President’s Lecture Series to feature Olympic motivator
Contact: Office of the President at 371-6119
February 7, 2008 Thompson Rivers University is pleased to announce that three time Olympic medalist Silken Laumann will be the next guest in the President’s Lecture Series, Tuesday, Feb. 26 at 7 pm in the Grand Hall.
Tickets are not required for her presentation, “An Olympic Story—The Courage to Dream,” and admission is free, although seating is limited. The TRU President’s Lecture Series was created to give both campus and community members an opportunity to hear world-class speakers and thinkers.
Laumann is best known as the athlete who suffered a devastating injury weeks before the 1992 Barcelona games, and then went on to win the Bronze Medal for Canada. She captured the hearts of a nation with her story of determination and her warm and friendly presence. In addition to her Olympic accomplishments Laumann is a two-time winner of the Canadian Female Athlete of the Year award; recipient of the Lou Marsh award in 1992 for Canada’s top athlete; and winner of the Wilma Rudolph Courage Award in 1997 – the first time this award was ever given to a non-American.
Now more of a writer than a rower, Laumann has written for the Globe & Mail, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent and Parents Canada magazines. Her book Child’s Play, about re-discovering the joy of play in our families, became a national bookseller last spring.
Laumann is an active member of the International Board of Directors for the Right To Play, an international development agency dedicated to reintroducing play into the lives of children in refugee camps around the world. She is also the founder of Silken’s ActiveKids Movement, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to bringing back unstructured play time for Canadian children.
In November 2006, The Globe & Mail named Laumann to their 2006 list of Canada’s most Influential Women. She has also recently been named as one of Canada’s most influential women in sport.
The TRU President’s Lecture Series sponsors one or more speakers each academic year on topics of global importance. Over the past four years, TRU has welcomed such international figures as Stephen Lewis, Romeo Dallaire, Lloyd Axworthy, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, David Frum and Buffy St. Marie. Some of these highly regarded presentations have generated local and international responses that include the founding of the CanGo Grannies and motivating many TRU students to become actively involved in a variety of developing world projects.
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