Yves Bergeron and Yves Mauffette, honorary doctors at UM

After a warm welcome from the President of the UM and Jean-Michel Marin, Dean of the Faculty of Science, it was Ahmed Adam Ali, Vice-Dean and patron of the two recipients, who delivered their eulogies. A successful exercise for this paleo-ecologist, specialist in global change, biodiversity dynamics and forest ecology, which enabled the audience to become better acquainted with these two prestigious professors-researchers.

Yves Mauffette, ecology and education

Yves Maufette is Associate Professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). An ecologist specializing in plant-insect interactions, he is also an internationally recognized teacher-researcher for his work on educational innovations in the university environment. His expertise is of particular benefit to the UM's Centre de soutien aux innovations pédagogiques. Yves Maufette chose this topic for his lecture:

"Being a university professor mainly involves teaching and research. Our training is first and foremost that of a researcher, and we often teach according to our intuition. In academia, our task is divided into three: research, teaching and service to the community. In theory, these three tasks should be equally divided. Research is the key activity, as it will primarily determine the success of our academic career from promotion to international recognition. The second component of the task, teaching, is less valued. Choosing to invest in university pedagogy entails certain risks, because we're thinking outside the box. It's one thing to change the content of a course, but it's almost insane to change the academic curriculum of a field, and to do so in the direction of a new pedagogical approach. Isn't training our students to better respond to tomorrow's needs a primordial challenge? Research is progressing, so why not pedagogy?

Yves Bergeron, the cold forest specialist

Yves Bergeron, professor at the Université du Québec en Atibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT ) and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), is a specialist in cold forests. He is, among other things, one of the driving forces behind the Memorandum of Understanding for the creation of the "Forêts froides" research project on boreal ecosystem analysis, in which the UM is also heavily involved.

"Canada's boreal forest is one of the world's last natural forests, and one that is under severe strain. Traditional forest management practices have drastically reduced the proportion of old-growth forest. Fire, a source of soil disturbance that increases soil fertility, has been largely suppressed. Forest managers need to find ways of reproducing the main characteristics of natural forests through practices that mimic natural disturbances and forest dynamics. In this crucial area, France has a long history of forest management, and paleo-ecological approaches have been developed to reconstruct the past. Over the past twenty years, the paleoecological expertise of the University of Montpellier has been applied in collaborative and cotutelle projects in the cold forests of Canada, France and elsewhere in the world."