All Posts Tagged With: "Brock University"

College students who transfer to university do well

Simon Fraser University (Simon Hayter)

From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings

Kristy Normore, 23, grew up in L’Anse-au-Loup, Nfld., and was one of 16 in her high school’s graduating class. (L’Anse-au-Loup has a population of 600.) She left to attend Memorial University in St. John’s, but found it wasn’t for her. “Some of my classes had over 300 people,” she says. “I absolutely hated it. No one knew your name.” Formerly a straight-A student, Normore found her marks began to drop. After her first year, she went back home and spent the year planning her next move.

Intent on a career in social work, Normore enrolled at Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) in Sydney, “one of the best decisions I ever made.” Classes had 30 people—tops. Tuition was cheaper. She got As again. After two years, diploma in hand, Normore transferred to Cape Breton University (CBU), right next to NSCC, into the bachelor of arts community studies (BACS) program. She graduated in June. Starting university the second time, she felt better prepared. “I was used to helping myself. I found it much easier.”

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Academics debate whether to accept Chinese cash

Photo courtesy of IvanWalsh.com on Flickr

When he first heard from a university administrator about a new Confucius Institute (CI) proposed at the University of Manitoba, Asian Studies professor Terry Russell asked for a meeting with the dean in charge. At that meeting, he asked her to carefully consider who was offering to pay for it. The money would come from the Hanban, an arm of the Chinese government that’s chaired by the minister of education. That’s the same government, as Russell put it, that jailed Nobel-prize winner Liu Xiaobo for 11 years, the same government who took the University of Calgary to task after it gave the Dalai Lama an honourary degree, and the same government that employs 50,000 citizens to scour the Internet in search of dissent. Russell says that Canadian universities shouldn’t take money from an education ministry that does such things.

Less than six months later, the university has announced that it will join a short-but-growing list of institutions that have decided against taking Chinese government money to set up CIs on campus. The university’s spokesman, John Danakas, says that “overtures were made” by Confucius Institutes earlier this year, but that “conversations have ended… for logistical reasons.” Pennsylvania State University, the University of British Columbia and the Republic of India, have also decided against CIs on campus.

But in the same month that Manitoba declined funding from China, the University of Regina and Brock University both inaugurated their new Confucius Institutes, bringing the total number at Canadian post-secondary schools to eight. More than 320 exist worldwide. China says that the funding of CIs—$150,000 initially and up to $200,000 per year after that— is meant to promote cultural understanding. But along with the money, schools, including Brock, have signed constitutions that says that “institute activities must … respect cultural customs, and shall not contravene concerning laws and regulations in Canada and China.”

Quite what that means is open to interpretation.

Russell says that means employees will feel dissuaded from mentioning Taiwan, Tibet independence, Falun Gong, or the Tiananmen Square massacre. If that’s true, the result could be an unrealistically positive view of China among the students who pass through the free language and history courses that they offer on Canadian campuses. He goes even further than that. “They’re nothing more than a propaganda and public relations exercise within the legitimizing framework of a university,” he says.

Sheila Young, Director of Brock International, takes the opposite view of their new CI. There isn’t any propaganda, she argues, but instead a fantastic opportunity for academic exchange with the world’s next superpower. “We’re in complete control of the curriculum and always have been, always will be,” says Young. The Chinese government offered to provide textbooks to them during at the Confucius Institutes Conference that she and other administrators attended in Beijing in December, but Brock has not decided which materials it will use. “Nothing has been shipped to us, where they said, ‘here these are prescribed texts,’” says Young.

Young stresses that the CI will allow them to offer many more Mandarin courses than they would be able to otherwise, plus teacher-training certification and possibly Chinese history and political science courses in the future. “There are a lot of cutbacks in the economy we’re in now,” says Young. “So the idea of getting some funding to teach in an area that hasn’t been taught [in] before is appealing.”

Brock University called to investigate

St. Catharines city councilors  are calling on Brock University to investigate an off-campus incident involving students alleged to be responsible for a home invasion last Thursday. According to the St. Catharines Standard, the so far unidentified culprits were having a snowball fight in the street after a house party. A local area resident shouted at the students to keep it down when he got up for work at 4:30am.

The man’s wife told the Standard what happened next:

The woman said after they were told to be quiet, the students began swearing and threatening the man, and then ran across their lawn to the house. She and her 14-year-old daughter slammed the front door shut, but before they could lock it, the students had shoved the door open and four young men were in their living room, swearing and throwing punches.

All three of the family members were knocked to the floor, and one of the men began pummelling her husband, she said.

Their daughter was screaming and crying and the woman tried to call police, but the phone was knocked out of her hand.

The incident occurred in an area where large numbers of Brock students are known to live, but the exact location has not been released to the public.

Although police are investigating the incident, city councilors say it is Brock University’s responsibility to also look into the home invasion. Speaking with Maclean’s, Brock spokesman, Kevin Cavanagh says the administration is “not sure” what the city councilors mean, emphasizing that the incident took place off campus. However, Cavanagh said that the university would be “eager” to assist the police with their investigation. Brock is also encouraging students with any knowledge of the incident to come forward. “We have strong links to the local police services,” Cavanagh said.

Brock has also indicated that it will consider disciplining any students found to have been involved in the home invasion.