All Posts Tagged With: "Alberta"

Wildrose Alliance wants investigation

Alberta’s Wildrose Alliance Party is calling for an investigation into all of the province’s post-secondary schools after learning that the University of Lethbridge reimbursed staff who attended Progressive Conservative Party dinners and golf tournaments in 2004 and 2005. The reimbursements cost the school $15,000. Lethbridge officials say they weren’t aware until 2005 of a new law that came into effect in 2004 that outlawed such payments. ”As soon as we were notified by the auditor general’s office, we at the very next meeting passed new policy to comply with the legislation,” Bob Turner, chair of the board of governors told the Calgary Herald.

Accused of recruiting on campus

Four members of the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) fraternity have been charged under the University of Alberta’s Student Code of Conduct for attempting to recruit pledges on campus, reports The Gateway. That’s in violation of the five-year suspension DKE received in January after alleged hazing. The investigation and charges came after the apparent recruiting was recorded by students, who then gave their recordings to the Dean of Students. Universities have been taking incidents of hazing very seriously lately. St. Thomas University’s new code of conduct allows for punishments as harsh as expulsion for off-campus hazing. The tough new rules were in response to the death of Andrew Bartlett, who hit his head after being at a party where hazing took place. The University of Guelph’s men’s rugby team was suspended in October after an off-campus party where an “initiation,” though not hazing, apparently took place, according to the athletics director.

Interprovincial competition for graduates heats up

An Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership candidate says every Albertan graduate should be given $20,000 in tax credits if they live and work in the province for at least seven years after graduation, reports the Calgary Herald.

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba and Saskatchewan all have similar schemes aimed at stopping the best and the brightest from moving to Toronto or Vancouver after their post-secondary educations are complete. Those provinces have good reasons to try and stem the brain drain. Manitoba had a net outflow of 1,000 residents in the first-quarter of 2011, according to Statistics Canad, while Saskatchewan lost 600 people and Nova Scotia shed 1,000.

But Alberta? They gained 5,300 people. Do they really need a tax credit program to keep students from jumping ship?

Ted Morton, the candidate, says they certainly do. “It’s a win-win-win,” for the province, its young people and employers, he said. The $160 million program would pay for itself through taxes paid by the students who get jobs or start businesses in the province, he added.

The Alberta Tories, who have governed uninterrupted for 30 years, are facing a challenge in the next election from the upstart Wildrose Alliance. A recent poll showed that 29 per cent of voters are leaning toward the Wildrose, compared to 34 per cent who would vote Tory. (Note: the survey of 2,400 was commissioned by the Wildrose Party itself. )

Advanced Education Minister’s biggest opposition to ebook depository may be students themselves

In the digital age we live in where print mediums are being rapidly replaced by their digital counterparts, a surprising amount of skepticism continues to surround the electronic textbook.

That doesn’t mean the e-textbook doesn’t have it’s supporters. Alberta’s advanced education minister Doug Horner  recently announced his desire to launch an online book depository for Alberta students, with the hopes that it could cut the costs of textbooks for students in half.

Horner told the Edmonton Journal that the students would have access to textbooks written in Alberta, in addition to commonly used first-year textbooks used at a variety of institutions. “Because isn’t the objective to help the student achieve, as opposed to paying a stipend to whoever wrote a book?” Horner said.

While this could be a groundbreaking development for Alberta post secondary education, Horner may have some serious obstacles to overcome. Perhaps his biggest? Convincing students to give up their cherished 10 pound paper textbooks.

One of the most significant factors in the failure of electronic textbooks to take over the education world has been the reluctance of students to make the switch. Despite often costing a fraction of what a new textbook costs, (the New York Times pointed out that e-textbooks are usually more expensive than a used textbook, but less expensive than a rental or new textbook) they continue to be a hard sell to students. “The screen won’t go blank,” Faton Begolli, a sophomore from Boston, told the Times. “There can’t be a virus. It wouldn’t be the same without books. They’ve defined ‘academia’ for a thousand years.”

Other students told the Times that eBooks can strain your eyes, and it’s easy to get distracted if you’re reading a textbook on your computer.

A study conducted by OnCampus Research in October found that students have been reluctant to catch on to e-readers, seemingly for these very reasons. According to a press release issued by the National Association of College Stores, the study found approximately 92 percent of students surveyed said that they do not own an e-reader, and only 13 percent had bought an eBook over the past three months. Some students explained in the comment section of the survey that they would never buy a digital textbook, and prefer having a physical copy that they can highlight and write notes on.

This hasn’t stopped companies from trying to sway students to a digital option. Amazon launched the Kindle DX last year, which has a larger screen better suited to reading textbook material, along with a pilot project with seven colleges and universities in the United States to find out how to make the device appealing for campus users.

Barnes and Noble College Booksellers has also tried to hook students on their e-textbook software, NOOKstudy, by giving away “College Kick Start Kits”, with ramen noodle recipes, tips for how to deal with college roommates, and access to several classics such as Dante’s “Inferno”.

Not all students are vehemently opposed to the e-textbook, and some educators have thrown their support behind the e-textbook option as well. Anne Jordan, professor emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, said in University Affairs magazine that she had an excellent experience teaching using an e-textbook that she wrote for one of her graduate courses, explaining that it allowed her to integrate multi-media platforms into her course, including videos and drag and drop exercises.

“It’s a completely different way of teaching from lecturing and having people go and do readings and write reports,” she said. “The interactivity makes it a much more personal learning experience”

Chris Martin, a student at McMaster University, told University Affairs that he saw the electronic textbook as a way students could be more eco-friendly, and thought the multifaceted structure of the electronic textbook could facilitate more diverse ways of teaching.

I’ll admit that I like writing in the margins of my textbooks as much as the next student, but it seems like a small convenience compared to the prospect of not having to lug around a massive book that I paid $200 for. That being said, I predict that many of my fellow students won’t be ready to let go of them anytime soon.

U of C might have the solution

The University of Calgary has found a way to bring more family doctors into Alberta.

According to an article from the Calgary Herald, Alberta needs hundreds of family physicians in both urban and rural areas. With an estimated 200,000 Calgarians without a family doctor, the city needs at least 150 new doctors, along with another 150 rural doctors.

It’s sort of a doctor shortage within a doctor shortage: we need more doctors, but we especially need more family physicians.

In the past, there weren’t nearly enough family doctors coming out of the U of C. In 2007, the department of family medicine accounted for 18 per cent of the school’s total graduating class, much lower than the national average of 33 per cent. At the time, the U of C held the second-lowest rate in the country. “The only school that had fewer students choosing family medicine was McGill (University in Montreal),” said Cathy MacLean, the head of family medicine at the U of C, in an interview with the Herald. MacLean said it was an alarming situation, considering the fact that the U of C’s medical school was founded to train more family doctors.

Fortunately, things are changing. This year, 24 per cent of the U of C’s medical graduates are on the way to becoming family physicians.

The article from the Herald describes some of the changes that lead to this turnaround. Dr. John Keegan was hired as undergraduate director of family medicine to promote and oversee the program, and the clerkship for family medicine was increased to six weeks (it was originally four). The department hopes this extended hands-on experience will translate into an increased interest in family medicine, as students gain more exposure to the field. Additionally, the department increased the number of family doctor teachers.

Despite the extra family doctors on the way, there’s still room for improvement. “We have a large number of people in the Calgary area without family physicians,” Dr. Valerie Congdon, AHS’s acting head of family medicine and the head of rural medicine for the Calgary zone, told the Herald.

The U of C is on the right track, but officials want even more students to choose family medicine. They hope that by 2013, half of all graduating medical students will become family doctors.

More med school news:

McGill eliminates MCAT requirements

Does the MCAT discriminate against francophones?

McGill wants ‘non-traditional’ medical students

Province says raise will be five per cent, teachers’ association says it should be at least six

Alberta Education Minister Dave Hancock says he’s prepared to stand his ground over wage increases for teachers.

The province announced last week that school instructors will be getting a raise of just under five per cent. The government imposed the increase after months of wrangling over a formula used to determine salaries.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association calculates the increase should be at least six per cent – a difference of $23 million – and has said it will take the province to arbitration if necessary.

“If one side invokes a process, the other side has to be there to defend themselves,” he said Monday.

Alberta teachers have a deal with the government that guarantees five years of labour peace in exchange for annual wage adjustments based on average earnings in the province.

The deal is tied to the Statistics Canada average weekly earnings index, but the national agency recently changed its method of calculating the figure, and that’s where the dispute began.

Hancock says everyone needs to work together to figure out how to slice $80 million from the education budget.

“I’ll be sitting down with school boards, with the ATA, with the parents association and with other stakeholders in the system through the course of the fall to be really focusing on what that means for the next year and the next two years,” he said.

Don’t be born in Ontario

For med school hopefuls, Ontario might seem like the perfect province to live in.

There are 17 med schools in the country. Six of those are in Ontario, more than any other province. But as I recently discovered, being born in Ontario is actually a huge handicap.

Most med schools prefer applicants from their own province. It makes sense: if you train local doctors, you produce local doctors. It’s not unusual to reserve 85 percent or even 90 percent of the available seats for in-province applicants. Most med schools even have higher entrance requirements for out-of-province applicants.

Everyone likes their own brand.

Except for Ontario. Not a single med school in Ontario reserves spots for Ontario applicants.

On the surface, the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario might seem like exceptions to the rule. On it’s website, Northern says that it encourages applications from “students who are from Northern Ontario and/or students who have a strong interest in and aptitude for practicing medicine in northern urban, rural and remote communities.” Western Ontario gives special consideration to applicants from “rural/regional communities in Southwestern Ontario.”

But neither of these med schools actually reserve spots for in-province applicants. Not to mention, those “rural and remote” communities that Northern Ontario mentions could actually be anywhere across Canada.

McMaster’s policy is a bit more complicated. They don’t actually reserve med school spots for in-province applicants. Instead, they award 90 percent of interview positions for Ontario residents.

Yeah, I know. I had to read that twice, too.

It means that once you reach the interview stage, it doesn’t matter which province you’re from.

Even if McMaster offered a genuine advantage to in-province applicants, it wouldn’t make much of a difference anyway. With over 4500 applicants and a success rate of 4.9 per cent in 2006/2007, getting into McMaster is like winning the med school lottery.

Opposition says province is headed towards its own Scopes Monkey Trial

Educators and human rights experts in Alberta are worried that a proposed change to human rights legislation could make it tough to teach a number of controversial subjects.

The change says parents should be notified when classes “include subject matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation,” and should have the right to ask that their child sit out that part of the class.

The term “religion” is extremely broad and could edge its way into almost anything that comes up in the classroom, said Dan Shapiro, research associate with the Calgary-based Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership.

“It’ll be like a kind of Monty Python skit. You have to say: ‘Well, today we have to think about the Hindu student’s going to object to this and tomorrow the Jewish student to this and then the Catholic student to this,’ ” said Shapiro.

“It’ll be madly off in all directions. (Teachers) are strapped enough for resources and time to do their job properly and help educate children.”

Frank Bruseker, head of the Alberta Teachers Association, said he’s also concerned about what the new rules could mean. He’s worried that some parents might think mentioning different classes of worms would constitute a reference to evolution. He said a discussion of ancient geologic formations can’t be had without mentioning the world is billions of years old, much more than a literal reading of the Bible would suggest.

Meanwhile, history and literature from around the world are chockablock full of references to religious upheaval.

“Religion is kind of a fuzzy thing, in a sense, in that what some people see as religion others might not,” Bruseker said.

Opposition parties have hammered the government on the issue, saying the province is headed back to the time of the 1925 Scopes trial, in which a high school biology teacher in Tennessee was tried for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Premier Ed Stelmach conceded to reporters last week that the provision could be used to pull students out of classes dealing with evolution if parents preferred their kids be taught what’s in the Bible instead.

“The parents would have the opportunity to make that choice,” he told a news conference.

But Lindsay Blackett, the Tory minister responsible for human rights, said in an interview that the intention of the law is to only allow parents to pull children out when the curriculum specifically covers religions, something that only happens for a few hours each school year.

“It’s talking about religion (such as) Hindu, or Muslim, or that type of religion, not … the curriculum with respect to, for instance, evolution,” he said. “That’s science and we’re not arguing science.”

The rule wouldn’t apply to any topics that come up spontaneously in a classroom, he said.

“It’s not discussion, it’s curriculum. You cannot be the thought police, and we would never ever advocate that.”

Why highly skilled university graduates are flocking to Alberta

From the prestigious halls of Oxford University, Patrick MacDonald considered more than a few attractive offers on where to start his career as a research scientist. There was a job in southern Ontario, near his boyhood home and his extended family, where he earned his doctorate and undergraduate degrees. And there were offers in ruggedly beautiful Vancouver and trendy Montreal.

But in the end he chose to bring his wife and two young children to Edmonton.

Lured by opportunity and quality of life, MacDonald is one of a growing number of Canadian professionals who are moving to Alberta. New Statistics Canada figures show that along with tradespeople, there has been a huge surge of post-secondary school graduates coming to Alberta. And this has some provinces worried about losing their best and brightest after footing the bill for their education.

According to today’s Census numbers, Alberta has the highest share of workers who lived elsewhere five years earlier. An estimated 160,500 people, or 8.6 per cent, of Alberta workers moved to the province from other parts of Canada between 2001 and 2006, the census showed. Worker mobility was highest in two industries: mining, oil and gas extraction and public administration.

And the numbers show that highly educated Canadians were the most mobile. Alberta had a net increase of 28,000 post-secondary graduates between 2001 and 2006. Nearly 7,500 of the net increase came from Saskatchewan, while 7,200 came from Ontario and 6,575 from the Atlantic provinces. In all, more than one in five of Alberta’s post-secondary graduates studied outside the province.

“Professional opportunity is what made us open our eyes to Edmonton,” said MacDonald, 31, who is an assistant professor of pharmacology at the University of Alberta and a researcher at the new Alberta Diabetes Institute. “It is no different than any other type of job. Alberta is seen as a place of limitless possibility at the moment. That really applied to my decision to take the job here. The family-friendly community clinched it.”

Jack Mintz, former president of the C.D. Howe Institute, is another newcomer who moved to Alberta just last month. Mintz gave up his position as a University of Toronto professor to oversee the creation of the University of Calgary’s new School of Policy Studies. Saying good-bye to Yorkville and other favourite Toronto haunts was tough, but the opportunity in Calgary was just too good to pass up, he said.