Professor Chris Sprysak has been selected as the 2011 recipient of The Honourable Tevie H. Miller Teaching Excellence Award, and Alex Pringle the 2011 recipient of the Faculty of Law Sessional Teaching Excellence Award.
The Committees for the Tevie H. Miller Teaching Excellence Award and the Faculty of Law Sessional Teaching Excellence Award met recently to review the candidates and student input with respect to the nominations. After careful deliberation, the Committees selected the above recipients from a list of other excellent instructors.
Professor Sprysak obtained his Bachelor of Commerce (with distinction) and his Bachelor of Law degrees here at the University of Alberta. He attended New York University as a Fulbright Scholar where he obtained his Master of Laws degree. He is currently the Faculty of Law's resident tax instructor, teaching Taxation, Corporate Taxation, Estate Planning, and Selected Tax Topics. His research interests are predominantly in the areas of taxation, tax policy and estate planning.
Prior to joining the Faculty of Law, he worked for Price Waterhouse, where he obtained his Chartered Accounting designation. After receiving his law degree, he articled and worked as an associate with the tax law firm of Felesky Flynn. In the summer of 2004, Professor Sprysak was invited to Japan where he gave several lectures on Canadian taxation, Canadian law and politics, and Canadian legal education.
Professor Sprysak regularly gives lectures and presentations to variousprofessional accounting and law groups including: the Canadian Tax Foundation, the Canadian Bar Association, the Chartered Accountants of Alberta, the Edmonton Tax Lawyers and Accountants Discussion Group, and the Society of Estate and Trust Practitioners.
Alex Pringle is the senior member of Pringle MacDonald & Bottos and has been practicing as a criminal defence lawyer since 1973. A native Edmontonian, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alberta in 1968 and earned his law degree from the University of Toronto in 1971. He was called to the Alberta Bar in 1972 and was subsequently called to the Northwest Territories Bar and Yukon Bar in 1977 and finally the Saskatchewan Bar in 1980.
Mr. Pringle enjoys a national reputation as a criminal lawyer and has defended serious cases in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, as well as in the Yukon Territories and the Northwest Territories. In addition to his full-time criminal defence practice, Mr. Pringle has taught for 30 years a variety of courses at the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta.
The Faculty would also like to recognize the exemplary performances of the other nominees, Professors Richard Bauman, Eric Adams and Shannon O'Bryne s well as Sessional Instructors Kevin Feehan, Tina Huizinga, Douglas Peterson and Dick Wilson.
The Friends of the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta instituted the Honourable Tevie H. Miller Teaching Excellence Award in 1998 to recognize and promote excellence in teaching at the Law Faculty. Under the term of the award, a short list of five nominees is selected based upon the ranking received by eligible candidates on their course evaluations of the previous academic year. The Selection Committee then invites written comments from students, Sessional Instructors and other interested persons on the strenghts and skills of the nominees.
Professor Chris Sprysak