Archive for Karen Pinchin

A new generation of M.B.A. graduates sets out to better the world. Honestly.

As the dusty red pickup truck bounced across Botswana’s rural outback, business graduate student Malaz Sebai nervously anticipated his first encounter with the country’s marginalized and indigenous San people. It was a steamy two-hour drive, and for Sebai, who had spent most of the summer in a small office coordinating the sale of handmade arts and crafts from the region, it was the culmination of an unusual career decision.

In the summer of 2008, while other M.B.A. students and graduates were working their way up through soon-to-be suffering banks and blue-chip corporations, Sebai volunteered as assistant manager with San Arts and Crafts, a non-profit wholesaler of handicrafts made by the impoverished tribe. At the time, he was halfway through earning his M.B.A. degree at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business in Montreal. He concedes that working in Africa, and at such a small organization, was an unconventional choice, particularly considering the high-powered jobs for which business school grads traditionally aim. But he doesn’t regret it.

“When we arrived at the village, we met these poor women we were helping, and there were children everywhere, and all these women were all kneeling on the floor selling their goods,” Sebai recalls. “Without us, these people would never have had access to that opportunity. I think that volunteer work is something that’s very valuable. Especially in this climate, when you go and apply for three positions and there are 150 candidates, this is really the type of thing that will set you apart.”

Sebai, 30, is just one example of the way many M.B.A. grads in Canada are changing their views—both of how to apply their degrees and of how their ethical impulses can merge with their careers. For Sebai, the working trip to Africa wasn’t only about touchy-feely volunteerism; it was also a calculated effort to put his professional acumen to work for a good cause.

Business grads all across the country are making similar choices, and in increasing numbers. And that’s occurring not just because the recent recession has made traditional M.B.A. jobs harder to find. According to Tima Bansal, who teaches strategic management at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, incoming M.B.A. grads are displaying unprecedented levels of social understanding of issues like climate change, poverty, literacy, women’s rights and international politics. “They have a greater awareness of people, and their position within society,” she says. “They care more about their social presence.”

M.B.A.s are giving the ethics of potential employers a much harder look now than they were 10 years ago, agrees Sharon Irwin Foulon, Ivey’s director of career management. She deals with students in both the admission process and in career placement. “I’ve been hearing from my colleagues that many of their students are refusing the few six-figure jobs that there are if they don’t like the values of the organization,” says Foulon. “People have been talking about this shift for a long time, but from my perspective business students seem to be increasingly giving their opportunities a genuine and thoughtful look.”

Toronto computer science grad caught on film handling, firing guns at Tigers camp

According to the National Post, a former president of the Canadian Tamil Students Association has been caught on film both handling and firing guns at a Tamil Tigers camp.

The photos feature Sathajhan Sarachandran, who is currently awaiting sentencing on terrorism charges in the United States, holding a machine gun and aiming a rifle as a group of men stand behind him.

In another photo, Sarachandran is aboard a ship that is carrying the flag of the rebels’ navy, the Sea Tigers.

RCMP officers apparently found the photos during a search of Sarachandran’s Scarborough home. The raid was conducted at the request of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was investigating his involvement in a rebel arms smuggling ring.

The 29-year-old computer science student has pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism and conspiracy to buy surface-to-air missiles for the rebels, also known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. He is facing a possible life sentence at his Oct. 6 court date.

For more on this story, click here.

Two years after unsolved crime, school says victim failed to keep a “proper lookout”

According to the Ottawa Citizen, the victim of a violent and unsolved sex attack in a Carleton University chemistry lab two years ago is suing the school for more than $500,000.

The 25-year-old Ottawa woman, who refers to herself as Jane Doe in the suit, says university officials were negligent in failing to take adequate security measures, which included equipping laboratory buildings with swipe-card security devices and ensuring all entrances to the building were visibly monitored by security cameras.

In its statement of defense, the university claims the victim failed to keep a “proper lookout” for her own safety and also failed to register with the school’s department of university safety as a late-working student. It also alleges that she chose to remain on the premises alone and didn’t lock the door to the laboratory where she was working.

The university says she knew, or ought to have known, the steps she could take to notify the safety department of her intention to work late on her own.

In the suit, which was filed last December, the woman is seeking $535,000 in damages for injuries she suffered in the August 2007 assault, as well as mental suffering and psychological harm, out-of-pocket expenses and the future loss of income.

Since the attack, Carleton has since spent $1.6 million upgrading security, which included more than tripling the number of video cameras on campus, enhancing the campus network of emergency phones, improving outdoor lighting, adding five security officers and 20 uniformed student-safety patrollers and installing swipe-card readers for access to the chemistry and biology buildings.

The lawsuit, which was filed in December, is ongoing.

For more on this story, click here.

Said he found elusive hormone receptor that could protect plants against cold, drought

According to the Winnipeg Free Press, the University of Manitoba has sanctioned a former researcher after an internal investigation concluded he faked data and made up experiments. That work led to an apparently groundbreaking study that was retracted eight months ago by Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious science journals.

Plant science researcher Fawzi Razem, who worked in the lab of university professor Robert Hill, claimed to have discovered a receptor for the major hormone linked to a plant’s response to environmental stress. The receptor, which could help plants adapt to cold or drought, was identified in an article and featured in the editor’s summary in the January 2006 edition of Nature.

Concerns about the research emerged last summer, when a team of researchers from New Zealand couldn’t replicate Razem’s work. A December 2008 online edition of Nature said the study made “erroneous conclusions” and there is no evidence to support Razem’s findings.

He resigned when the initial allegations surfaced.

On July 30, UManitoba issued a statement confirming that Razem had committed fraud, which also said he will “never be recommended for an academic appointment of any kind at the university.”

Education, business students became more religious during university, study finds

A new study released by the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research is shedding some light on the relationship between the religiosity of students and how it interacts with their higher education.

Religious high school students, meaning those who attend religious services or view religion as being important in their lives, were overall more likely to attend university. That group of students may be under pressure from fellow churchgoers to pursue higher education, something the four University of Michigan researchers who conducted the study called “nagging theory.”

Additionally, studying humanities or social sciences had a negative effect on the religious beliefs of students, while education and business students showed an increase in religiosity during their university years.

For students majoring in biological or physical sciences, their religious attendance was not affected by their program of study. However, studying physical sciences did have a negative impact on how those students viewed religion’s importance in their lives.

For study abstract, or to order a copy, click here.

School is the sixth to offer free tuition to the children of fallen soldiers

Concordia University has announced that it will be the first Quebec school to offer free tuition to the children of Canadian Forces personnel killed while serving in an active military mission dating back to February 2002.

The university is the sixth to join Project Hero, a project started at Newfoundland’s Memorial University by Canada’s former top general Rick Hillier.

For more on this story, see here and here.

For students 20 to 24, unemployment hits 14 per cent, the highest rate since 1997

In this story, published today, The Globe and Mail’s Elizabeth Church has some great anecdotes about students who are struggling in summer 2009′s tough job market.

Her article is timely, considering two studies that were recently released.

In Statistics Canada’s latest labour force survey, the agency found that compared with June 2008, employment was down 43,000 for students aged 20 to 24 in June 2009. That means their unemployment jumped 4.8 percentage points to 14 per cent, which is the highest June unemployment rate for these students since 1997.

StatsCan also found that the labour market for 17 to 19-year-old students is slumping. Employment for this age group was down 50,000 between June of 2008 and 2009. That brings their unemployment rate to 18.1 per cent, the highest since June 1998.

In another report released last February, the Educational Policy Institute predicted rising youth unemployment will add more than 105,000 new borrowers to the Canada Student Loan Program in the next three years. The study found that a one per cent rise in youth unemployment increases the demand for student loans by about six per cent.

For more from this story, click here. For Jobless? No, I’m funemployed click here.

When it comes to career and life, the sexes make similar choices — but at different times

Question: What’s the real difference between men and women?

Answer: It’s all in the timing.

Based on the results of Statistics Canada survey released today, although men and women follow similar pathways from school to adult life, the main difference is in the timing of when they make certain transitions.

Studying more than 22,000 young people over eight years, researchers found that the most common sequence of events after formal education was pretty much what you might think: leave school, find a full-time job, leave the parental home, form a relationship, have children.

However, they also found some interesting facts: men were leaving school and working full-time earlier than women, while women moved out of their parents’ homes, formed relationships and had children earlier than men. Over those eight years, from 2000 to 2008, more men worked full-time and still lived with their parents. (Does this remind you of anyone? If so, that’s why.)

Respondents, who were 18 to 20 years old in 2000 and from all 10 Canadian provinces, also provided information about higher ed. When the survey started, about 55 per cent of both men and women had participated in some form of college, university or private post-secondary education. In 2008, by time they were 26 to 28 years old, this proportion had increased to 81 per cent.

Colleges edged out universities in terms of attendance, with 43 per cent of student attending college, and 42 per cent attending university. Overall, though, more women were going to university (8 per cent) and college (7 per cent) than men by the time the survey ended in 2008.

But women didn’t top all the lists. Over the full eight years of the study, a smaller proportion of women than men were working, and a smaller proportion were working full-time. In 2008, 80 per cent of men had a job and were not in school compared with 72 per cent of women. And about 75 per cent of men were working full-time compared with 63 per cent of women.

When the survey started, in 2000, 8 per cent of both women and men didn’t have jobs, but eight years later those numbers were drastically split. Thirteen per cent of women didn’t have jobs, which is almost double the six per cent of men who also didn’t have jobs.

Most obviously, the report’s authors say the reason why women between 26 and 28 had a lower rate of participation in the labour market could be directly related to the fact that more women were in a relationship and had children earlier than men. In 2008, 57 per cent of women were (or had been) married or common-law compared with 42 per cent of men. Almost twice as many women (32 per cent) than men (18 per cent) had children at the same age.

- photo courtesy of daniel.julia

Son of Dead Sea Scrolls academic is accused of using Internet aliases to trash his father’s rivals

New York City lawyer Raphael Golb has pleaded not guilty to stealing identities and using them to try to discredit his father’s academic rivals on the Internet, according to a report by the Associated Press.

Golb is the son of controversial Dead Sea scrolls scholar Norman Golb at the University of Chicago, who, against common historical thought, contends the scrolls were written by Jewish scholars in Jerusalem. For more on the back story from The Chronicle, click here.

According to Manhattan’s district attorney, “Golb engaged in a systematic scheme on the Internet, using dozens of Internet aliases, in order to influence and affect debate on the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Defence lawyer Martin Garbus says the case is about free speech and that no crime was committed.

Judge Carol Berkman has set bond at $15,000 and ordered the 49-year-old to surrender his passport.

University says rule is intended to prevent “predatory commercial marketing practices”

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association says free speech is being threatened at the University of British Columbia, where the group says students have been forbidden from posting signs and posters on dorm buildings or in dorm windows “visible from the Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre.”

According to a press release issued by the group, the school has asked students who live on campus to sign a tenancy agreement that obliges them not to post “signage or displays that create a false or unauthorized commercial association with the Olympics.” In response, the BCCLA says it will be working with students in September to “overturn this prohibition on speech,” similar to agitation that took place during 1997′s APEC protests at the school.

“Canada, B.C. and Vancouver said in our bid documents that we would honour our constitutional commitment to free speech, but they forgot to mention this right was reserved for Olympic sponsors alone,” said Robert Holmes, BCCLA president in the release. “It’s time for a sober second look at these anti-free speech activities.”

UBC spokesperson Stephen Owen told the CBC that the university is not trying to suppress anyone’s right to political protest.

He says the clause in question is intended to protect the commercial interests of games organizers.

“There’s absolutely no impact on free expression of personal or political views. It’s very strictly limited to predatory commercial marketing practices,” says Owen.