Speaker Name: Dr. Victoria Burns
Session Description:
Recovery on Campus (ROC) was founded by Dr. Victoria Burns at the University of Calgary in response to a critical gap. Post-secondary environments often remain recovery-threatening, shaped by stigma, the normalization of substance use, and limited support for addiction. After being advised not to disclose her recovery as a faculty member, she set out to ensure that no student or staff member would have to choose between their recovery and their education or career.
What began as a grassroots initiative grounded in lived experience has grown into a $5 million province-wide movement. ROC supports students and staff across all recovery pathways through peer-led services, substance-free housing and events, scholarships, and recovery-oriented education. These efforts foster belonging, visibility, and inclusion.
As Canada’s first province-wide campus recovery initiative, ROC is being scaled across 27 publicly funded post-secondary institutions. Central to this work is the Recovering in Place Lab, a living lab that integrates direct services, education, and research through a continuous feedback loop. This approach advances evidence-informed, community-based recovery practices.
This talk introduces a place-based framework that brings together peer-led support, education, research, and sustainability to transform recovery-threatening environments into recovery-supportive communities.
Recovery should not be hidden or considered brave to name. It should be recognized as a source of strength and hope, visible, valued, and supported on every campus.
Learning Objectives:
Understand how post-secondary environments can function as recovery-threatening spaces and how a place-based approach can transform them into recovery-supportive communities.
Identify the core components of an integrated campus recovery model, including peer-led support, education, research, and sustainability, and how they work together to build recovery capital.
Explore strategies for reducing stigma and increasing visibility of recovery to foster belonging and support students and staff across all recovery pathways.
BIO
Dr. Victoria Burns is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary and the Founder and Director of Recovery on Campus Alberta (ROC), Canada’s first province-wide campus recovery initiative. She is an internationally recognized recovery scientist whose work focuses on stigma, recovery, and place-based approaches to addiction, with an emphasis on transforming post-secondary environments into recovery-supportive communities.
Drawing on both lived experience and extensive research expertise, Dr. Burns leads innovative, evidence-informed initiatives that integrate peer-led support, education, and community-based research. She also directs the Recovering in Place Lab, a living lab advancing recovery science through real-world application and continuous feedback between research and practice.
Dr. Burns is committed to ensuring that students and staff do not have to choose between their recovery and their academic or professional goals.