Archive for October, 2011
$100-million donated for Canada, Israel scholarships
STEM students will get $60,000 each
Seymour Schulich, who already has several Canadian schools named for him, has announced he has donated $100-million to fund scholarships in Canada and Israel, reports Shalom Life.
The Schulich Leader Scholarships are meant to increase enrollment in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects, in order to spur innovation.
All graduating high school and CEGEP students in Canada and Israel who are planning to study STEM subjects may apply. Each winner will receive $60,000 over four years. Five Israeli and 20 Canadian Universities will award one scholar each in the first year of the program. After that it will grow 75 awards per year. United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto will administer the cash.
Schulich, a business leader, has already made donations that have resulted in the following things named for him: a medical and dentistry school at the University of Western Ontario, a library and a school of music at McGill University, a law school at Dalhousie University, an engineering school at the University of Calgary, an education school at Nipissing University and a business school at York University.
Two separate attacks on females in Ontario
One woman grabbed, another kissed by strange man
Police in two Ontario cities are looking for male suspects after separate incidents involving university-aged females that occurred on or near campuses this week.
The first happened at the University of Western Ontario at 6:40 a.m. on Wednesday. After a female left her vehicle and walked to work near the TD Waterhouse Stadium, she was grabbed from behind by an unknown male who is described as white and aged 25 to 35 with a thin build and a stud or ring in his lower lip. He was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt under a black leather jacket and black jeans, reports the London Police Service.
The second incident involved a 21-year-old woman near the Wilfrid Laurier University and University of Waterloo campuses on Thursday around 3:30 p.m. A man unknown to the woman hugged and kissed her on the cheek before letting her go. Waterloo police told the Waterloo Record that the man is described as dark-skinned and short in height with a large belly and short dark hair. He was wearing a red sweater or jacket and jeans.
Minority job applicants get fewer callbacks
Study reminiscent of 1948 Maclean’s article by Pierre Berton
Photo by |Mahin| on Flickr
A new study has shown that Canadians with English-sounding names on their résumés get many more responses from employers than those with foreign-sounding names, even when applicants have identical qualifications and make it clear they can speak English or French proficiently.
Philip Oreopoulos and Diane Dechief of the University of Toronto found that of the 8,000 fake job applications they sent out, those with English-sounding names at the top were 47 per cent more likely to receive callbacks in Toronto than resumes with Greek, Indian or Chinese-sounding names. In Montreal, English names had a 39 per cent advantage. In Vancouver it was 20 per cent.
Oreopoulos told The Globe and Mail that subconcious discrimination may partially explain the difference. Another part of their study showed that human resources professionals cite concerns over language or social skills for the possible differences in their reactions—despite the fact that such skills can easily be determined with a simple phone call.
Continue reading Minority job applicants get fewer callbacks
Are today’s students really more boring?
Philosophical conversations make a comeback on campus
Photo by passer-by on Flickr
University students just aren’t what they used to be, it seems. James Lang, reviewing a book by Cathy Small in The Chronicle of Higher Education, sadly concedes that today’s students no longer engage in the big undergraduate discussions of the meaning of life, the sort of late-night, possibly pot-scented talks that he had when was he was young. Indeed, he concludes, this new bunch of students no longer has “a curious and thriving intellectual life outside of their courses.”
Similarly, according to this U of T Dean, today’s young people no longer see a course as a chance to explore concepts and knowledge for their own sake, but merely as pragmatic means to Spartan ends. Then she hints that they may more boring too. “I sometimes wonder if people feel less curiosity now that they can just turn to Google,” Kelly Castle rhetorically asked in The Grid.
Montreal MBAs jump in Economist rankings
Where does your business school stand?
John Molson School of Business by Canuckistan on Flickr
The Economist has released its annual ranking of full-time M.B.A. programs. Below, we show you all the Canadian schools on the list, with their 2010 ranks in parentheses. The thing that jumps out here is how much Montreal’s two primarily English-language programs have climbed. After winning a long fight with the Quebec government to charge tuition in line with what other schools charge, McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management leaped onto the list at 64th. It’s unclear whether those two facts are related, though the upped tuition did begin in 2009-10. Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business also made a significant gain. Congratulations to all.
University of Manitoba asks: What should I say?
How to use terms like Native, Indigenous and Aboriginal
Photo by kwankwan on Flickr
After Deborah Young was appointed the Executive Lead, Aboriginal Achievement at the University of Manitoba in April, she quickly changed her title to Executive Lead, Indigenous Achievement.
That’s caused the school to explore in a podcast, “What do I say?” Local experts explain that there are important nuances in the terms we use to describe the decendents of those who lived in Canada first. Here are just a few of their ideas.
Young says that she chose the term Indigenous because it’s more uniting than Aboriginal. Indigenous is a term that crosses borders and recognizes a shared history. Indigenous is the word used by the United Nations. Aboriginal is not wrong. It’s simply an umbrella term used for First Nations, Metis and Inuit people in Canada. But, warns Young: “One of my pet peeves is that people don’t capitalize Aboriginal.”
Continue reading University of Manitoba asks: What should I say?
Master’s student plans to prove psychics are real
Thesis experiment to examine brain waves
Photo by CarbonNYC on Flickr
A student pursing her master’s degree in pschology is on a mission to prove psychic activity exits, reports The Sudbury Star.
Mandy Scott, a student at Laurentian University, says she plans, among other things, to measure changes in brain activity during supposed psychic episodes.
“Psychic functioning is the ability to perceive and describe targets, which could be people, places, events, situations, anything that’s hidden from you at a distance of space in time,” Scott explained to the newspaper.
Although she is sometimes criticized for her choice of study, she asserts that, “psychic function is real and we need help in pinpointing how it works.”
The study will include three groups. One will be the control. A second will be taught psychic techniques. The third will consist of “experienced psychics.” Each group will be asked to describe a photo inside an envelope. The question is, will the psychic groups do better? Each participant will also be given six EEG scans to look for changes in brain wave activity.
Can you blame Facebook for your bad grades? Maybe.
Some activities may lead to lower marks
Photo by Spencer E Holtaway on Flickr
It’s common to use Facebook as a scapegoat for poor academic performance. That’s because a few small studies have shown that grades are lower among students who spend more time on the social media site. The assumption has always been that more time spent on Facebook translates to less time spent studying, which leads to lower grades.
But a newer, bigger U.S. study has found that Facebook time and study time are only weakly related. It takes many extra hours of posting and chatting before grades start to slip. What’s more, although the new study found negative relationships between grades and certain types of Facebook activities, other types of activities appear to be a associated with higher grades.
Continue reading Can you blame Facebook for your bad grades? Maybe.
Saskatchewan Party pledges affordability
Incumbent party announces two new programs
Photo by waferboard on Flickr
The Saskatchewan Party’s leader, Premier Brad Wall, announced on Tuesday two new initiatives for improving access to post-secondary education in the province. It happened on the first day of the campaign before the Nov. 7 poll.
The Saskatchewan Advantage Scholarship would provide up to $2,000 for high school graduates in the province to go towards tuition fees at Saskatchewan post-secondary institutions. Under the new program, which would be launched next year, students would be able to reduce their tuition costs by up to $500 per academic year.
The second program, the Saskatchewan Advantage Grant for Education Savings, would build on the federal Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) to help families save for their children’s educations. The provincial government would match 10 per cent of contributions to an RESP account, to a maximum of $250 per year.
The two programs would cost close to $15 million in the next year, according to the release.
So far, Wall’s main challenger, NDP leader Dwain Lingenfelter, hasn’t announced any major education-related policy ideas, except that he would spend $24-million to help small centres recruit and keep doctors. That plan would “include things on tuition…” he told the StarPhoenix.
Brandon University staff are on strike
Sticking point is wages, says professor
Photo by ggbaker on Panoramio
Staff at Brandon University are on strike. They hit the picket lines at 7:30 a.m. this morning.
Negotiations between the Brandon University Faculty Association and the administration ended at 5 a.m., reports CBC News. BUFA represents 240 professors, instructors and librarians.
The university says that classes for roughly 3,000 students are cancelled until at least Oct. 14. Deandra Tousignant, who speaks for the Brandon Students Union, said the faculty association communicated their support of students who cross the picket line for school work.
Jim Forsythe, a professor, told CBC that faculty asked for wage increases of four per cent for each of the next three years, but that the university offered two per cent in year one, two per cent in year two and no rise in year three. Taking into account inflation, the offer amounts to a pay cut, he said.
A recent Statistics Canada study of 27 universities showed that the median salary for associate professors in 2010-11 at Brandon was $95,220. The highest paid associate professors in the study were at York University ($123,959) and the lowest paid were at Vancouver Island University ($82,946). Brandon’s professors were the 20th best paid out of the 27 schools in the study.
BUFA was last on strike in 2008 for 17 days.
Layton’s books to rest at Ryerson University
Late NDP leader was lecturer at school from ’74 to ’81
Photo courtesy of Medmoiselle T on Flickr
The family of Jack Layton, the late New Democrat leader, has donated his book collection to Ryerson University. The donation was announced by President Sheldon Levy at the Ryerson Senate meeting on Oct. 4, reports The Eyeopener. Levy said the University is still in the “thinking stages” as to what to do with the books. Renaming or appointing a Chair position to honour Layton is also being considered.
Layton began lecturing in the politics department at Ryerson in 1974. He stopped teaching after joining Toronto City Council in 1982. He earned an MA (’71) and a PhD (’84), both from York University.
On May 2, Layton led the New Democrats to new heights, winning 103 ridings out of 308 total to become the official opposition for the first time. He died of cancer on Aug. 22 at the age of 61 and was honoured with a state funeral.
Stop attacking university research
If professors don’t produce research, who will?
Photo by NASA Goddard Photo and Video on Flickr
University research is under attack these days. This editorial in the Globe and Mail is just the latest call for “reform” of a system where university professors are, they say, too devoted to research, contemptuous of teaching, and wasting the public’s money. If professors spent more time teaching and less time researching, taxpayers and students would get more bang for their buck, they argue. As a student and a young scholar, I always took the value of university research for granted.
Apparently I can’t any longer.
One reason such editorializing is wrong-headed is that the anti-teaching prof is a myth. While those outside the academy like to represent today’s professor as a hyper-nerd who can churn out papers but not explain anything, the stereotype simply doesn’t hold up. In nine years as a student and eleven as a professor, I have met only a few professors who hated teaching, and not a single one who didn’t work hard at it.
Deadly construction collapse at York University
No injuries to students reported
One man is dead at York University after a piece of construction equipment, possibly a crane or drilling machine, toppled over onto construction workers around 2:30 this afternoon. Another man, who is 36-years old, is still trapped in the debris as of 4 p.m., reports CP24. Three people have been taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. The accident happened beside the Schulich School of Business where construction workers are drilling for the Spadina Subway extension. The accident has caused road closures, including portions of Keele St. York students are currently on a reading week break, so few are on campus. No students have been injured.
Illegal immigrants to get student aid in California
But bill to legalize affirmative action is dead
Photo by paulinaclemente on Flickr
California’s Governor Jerry Brown decided on two controversial higher education bills this weekend.
The first, which he signed into law, makes it possible for illegal immigrants and their children to be eligible for financial aid to attend California universities and colleges. As noted by the San Francisco Chronicle, “such students have the hardest time paying for college because they cannot legally be employed, they qualify for no financial aid, and their parents often are not wealthy enough to help.” The new grants provided to roughly 800 students per year under the so-called “Dream Act” will cost at least $13 million.
The second bill, which Brown vetoed, would have allowed universities to consider the race, gender and income of applicants to increase diversity on campuses. Such “preferential treatment” was outlawed by a voter proposition in 1996. Brown said he supports the affirmative action aims of the bill, but that it’s up to the courts to decide whether such a change would be legal.
That bill, SB 185, stirred controversy when Campus Republicans at UC Berkeley held an “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” two weeks ago at which they tried to demonstrate their dislike of such measures by selling baked goods at different prices, based on race and gender. Many campus leaders criticized the demonstration as racist and the student union’s senate had a special meeting to consider pulling their funding. At the bake sale, the cupcakes sold out quickly, suggesting strong support. But large numbers of protesters opposed to the sale also showed up.
Ont., Man. and P.E.I. voters keep student-friendly governments
But turnout still dismal
Premier Dalton McGuinty by • JenniferK • on Flickr
Voters in Ontario, Manitoba and P.E.I. have re-affirmed their provincial governments—and all three of those governments ran on more student-friendly platforms than their main competitors.
Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario Liberals won a third term Thursday, but were one seat shy of a majority government. McGuinty got 53 seats, the Progressive Conservatives under Tim Hudak got 37 and the New Democrats under Andrea Horwath got 17. The leaders achieved, respectively, 38, 35 and 23 per cent of the vote.
McGuinty’s Liberals poured funding into universities over the past two terms, although they promised no extra base funding this time around. That’s unsurprising considering Ontario’s $15-billion deficit. What they did promise for students is the introduction of a new grant in January that will reduce tuition for full-time college and undergraduate students by approximately 30 per cent, so long as their families’ household incomes are less than $160,000. The Progressive Conservatives promised no such grants. The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance was quick to congratulate McGuinty on his win.
Continue reading Ont., Man. and P.E.I. voters keep student-friendly governments
USask “levelling the playing field”
Students can be admitted without provincial exams
Photo by daryl_mitchell on Flickr
The University of Saskatchewan is hoping to attract more students from Alberta, British Columbia and the territories by “levelling the playing field,” reports the StarPhoenix.
The university will now waive provincial and territorial final exam marks and will base admissions and scholarships decisions entirely on the grades teachers assign throughout grade 12—should those marks be higher.
For Albertan students, diploma exams count for 50 per cent of students’ final grades. Clearly, if they can choose whether to include the test or not, it means some students will be considered by Saskatchewan who might not have been in the past.
The reason for the change is equity, Dan Seneker, undergrad recruitment manager for the U of S told the newspaper. He argued that admissions standards haven’t changed. “We’re not dropping our average, we’re not dropping our scholarship averages or anything like that, we’re not increasing space in programs. We’re keeping everything status quo, we’re just admitting students on a more equitable basis,” he says. A message on the U of S website echoes that sentiment. It reads: “we don’t want to penalize you if you have a bad test day.”
School uses app to keep freshmen out of parties
Students worry about privacy
Photo by Brian Lane Winfield Moore on Flickr
An American university has gone to great lengths to enforce its new rule that first-semester students may not attend fraternity or sorority events.
Cornell University is releasing an ID scanning application for Apple devices. Fraternity and sorority party organizers will be required to borrowan iPod with the application installed from the school, which they’ll use at the doors of their social events. The app allows them to check student’s names, class years and whether they’ve reached 21, the legal drinking age in the U.S.
The information scanned is accessible “to a limited few in our office… and stored on a secure server with no plans to share further,” Travis Apgar, associate dean of students for fraternity and sorority affairs, told The Sun. “The use of the scanners will improve [the Greek community’s] management of risk by properly identifying the class year of attendees,” he said.
Continue reading School uses app to keep freshmen out of parties
BU faculty vote to strike
Last strike was in 2008
Brandon University’s 240 professors, librarians and administrative staff have voted 71 per cent in favour of a strike. That does not mean a strike is certain. “The clear message of this strong, positive mandate is that BUFA members are determined to achieve a fair and equitable settlement in this round of negotiations,” Brandon University Faculty Association president Joe Dolecki said in a release. The school experienced a 17-day strike in the fall of 2008, according to CBC News.
Concordia library to start lending out iPads
But is it a good use of tuition money?
Photo by Rego - d4u.hu on Flickr
Concordia University’s library will lend out iPads to students starting this month. OpenFile Montreal reports that the library has acquired 25 of the tablet computers and they’re almost ready to go.
Concordia, like many schools, lends out laptops. That’s undoubtedly a useful service for students who want to do research in the library instead of carting home a pile of books. And not everyone can afford a laptop, so this improves access.
But while a number of American university libraries lend out iPads to students, Concordia is the first university in Quebec to do so. Some universities, including nearby McGill, offer e-readers, but iPad lending appears to be rare in Canada. The only other example I can find, using an (albeit non-exhaustive) Google search, is at York University’s Steacie Science and Engineering Library. They have a single solitary iPad to lend.
Continue reading Concordia library to start lending out iPads
Canadian schools improve in Times Top 400
McMaster, Alberta, Montreal, Ottawa and Queen’s leap ahead
Montreal, a fast climber. By l.Gouss on Flickr.
Eighteen Canadian universities are in the Times Higher Education’s Top 400 Rankings for 2012, the same number as in 2011. But take a look at the schools’ positions in last year’s Top 200 Rankings (in parentheses) and you’ll see that more Canadian schools improved this year—some greatly—than fell in rank.
The U.S. dominated once again with 18 of the Top 25 universities, compared to four for the U.K., two for Canada and one for Switzerland.
You’ll notice that big schools with huge amounts of research funding dominate the list. That’s because research and citations account for 60 per cent of the marks. For a fuller ranking of Canadian schools, click here for the Maclean’s 2010 Rankings or pick up a copy of our 2011 Rankings, out on newsstands in late October.
