2025 MUFA Award for Outstanding Service Winner

Bruce has served McMaster and the broader Research community as a reviewer and editor.

This year and last he served on an NSERC Discovery Grant review panel, which meant the entire months of January and February were spent reviewing grants, all day, every day. He has also served on a CFI review panel. He is on the editorial board of four major journals, and he reviews for numerous high-impact journals.

Bruce has served in leadership and governance at McMaster.

Bruce currently serves as an elected member of Graduate Council, as a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Advisory Board, and as a member of the McMaster Research Ethics Board, where he served as vice-chair in 2010.

He has served on and chaired curriculum development committees, budget and space allocation committees, and long-range planning committees at both department and faculty levels.

He has served as the Acting Associate Dean (Graduate) twice, and as the Acting Dean for Faculty of Science.

In Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, he is our most recent past department chair.

Bruce is dedicated to student success

One of his colleagues said “The first thing that you learn about Bruce during any collaboration is his unfailing support for students.”

If he perceives a gap in students’ understanding of concepts (e.g. research, statistics, ethics) he will offer extra training to his own students and open it up to all interested students. His series of lectures on preparing students for graduate studies is still available on YouTube. The lecture on crafting a statement of research interests has 13K views.

Bruce has served on our departmental EDI group since its inception in 2020 and was the inaugural chair. He serves as MUFA’s representative to the Sexual Violence Prevention Task Force. His experience as PNB chair during the summer of 2020, his subsequent role as chair of the department’s Inquiry and Remedy committee, and his academic expertise make his input into the university’s Sexual Violence Prevention Task Force unusually relevant. 

PNB is lucky to have had Bruce as a leader in our department.

As early as 1996 when he was an assistant professor he was on our department chair’s advisory committee – a testament to the esteem and respect department leaders have for him. He later served as PNB Associate Chair (Graduate) for multiple terms.

As chair, Bruce valued transparency and invested in the leadership development of his colleagues, so that we could learn from him about operations at department, faculty, and university levels. Bruce prioritizes future leaders.

During his term as department chair, the biggest challenge Bruce faced was a set of highly publicized sanctions against members of the department. These sanctions led to an unfathomable workload. He was involved in restructuring 31 graduate supervisory committees, and re-staffing multiple undergraduate courses that were vacated by faculty members put on administrative leave, sometimes in the middle of the term. He became the supervisor of record for several of our stranded students.

Bruce managed departmental operations while misinformation was swirling in the media and department members were desperate for information and guidance. As chair, it fell on Bruce to carefully manage communication within the department, with the upper administration, and with consultants who were hired to restore our workplace. His wisdom, compassion, and restraint were extraordinary.

Imagine dealing with such turmoil during the pandemic when we were all figuring out how to work and teach remotely.

Bruce advocated for Michelle Flaherty’s investigation into McMaster’s investigatory processes, which resulted in the Flaherty Best Practices Report. This report and the summary released just last week, are our roadmap to making McMaster a safer place to work and learn.

One of his colleagues commented “Through these crises, Bruce remained level-headed and steered the Department effectively despite the tremendous increase in his workload. I always felt support and I appreciated the grounding effect of his optimism.”

Members of the department have described his leadership as “exceptional and inspiring.”

One colleague said “he leads with remarkable steadfastness, optimism, and compassion.”

Another colleague said “many people in PNB would credit him for maintaining effective and harmonious working relationships and guiding us through uncharted waters.”

We in PNB are grateful for Bruce’s calm and thoughtful leadership.

citation by Mel Rutherford