All Posts Tagged With: "OCAD University"
He begged for a job with a cardboard sign
Today entrepreneurial grads like him find plenty of help
Smith in July 2009 (Andrew Vaughan/CP)
Jordan Smith was desperate. It was July 2009 and he was unemployed and struggling. A recent graduate, his business degree from Memorial University was proving to be poor bait for potential employers. To top it off, it was mid-recession.
“I couldn’t find a job,” he recalled. “Nobody was hiring. If anything they were laying people off.”
So the 23-year-old devised a plan. He printed off a stack of resumes and constructed a large sign from a piece of a refrigerator box. It read: “NEW GRAD. NEED JOB.”
Still going by the book
Textbooks remain costly in an increasingly electronic age
Studying at the University of Guelph (Jessica Darmanin)
From the 2013 Maclean’s University Rankings
It’s a textbook case in how to annoy students. This year, OCAD University in Toronto required students in its first-year visual culture course to purchase a “custom reader,” comprised of parts from two American text- books plus additional material on Canadian and Aboriginal art. Separately the items retail for over $300. The custom text was priced at $180. But there was a problem—this art book didn’t include any actual art.
Due to unexpected expenses in obtaining copyright, the publisher simply left large white boxes where the pictures were meant to go; students were told they could look at the art online. They got outraged instead—a petition was organized, parents began blogging and local media soon picked up the cause of the artless art book.
What students are talking about today (October 15th edition)
Liberals up, Cubans defecting & art students protesting
ycanada_news/Flickr
1. In the wake of Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will run for the Liberals, a new Nanos Research poll puts the party in second place for the first time since April. The Conservatives have 33.3 per cent support, the Liberals have 30.1 per cent and the NDP is at 27.9 per cent. The Liberals are now in first place in Ontario and B.C., while Quebec still strongly supports the NDP. The Conservatives gained in Atlantic Canada.
2. Three players from the Cuban men’s soccer team who vanished before a World Cup qualifying match in Toronto defected, according to FIFA. “As with any Cuban sport team that travels around the world, they’re all chasing the American dream,” coach Alexander Gonzalez told The Canadian Press. Or the Canadian dream.
3. After five years preparing, Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space on Sunday. He hit speeds of 1,336 kilmotres per hour after leaping from nearly 39 kilometres above the New Mexico desert. His free fall was four minutes long. He said he had tears in his eyes.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 15th edition)
What students are talking about today (October 1 edition)
London shooting, Regina theft and Toronto mega-project
A Toronto development that would include 80-story towers and space for OCAD U. (Gehry International)
1. Students at Western University in London, Ont. had their homecoming weekend marred by the shooting death of 21-year-old Terrell Johnson off-campus early Sunday. A 28-year-old man was also taken to hospital. Joshua Carter, 22, is charged with second-degree murder.
2. Hannim Nur, the student who resigned from her post as president of the University of Regina’s Students’ Union (URSU), did so because she stole $700 of student money from the Canadian Federation of Students Saskatchewan by forging signatures on cheques when she was Chair. A statement from CFS-S says that the money was repaid and that they’ve updated procedures to reduce the chance of it happening again. Questions remain as to why Nur continued to work at URSU after she admitted the forgery to CFS.
3. A proposed mega-development on King Street in Toronto will house a whole lot of people in three 80-story condo towers. It will also include two museums and facilities for nearby OCAD University. The design is by Frank Gehry and the funding is from theatre king David Mirvish. Tweeters have compared the design to a tipped-over recycling bin, but Edward Keenan of The Grid points out that Gehry’s early sketch of the now-loved Art Gallery of Ontario once raised eyebrows too.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (October 1 edition)
Art book without art highlights issue of pricey textbooks
Are students getting gouged?
wohnai/Flickr
The outcry from a group of first-year students forced to buy an expensive art history book that has no art in it has focused attention on an issue as perennial and seemingly as intractable as fall back-to-school jitters: the cost of college and university textbooks.
Most everyone agrees textbooks can be a significant financial burden for students and their parents but there’s less agreement on what can or should be done to bring the price down.
“Many students are paying upwards of $1,000 per year for textbooks,” said Jessica McCormick, deputy chairwoman with the Canadian Federation of Students.
“That is another financial burden that adds to the debt that is sinking this generation.”
Continue reading Art book without art highlights issue of pricey textbooks
What students are talking about today (Sept. 18 edition)
Freshman 15, politics in the classroom & anger at OCAD U.
yurilong/Flickr
1. Yesterday there was a flash sale from Chartwells at the University of Prince Edward Island during which poutine was 50 per cent off for a few hours. Cadre reporter Josh Coles took on the breaking news assignment: “This poutine was weighty. Heavy. Thick. I would compare its weight to that of a litre of chocolate milk,” he wrote.
2. The poutine and chocolate milk diet seems like evidence for that legendary Freshman 15 weight gain, but another study suggests the weight gain isn’t really 15 pounds. Researchers from Auburn University in Alabama showed that the Freshman 15 is really more like the Four-Year 12. After four years at the college, students in the study had gained an average of 11.7 pounds.
3. Homecoming will likely make a homecoming next year at Queen’s University after students finally behaved in public with just 12 arrests over the weekend compared to 124 in 2008. In an email sent Monday to the Queen’s community, Principal Daniel Woolf wrote that he’s working with “various members of our community, including alumni, to plan for the potential safe return of fall reunions in 2013.” The University Council asked Woolf to reinstate the tradition, which was barred after many years of alcohol-related arrests. See The Perils of Drinking on Canadian Campuses for more.
Continue reading What students are talking about today (Sept. 18 edition)
