My sincerest condolences to Colleen and family.

from John Partyka

I worked with Rick Powell from around 1994 through 1998, while he was the Director of Institutional Studies at Athabasca University. Although I had no prior experience with statistical analysis, he was willing to take me under his wing because, as he put it, “I could read and write”. This opportunity effectively changed my career path going forward.

I found Rick to be extremely dedicated to his chosen field and his staff. I learned quickly from him, mainly because he was both perceptive and honest. In many cases, his sideline remarks were the most illuminating. Unlike any leader I’ve worked with since, Rick believed in “rolling up your sleeves and handling the data with your bare hands”, a creed I practised for the remainder of my career.

But Rick was more than a great boss. He was a kind man of high integrity. An intelligent man with a disarming sense of humour. He was never authoritative nor disciplinary; a rare quality in a department manager. In short order we transcended the traditional boss/employee relationship. My satirical pet name for him, “Old Iron Balls”, never seemed to offend him. I played ridiculous pranks on him, like stealing an art print from the University reception area and placing it by the wall behind his desk. Weeks went by, but he never noticed it! I came in hours late for work once and claimed I’d been kidnapped by aliens. He didn’t bat an eyelash, and work proceeded without further comment.

Lest you conclude my account overly generous, I must say that Rick was the clumsiest carpenter I’ve ever known. He could not swing a hammer without bashing a finger, leaving blood on anything he tried to build. He sometimes went on and on about his times in Italy with Colleen. I think this was a very special time of his life. He was quick to identify “bloody idiots”, particularly politicians and some Athabasca University senior staff, who shall forever remain unnamed.

I feel honoured to share my experiences and celebrate the life of a great human being with you. I hope that some of the love and respect I have for Rick has been exposed by my words. Thank you all for listening.

John Partyka

I knew Rick as a long term coordinator with the Office of Institutional Studies at Athabasca University. Most of the terms still in use today at the institution, such as gross vs net registrations, effective students, starts vs. enrollments, as well as query logic for FLEs, government reporting and much more, were his design. I worked closely with him when I first started, literally sat next to him for months of job shadowing. He was a brilliant man who never compromised his principles, a knowledgeable mentor, an articulate communicator, exceptionally personable and down to earth, qualities he imparted on the unit's work culture. May he rest in peace.

(From Sophy Gairdner)

Colleen and I met in Kibi in Ghana as international volunteer tutors in the Men's and the Women's teacher training colleges respectively in the late Sixties.

We kept in touch afterwards and Colleen let me know she and a man she had met and fallen in love with were planning to go to francophone West Africa to improve their spoken French, an unusual motive for going from Canada to West Africa. To this end presumably Colleen took a degree in Hamburgerology.

The next thing I knew was, as I was driving away from my house in Bristol in the UK one day I thought I was seeing a familiar figure walking along the street towards me. So I stopped the car and greeted Colleen in surprise and her tall companion, Rick, and proposed we should all go back to my place for a catch-up. I assumed they had to be going on shortly with their onward journey to West Africa.

As it began to get dark I suggested they stay the night. They stayed two or three nights more, until the host-guest relationship shifted, to all our satisfactions, as I am no cook and was working, while Rick and Colleen are good, seriously trouble-taking cooks. Once they spent a whole day walking the streets of Bristol asking for Graham Crackers for the base of a cheese-cake, but these are disguised in Britain as Digestive Biscuits. My cookbook recipe for Mackerel with Gooseberry Sauce has been annotated in Rick's hand as 'Disgusting'.

Imagine my surprise then when Rick got a job with a helicopter manufacturer, and Colleen took on secretarial work, which she soon developed into pleasingly remodelling the way the firm did things. My memory (possibly faulty) is that they stayed nine months, anyway a time well remembered for its very good company. Rick's father and mother came and joined us at one point. I think Rick and Colleen went on to somewhere in francophone West Africa. Their accents were probably hard to place in Montreal.

(From Bob Spencer)A great friend and colleague! Wonderful memories of playing bridge at the Powell's and online after Covid. Rest in peace my friend. Condolences to Colleen, David, Megan,

(From Barb Andrews)

Rick.

I met Rick on the first business day of January,1981. He hired me to help gather data from the courthouse in Edmonton for the Canadian Institute for Research in Calgary. I met Colleen shortly after that when I was delivering work to Rick and he invited me to spend the night with them and go back home the next day. We all hit it off and it was the start of a lifelong friendship.

David was born that August. I remember this tiny baby sitting on his dad’s lap being read “War and Peace”. Who does that?

Rick and Colleen moved to Edmonton, which was great because I could see David all the time. They bought a house in Millwoods against my whiny objections because I always got lost and I would make Rick drive ahead of me when I left so I could follow him out. One year Rick decided to build a garage and the roof came down. Another attempt was a box for David to stand on to pee, which fell apart during its maiden run. A carpenter he was not but he was the most patient person ever and in all the years I never once saw him get mad.

Megan was born and was the tiniest little squirt I ever met. Also, I lost my first argument with her at 6 weeks and she’s never been one to mess with. I loved them both to bits.

I had kidnapped a lovely abused dog and was hiding her in my apartment when I got caught and threatened with an eviction. Rick and Colleen agreed to take Kelly and she lived so happily with them until she was 19. Their last move was up to Athabasca where they remained.

Rick loved to play bridge and tried to teach me how. I’m sure he’d be gnashing his teeth and I would often be his partner but would sometimes make bids that he considered insane and then win the round. Neither of us ever figured out how I did that and he made such fun of me. He played bridge like chess and was an excellent player and enjoyed it all of his life, except if I was playing. I like to think I kept him sharp.

He was happy doing research and I worked for him when he was at Athabasca University. He was such a pleasant person and wonderful to work with. I learned a lot from him. He had a poster that said something like “if a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing well.” He also had a great sense of humour.

I’ll miss my friend. I’ll remember him as a kind and good man that I was lucky to know and who was always supportive of me. He was thoughtful and soft and loved his wife and children and friends. I’ll think of him often.

I first met Rick in the fall of 1985 when he interviewed me for a job at AU. My first impression of Rick was of a thoughtful and extremely intelligent guy. Today, 38 years later, that’s still the way I remember him, but I am lucky to also remember him as a dear friend.

From the moment I arrived in Athabasca, Rick and Colleen made me feel welcome in town, frequently inviting me to their home, feeding me often, and spending hours trying to teach me bridge. I got to know a very young David and Megan, and Kelly, the Powell family dog. When my wife arrived the following spring, and when in due course we welcomed the birth of our two sons, Rick and Colleen continued to offer friendship and support to the whole family.

Working with Rick was enjoyable and rewarding. Rick was the inspiration and intellect behind much of the research work undertaken in Institutional Studies and the Centre for Distance Education. His insight and expertise covered a wide range of topics across the institutional research spectrum, and the University benefitted greatly from them. I learned an awful lot from Rick, and I’m grateful I had the chance to work with him.

Chris Conway

I was saddened to hear of Rick's passing. During my years at Athabasca U, Rick was one of the people I most enjoyed speaking to about the university itself, about politics, and much else. Though he received little credit for it, Rick helped to save the university from the Klein cuts being performed by a meat cleaver rather than just a big knife by persuading the management to stop obsessing about how many degrees we were awarding and focus instead on the huge percentage of students completing degrees in all universities who had taken one or more Athabasca courses. He and his Institutional Studies staff also did research that showed that we could spare about 1/4 of our enrolees the time and expense of registering by implementing a simple test that could identify with almost 100% precision students who had no chance of completing their course. The powers-that-be suppressed what would have been a kindness to folks we couldn't serve properly but whose pockets management wanted to pick anyway. Two of the other staff members whose company I much enjoyed were Colleen, who was invaluable as AUFA's executive director and an amazing and fighting friend for our members when they were being treated like dirt by management, and later David, who shared his parents' humanistic values and fighting spirit. I'm so sorry for both of you and for Tracey to lose Rick so early. I know Rick had his demons but he was truly the salt of the earth.

Message from Clive Keen who was the Director of Public Affairs at AU.

Having previously worked with his protégé, Chris Conway, I had high hopes of working with Rick Powell, and was not disappointed. Unlike too many stats people, Rick saw not just numbers, but what the numbers really meant. His insights on looking at statistics were legion, but I’ll give just one example to give the flavour.

Rick had been looking at the statistics for people who had not previously experienced university education, and he noticed a very interesting pattern. Often, such students would take their first course, and scrape a pass. They’d take a second course, and get a more respectable mark. On their third course, they’d get an A. And then they’d drop completely out of university education. What on earth was happening? But Rick was always capable of seeing the people behind the statistics. What he saw were people who had always doubted their ability, not having shone at school. So what they’d done was prove to themselves not just that they were perfectly capable of dealing with university education, but could excel at it. That, not some certificate, was their real goal.

Rick had the insight to see that providing personal validation was one of the great unsung, and unacknowledged, successes of Athabasca University – but don’t try to sell that to the powers-that-be. Rather too often, seeing what the statistics really meant was not popular with those powers-that-were. Shouldn’t I have developed something to get those students, and all their tuition dollars, back again? But in this instance, as in far too many others for the benefit of our careers – we (always led by Rick) saw the people behind the statistics, and retained our integrity.

We need to you back, Rick, in this Post-Truth world.