Sylvia Stockwell ‘59

Faculty of Social Sciences

Sylvia taught English in the Hamilton secondary school system before resigning to start a family. She subsequently returned to teaching as a part-time English instructor at Sheridan College, but soon became a full-time member of faculty. She retired from Sheridan in 1997.

In retirement, Sylvia and her husband Allan, have become busy travellers and community volunteers. Sylvia has been a long-time volunteer with the Art Gallery of Burlington and the Burlington Baptist Church. She was the scholarship chair on the executive committee of the Burlington University Women’s Club and even travelled with the legendary Burlington Teen Tour Band as a chaperone.

At McMaster, Sylvia was a “tracking volunteer” for the McMaster Alumni Association in the 1970s, working with then-alumni director Ken Frederick and his team to locate alumni who no longer had an active address in the Association’s records. Sylvia has also been a mainstay on the reunion committee for the Class of ’59, serving as a leader for multiple reunions of one of the University’s most engaged and active classes. Sylvia is probably best known to the broader McMaster Alumni family for her work with one of the Association’s showcase programs, the McMaster Alumni Gallery. For more than a decade, she chaired the Alumni Gallery Sub-committee, the group of dedicated volunteers that runs the award-winning Gallery program, including selecting the annual list of inductees and overseeing the Induction Ceremony.