Accolades for the week of January 21

Natalie Phillips, professor of psychology and a member of the Centre for Research in Human Development, is part of a team that developed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA, 2005), a screening test for mild cognitive impairment. In November, the research article surpassed 1,000, a significant academic milestone.

MoCA was devised as a simple-to-administer test that would differentiate elderly individuals who would be classified (after laborious clinical and neuropsychological assessment) as normal compared with those showing the earliest changes of memory loss that could lead to Alzheimer’s Disease. It takes only 12 minutes to administer the test, and it produces a valid result that distinguishes between the expected memory function of an elderly brain and mild cognitive impairment.

Teammate Howard Chertkow said, “It’s a number that represents a rare achievement. It demonstrates broad acceptance of the MoCA test, and we’re thrilled to have developed an instrument that has had a real-world impact on how we go about assessing cognitive impairment.”

Useful Cinema, a book edited by Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson, received an honourable mention from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the oldest and most prestigious organization for film and media scholars, in the 2013 Best Edited Collection Award competition.

Acland is a professor of communication studies, and Wasson is an associate professor of cinema.

The volume grew out of an SSHRC-funded workshop held at Concordia University in 2006. The book consists of 14 essays that explore how mid-20th century institutions, including libraries, museums, classrooms, and professional organizations, helped to make moving images an ordinary feature of American life. The SCMS awards committee praised the volume for helping to open up a new research domain and noted the consistently high quality of the historical research across the essays.

This is the first time an SCMS Best Edited Collection Award committee has recognized work from scholars at a Canadian university. The award ceremony will take place in Chicago in March.

Concordia’s student radio station, CJLO 1690 AM, has received a $14,500 grant from the Community Radio Fund of Canada for its CJLO Artist Outreach Program. CJLO is using the grant money to make EPs for local musicians who do not have the financial means to rent professional studios to record their songs.