BA, MA, PhD
Dean, Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
604.986.1911 ext. 2161
Fir Building, room FR413
tracypennylight@capilanou.ca
Education
PhD, History, University of Waterloo, 2003.
MA, History, Laurentian University, 1995.
BA (Honours), Nipissing University, 1992.
"I love learning and a learning-focus is central to all that I do, whether that is in teaching or leadership contexts. All of our experiences matter and shape how we understand and view the world."
Bio
Tracy Penny Light (PhD, University of Waterloo, 2003) is Dean, Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Capilano University. A fully tenured professor, she has served in several academic and administrative capacities at Canadian and international universities. She regularly consults with institutions internationally and is President of the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning (AAEEBL), the international community of practice for ePortfolio practitioners and researchers.
Her research spans education, history, and interdisciplinary studies with a focus on better understanding transformative learning experiences, education quality, and how we come to understand the world. Publications include Becoming: Transformative Storytelling for Education's Future (with Laura Colket and M. Adam Carswell), Electronic Portfolios and Student Success (with Helen L. Chen), Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors (with Helen L. Chen and John Ittelson), Bodily Subjects: Essays on Gender and Health, 1800-2000 (with Wendy Mitchinson and Barbara Brookes) and Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice (with Jane Nicholas and Renee Bondy).
I have taught in a number of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts and at all levels of higher education.
Early in my career, I began work in educational development, which has shaped my thinking about my teaching and research throughout my career. All of my teaching is grounded in reflective practice and the process of learning to think historically (critical thinking) so that my learners have opportunities to transfer their learning between and among contexts in preparation for making positive change in the world.
Always, I aim to enable transformative learning experiences for both my students and myself as I always learn much from those who I am guiding in learning.
My research spans education, history, and interdisciplinary studies and focuses on better understanding transformative learning experiences, education quality, and how we come to understand the world. Reflection and thinking historically underpins all of my scholarly interests, a product of the interweaving of my training as an historian and my deep affinity or ePortfolio practices and pedagogies.
Most recently, I have used storytelling as a way to reflect on learning and to understand educational decision-making though the lens of yoga philosophy.
Books
Colket, Laura, Tracy Penny Light and M. Adam Carswell (eds.), Becoming: Transformative Storytelling for Education's Future, New York, NY: DIO Press, 2021.
Penny Light, Tracy, Jane Nicholas and Renee Bondy (eds.), Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015.
Penny Light, Tracy, Barbara Brookes and Wendy Mitchinson (eds.), Bodily Subjects: Essays on Gender and Health, 1800-2000, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015.
Penny Light, Tracy, Helen L. Chen and John C. Ittelson, Documenting Learning with ePortfolios: A Guide for College Instructors, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012.
Helen L. Chen and Tracy Penny Light, Electronic Portfolios and Student Success: Effectiveness, Affordability, and Efficiency, Washington: AAC&U, 2010.
Articles and Book Chapters
Roche, Cicely, Lane Abria, Orna Farrell, Jonathan Johnston, Alex McKibben, Tracy Penny Light, Aisling Reast, Kathleen Yancey, "ePortfolio for experiential learning: guided by theory, cultivated by students," International Journal of Students as Partners, 7, 2 (2023): 165-180. https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v7i2.5096
Guttin, Talia, Todd McKay, Tracy Penny Light, Lauren Nicki Wise and Sarah Baillie, "Growth Mindset in Veterinary Educators: An International Survey," Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, (May 2023), https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme-2022-0128
Penny Light, Tracy, "Moving Forward, Looking Back: Historical Inquiry for Social Justice" in Corey Johnson and Diana C. Parry (eds.), Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry: A Methodological Guide, 2nd Edition, Routledge, 2022: 179-195.
Guttin, Talia, Tracy Penny Light and Sarah Baillie, "Exploring the Mindset of Veterinary Educators for Intelligence, Clinical Reasoning, Compassion, and Morality," Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, 48, 4 (August 2021) https://jvme.utpjournals.press/doi/10.3138/jvme-2021-0057
Colket, Laura, Tracy Penny Light and M. Adam Carswell, "Uncovering and Examining Three Distinct Paths to Educational Leadership," in Laura Colket, Tracy Penny Light, and M. Adam Carswell, Becoming: Transformative Storytelling for Education's Future, New York: NY, DIO Press, 2021: 335-349.
Chesser, Stephanie, Diana Parry and Tracy Penny Light, "Nurturing the Erotic Self: Benefits of Women Consuming Sexually Explicit Materials," Sexualities, 0, 0 (November 2018): 1-19.
McKeown, Janet, Diana C. Parry and Tracy Penny Light, "My iPhone Changed my Life": How Digital Technologies Can Enable Women's Consumption of Online Pornography," under review, Sexuality and Culture, 22, 2 (June 2018): 340-354.
Frances E. Chapman and Tracy Penny Light, "Functionally Inaccessible: Medical and Legal Perspectives on Abortion in Canada," in Shannon Stettner, Kristin Burnett and Travis Hay (eds.), Abortion: History, Politics, and Reproductive Justice After Morgentaler, Vancouver, UBC Press, 2017.
Penny Light, Tracy and Diana C. Parry, "Normalizing Dark Desires?: The Medicalization of Sex and Women's Consumption of Pornography,” in Heather Brunskell-Evans (ed.), Performing Sexual Liberation: The Sexualized Body and the Medical Authority of Pornography, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2016.
Diana C. Parry and Tracy Penny Light, "Sexual Desire in the Digital Leisure Sphere: Women's Consumption of Sexually Explicit Material," in David McGillivray (ed.), Digital Leisure Cultures: Critical Perspectives, London: Routledge, 2016.
Penny Light, Tracy, ""I can't believe I've never seen that before!": Feminism, the "Sexualization of Culture' and Empowerment in the Classroom," in Penny Light, Tracy, Jane Nicholas and Renee Bondy (eds.), Feminist Pedagogy in Higher Education: Critical Theory and Practice, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015: 279-292.
Penny Light, Tracy, "Moving Forward, Looking Back: Historical Inquiry for Social Justice" in Corey Johnson and Diana C. Parry (eds.), Fostering Social Justice through Qualitative Inquiry: A Methodological Guide, Left Coast Press, 2015: 191-216.
Penny Light, Tracy, "From Fixing to Enhancing: Shifting Ideals of Health and Gender in the Medical Discourse on Cosmetic Surgery in Twentieth Century Canada," in Penny Light, Tracy, Barbara Brookes and Wendy Mitchinson (eds.), Bodily Subjects: Essays on Gender and Health, 1800-2000, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015: 319-346.
Shannon Stettner and Tracy Penny Light, "The Politics of Reproductive Health History: Visible, Audible, and Consequential," Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 31, 2 (2014): 9-24.
Diana C. Parry and Tracy Penny Light, "Fifty Shades of Complexity: Exploring Technologically Mediated Leisure and Women's Sexuality," Journal of Leisure Research, 46, 1 (2014): 38-57.
Penny Light, Tracy, "Consumer Culture and the Medicalization of Gender Roles in Interwar Canada," in Cheryl Warsh and Dan Malleck (eds.) Consuming Modernity: Gendered Behaviour and Consumerism before the Baby Boom, UBC Press, 2013: 34-54.
Penny Light, Tracy, ""Healthy' Men Make Good Fathers: Masculine Health and the Family in 1950s America," in Isabel Heinemann (ed.), Inventing the Modern American Family: Family Values and Social Change in 20th Century United States, Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2012: 105-123.
Penny Light, Tracy, Bob Sproule and Katherine Lithgow, "Connecting Contexts and Competencies: Using ePortfolios for Integrative Learning," in Darren Cambridge, Barbara Cambridge and Kathleen Yancey (eds.), Electronic Portfolios 2.0: Emergent Research on Implementation and Impact, Stylus Publishing, 2009: 69-78.
Penny Light, Tracy, "Reproducing Discourses: Science and Mennonite Sexuality in Early Twentieth Century Canada," Journal of Mennonite Studies, 2 (2008): 31-47.
Penny Light, Tracy, "Making Connections: Developing Students' Historical Thinking with Electronic Portfolios," Academic Intersections, vol. 2 (Spring, 2008).
Penny Light, Tracy, Kathleen Bloom, Dawn Buzza, Barbara Jane Collins, Beatrice Moos and Judy Carey, "First Steps in Developing an Online Learning Community to Facilitate Knowledge-Sharing on Early Literacy Issues," Language and Literacy, 9, 1 (Spring, 2007): http://www.langandlit.ualberta.ca/Spring2007/PennyLight.pdf
Penny Light, Tracy, Kevin Harrigan, Liwana Bringelson and Tom Carey, "Collaboration and Community Building: Extending Instructional Design Models for Learning Objects to Foster Reusability, "in Alex Koohang and Keith Harman (eds.), Learning Object and Instructional Design, Santa Rosa, California: Informing Science Press, 2007: 197-218.
Tosh, David, Ben Werdmuller, Helen Chen, Tracy Penny Light and Jeff Haywood, "The Learning Landscape: A Conceptual Framework for E-Portfolios," in Ali Jafari and Catherine Kaufman (eds.), Handbook of Research on Electronic Portfolios, Information Science Reference, 2006: 24-32.
Tosh, David, Tracy Penny Light, Kele Fleming and Jeff Haywood, "Engagement with Electronic Portfolios: Challenges from the Student Perspective," Canadian Journal of Learning Technology, 31, 3 (Fall 2005): http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/view/97/91
Distinguished Teacher Award, University of Waterloo, 2012.
Distinguished Arts in Academics Award, University of Waterloo, 2009.
Staff Recognition Award, University of Waterloo, 2004.