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Mrs. Lois Claxton (BA 1968)

     Since 1991, Lois Claxton (BA 1968) has held the office, Secretary of the University at the University of Waterloo. “In that role I work closely with the President and with the Chair of the Board of Governors and have line responsibilities for governance and corporate services including: UW legal matters, UW's internal audit and risk management, Freedom of Information and Privacy Protection compliance, Conflict Management & Human Rights, Police & Parking Services, Safety, Records Management, corporate governance and the University Secretariat.” Her education in English has proven useful in her present role: “Writing was an integral part of my undergraduate degree and writing has been integral in my current role. While most of my writing is administrative, I was delighted when Ken McLaughlin, UW's official historian, invited me to write the forewords to Waterloo: The Unconventional Founding of an Unconventional University (1997) and Out of the Shadow of Orthodoxy: Waterloo @ 50 (2007). Similarly, it was a privileged experience to edit inno'va-tion: Essays by Leading Canadian Researchers (2002) with James Downey.”

Lois Claxton     Professor Roman Dubinski taught Lois’s three favourite courses: two English criticism courses because they were analytical, and one on the works of Milton, in particular Paradise Lost. “I had great regard for Professor Dubinski as an instructor and personally. He encouraged my to take a master's degree, which I did, but not in English.”

     Lois’s English degree from UW “provided the platform for my subsequent degrees and those degrees enabled me to start my career, a career which has been very different from teaching, as I had planned, and far more exciting and fulfilling than I could have imagined.” She furthered her studies at the University of Toronto, where she earned a BLS (Bachelor of Library Science) and MLS (Master's of Library Science).

     During the 1970s, Lois worked as the Head Librarian for the Economics and Policy Library of Energy, Mines and Resources in Ottawa. In 1979, she was hired by UW as a librarian and was initially in charge of what was then the government publications department. Later, she had responsibility for public services at all of the campus libraries.

     Last year, Lois was honoured when Bob Harding, Chair of the Board of Governors, established a scholarship in her name, “the Lois Claxton Award in Humanities and Social Sciences Research which will be used to enable UW to achieve its aspirations in social sciences and humanities research.”