arts at the University of Saskatchewan in 1969 and earned her master of arts from the University of Alberta in 1980 before taking a professorship at the University of Victoria in 1991, where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita. Crozier has published 23 volumes of poetry, including the Governor General’s Award-winning Inventing the Hawk and her two acclaimed memoirs, Small Beneath the Sky and Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats). She has also been a mentor to renowned authors such as Richard Wagamese and Esi Edugyan, and as co-editor of the Breathing Fire anthologies with her late husband and fellow poet, Patrick Lane, she has played an influential role in highlighting new Canadian poets. A lifetime member of the League of Canadian Poets, she was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2009 and an officer of the Order of Canada in 2011. Her enduring relationship with the U of A was celebrated in 2005 when she received an Alumni Honour Award.
Poems upon Several Occasions
Ah! What can mean that eager Joy
Transports my Heart when you appear? (92)
Widely recognized as the first Englishwoman to support herself through writing, Aphra Behn (1640–1689) was a poet, playwright, and author of prose fiction and translations. As the excerpt above indicates, love is central to Behn’s poetry and scholars have written extensively on how she constructs and represents passion. In this collection, Behn writes with remarkable candour, exploring both the emotional and physical dimensions of intimate relationships. The poems also highlight Behn's dual role as a pioneering female writer and social commentator. This copy is bound in mottled calfskin with gilt ruling on the covers. The spine is decoratively tooled and gilt-lettered in compartments, and the typographic bookplate of Lawrence Strangman, a previous owner’s mark, is affixed to the front pastedown. [PR 3317 A6 1684]
Dr Richard Sutton
Richard Sutton, a professor in the Department of Computing Science and a founder of modern computational reinforcement learning, has been instrumental in shaping Alberta into a world-renowned AI hub since arriving at the U of A in 2003. The usefulness of Sutton’s visionary research has expanded far beyond computer science, with wide-ranging applications in medicine, economics, engineering and agriculture. Sutton got his start at Stanford University as an undergraduate studying behavioural psychology. He went on to earn his master’s and PhD in computer science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he met longtime collaborator Andrew Barto. In 1998, they published Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction, which has remained an essential text in the field. Sutton served as Chair of Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence at iCORE/AITF until 2018, founded the Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and is also chief scientific advisor at Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. In 2017, he co-founded Google DeepMind Alberta, and in 2023, he announced a partnership with the celebrated video game engineer John Carmack. In 2018, the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Association recognized Sutton with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Society of London and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. Most recently, he was a co-recipient of the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery A.M. Turing Award, the world’s most prestigious prize in computing science.
The Sciences of the Artificial
Herbert A. Simon’s (1916–2001) foundational text on artificial intelligence explores “how a science of the artificial is possible” and the ways in which “artificiality is interesting principally when it concerns complex systems that live in complex environments” (xi). An American social scientist and pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence, Simon received numerous accolades, including the 1975 A.M. Turing Award (shared with collaborator Allen Newell), the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics, and the National Medal of Science (1986). In his opening chapter on natural and artificial worlds, Simon addresses the origin of the term “artificial intelligence,” noting that it “...was coined, I think, right on the River Charles, at M.I.T. Our own research group at RAND and Carnegie-Mellon University have preferred phrases like ‘complex information processing’ and ‘simulation of cognitive processes.’ But then we run into new terminological difficulties, for the dictionary also says that ‘to simulate’ means ‘to assume or have the mere appearance or form of, without the reality; imitate; counterfeit; pretend.’ At any rate, ‘artificial intelligence’ seems to be here to stay…” (4). This first edition is of particular research interest because it presents the text in its original form. In the more widely available second (1981) and third (1996) editions, the sections on economic systems, organizational design, and modern computational tools are significantly expanded. First edition copies of this book are hard to come by, especially those with the elusive dust jacket. This copy is bound in white cloth with minimal wear and includes a near-fine jacket. As a significant early text on artificial intelligence, it is a valuable addition to the Peel library’s interdisciplinary science holdings. [Q 175 S59 1969]
David Tuccaro
David Tuccaro, a member of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, is a business leader and philanthropist who has used his knowledge, expertise and influence to advance economic development in the Wood Buffalo region and enrich the lives of Indigenous youth and entrepreneurs across Canada. As founder and CEO of the Tuccaro Group of Companies, he took a struggling business and built it into a multimillion-dollar empire providing essential services to the oilsands industry in northeastern Alberta and to communities throughout Western Canada. His lifelong dedication to education, inspired by his mother’s example, has guided his mission of using his businesses to create opportunities for Indigenous people at every level of education and employment. He is a founding member and past president of the Northeastern Aboriginal Business Association, a board member and supporter of Keyano College, and a former board chair of Indspire, a national charity that invests in the education of Indigenous people. He was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2024.
Invitation to the Centre
Métis and Cree artist Nancy Desjarlais earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta and spent her early childhood on the Fort McMurray First Nation reserve. The experience of being separated from her family and community at a young age continues to shape her practice, which explores reconnecting with those origins. Rooted in a spiritual relationship with the earth, her work evokes the interconnection of earth and cosmos, framing human experience as part of something greater. This perspective is reflected in Invitation to the Centre, where a central swirl emerges through concentric bursts of colour within an abstract composition that feels both expansive and intimate, visually echoing the interconnected movement of the universe and the inner self. [ND 249 D472 A65 2021 folio]