Archive for Carson Jerema
Canada’s best teachers: Arne Kislenko
This 3M Fellowship winner gives good old-fashioned lectures
Kislenko’s success as a teacher can be attributed to his personal style and well-executed lessons. A specialist of international history, he remembers professors who managed to make lectures on the two World Wars and the Cold War boring. “How that happened is just amazing. If you can make that boring, you’re in trouble,” he says. “I have tried really hard to never be as boring as them. Plain and simple.”
Kislenko’s lectures are full of emotion—injected with humour, irony, outrage and sadness, depending on the historical period he is discussing. But above all, he strives to show students that they are a part of history. “Everyone is history. And history is everything. All we are and everything we do, think, and believe stems from it,” he says.
That approach has engaged students who otherwise would have had no interest in the subject. “I always felt history was a topic that we had to spend time on in order to become more patriotic and not a topic that should ever be studied seriously,” says Daisy Chang, who is graduating this June with a business degree in hospitality and tourism. After taking one class with Kislenko, however, Chang better understood why her parents fled communist China to come to Canada. “Learning about Asian-Pacific history, World War II, and the Cold War made me realize what my parents had gone through and why I live where I do today,” she says. Chang has taken every class she possibly could with Kislenko, and hopes to work in historical tourism.
When asked about teaching technique, beyond emphasizing well-structured lectures, Kislenko highlights being accessible and demanding. Accessible, because it allows for “a broader, more transformative kind of teaching.” Demanding, because if professors don’t respect both academic standards and the capabilities of their students, “we should just hand out degrees at the subway station.”
Canada’s best teachers: Scott North
This 3M winner has a unique talent for attracting students to oncology
In 1986, to recognize the importance of university teaching, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and 3M Canada created the 3M National Teaching Fellowships. Ten university faculty members are recognized each year for their educational leadership and exceptional contributions to teaching. Here we continue our series profiling all 10 of the 2011 3M Teaching Award winners, with a look at Scott North, an oncology professor at the University of Alberta.
One of the worst mistakes a professor can make is “overteaching the topic,” says University of Alberta oncology professor Scott North. Many professors “teach to a level of detail that is much above what the average person needs to know and in so doing . . . they turn [students] off.” The critical skill for teachers is to know when “less is more.”
North favours comparing his own approach to a tree. “There are branches which are concepts and there are leaves which are detailed information.” The same way trees shed and renew their leaves every year, details are always in flux. “The branches, or concepts, remain present,” he says. “Teach the student the fundamentals and you will provide them the tools to find out the details.”
Recalling that during medical school he wasn’t particularly interested in oncology—only choosing his specialization during his residency—North takes great care to emphasize to his students that he is not trying to turn them all into oncologists. He points out that nearly everyone has been affected by cancer, and that his goal is to help students become well-rounded doctors with a firm understanding of how to “work with cancer patients in a way that improves the doctor/patient relationship.”
While it might be fashionable for educators today to dismiss the lecture format as outdated, North recognizes that lectures are “still useful teaching vehicles” that “are efficient when trying to get information across to a large number of learners.” At the same time he does his best to pepper his lectures with humour and anecdotes.
Practical teaching methods also feature heavily in North’s classrooms. He brings in patients to discuss their illnesses, and regularly enlists actors so that medical students can practice diagnosing patients, hone their bedside manner, and learn how to deliver bad news. As he teaches students during the pre-clinical part of their degree, such experience is invaluable.
“This helps to introduce skills and topics that might be either emotionally difficult or uncomfortable to students so they can experience it and learn before having to do it on real patients,” he says.
Shaun Loewen, a radiation oncology resident, who took a course with North in 2004, says his classic undersell of oncology as a career, North’s skills as a lecturer, and his desire to fully prepare students to enter clinical training are what led him to become an oncologist himself: “I view my experiences in Professor North’s oncology course as the seminal event that pointed me towards a career in oncology.”
Canada’s best teachers: Billy Strean
This 3M winner emphasizes ‘full-body engagement’
In 1986, to recognize the importance of university teaching, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and 3M Canada created the 3M National Teaching Fellowships. Ten university faculty members are recognized each year for their educational leadership and exceptional contributions to teaching. Here we continue our series profiling all 10 of the 2011 3M Teaching Award winners, with a look at Billy Strean, a physical education professor at the University of Alberta.
If you ask Billy Strean what he teaches, there’s a good chance he will simply say “students.” The University of Alberta physical education professor takes great care to learn as much about his students as he can, typically learning all their names after only a couple of classes. “I find the students more interesting than ‘content’ and I find the process of engaging with the students to be the heart of the learning enterprise,” he says.
At the centre of that enterprise is what Strean calls “exhilarated learning.” The approach features three pegs. The first is “human connection” where Strean spends time getting to know his students and encouraging them to get to know each other.
The second is what he calls “full-body engagement,” or “the synergy of thinking, feeling, and acting.” Here he emphasizes the “mood of the classroom” by playing music, using humour, and employing experiential and group activities. To illustrate flow theory, for example, students may be asked to juggle in class.
Third, Strean “connects content to context.” What matters is not only that students learn the material, but that they understand why it is important. “When the focus is too heavily on the content, a pitfall is trying to ‘cover the material’ at the expense of uncovering meaning and building understanding,” he says.
Strean’s suitability for the classroom is unmistakable. Unlike most university professors, he earned a teaching certificate along with his bachelor of arts, and he has been coaching basketball, soccer, and a variety of other sports since he was 16. His doctorate is in sport and exercise psychology.
Strean’s enthusiasm for teaching combined with a charming personality, infectious smile and magnetic presence leaves his students more than a little taken with him. Shelby Stollery who took a third-year class with Strean called, “Structure and Strategy of Games” describes what she calls a “ridiculous enthusiasm.” He frequently opens classes with a dance, a joke, or by blasting baroque music.
“One day we played ‘historical basketball’ and started off by playing the original game with the original rules from the 1800’s,” she says. “We didn’t even realize how much we were learning because we were having too much fun.”
Another student refers to “the awesomeness that is ‘The Strean,’” while yet another calls him an “amazing human being.”
High praise, but it all stems from Strean’s simple student-centred philosophy: “People don’t care what you know until they know that you care.”
‘Warning: you may have to get off your iPhone’
Why youth don’t vote
Writing over at Open File, Spencer Keys challenges the received wisdom of why youth don’t vote:
In the meantime, let’s stop listening to the armchair strategists that think youth voter turnout can be raised by raising awareness among those who were already going to vote, and start doing the hard work of engaging the silent, unreached masses. Warning: you may have to get off your iPhone.
Canada’s best teachers: Fred Phillips
How accounting can be ‘exciting’
In 1986, to recognize the importance of university teaching, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and 3M Canada created the 3M National Teaching Fellowships. Ten university faculty members are recognized each year for their educational leadership and exceptional contributions to teaching. Here we continue our series profiling all 10 of the 2011 3M Teaching Award winners, with a look at Fred Phillips, an accounting professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
University of Saskatchewan accounting professor, Fred Phillips is rarely discouraged by the fact that students often view accountants as dull, humourless money counters. “In a lot of ways, it is to my advantage,” he says, before adding wryly, “The bar is very low.”
For him, accounting is not dissimilar to detective work. Financial statements tell a story and “that story doesn’t always go in the same direction as the cover story that people tell.” A solid grasp of accounting principles allows for uncovering what is actually going on in a firm. “It’s really a fun puzzle,” he says.
For years, Phillips used PowerPoint presentations in the classroom, but starting in 2009, he compiled all his lectures into video form. This solved a dilemma he had been facing. By making the video lectures available to students before class, time was freed up to discuss specific case studies—a valuable resource when studying a profession that demands “deep, contemplative critical thinking.”
Unfortunately, another obstacle arose. “The problem was that there weren’t a lot of suitable resources like this to draw on,” Phillips says. So he set about developing his own case studies. He produced videos highlighting well-known cases such as the fraud trial of former Computer Associates chairman, Sanjay Kumar, and the bankruptcy of Circuit City, to illustrate key accounting practices and principles. He then wrote his own hypothetical problems to present to his classes. Phillips enjoys helping his students learn: “It’s fun to help them discover where their perceptions are and are not on point,” regarding what accountants do.
Phillips’ approach does appear to be working. One of his students, Samuel Clarke, switched majors from arts to accounting, because Phillips helped him to see that the material was “exciting.”
‘vastly over-invested in universities’
From the Harper dossier of potentially controversial quotes.
From the Harper dossier of potentially controversial quotes.
I think we’re vastly over-invested in universities. Universities should be relatively small and provide excellent education and research in a number of specialized areas. I think the vast majority of young people should be going through non-university, post-secondary training
Source: the Calgary Herald, Sept 15, 2000
Canada’s best teachers: Lisa Dickson
This 3M winner focuses on active learning
In 1986, to recognize the importance of university teaching, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and 3M Canada created the 3M National Teaching Fellowships. Ten university faculty members are recognized each year for their educational leadership and exceptional contributions to teaching. Here we continue our series profiling all 10 of the 3M Teaching Award winners, with a look at Lisa Dickson, an English professor at the University of Northern British Columbia.
When Lisa Dickson talks about literature, it is hard to imagine her being anything but an English professor. “Literature is important. It can change the world. It can change how you see,” she says. But her career path was not always clear. In high school she had her heart set on studying medicine in university. “I was going to be a doctor,” she says. And, before that she had toyed with joining the Canadian Forces but reasoned her frame was not built for combat.
Despite her enthusiasm for science, however, her biology teacher bluntly told her, “You’ll never make it as a doctor.” Though she was initially “crushed,” a turning point came when she volunteered to be a peer tutor for her high school English literature class.
When she realized she was actually helping other students get past their frustrations with the material, something switched. “It was like a watershed moment for me,” she says. She was hooked on English.
While at the University of Guelph, Dickson recalls how her friends pursuing science degrees would head to the lab at 2:00 am just to get a spot, while she stayed home, wrapped in a blanket, reading King Lear. “What could be a better way to spend your life than that?” she asks.
Perhaps because of her earlier experience as a peer tutor, Dickson encourages her students at the University of Northern British Columbia to learn from each other, with a heavy emphasis on group work. For example, when teaching Shakespeare, her area of specialization, students don’t just read the plays, they perform them. “It gives students that chance to get in there and see how things work,” she says. “It can create situations where students can explore ideas together.”
Dickson always remains firmly in control of her classes, guiding students as needed, but she continues to experiment with giving them more authority over their own learning. Last spring, she taught a course on Hamlet that crammed 13 weeks of teaching into five days. Working in groups, students discussed the text, selected scenes from the play to perform, and critiqued each other.
Over the course of the week, Dickson gradually removed herself from the process, and by the fourth day, students were entirely on their own. The students “were over the moon with this idea,” she says. “They were terrified at the beginning, but by the end of the course, they felt this gave them the opportunity to really test out what they had learned.”
One of those students was William Henderson, who says “everyone that took that class became passionate about Hamlet.” He also describes Dickson’s reading of a particular passage as “very powerful.”
Dickson has been on sabbatical for the past year, but while most professors would use that time solely for research—that is what sabbaticals are for after all—she has continued her committee work on improving first-year education in the arts and social sciences at UNBC.
The Hamlet class was an “experiment” in active learning that Dickson hopes can be tailored to some degree or another to all levels of undergraduate teaching in the English department. “It can kill literature if you’re just standing at the front shouting ‘this is really interesting, you should be interested,’” she says.
Dickson’s commitment to Shakespeare is undeniable. As is her devotion to the scholarship of teaching and learning. But even serious academics have guilty pleasures. Dickson’s weakness? Science fiction. In her spare time, she pens novels in the genre, though she writes under a pseudonym. “Like a ninja, I work only under the cover of darkness,” Dickson says.
Her interest in all things spacefaring does have an academic angle as well. In 2006, she edited a book on the long running Canadian-American series Stargate SG1 that explored themes such as nationalism, politics and gender roles within the show.
Dickson is also an amateur tap dancer. At a final exam she was giving for her third-year English theory course, she opted to perform a routine for students. One student, Rachelle Durand, remembers that day fondly. “She slipped and fell in the middle of her routine. She laughed and was unhurt. This was a great memory,” Durand says.
Whatever her side interests, Dickson’s passion is for teaching: “Undergraduate education is important because it helps to scaffold and structure that moment in a student’s life as they move from home out into the world.”
Does education matter in elections?
Our student panel has their say
With an election on May 2, we asked our student panel how big a role education policy plays in their decision to cast a ballot for one party, or one candidate, over another. As with previous entries, all videos are archived on our You Tube channel.
A refund is not enough
No matter the outcome students are the real losers in VIU strike
If the Vancouver Island University strike is not resolved by Monday, the term may be extended, and students will be eligible for a full tuition refund if they choose not to complete their classes. That would be an unacceptable outcome and relations between the university and the faculty association should have never deteriorated to the point where the semester is so clearly in jeopardy.
UPDATE: VIU Strike ends
The position of either side does not matter at this point. Even if the university has to concede to concessions it claims it cannot afford, or if the faculty union ends up having to live with a lower level of job security for its members than it would like, the real losers will be students. A certain standard of education at a set time and place is owed to them.
Some students may have to postpone graduation and those in professional programs may be ineligible for provincial accreditation if they don’t complete their studies on time. And many others, if they choose to complete an extended term, as opposed to taking the refund, will lose out on the summer job race.
Giving students the option to get their money back is the least the university could do, but it doesn’t rectify anything. Through no fault of their own, many students will have to face the reality that the semester has been lost and that they will be responsible for making up the time.
If by some last minute breakthrough, a deal is reached between the union and the administration and classes do restart Monday, both sides will likely claim that the semester has been saved. That will hardly be comforting to students.
Compressing the rest of the term into the last three weeks of April, and eliminating the examination period, as the university says it will do, still deprives students of what they were owed.
In some ways a compressed, albeit saved, semester is a less desirable outcome than losing the term altogether. At least if the term is lost, students can register for the same courses next year, secure in the knowledge that they will receive the quality of instruction they expect. The same cannot be said for a drastically shortened term.
Unfortunately, there is not much students can do about the situation, beyond shouting from the sidelines.
One of the clearest expressions of just how few options students have to stand up for themselves came about a year ago when an Ontario judge dismissed a class action suit against York University. The plaintiff alleged that because of the 2008-09 strike, the compressed term forced students to accept lower quality teaching.
However, the judge refused to rule on educational standards, stating, that “(t)hese are matters that fall within the discretion of the university.”
So, presumably because of the convention of university autonomy, institutions can claim that cutting corners, which is what happens after a strike has ended, has no impact on educational quality and students are expected to accept it.
While not inconsequential to a university’s finances, students cannot exert the sort of influence that consumers can in sectors that are not subsidized and regulated to the same extent as the education sector. It is easy to wonder if students are even a factor in collective bargaining.
When labour negotiations break down, students are sometimes described as “bargaining chips.” If only that were true.
Canada’s best teachers: Diana Austin
UNB English prof teaches every 50 minutes as if it is ‘the most important 50 minutes’ of her students’ lives
In 1986, to recognize the importance of university teaching, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and 3M Canada created the 3M National Teaching Fellowships. Ten university faculty members are recognized each year for their educational leadership and exceptional contributions to teaching. This week we continue our series profiling all 10 of the 3M Teaching Award winners, with a look at Diana Austin, an English professor at the University of New Brunswick.
When Diana Austin saw a video of herself teaching, she could not have been more embarrassed. As she lectured in front of the class, she became wildly animated. “I was horrified to see how expressive my face was,” says the University of New Brunswick English professor. “I actually apologized to my students.”
There was no need. Austin’s intensity, where “whatever emotions” she is teaching “flit right across” her face, is what draws students to her. Her apology was rebuffed by her class as unnecessary.
That enthusiasm for English literature and poetry has been charming students for years. Sean Yeomans, who graduated from UNB in 1995, says what he remembers most fondly about Austin was “her waving her intensity and passion” at the authors she taught.
Yeomans, who is CEO of Prince Edward Island video game developer, Telos, credits Austin with helping him to “harness a thought and wrestle it down.”
Once when Austin, a notoriously hard marker, awarded him a “B” on a paper, he visited her to see how he could improve. She tore “apart the entire essay from beginning to end,” Yeomans recalls. While going through that exercise with another professor, might have been excruciating, Yeomans welcomed it from Austin. “I was hungry for that kind of attention to detail and she recognized that and she was fired up,” he says.
Third-year English student Ashlee Joyce, would agree with that sentiment, describing Austin as a “coach” who is always “in your corner.”
Joyce highlights two common exercises that Austin uses to engage her students.
The first is called “designated speakers” where at the start of each class a different student gives their opinion of that week’s readings. “Dr. Austin has a way of making every student feel valued for their idea. Any interpretation is on the table for discussion,” Joyce says.
The other exercise is “rants and raves” where three times each term, students submit a couple paragraphs, via email, about either what they loved or what they hated about a particular reading assignment. Students are encouraged to be informal, and to draw comparisons between the readings and events in the world or their own lives. “She really believes in developing each individual student,” Joyce says.
Austin would be heartened to hear her students speak that way as it illustrates almost perfectly her teaching goals. “My attitude is to teach every 50 minutes as if it is the most important 50 minutes for any of our lives because we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says.
‘Our economy now runs on ideas’
Will education play a role in the campaign?
According to the Toronto Star, education should be a major feature of an election.
Investing in innovation. The Conservatives did a poor job in their anti-recession stimulus package of building for the future. They could have turned the crisis into an opportunity, but their 2009 budget actually cut funding for scientific research (though they later addressed that mistake by creating more research chairs and luring world-class researchers to Canada). But the steps are still tentative: last year’s federal budget increased Ottawa’s spending on R&D by $200 million — while President Barack Obama was upping U.S. spending by $15 billion.
Canada needs to step up dramatically in this area. Our economy now runs on ideas; more and more of us discover, design and create things. Waterloo’s Research in Motion is the poster child for that kind of innovation, but we need much more. What kind of investment in research and higher education do the parties propose to keep the country competitive for the next generation?
While it is unclear whether education and research will play a central role in a campaign, all three parties have introduced, or hinted, at what their education platforms could look like. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says he plans to focus on access for students and has, in the past, endorsed centralization by creating a dedicated higher education transfer to the provinces, presumably with conditions similar to the Canada Health Act. We could likely expect something similar from the NDP.
And, if the Tory budget, released earlier this week, really is to double as an election platform, their position is to focus on targeted research for the physical, engineering and technological sciences, while mostly limiting support for students through established programs such as the Canada Student Loans and Grants programs. The Tories have, in the past, promoted developing something similar to a dedicated transfer in higher education, largely through working with the provinces to outline priorities and demanding reporting for how transfers are spent, though they have been slow to follow up.
The federal role in post-secondary education has always been a bit murky. Ottawa is involved in student loans, in part, because it holds jurisdiction over the banking sector, but the provinces still retain responsibility for determining a student’s eligibility for loans. Because of the presumed importance of research to economic development, a large federal role in this area could arguably be justified under the trade and commerce power.
In any case, all three parties advocate a visible role for the federal government in this education and research, with the NDP and the Liberals likely to promise a more robust presence for Ottawa, and the Tories likely to take a more incrementalist approach more in line with the constitutional division of powers.
Thanks for the cash
Education sector reacts to federal budget
It might all be irrelevant at this point, given that the federal opposition may take down the government, but reaction from the education sector to Tuesday’s budget has been mostly positive. The budget included a boost to the operating budgets of Canada’s three federal research granting agencies, money for the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, another 10 Canada Excellence Research Chairs, and Genome Canada.
For students, tweaks to Canada Student Loans and Grants will see more money flow to part-time students, and allow full-time students to earn a higher income without incurring a penalty to their loans. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s budget also included $10 million to develop an international education strategy, and debt relief for doctors and nurses who promise to practice in rural areas.
Among those cheering the Tories was the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada, whose president, Paul Davison said: “This budget represents tremendous progress for the university sector: more funding for the research councils, promotion of international educational marketing, additional support for students, and a range of measures to foster innovation and research.”
Similarly, Sheldon Levy, chair of the Council of Ontario Universities, released a statement that read: “These investments will generate positive results, both short and long-term, for our universities and for our province and most importantly for our students.”
The Canadian Alliance of Student Associations issued a response that was somewhat more tepid in its support of the budget. “The plan the Conservatives tabled will take some strain off the pocketbooks of working students, but there is still a long way to go if we are to truly create an accessible post-secondary education system,” National Zach Dayler said. CASA wanted to see more money put into student loans, relief for the cost of textbooks and measures to help aboriginal students access education.
More critical was the Canadian Federation of Students. In a statement titled “Federal budget fails to deliver affordable education for Canadians,” the CFS criticized inadequate funding for education transfers to the provinces that remain “approximately $800 million short of 1992 levels when accounting for inflation and population growth.” National Chairperson David Molenhuis called the lack of a “national strategy” for higher education, a “recipe for disaster.”
James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers bemoaned the government’s emphasis on targeted research initiatives when combined with only a “small increase” to the federal granting councils. “Research priorities are best set by the scientific community, not by politicians,” he said.
Budget sees modest support for students
Flaherty announces new support for research, and tweaks to student loans and grants
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced $155 million in new spending for research and innovation for the coming year, as part of his budget that was released this afternoon. As with previous years, funding will be concentrated in the physical, engineering and technological sciences, with little new money for social science research.
As for students, little in the way of new funding has been announced, but tweaks to Canada Student Loans and Grants programs will see more money flowing to part-time students.
The budget includes $37 million in additional funding for Canada’s three research councils, plus $10 million to cover operating costs. However, extra funding for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC) was listed separately, including $35 million, over five years, to support climate and atmospheric research, as well as the creation of an additional 30 Industrial Research Chairs.
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Waterloo, is to receive $50 million over five years, beginning in 2012-13, while funding will be provided to the Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute in order to build a cyclotron to produce medical isotopes.
The Canada Excellence Research Chairs program will see 10 chairs added to its current roster of 19, and an extra $65 million will be allocated to Genome Canada.
“In supporting research and development our goal is to promote innovation—and ultimately to create good, new jobs for Canadians,” Flaherty said in his speech to the House of Commons.
The government will also be spending $60 million over three years to “promote increased student enrolment in key disciplines related to the digital economy,” such as in science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs.
The budget also included measures to entice doctors and nurses to practice in rural programs, a proposal that was released on Monday as part of the government’s unsuccessful attempts to sway the NDP to support the budget.
The government will forgive up to $40,000 of the federal portion of student loans for doctors and $20,000 for nurses who choose to work in underserved areas.
“The number of doctors and nurses in Canada has increased in recent years, but Canadians in some regions of the country continue to experience a shortage,” Flaherty said.
A change to income thresholds will see more part-time students eligible for student grants.
Tweaks to the loan system will allow part-time students to retain eligibility as their family income rises, while full-time students will be permitted to earn $100, up from $50, a week while in school without incurring a penalty to their loans.
Other measures targeted at students include, allowing professional and trade workers to claim certification exams under tuition tax credits, and $10 million in “tax relief” and Registered Education Savings Plan “assistance” aimed at increasing the number of Canadian students who study abroad.
“Our goal is to help Canadian workers reach the next stage of their careers and to seize new opportunities in the years to come,” Flaherty said.
McGill University–’perplexed and disappointed’
Defends decision to raise MBA tuition 900%
McGill University has issued a statement, pasted below, responding to the provincial government’s decision to fine the institution $2.1 million for raising MBA tuition by 900 per cent.
McGill University is perplexed and disappointed with the response of the Government of Quebec to the changes made by McGill to transform the University’s MBA program. Rather than celebrate the dramatic progress and success McGill has achieved in a short period of time with its renewed and self-funded MBA, the government has imposed a significant fine against one of its own universities.
This action puts an arbitrary, elective and unprecedented exercise of authority of government as a priority over demonstrated quality and program performance.
Since McGill moved to a self-funded program, it has developed an MBA that is attracting top-calibre students from Quebec (some of whom have otherwise gone outside the province for their MBA), and from elsewhere.
The McGill MBA’s improvements include: leaping from 95th to 57th in the prestigious Financial Times rankings; maintaining stable enrolment rates; having McGill graduates enjoy the highest job placement rates and highest starting salaries in Canada; being ranked by FT as the only Quebec MBA program in the Top 100 in the world.
To sustain the University’s increased investments in its program, McGill moved last fall to a self-funded tuition model under which it does without any government subsidies for its MBA students, thus saving Quebec taxpayers about $1.2 million annually.
McGill has created, at the same time, student aid at a unique level of support for any Quebec university program, on a per-student basis. The McGill MBA program provides an average of $12,000 per student in financial aid.
Quebecers deserve better than to have a top quality program fined. Quebecers deserve a world-class MBA program and McGill is providing it. McGill has demonstrated that it can do so without limiting accessibility, and without doing so on the backs of our undergraduate students.
McGill’s rejuvenated program, now with better facilities, improved student-teacher ratios, top-level professors, improved advising and novel educational elements, costs significantly less than top MBA programs elsewhere in Canada, and the world.
McGill will continue to meet the interests of our students, and of Quebec.
Queen’s grad society critical of impeachment process
Referendum would not be ‘representative of the entire student body’
Queen’s University’s graduate student society released a statement earlier today criticizing the impeachment process undertaken against rector Nick Day. As rector, Day represents both undergraduate and graduate students.
Here is their release:
The Executive of the Society of Graduate and Professional Students (SGPS) would like to clarify that our students are in no way represented by the actions of the Alma Mater Society (AMS) against Mr. Nick Day, Rector at Queen’s University (Kingston). The SGPS represents all graduate students and the majority of professional students at Queen’s, with over 4000 members. Any AMS referendum is limited to its membership, primarily undergraduate students, and is not representative of the entire student body. We ask the AMS, the Office of the Principal and all parties to cease referring to the process begun against Mr. Day as representative of all students. The process undertaken against Mr. Day is an AMS process with neither the input nor the consent of graduate and professional students at Queen’s. Given the grave importance of this issue, the SGPS is carefully evaluating the options to determine the course of action that best reflects the interests of our members.
Queen’s rector faces impeachment
Students furious Nick Day used his title when defending Israeli Apartheid Week
Queen’s University rector Nick Day now says he regrets signing, with his official university title, a public letter to Michael Ignatieff that accused the Liberal leader of being complicit in “genocide.” On Monday, Ignatieff released a statement condemning Israeli Apartheid Week, calling it “an attack on the mutual respect that holds our society together,” and adding that “It is a dangerous cocktail of ignorance and intolerance.”
On Wednesday, Day issued his response calling Ignatieff’s statement “deeply unethical” and accused Israel of being responsible for the “biggest human rights tragedy of my generation,” and further stated that there is a “genocide happening in Palestine.”
As result of that letter, Day could find himself removed from office. Last night, the Queen’s Alma Mater Society voted unanimously to hold a referendum on Day’s impeachment after a petition signed by more than 2,200 students was submitted to student council.
At issue is that Day, who was elected to represent students in “matters pertaining to education” signed his letter as “Nick Day, Rector, Queen’s University, Kingston,” implying that his letter to Ignatieff was an official position of either the office of the rector, or the university itself.
In his statement to Ignatieff, Day also wrote that “If I ever used the influence of my office and the power of my public voice, as you have [. . .] I would have a very difficult time sleeping at night.”
A Facebook group setup to organize the impeachment drive states that what is “most troubling” is Day’s “claim that he was merely speaking for the students.”
Even Queen’s principal Daniel Woolf entered the controversy. He met with Day on Thursday, and then issued his own statement which read, “Mr. Day’s views do not and should not be seen as being representative of those of the University or Queen’s students.”
When campus paper, The Journal, interviewed Day, he said he regretted signing the letter as “rector,” but added that he was concerned that the substance of his argument was being ignored. “I have a need to publicly talk about Israeli Apartheid Week. I think that the letter receiving any more attention about what the rector is doing is detracting about what we should be talking about.”
Students will vote on whether or not to impeach Day March 22-23.
Picket lines continue at VIU
‘At this point, it’s a bit like a snow day’
“At this point,” Dan McDonald said during a short break in collective bargaining Thursday afternoon, “it’s a bit like a snow day.” The president of the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association (VIUFA), whose members went on strike at 8:00am yesterday, wants to assure the more than 18,000 students whose classes are cancelled, that he is “hopeful” a resolution will be reached without jeopardizing the semester. The two sides, however, remain miles apart.
Job action was triggered over language in the collective agreement surrounding layoffs, which the union has said is a “deal breaker.” VIUFA, McDonald says, wants the university to agree to a clause that would see layoffs occur only if the administration were forced to declare a financial crisis. It would pretty much commit the university to a “no-layoffs” policy. When asked if the faculty bargaining team was willing to concede anything, McDonald’s answer was, “not at this particular point.”
The current collective agreement allows for layoffs “for reasons of demonstrable and substantial declining enrolment over a sustained period, and for reasons of a demonstrable need for program or service reduction, including the non-viability of non-teaching positions.”
Toni O’Keeffe, VIU’s executive director of communications, says the university isn’t planning on wavering from its position to retain the current agreement, unaltered, until 2012. “A no-layoff clause is a huge cost item, put off to the future,” she said. The British Columbia government has mandated that all universities and colleges bring forth cost neutral budgets this year. Earlier in the week, O’Keeffe said she anticipates there will be faculty or staff “reductions of some type.”
Despite a government appointed mediator taking part in Thursday’s negotiations, the stalemate continues. A media release from the faculty association issued last night, after the VIUFA president was interviewed, stated that the “strike continues” and that no further talks are scheduled. “We came to the table to focus on one issue–ensuring that there are no unnecessary cuts to courses at VIU. Unfortunately the employer has not changed its position,” a quote from McDonald reads.
O’Keefe says the university has been exploring options to complete the term if “the strike lasts longer than two weeks.” Students could see the semester lengthened, and/or courses could be held on evenings and weekends, in order to “compress some of the learning time that was lost,” O’Keefe said.
During the strike’s first day, hundreds of faculty showed up to fill picketing duties. “It was raining but the shifts were full,” McDonald says. They were joined by faculty associations from Vancouver Community College, Camosum College, and Langara College which has also threatened to strike. Dozens of students also showed up in support of striking faculty, wearing signs that read “Students in Support of VIUFA.”
Photo: Students show their support for striking faculty, by Sherry Wota, courtesy of The Navigator
VIU shuts down over strike
Faculty hit picket lines at 8:00 am
As of 8:00 this morning Vancouver Island University has been shut down due to a faculty strike, leaving more than 18,000 full and part-time students without classes to attend.
VIU faculty strike confirmed
As faculty ready picket lines, government mediator returns
It’s official, classes will be cancelled at Vancouver Island University on Thursday. “We’re going on strike tomorrow for sure,” faculty association president Dan McDonald said. After a short bargaining session with the administration today, both sides agreed to call back the government appointed mediator who, only yesterday, declared that an agreement could not be reached. Negotiations are to resume Thursday afternoon.
At the centre of the dispute is the status of layoff provisions in the collective agreement. The union wants the current language strengthened so that faculty reductions could not take place unless the university declares a financial crisis. It is a provision that would amount to a “no layoffs” policy.
A message left with the administration Wednesday afternoon was not immediately returned, but spokesperson Toni O’Keefe previously said that due to a government mandated budget freeze, the university “can’t negotiate on cost.” O’Keefe also said that there will likely be staff or faculty “reductions of some type” when VIU brings down its budget.
While McDonald said it is job security that is the “deal breaker,” other issues on the table include faculty involvement in choosing senior administrators, job security for contract faculty, and developing a uniform policy across the university so that department chairs are eligible for lighter teaching loads.
When asked to speculate on how long the strike will last he said that “if we have successful talks, it could be for one day . . . or it could be much longer.”
VIU ‘Strike Begins Tomorrow’
Still no progress in negotiations
So far there doesn’t seem to be any progress in negotiations between the Vancouver Island University Faculty Association, and the university. VIUFA informed the administration yesterday that it intends to strike. I am still awaiting for VIUFA to return a couple messages, but they posted a release on their website earlier today that carries the headline “Strike Begins Timorrow” (UPDATE: I have now spoken to VIUFA president Dan McDonald, and he confirmedthat the strike will happen “for sure”)
We have come to this position reluctantly (especially since we have been without a contract since April 2010), but with an abiding commitment to our position. We are well aware that money is tight in the public post-secondary sector in BC as the provincial government continues to reduce their share of the costs, forcing tuition fees higher. 1,500 students were caught up in waitlists this year.
In such an environment, we argue, it is even more important to prioritize student access to education since a better-educated community is a recognized stimulus for economic recovery. As both education and living costs become more expensive, it becomes even more vital that students be able to complete their degrees in a timely manner. Inadequate numbers of sections and cuts to courses and faculty all impede students’ access to their chosen fields of study.
A message posted to the university’s website is similarly taking the view that a strike is inevitable:
VIU anticipates that strike action will be underway at all of our campuses early Thursday morning, March 10, 2011.
Meanwhile, students are beginning to panic. According to the Nanaimo News Bulletin, dozens of students rallied against a strike in front of the school’s library. However, despite being worried over their classes being cancelled, students who spoke to the Bulletin were generally supportive of faculty.
“I fully support the teachers, they shouldn’t lay anybody off,” anthropology student Meghan Dalskog said. “It sucks for the faculty, but all in all, it’s the students who get screwed.”
Arts student Tim Balaski was more straightforward in his support. “It’s probably not going to be good in the immediate sense, but I’m for it . . .I’d rather lose some money and have things improve a bit then not take a stand at all,” he said.
