All Posts Tagged With: "Dalhousie University"

Prof. Pettigrew ranks our campus cartoonists

#2. Caveman Agent by Evan Eshelman

One fond memory of my undergraduate days is of reading the comics in the student newspaper. They lacked the artistry of professional comics in the big dailies but they had a certain joie de vivre that came with, presumably, not getting paid very much (if anything at all).

Since then I have followed university comics mainly when they get involved in controversies, as when the UPEI student newspaper was confiscated by university officials after it published the notorious Danish Mohammed cartoons, or when a community college ran a comic in which Barack Obama looked a bit like a monkey, or when the Saskatchewan student paper ran a comic, reportedly by mistake, showing Jesus in, shall we say, a sexually compromising position.

But browsing student news sites the other day, I became curious as to the state of university comics, so I went looking and found that the tradition was alive and well, and even better than I remember. In fact, I was so impressed that I am inspired to provide my entirely subjective, online-only list of the top five university comics in Canada. Here are my picks.

5. The Daily Snooze, by Jacob Samuel, Simon Fraser

Samuel provides us with quite charming one-off panel cartoons, of the sort one finds in The New Yorker—and provides fewer head scratchers than that redoubtable mag.

4. Ski Ninjas, by Kyle Lees,  Lakehead

Ski Ninjas feels like it could have been called Little Orphan Anime. I admire the strong lines and the simple off-beat humour, as in this strip where the joke is essentially that “booze” is a funny word. Which it is.

3. Too Fancy Gents, by Mike Hayes and Amani Elrofaie*, Western

Too Fancy Gents gives us the dialogue of two Oscar Wilde-esque fellows called Monocle and Bowler (perversely, Monocle wears a bowler, and Bowler wears a monocle). Typically our gents (who really are too fancy) sound awfully posh but quickly veer off into accounts of their sexual escapades or drug-fuelled misadventures.

2. Caveman Agent, by Evan Eshelman, York

I must admit, I don’t think I always understand Eshelman’s Caveman Agent (which feels a bit like Ziggy if Gary Larson had drawn it, with a dash of Krazy Kat for flavour), but the drawing is fantastic and the artist manages to catch his main character (is Cavemen his name?) in oddly human moments, as in this panel where he tries to keep his dinosaur from being traumatized.

This one makes me slightly regret my one-winner-per-university rule, though, since York provides several other worthy candidates, including Adventuresome by Keith Maclean, and the very clever Sent from the Moon, by Alison Wight. Let’s call those very honourable mentions.

1. Glamour Pig, by Katherine Johnson, Dalhousie

Glamour Pig is a largely text-based comic with admittedly sketchy drawing, but has just the sort of skewed viewpoint that gives us a new perspective on life (as in one comic where Johnson lists some of the downsides of eye glasses: “Impossibility of repair should damage occur in post-apocalyptic future.”). This is the kind of comic that makes you feel like you have a cool new friend.

If I have missed any worthy candidates, please feel free to link to them below. Meantime, campus cartoon artists: don’t stop now!

*We initially failed to give credit to Amani Elrofaiem, the illustrator behind Too Fancy Gents. We regret the error. Additionally we initially listed Ski Ninjas as Sky Ninjas. This post was updated Jan. 14, 2011.

The academy comes down too hard on honest mistakes

Maclean's writer Emma Teitel

From the Maclean’s University Rankings—on sale now.

It’s fall, and over 800,000 undergraduate students have just begun classes at universities across Canada. In the next 12 months, 32 per cent are likely to binge drink and smoke marijuana, 14 per cent will probably drop out, and—to introduce a new scholastic rite of passage—more than 1,000 will be accused of plagiarism. Scores will be convicted, but there’s a good chance only a few will be guilty of anything more than oversight. I know this because I am a plagiarist.

I was accused in my third year at Dalhousie University (a mature plagiarist, they would say) by a creative-writing professor a few days before reading week: I had failed to attribute a philosophical term, “category mistake,” to the philosopher who first used it, an omission that put me in direct violation of Dalhousie’s academic dishonesty policy. In addition, I gave an example of the term that was nearly identical to the example used by its originator, Gilbert Ryle, in his 1949 book, The Concept of Mind. Here’s what I wrote: “Such a question is the stuff of a philosophical category mistake. For example, if a small child touring Halifax were to ask his mother and father ‘show me a university,’ the parents might take him on a tour of Dalhousie, showing him all the different faculty and athletic buildings, and confused, he would still ask, ‘show me a university,’ so the same concept applies to the question of film editing.”

Continue reading I was a plagiarist

Victory for student groups

A majority of university presidents in the U.S. (55 per cent of them) say that plagiarism has increased in the past 10 years. Of those, 89 per cent blame the Internet, says a new study by Pew.

Many universities have fought back by using software like Turnitin, which forces students to upload their papers to be scanned against a database of published works, before their professors grade them. If passages appear to have been copied, the professor is informed and may investigate.

But profs at Dalhousie University learned this week that they no longer have access to the software, in part because papers were being stored on U.S. servers against the school’s wishes, Dwight Fischer, the school’s Chief Information Officer told the Toronto Star.

“We’re moving quickly to replace that system with something else,” said Fischer. “We’re not bailing on our academic integrity strategy. Students should not think that this is a retreat on what we hold dear and valuable here.”

Dalhousie University’s Student Union has long opposed Turnitin, partly because it presumes students are guilty before proven innocent. Some students were concerned that their intellectual property was being stored in the U.S. or copied and stored against their will.

McGill University student Jesse Rosenfeld won the right to submit his paper in person, instead of through Turnitin, after the university punished him for refusing to use the software in 2003.

Ryerson University uses Turnitin, but students can opt out if they make alternate arrangements.

Seven students at the University of King’s College were found guilty of plagiarism in December after fifteen papers had been flagged by Turnitin.

That mysterious substance guidance counsellors call ‘fit’ is not so mysterious anymore.

Deanna Jarvis, the 19-year-old first-year student on our cover, says she knows the University of Guelph is the right place for her. She’s just not sure why. Maybe it’s the gold and red leaves that litter the campus in the fall. She could never live in a concrete jungle, she says. Perhaps it’s that Guelph offers a rare major (adult development, families and wellbeing) that will teach her how to help people. “I just like to listen to friends and help them,” she says. Or maybe it’s that Guelph is a big enough school to keep famous playwrights like Judith Thompson on staff. Jarvis, a parttime actor, is a huge Thompson fan. Whatever the reason, Guelph just seems to fit.

Parents, students, university presidents and even education marketers are trying to nail down exactly what makes a school fit. Traditionally, school size and city size were the shorthand for determining where a particular student should go. Big schools offer more cultural opportunities; tiny schools offer more personal interaction, or so the theory goes. Those rules still apply, but sociologist James Côté, of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., has found another predictor for what he calls the “goodness of fit.” His research found students do best when their inner motivations match what the environment has to offer.

Tom Traves, president of Dalhousie University, agrees that students should look inward to determine the best school for them. “For some students it will be a small, intimate, collegial environment,” says Traves. “For other students, their personalities will be sufficiently expansive and their strength of purpose and needs will be such that going to a small environment will be too much like an extension of high school.”

Côté would agree, but says university officials are not the only people to ask. “You’ll have to do the digging yourself,” he says. Some “universities don’t want to alienate prospective students who aren’t the right fit,” he explains. “Because they’re funded by tuition and the number of bums in seats.”

Assuming they’re not going to university because of parental pressure, most students have one of three motivations, according to Côté: the “personal and intellectual” motivation, the “career and materialism” motivation, or the “humanitarian” motivation.

For the student whose goal is to develop personally and intellectually, a small liberalarts oriented school is best, he says. “A good liberal arts education really requires smaller class sizes, so you can have seminars and contact with faculty,” he explains. “You’ll also be required to do more public speaking and writing. A large school simply can’t do this.” St. Francis Xavier in Antigonish, N.S., and Quest University in Squamish, B.C., are examples of schools where students seeking personal and intellectual growth will find it, he says.

Large, reputable schools like McGill and the University of Toronto fit students who are personally and intellectually motivated, says Côté, but be sure “you’re outgoing or able to work on your own.” Students who choose the school primarily for its reputation, says Côté, need to remember that “they may never see any of the profs that make those schools famous.”

The second type of student, the “careeristmaterialist,” is someone who wants a degree mainly for the job and prestige. “The careeristmaterialist might fit at schools that are vocationally oriented,” says Côté. “We’re going that direction at Western,” he says, giving the example of the increasing popularity of degrees like the bachelor of management and organizational studies over the traditional broad B.A.

The third (and more rare) motivation to study is altruism. Côté offers King’s University College (a Western affiliate) as a good fit for the “humanitarianism-motivated” student, because of its social justice focus.

Ken Steele, an education marketing expert, agrees with Côté that universities themselves are unlikely to help you determine fit. Most universities are still trying to be “everything to everyone,” he says. However, he has seen a few encouraging examples of schools that are marketing with “goodness of fit” in mind. “Acadia [in Wolfville, N.S.] actually says it’s not for everyone,” explains Steele. “They want students to know they’re coming to a small town and that’s going to be a shock for some of them.”

William Barker, president of the University of King’s College in Halifax (an even smaller school than Acadia), suggests visiting as many schools as possible, sitting in on lectures, and staying overnight with a friend.

That’s advice Côté wants parents to hear. He says more parents should encourage their offspring to explore far and wide; too often they encourage offspring to choose the closest school to home in order to save money. “You may save a lot financially in the short run, but you will have lost in the long run,” he says. If a person fails at university because it’s the wrong fit, they risk losing millions of dollars in lifetime earnings, he explains—and it’s not a cheap investment. “If parents were forking out this kind of money in the stock market or real estate, they’d look at it much more carefully,” says Côté.

Of course, not everyone can afford to fly around the country to research each school. That’s why Maclean’s asked successful students from four schools exactly what makes their university the right fit for them. Their answers prove just how important it is for future students to ask themselves who they are and why they want a degree. Why? Just ask Côté. “If you don’t develop goals of what you want to get out of university, you potentially squander the most transformative experience of your life.”

With Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze

High marks aren’t enough

Even with high marks and impressive extracurricular experience, there are no guarantees when it comes to getting into med school. At least, not in Canada. The harsh reality is, there are far more highly qualified applicants than there are available seats.

The statistics vary from province to province, but as a med school hopeful living in Ontario, my chances are about 19 per cent (or 1 in 5). Yes, this is just a raw number–it doesn’t take grades, extracurricular activities, or MCAT scores into account. For applicants with high (or low) marks, or applicants who are involved in some sort of incredible medical research, the chance of success isn’t 19 per cent. But there are lots of students with impressive GPA’s, great MCAT scores, and plenty of medically-related volunteer work, and they’re all competing for the same number of limited spots.

How can an applicant stand out?

A few years ago when I interviewed Dr. Evelyn Sutton, assistant dean of admissions and student affairs at Dalhousie University, in an article for Maclean’s Professional schools issue, she remembered one successful applicant whose “unique” extracurricular activity made her stand out from the pack: she was a champion skip-rope jumper.

Some med schools, including Dalhousie, still want to see medically related experience on an applicant’s transcript. The important thing to remember: med schools are looking for “well-rounded” applicants.

I’m not suggesting that a med school hopeful should volunteer or suddenly develop a “passion” simply because it might improve their chances of getting in. After all, the admissions board can see right through that kind of act. Trying to be a good Samaritan just because you think it’ll make you look good will probably have the opposite effect.

What does this mean for the rest of us? How can applicants present themselves in the best possible light?

“Don’t be just a computer geek,” advises Dr. Barry Ziola, of the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Medicine, “because computer geeks do not make good physicians.”

-photo courtesy of RambergMediaImages

Campus residences are overflowing with crush of first-year students

Incoming students at Dalhousie University that were guaranteed a room in residence are out of luck as the school year starts. At least 75 students will have to sleep in common areas while the university finds a solution to an apparent overflow. It is a direct result of rising enrolment numbers, says Heather Sutherland, assistant vice-president ancillary services. “Dalhousie is thriving,” she said.

Many universities intentionally oversubscribe their residences, and temporary housing is common, as there are always a handful of students who change their minds, or simply don’t show up. What is notable at Dalhousie this year, is that the university is having difficulty accommodating first-year students who are guaranteed a room if they apply before August 1. It may take until Thanksgiving before the housing situation is sorted out. “Past practice has shown us they’re not sure where they want to live,” Sutherland said.

Dalhousie is just one of several universities across Canada that is experiencing a crush of first-year students wanting to live on campus. While final enrolment numbers are not yet available, universities are preparing for what could be a record year.

Similar to Dalhousie, the University of Western Ontario guarantees a room to all first-year students who apply, but has avoided having to resort to temporary housing, or a waiting list. With an extra 270 first-year students wanting a bed, a little over 100 will be housed in on campus apartments, normally reserved for upper-years students. The displaced older students are being moved to an apartment building just off campus that the university leased in anticipation of increased demand. “We know that first-year students want to be on campus,” Susan Grindrod, associate vice-president of housing, said.

At McGill University, the residence normally operates at 105 per cent capacity at the beginning of the year. This year they are running at 110 per cent. To accommodate for the overflow, and a general rise in demand in recent years, McGill has converted other areas, such as small study areas, into rooms. Additionally, the university has acquired three hotels, adding at least 800 rooms, to be converted to residences by September 2011.

Mike Porritt, executive director of student housing for McGill, says that while higher enrolment can partially explain the increase in demand for residence, it is the proximity to campus services that is attracting students. Students are closer to their classes and libraries, and can more easily form study groups. “We’re a part of the academic mission of the university,” he said. To back up that claim, he cites internal numbers that show first-year students living in residence boast grade point averages six per cent higher than their peers who live off campus. The retention rate, students who stay on for second year, is eight per cent higher for those who live on campus.

At the University of British Columbia, where demand has been straining the school’s resources for much of the past decade, a survey of 6,000 students last year revealed that 82 per cent recognize that it is profitable to live at school. “There seems to be a heightened understanding of the benefits of living on campus,” Andrew Parr, UBC’s managing director of student housing, said.

Across the city from UBC, Simon Fraser University takes a unique approach to campus housing. “We don’t oversubscribe,” says Chris Rogerson, associate director of residence. Instead, SFU only sends out as many offers as there are rooms available. Any offers that are declined are then sent to the next students on the list. In previous years, about 55 per cent accepted the first offer. This year the yield was closer to 65 per cent.

Not every university is experiencing rising demand for on campus living, however. York University has seen a steady decline, being unable to even fill existing rooms. In 2008, there were around 50 vacancies. Last year, there was approximately 150. This fall, Debbie Kee, director of housing, expects there to be 250 unfilled rooms. The decline is a combination of new housing developments around the campus, and the fact that York is a commuter school. Many students, who live in the Greater Toronto Area, who might have previously lived in residence, are choosing to stay home because of financial restraints. “Unfortunately it has left us a little shy,” Kee said.

From Halifax to Vancouver fresh food and vegetables are being brought to students

Fresh locally grown fruits and vegetables and other artisanal products are turning up on Canadian campuses as students embrace the trend of shopping at farmers markets. McMaster University in Hamilton has just launched a market, the result of student Mary Koziol’s passion for local food. It runs every Thursday in the centre of the campus.

“It’s a completely not-for-profit venture,” says the 22-year-old president of the university’s student union. “But it’s a start in terms of offering healthy and local options to those who study (at), work (at) and visit the McMaster campus.”

At Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., about a dozen local vendors bearing fruits, vegetables, cured meats, fresh lamb, cheeses, freshly baked bread and maple syrup descend on the campus every Friday. “We do it outdoors and have a barbecue going as well as live entertainment,” says university spokesman Iain Glass, adding, “It is the social event of the week, a wonderful break for students and others as well.”

Although the McMaster market is run by students, Koziol says the farmers who supply the produce “are invited to come and share their invaluable knowledge with us.” So far they have managed to source three area growers of fresh produce as a beginning, she says.

Robert Chorney, executive director of Famers’ Markets Ontario and chairman of Farmers’ Markets Canada, says the campus markets are so far relatively unknown by his organization. “We have had inquiries from a few universities, but I know very little about what is going on with them,” he says. “We would be glad to help them in any way we can because it is so positive to see the students keen on local, fresh, nutritional food.”

Dalhousie University in Halifax doesn’t have a farmers market, but it has put in community gardens so students can grow fruits and vegetables for their own consumption, says university spokesman Charles Crosby.

One of the most ambitious projects of all is the farm at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Its market has become so successful that it runs twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday. “This is a pretty unique connection,” says Mark Bomford, director for Sustainable Food Systems at the farm. “Most farmers markets rely on produce grown somewhere else, but the food for our market is grown right in our fields.”

The farm and its market have been operating for 10 years, he says, and has always been student-run from the cultivation of fruits and vegetables to the managing of the market. “Revenue from the market is the main source for all the different teaching and research programs that are happening on the farm,”says Bomford.

The University of Waterloo’s market is located in the Student Life Centre and is operated by student volunteers, says media spokesman John Morris. Students teamed up with the university’s Food Services division and produce is sourced from the Mennonite-run Elmira Produce Auction Co-operative.

The Canadian Press

Student survey results will be available in time for the fall

Dalhousie University students won’t need to use Ratemyprofessors.com next year to pick classes, with professor and course evaluations being made public.

While student leaders are hailing the decision as necessary for improving the quality of education, making sure professors aren’t badmouthed online is a hurdle the school says it can overcome. Allan Shaver, vice-president of academics at Dalhousie told the CBC he doesn’t foresee any issues. “I get to see all the course evaluations, and the professors of this university have nothing to fear,” he said.

At most universities, students are required to fill out questionnaires after completing a class, asking them to rank items like the appropriateness of the workload, and the professor’s availability for out-of-class consultation.

Students typically rely on word-of-mouth from peers as to which classes they want to enroll in. When Ratemyprofessor.com went online, students could look to user-generated comments for insight into a class, but comments on the site appear mostly unmoderated and tend to deviate from academics.

At Saint Mary’s University the student’s association pulled their online rating system because of “uneven participation and unfiltered comments,” the CBC reported.

While rules for the system at Dalhousie are still being finalized, online commenting won’t be allowed and professors can opt to keep their results private.

Dalhousie’s evaluations will be made public for the 2010-2011 school year.

Dalhousie gets international recognition for new sustainability program

When Dr. Deborah Buszard asked a classics professor whether his department had any interest in contributing to planning a new sustainability program, she wasn’t expecting much. Buszard, a plant biologist who researches the use of plants in built environments, had been tasked with contacting every program at Dalhousie University to solicit feedback on the university’s plans to develop an ambitious interdisciplinary sustainability college. So she was delighted when the classics professor responded excitedly, “Oh yes! You can’t understand sustainability without reading Oedipus!”

The classics professor’s suggestion that Oedipus—the story of a mythical Greek king who killed his father and married his mother—is an essential text for anyone trying to understand human behavior was exactly the sort of thing Buszard was after. Recognizing that sustainability issues now touch virtually every subject—be it business, engineering, science, the arts, health, you name it—Dalhousie set the goal of creating a program in which any student from any faculty could pursue a double major in sustainability, a first in Canada. This past fall, only a couple of years later, the program welcomed its first students, and has already gained international recognition by being short-listed for a 2009 World Innovation Summit for Education Award, awarded at the WISE conference in Doha, Qatar in November.

Buszard sees the Environment, Sustainability and Society undergraduate program as the next step in modern liberal education. The accepted view of a liberal education is that students should have a broad education when they graduate from university, having studied English, science, math and so on in addition to their main focus. Buszard says that considering today’s complex problems, sustainability should be added to the list of subjects every student should study. “Whatever you are doing in your career, if you are in a leader position, you need to have this understanding,” she says. “We can’t afford to graduate students without that.”

This is the thinking that is behind’s Dalhousie’s goal of providing sustainability education to every undergraduate student. The program, which can be combined with any other major, brings students from departments from theatre to business to chemistry into the same classroom to puzzle together over complex problems such as water security, climate change or increasing urbanization.

The idea was originally conceived when Buszard’s colleagues realized that there were nearly 150 professors at Dalhousie involved in research on sustainability, in subjects as varied as medicine, international policy, ocean management and law. But these researchers were typically isolated within their departments, without the place to engage with other scholars with similar interests. How could these experts be brought together in a meaningful way?

The result is a college that provides a physical and intellectual place for the exchange of this knowledge. The cornerstone of the college is the undergraduate program itself, in which students study complex sustainability problems in the context of their differing majors. The first year focuses on history of sustainability taught by three professors—a historian, an architect and a scientist—that covers topics such as the development of the wheat economy in Canada and the use of whales as a resource. By the third year, students take their knowledge outside of the classroom to apply to real problems as part of the Campus as a Living Laboratory course in which they identify sustainability issues at Dalhousie and try to develop and implement solutions. In the final year, groups of students team up with community partners such as government and NGOs to tackle community-based challenges.

The intention of the program is to give students an understanding of complex sustainability issues outside of the lens of only one subject of study. The interdisciplinary approach distinguishes the program from environmental science. “We didn’t want to create another silo of experts,” Buszard explains. “We don’t want to produce people who are, say, an economist and only thinks of an issue in terms of economics.”

Buszard says that the program is a first for Canada, and she knows of only one similar program in the States. And students seem to be responding positively. Although the school hoped to enroll 150 students in its first year, 300 signed up.

International committee reviewed school on 132 standards, was deemed “not-compliant”‘ on 17.

Dalhousie University says it has lost an appeal that places its undergraduate medical education program on two years’ probation.

The Halifax medical school had appealed a preliminary finding by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education, an international accrediting body based in the United States. The school said Wednesday that the appeal was heard last Thursday in Chicago.

Despite its probationary status, which begins Thursday, Dalhousie said its undergraduate medical program remains accredited and it does not affect the ability of students to qualify as doctors or obtain residency training.

Dalhousie has said the board reviewed the school on 132 standards earlier this year, and it was deemed “not-compliant”‘ on 17.

The school says most of the issues identified by the committee following a routine review related to curriculum management, monitoring and evaluation.

The school’s dean, Tom Marrie, said the university has started to improve the areas where problems were found. “We’re continuing our remediation efforts,” he said in a news release. “We expect this task to be accomplished quickly.”

There are 17 accredited faculties of medicine across Canada.

Marrie said the probationary period has no impact on Dalhousie University’s plans for an accredited medical program that is slated to start next September in New Brunswick. “To achieve our goal of having North America’s best undergraduate medical education program, we have begun the task of renewing our present curriculum,” he said.

“Good progress is being made and I expect us to be in a position in September 2010 to implement, here and in New Brunswick, the first year of this innovative new curriculum. We expect we’ll exceed current LCME standards.”

- The Canadian Press