President's Award

The President’s Award of Excellence recognizes faculty, staff, and/or work teams who contribute to the achievement of JIBC’s vision and consistently demonstrate the values of the organization.

2018

Pete Learoyd

Pete Learoyd began his career with JIBC as an instructor, teaching emergency management fundamentals to communities across the province. His role in the Emergency Management Division (EMD) has grown from oversight of contract training and customized course offerings to include managing EMD’s core client training and emergency management training for First Nations communities in BC.

He has taken the initiative to develop and deliver emergency management training for JIBC’s Senior Management Council, as well as senior and executive leaders at other post-secondary institutions. Pete’s applied research, particularly his work on models for post-disaster damage and safety assessment, informs JIBC curriculum as well as practices used in BC, Canada and beyond.

Pete has actively promoted diversity in emergency management training, from curriculum to personnel. This has included ensuring that JIBC indigenized the delivery of courses to BC First Nations communities so they would meet the Indigenous communities’ needs for relevant and culturally-appropriate training.

He has been a champion of Praxis, JIBC’s online, interactive computer-simulation training tool, and has led several initiatives despite the demands of his existing workload, contributing to the success of not only EMD but JIBC as a whole.

2017

Steve Schnitzer

Steve Schnitzer joined JIBC in September 2010 as a Program Coordinator for the Police Academy’s Law Enforcement & Regulatory Training. Today, he is the Director of the Police Academy and was instrumental in overseeing the dramatic and ground-breaking change to the Police Recruit Training program, this year’s recipient of the Program of Excellence Award.

Historically, police academies and training institutions have utilized a lecture-based training approach with microsimulations. Under Steve’s unwavering leadership, the Police Academy developed and implemented a case-based curriculum based on competencies.

In addition, Steve was instrumental in chairing a committee to create a conference on the opioid crisis for senior police leaders. In this role, Steve was required to pull together a diverse group of first responders from throughout Canada and the United States as well as other subject matter experts on opioids.

Steve also initiated and directed the implementation of strategies to assist students including a mentorship program, directed studies program and an appeal process for recruits.

2016

Melanie Myers

Melanie Meyers started working at JIBC in 2008, and since 2010 has been in the Centre for Teaching, Learning & Innovation (CTLI) where she has made a significant contribution to advancing JIBC’s vision of safer communities and a just society through her role as a Senior Instructional Designer for CTLI.

Melanie has led a number of key and award-winning projects that have shifted JIBC’s approach to innovative programming in Justice and Public Safety. These include the development of ABC of AD, JIBC’s first Wordpress micro-learning course; the development of online courses in the Road Safety at Work program, JIBC’s first use of LearnDash, to make workplace training more accessible and mobile; and more recently, the development of the Fentanyl Safety for First Responders training and information site. The fentanyl site is a good example of a highly visible and valued resource that truly does help keep our communities safe. 

Melanie is passionate about the quality of work which JIBC produces. She is respected across the organization and has developed a reputation, both internally and externally, as a creative leader in instructional design and complex e-learning projects.  This has led to clients specifically requesting Melanie for projects, and she has responded by mentoring and coaching other instructional designers in CTLI in order to help JIBC develop more capacity to support innovative programming and e-learning.