Robyn Gray (MLIS ’16) is the recipient of the 2015 Stephanie Downs Memorial Award.

When Stephanie Downs returned to Canada from the UK to become a librarian, she chose to enter the MLIS program at Dalhousie for its sense of community, welcoming faculty and Maritime culture. Diagnosed with cervical cancer at the end of her last year at SIM, Stephanie graduated with her MLIS but lost her hard-fought battle to her illness on May 27th, 2007.

Remembered for her enthusiasm, Stephanie was a “doer” and very active in school life, serving as 2005-2006 Co-Chair of SIMSA and SIM Team Captain for the 2005 Halifax “Run for the Cure”. She was also awarded the Student-to-CLA travel award to attend the 2005 CLA Conference in Calgary. This award was established by Stephanie’s family and friends in her memory.

Robyn Gray is entering her second year of the Master of Library and Information Studies program at Dalhousie University. Originally from Calgary, Alberta, she moved to Victoria, British Columbia for her undergraduate degree. In 2013, she completed her Bachelor of Arts with Honours at the University of Victoria, majoring in English literature.

While studying in Victoria, Robyn took academic German courses and was an active member of the German club. Upon graduation, she was provided with the opportunity to spend the school year of 2013-2014 acting as an English Teaching Assistant in Berlin, Germany. While there, she completed a German immersion course at the Technische Universität Berlin. She also became involved in the music community, performing at school-related functions and also with a recreational orchestra, on the stand-up bass and the bagpipes.

During Robyn’s first year in the Dalhousie MLIS program, she published an academic paper to the Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management (DJIM), presented the paper at the DJIM launch, and also peer-reviewed and copyedited works for this same journal. She was elected Financial and Fundraising Chair for the student-run Information Without Borders Conference, presented at this conference, and was a member of the Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL). She also worked as a tutor at the Dalhousie Writing Centre, and has been working on Dalhousie’s Curriculum Map Editing project.

In the interim between her first and second year, Robyn first spent three weeks completing a practicum in the Cataloguing and Metadata Department at the University of Calgary. She is currently completing an internship at ARC Resources, as a Records and Information Management Summer Student.

Robyn is honoured to have been presented with this award, and is looking forward to returning to Dalhousie in the fall.