June 27, 2024

Champion of UCalgary camps receives Friends of Camp award

Kinesiology's Dr. Patricia Doyle-Baker makes lasting impact on UCalgary youth programs
Dr. Patricia Doyle Baker
Adrian Shellard

The Friends of Camp award is given to an individual or group whose efforts have had a positive and lasting impact on UCalgary youth programs and the communities we serve, and this year the award goes to Dr. Patricia Doyle-Baker, PH, PhD, a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology. 

For more than 20 years, Doyle-Baker has been a valuable, and often unnoticed champion and tireless supporter of UCalgary camps; she led a three-year study investigating kid’s movements in camp which involved hundreds of participants and a dozen students and staff to collect the data. With the help of her expertise the study resulted in multiple publications, abstracts, oral presentations, conference posters, newspaper articles, website articles and spin off studies. The study also included the support of a grad student who completed their master’s degree. The study set the bar for our understanding of kids’ movement in camps and forever changed the way Active Living plans programs. 

Doyle-Baker’s association with the camps does not end there - her three sons attended camps when they were young, and then worked as summer camps leaders while in university. She has been and is currently serving as the summer camp faculty advisor and principal investigator to use animal and invertebrate tissues in several camps, giving campers unique hands-on learning opportunities in science-focused camps.

The UCalgary camps team is pleased and honored to present Dr. Patricia Doyle-Baker with the award.