A good mentor in life is priceless, especially for a student on a journey through university, seeking reassurance you are on the path to academic success.
A prime example at Carleton University is Chancellor’s Professor Chris Burn, with three decades of experience mentoring Carleton University graduate and undergraduate students. It is fitting that he was recently recognized for his outstanding mentorship.
Burn was awarded the 2024 Mentorship Medal from the Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences (CFES), a recognition given annually to one earth scientist from Canadian industry, academia or government who has shown sustained excellence in mentoring. In Burn’s case, he has been dedicated to training researchers focused on the relations between climate and permafrost, many of whom he helped pursue work in the North and have gone on to contribute to the research field.
Burn’s mentoring was also highlighted by Carleton’s Past President Rosann O’Reilly Runte in her new book Canadians Who Innovate: The Trailblazers and Ideas That Are Changing the World.
Chris Burn is the [physical geography] professor par excellence and the mentor we all hope to have at some point in our lives.
– Rosann O’Reilly Runte, Carleton University Past President
Likely, the group of students Burn has mentored would agree with O’Reilly Runte, seeing how they have benefited from his guidance and teaching. Many of these students, from undergraduates to post-doctoral fellows to those working in a related field, showed their support at Burn’s award ceremony during the International Permafrost Association’s 12th International Conference on Permafrost, held at Whitehorse in June.
Burn’s group, which formed naturally over the years, is now a community of researchers that work together to further permafrost research in Canada’s North. Most of Burn’s former students have helped students who joined later to progress in the field.
Burn was particularly proud to see fifteen of these scientists present their work at the conference and five recent graduates publish papers in the conference proceedings.
“If my students hadn’t been so successful, then I wouldn’t be receiving the award,” said Burn. “I’m very glad to receive this honour but really it’s for the students and former students who were in Whitehorse and the others in the group who could not be there”, referring to the 19 of his mentees in attendance – and the other 37 graduates who could not be there.
When asked what he enjoys most about training new researchers, he draws on the students’ work.
I am particularly glad that those in my mentoring group are enthusiastic about what they do and become motivated to contribute solutions to climate issues in the North. Most of them are committed to the intellectual problems within their field and to understanding what it means to be part of a northern research community.
– Chancellor’s Professor Chris Burn
He shares that most of the mentoring group live in the North; showing they recognize the problems needing to be addressed can only be solved with active community involvement.
“If you want to have an impact in terms of the life of a community, then it’s really about having people who can work in their own way to collaborate with existing people on the problems in those places,” said Burn. “We can only have that if there is good training and supervision in those places, so students know they can use their training for impactful work in their field.”
To see what projects Chris Burn is leading, learn more about his permafrost research.