Danielle Fortosky
President's Service Award - Fall 2003
The 61 colleagues who supported her nomination say it's Danielle Fortosky's untiring dedication, resourcefulness and selflessness that have earned her the Fall 2003 University of Saskatchewan President's Service Award.
So it's not surprising that the veteran of 29 years' employment at the U of S, for the past 19 as Director of the Division of Media and Technology (DMT), confirms that her motivating force is service to others.
"Service, to me, is the highest order of human activity - to serve each other - and I always try to keep that in mind," Fortosky says. As a result, ever since joining DAVS in 1974 she has diligently tried to serve faculty, staff, students and the University, and has succeeded tremendously.
Fortosky earned all three of her degrees from the U of S - a BA (English) in 1967, a B.Ed. (Communications) in 1974, and an M.Ed. (Communications) in 1983. She began her career teaching high school in Aberdeen (1967-68) and in Saskatoon at E.D. Feehan (1968-73). In 1974 she joined DAVS staff as Head of Television. In 1984 she was appointed DAVS Director and in 1985 she won a Commonwealth Relations Trust Bursary to study in the U.K., where she researched the relationship between the British Open University and the BBC.
At the U of S, Fortosky has happily taken on major challenges and led many initiatives, all the while impressing faculty, administrators and co-workers with her unassuming yet determined hard work. She has played a key role in projects including:
- From 1974-84, leading the production of more than 150 educational television programs.
- In 1981, launching the University's educational satellite broadcasting initiative, one of the first in Canada.
- In the 1980s developing the University's production and broadcasting agreement with the Saskatchewan Communications Network (SCN).
- Helping to lay the groundwork for the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) program, resulting in millions of dollars for development of online courses at Saskatchewan's post-secondary institutions.
- Leading an initiative to upgrade more than 60 U of S lecture theatres, classrooms and labs with multimedia technologies.
Her nominator, Professor Emeritus of History, Michael Hayden, noted that despite budget cuts, Fortosky has succeeded in making DMT a first-class campus agency that is the envy of many Canadian universities. She and her staff have won 93 national and international awards for programs they have produced, averaging four per year since 1980. In 1985 Fortosky won the Saskatoon YWCA Woman of the Year Award and in 1996, Danielle and her husband Ted were awarded the Distinguished Alumna and Alumnus Award by St. Thomas More College. In 1998 she won a national Leadership Award from AMTEC (the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada).
Co-workers call her "an inspiration" whose dedication has brought honour to the U of S. For her part, Fortosky says the honour has been hers - to work with "the very talented faculty, staff and students here" for nearly 30 years. "It's a world of ideas here, and it's never boring." She has loved working toward her goal of service - helping faculty communicate their research and their teaching to students.
