Archive for October, 2009

We ended up where our parents started, but we can’t forget where we came from.

Even if I wanted to, I could never be “from” Ottawa. I’ve tried telling people before, new acquaintances who wouldn’t be able to call my bluff. But I always feel too guilty. It’s simply not the truth – I’m from Calgary, and there’s nothing I can do to forget it.

I’m reminded of this because Thanksgiving weekend is arguably the time of year when my “school” life and my “home” life mingle most aggressively. It’s only a few days break, after all, so it’s a slap-and-dash alternate universe switcheroo – different family members, different friends, different city.

While I’ve been home for the break in the past, this year however we all acknowledged that it’s a little too far to go. So I’ll have my first University Thanksgiving – and all the messy attempts at stuffing and cranberry sauce that implies. But since I can’t have my family here, I’ll be graced with visits from close childhood friends now living in Toronto and Montreal, and we’ll remind each other exactly where we came from.

They’re in much the same situation as me. As opposed to Ontario, where students seem to move only hours from home, the post-graduation exodus to schools “back East” is pretty standard in Calgary. At least one parent is often from Ontario or Quebec, and sending us out here for school is, in a way, like sending us back home. We may be far from them, but we usually fall right into the warm laps of grandparents, aunts and uncles.

Add to that the limited number of universities in the West, especially if you’re not so keen on the engineering deal, and a huge chunk of my friends ended up where their parents started. Some even took it further – not only did they return to their parent’s home province, they returned to their alma mater, their old neighbourhood, and – in one case – their old apartment building.

Montreal is an especially strong example. It often seems that half the kids from home moved to Montreal. They go to school together, live together, hang out together. If a band from Calgary tours there, guess who makes up the crowd? I could go to whole parties in Montreal, probably without meeting a single person who isn’t from Calgary. There’s even a neighbourhood nicknamed “Little Calgary,” according to my friend Guillaume, that resembles some sort of ex-pat community.

Of the kids I grew up with, if our parents are from Canada at all (and a good chunk aren’t), they usually came to Calgary in the eighties to get work. A lot of these parents, for obvious reasons, are engineers. (There are a disproportionate numbers of engineers in Calgary, which I think says an awful lot about the city itself. And because engineers are convinced that it is the best profession in existence, every math-deficient kid in the city has some joke about how their parents put them in science camps at age five and keep asking when they’re going to give up those philosophy classes and start taking calculus.)

My Mum is an English Montrealer, and my Dad grew up in Windsor, but was born near Edinburgh. So I, like many of my friends, am a first generation Calgarian. The things we associate with being “truly” Calgarian – Vietnamese subs, for example, or going to illegal parties in Riley Park – weren’t even around when they moved to the city, and certainly not back in the days of the original oil barons. My parents made the city their own (they even wear cowboy boots now), but it defined me from the beginning.

So my childhood friends Guillaume, who goes to Concordia, and Scott, who goes to McGill, are coming to stay with me this weekend, along with Rebecca, who’s at York. And regardless of historical connections to our school-year cities, all attempts to pass for “Montrealers”, “Ottawans” and “Torontonians” will immediately go out the window. Who are we fooling, after all? We may be following our parents back where they came from, but in the end, we’re Calgarians through and through.

Students are caught unintentionally plagiarizing all the time. Learn how to stay safe

You’re writing a paper and you find yourself on the horns of a dilemma: if you make up facts that show the world as you think it ought to be, that’s fabrication and you’re guilty of academic misconduct. On the other hand, if you do your research and find the foremost expert on the subject and repeat whatever he says word-for-word, that’s plagiarism and it’s also academic misconduct.

Come on! It hardly seems fair!

Joking aside, plagiarism is easy to commit accidentally, it’s easy for professors to detect, and it can have serious repercussions. Ignorance is no defense against a charge of plagiarism; at this stage in your academic career, you are expected to know what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.

Plagiarism, in a nutshell, is when a student takes someone else’s idea or their way of expressing an idea and passes it off as their own. (This plagiarism stuff is making me nervous. I admit it: I paraphrased this definition from the University of Toronto’s Code of Behaviour on Academic Matters.)

To make things extra weird and complicated, you can also plagiarize yourself if you take things from papers you’ve previously submitted without citing them, because all academic works are supposed to be original.

Why would students plagiarize themselves, or anyone else, for that matter? Most plagiarism is committed accidentally, or out of ignorance.

“Usually it’s because they are not aware of correct citation practices so they don’t include quotation marks, they don’t cite their sources correctly,” says University of Western Ontario ombudsperson Adrienne Clarke.

Citation practices vary from subject to subject and from university to university. There are several styles of citation you may be expected to use, such as the MLA system and the APA system. It is your responsibility to learn the expectations of your professor and your department, and to follow them. Most universities have websites on plagiarism and citation, and if you’re still not certain, ask your professor.

Even if you are aware of expectations, it’s still easy to make mistakes if you’re not careful. Clark gives a scenario of how an honest student could land up plagiarizing a source:

“A student is working on a paper. They have notes in front of them, with citations and page numbers on sticky notes. They are organizing them, putting them down, moving them around. They are taking information from different places and jotting down page numbers and references. And then when it comes to putting the final paper together, there has been some careless note taking, or they have put their stickies in a different order, and written down wrong page numbers or gotten sources confused, so that their final citation list is not correct.”

Alex Gillis, a journalism professor at Ryerson University, has also seen mistakes made by students with chaotic notes. “Get organized so that later you don’t inadvertently plagiarize by thinking ‘That’s a great sentence I wrote’ when it’s actually from the Village Voice or something.”

Yes, improper citation, committed with the best of intentions but without much attention to detail, is plagiarism, and could be considered academic misconduct. When you’re taking notes, it’s important to keep your sources straight so you don’t attribute the wrong source, or worse, mistake a quotation you jotted down as an original idea of your own.

Next: What’s another way students accidentally plagiarize?

It’s time to let teens speak for themselves

Can I emphasize “tired” once more?

Today (again) it’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic (c-can…can I say that?) novel by Harper Lee about 1950s racial injustice in the American South.

The mother of a Toronto high school student has raised concerns about the novel and supposedly wants it removed from the curriculum. If a formal complaint is pursued, the Toronto District School Board will strike a book review committee to decide what to do with the book.

This latest complaint comes after the novel was removed from the reading list of a Grade 10 Brampton classroom, where a student’s mother objected to the text’s inclusion of the “n-word.”

It seems so obvious that these moms are missing the boat—I feel cliché even mentioning it. To Kill a Mockingbird is the type of novel that seduces classroom thematic analysis about race relations. It decries intolerance and invites discussion about gender roles and hegemony. The novel’s value also lies in its timeliness; would Lee have depicted the black characters of the American Deep South the same way if she had written it today, almost 50 years after its initial publication?

I get it, though. Some people find the book offensive and believe there are other novels that will evoke similar classroom discussions.

To that I say: so what? These mommies should realize that their kids are going to face a whole lot more “offensive material” once they leave the nest. I guarantee that Professor X will be unimpressed with mother dearest’s “constructive criticism” on his or her reading list, so why don’t we give high schoolers a head start by letting them learn to speak for themselves?

Unfortunately, mommy’s wrath has come down on more than just Lee’s work. Books that have faced criticism in Canada include Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Timothy Findley’s The Wars, Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women and even J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

I have read all of the above (save Harry Potter, but I did see the movie) and I personally found little to be contentious. But even if I did, I think it is precisely that which evokes the strongest reaction that calls for the most open of discussions. The world is full of real characters—bigots with vices and malevolent schemes (no, this is not a political rant); why pretend like they don’t exist?

I’ll concede slightly; maybe we should keep Pornography: Men Possessing Women and Woman Hating out of the second grade classroom for the time being. But I do think we should let teenagers tackle the tough issues, especially while they’re in a relatively safe environment. After all, a little Boo Radley never hurt anyone.

- photo by florian.b

Hungry teens choose between lunch and a university recruiter. Guess who wins.

I’m working on a – long overdue – breakdown of the madness of Student Life Expo in Toronto. Had an interesting day though, and thought I’d post some quick stories. Enjoy.

My final school visit today was a strange one…

Typically, university visits are well-publicized affairs. High schools put up posters, sign students up, and there’s a small group waiting when I arrive. We have a good conversation, I leave, and repeat at the school down the road. Today however, things were a bit different. At this school, I was sent to hawk my wares in front of the cafeteria at lunch hour. I’m not sure how many of you remember the high school cafeteria, so let me refresh your memory:

Hundreds of hungry teens invade over the course of 10 minutes at the beginning of lunch hour. They camp out there for the next hour, before reversing the process on the way to their afternoon class. Needless to say, it was not the most productive experience I’ve had. In their single-minded quest for food, students weren’t exacty thinking about a small liberal arts university in Quebec. My notes from this visit will recommend that we hand out hot dogs next time, since that’s probably the only way we’ll get anyone’s attention with this format. A strange set-up, and certainly not the best way to facilitate interaction.

One of the more memorable moments so far is from one of my visits to an independent school in Toronto. I was sitting down with a small group having a great conversation, when the guidance counsellor spoke up:

‘What about the parties?’ he asked.

I was surprised by this, since most students are too shy to broach that topic. Then, he qualified his question, speaking to the group.

“Remember guys, classroom education is only part of the university experience. The social aspect is really important, and you shouldn’t lose sight of that.”

I was blown away. It’s nice to have a frank conversation with students, and this broke down the last set of walls with these students. Allowed to discuss social life, I talked about parties with open invites, great nights at the Lion, and seeing professors at wing night. For students looking for that type of experience, it was perfect. For others, they’ll look elsewhere. But at least now they know.

My challenge to those of you choosing universities? Ask the questions you really want the answers to, no matter how unorthodox. Be brave, and you may actually end up at the school that best suits your needs.

Closing the higher education gap is more complicated than making sure everyone can afford it

A study of university graduate rates in Quebec suggests that while needs-based grants improve university attendance, they don’t help university graduation numbers. In other words, Quebec’s additional needs-based grants did allow more lower-income students to go to university, but that increase did not mean that more of those students actually graduated.

This study raises at least two questions in my mind. First, if a student goes to university and does not graduate, has that student necessarily wasted the time and money spent? The study’s author, Mathieu Chemin, seems to think so, pointing out that the labour market rewards graduation, not attendance. But labour markets are not the only measure of the value of education. I would like to see data regarding how many students who attended university without graduating still view their time there as rewarding and valuable. A half-eaten meal is still nourishing; it may be all you need. Might there not be many who attend university for, say, two years, and then decide to move on to other things, but do so with a wider range of knowledge, a better set of critical skills, and a fuller sense of the world’s possibilities? I have known more than one student who fits this description perfectly.

But even if many students do end up wasting their time pursuing a degree they don’t finish, another question arises: Why don’t more of those low-income students end up graduating? The possible answers that suggest themselves to me relate to preparedness. For one thing, low-income students may live in areas with inadequate educational resources. If their schools, libraries, and museums are inferior (or absent), poorer students may not be as well-prepared for university study. Similarly, if parents are struggling to make ends meet and working long hours at exhausting jobs, they may be unable to take as active an interest in their kids’ learning (directly or by hiring tutors, say) as richer parents. Still further, low-income parents may themselves not have been to university and, as such, may (consciously or unconsciously) teach their kids to undervalue higher education, which might make their kids less likely to stick with it even when they do go to university themselves.

In short, lower-income kids may be less prepared and less enthusiastic about university in the first place, leading them to drop out before finishing. A 2007 Statistics Canada study concluded something similar about university attendance in general: that poorer students don’t attend university as often, but not because of money per se, but because of lower academic performance and differing parental expectations. If this is true, though, it doesn’t mean there is no problem. Instead, it may mean that we need to concentrate less on grants to lower-income students and look more closely at public education to see if it can play a greater role in letting disadvantaged kids know that university is an option, and getting them ready to realize that choice.

Blame culture. Or genes. Or Dilbert. In engineering, it’s a man’s world—for now.

The Eurythmics had it only partly right. Back in 1985, the British pop duo of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart recorded Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves with the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. A modern feminist anthem, the song makes this interesting observation: “The inferior sex has got a new exterior. We got doctors, lawyers, politicians too.” Indeed, much of that has come true. At several Canadian medical and law schools, women now outnumber men. But there’s one traditionally male-dominated field where men are still a clear majority—and where women’s representation has even declined in the past few years: engineering.

According to Engineers Canada, the number of women enrolled in engineering programs was on the rise for a full decade before plateauing in 2001, when 20.6 per cent of students were women. But since then, as more and more men have taken engineering, the number of women has remained flat. Since 2001, the proportion of female engineering students has dropped nearly every year, to just 17.3 per cent in 2007, and a mere 17.1 per cent in 2008. At the University of Toronto, for one, women comprised 26.6 per cent of engineering students in 2001, but just 21.4 per cent in 2008. And the phenomenon is not confined to Canadian universities: female enrolment in engineering has plateaued across North America.

The reasons are the subject of a heated debate in and outside of the academy. “Certainly, it is not due to a lack of effort to encourage women to go into engineering,” says Judy Myers, the past president of the Canadian Coalition of Women in Engineering, Science, Trades and Technology (CCWESTT). Indeed, universities have embarked on a number of initiatives to attract women to the field, and the deans of some of the country’s top engineering schools are female. Yet the male-female gap continues to grow, confounding professors and university administrators. And before they can address the phenomenon, they must first figure out why it exists.

One hypothesis, endorsed by CCWESTT, suggests that women aren’t turning away from engineering so much as they’re turning toward other sciences that seem to offer not only challenging career opportunities but also the chance to make a difference. As Elizabeth Cannon, dean of the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, explains, there are now many science disciplines that fit the bill, and so women might enrol in health or environmental sciences instead of biomedical or environmental engineering. “With so many doors open,” says Cannon, “you get a little bit of a dilution across all of these areas where women can be successful.”

Others suggest the field may still have an image problem—engineers as out-of-touch geeks or nerds. As Tyseer Aboulnasr, the dean of the faculty of applied science at the University of British Columbia, says, “The perception of engineering as a pure-technology field that doesn’t really connect with society is certainly an issue.” A recent study supported by Engineers Canada found that young women tend to “equate engineering and technology . . . with construction work, outdoor work, working in a cubicle, and relating primarily to computers and machines, rather than people.” Says Kathleen Sendall, an engineer and the first woman to chair the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, “Dilbert has contributed to a number of stereotypes about engineers.”