All Posts Tagged With: "Simon Fraser"
SFU first non-U.S. team in the NCAA
All varsity teams will compete in the organization’s Division II starting September 2011
Simon Fraser University has been approved as the first non-U.S. member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which is the world’s largest college sports organization. The announcement comes on the heels of a decision by the University of British Columbia to defer joining the organization by at least one year.
The school says all of its varsity teams will compete in the NCAA’s second division in 2011, after a two-year transition period, according to a press release issued July 10.
“This is a first for a Canadian university, and it reflects SFU’s long history of competing in U.S. varsity associations and conferences,” says SFU president Michael Stevenson.
“It means a high level of competition and challenge for our athletes. As has always been the case, our primary concern is that our athletes succeed as students. The NCAA has strong academic requirements and we will maintain the high academic standards that SFU has always demanded from all…teams.”
For more from the press release, click here.
Stay tuned to Maclean’s OnCampus for continuing coverage of this story.
Simon Fraser to flag academic dishonesty on transcripts
Repeat plagiarists and cheaters would get an “FD” grade, could lose their degree
The senate and board of governors of Simon Fraser University say they have approved “significant and extensive” changes to the school’s policies concerning dishonesty and student misconduct.
Included in the changes is a new mark – FD – which will indicate that a student was failed for reasons of academic dishonesty. This means that a plagiarized essay or serious case of cheating could follow students around throughout the rest of their academic careers.
“The FD grade will be available to department chairs who feel that a student’s behavior warrants a severe penalty, usually because they are repeat violators,” says Rob Gordon, director of the school’s criminology department. “A chair may also request the imposition of more severe penalties through the University Board on Student Discipline such as suspension and the rescinding of a degree.”
The changes were the result of a university-wide, three-year investigation by Simon Fraser’s senate committee on academic integrity in student learning and evaluation, otherwise known as SCAISLE. The committee was struck in fall 2005 after a series of incidents concerning academic dishonesty were identified, and the school commissioned a report.
That report found that 63 per cent of faculty and 41 per cent of teaching assistants and tutor markers surveyed at Simon Fraser had ignored suspected cases of cheating. This included cases of falsifying lab data, “recycling” of labs, fabrication of bibliographies, extensive plagiarism in papers, homework copying, illegal group work, and copying on exams.
Calling the policy “a zero-tolerance approach both in theory and in practice,” Gordon says the school aimed to create a fair, consistent and effective new policy on matter concerning academic integrity. “We believe the combination of policies, procedures and strategies we’ve come up with will do that.”
As of May 1, the new policy includes a “Code of Academic Integrity and Good Conduct,” which includes a summary of expectations for students around issues of academic honesty and personal behaviour. This includes prohibitions against hazing, bullying, disclosing confidential information and possessing guns on campus.
“We now have a single student code of conduct that covers both academic integrity and good-conduct issues,” says Gordon. “And we’ve created a reporting system with a central record keeping mechanism so we can better detect multiple offenders across campuses and departments.”
Can I have your half-attention, please?
Profs say laptops are creating culture of ‘constant partial distraction’
I’m sitting in the back row of a darkened lecture hall at the University of British Columbia. Nearly half of the 200 students have their laptops open, giving off a piercing blue-white glow that reminds me of driving at night.
A girl directly in front of me is toggling between two chat windows, a website of song lyrics, email, her Facebook profile, and, every now and then, her lecture notes. It’s hard to concentrate. I feel a pang of sympathy for the professor at the front of the hall. His multitasking students are certainly busy, but by bringing their online lives into the classroom, are they paying enough attention to him—or their educations?
Université de Montréal business professor Jean Boivin decided enough was enough a few years ago, when he read in the newspaper that one of his students had lost thousands of dollars in the stock market—while trading online during a lecture. Boivin was then at Columbia University in New York, and in consultation with students, he banned laptops from the classroom. It’s a rule he brought with him when he returned to Canada.
“I’ve never had any students complain about the policy,” says Boivin, He says bright, flashing computer screens, particularly when used for surfing the web, are a terrible distraction. He believes the laptop ban has led to his students paying better attention and scoring higher on exams.
But ask many other students and the idea of forbidding laptops is practically sacrilegious. “My attention span only lasts so long. I don’t know what I’d do without my laptop,” says Stephanie Poato, a second-year communications student at Simon Fraser University, whose laptop screen shows a large Facebook profile photo of herself. “Plus, I pay for this class, and it’s my money, so if I fail I only have myself to blame.”
Students are under too much pressure to concentrate exclusively on any one thing, says fellow second-year student Nadia Saeker. “I know you can’t really be focused on everything at the same time, it’s just not possible,” she says. “But we all have jobs and are trying to get everything done at once. I don’t have the luxury of sitting here and concentrating only on my lecture.”
While some professors seek to exclude the devices from the classroom, others are creating multimedia-rich curricula in which students can draw on online resources and interact with each other. Banning laptops is just plain wrong, according to Don Krug, associate professor at UBC’s department of curriculum studies. He says students are adults, and the best a professor can hope for is a “respectful learning environment,” where students limit their own behaviour. “If they really want to learn the information, they will. They’re paying a lot of money,” he says. “We’re better off teaching them how to be responsible learners.”
Saving lives: one step at a time
SFU team lands on prestigious invention list with energy harvester
A bionic energy-harvesting device created at Simon Fraser University has made Time magazine’s high-profile list of Best 50 Inventions of 2008.
The leg-worn brace weighs about 900 grams and can generate about a half-hour of mobile phone talk time (about 13 watts) from one minute of walking. The device was invented by Max Donelan and his SFU research team and developed by Bionic Power, a spinoff company that sports Donelan in the role of chief science officer.
In its Nov. 10 issue, Time calls the Bionic Energy Harvester “perhaps the most promising in a class of products that harvest energy – all the more important at the time when portable tech, from Blackberries to iPods, is becoming ubiquitous.”
Donelan says he and his research team are honoured to land on the list and excited by how the technology could help revolutionize how power is generated and stored, which has real potential to save lives.
“There are groups whose lives depend on portable electricity and their lives are at risk if they run out,” he says. “People like the military treat batteries the way they treat food and water, and in a 48-hour mission, soliders can carry as much as 30 pounds of batteries with them.”
Although Donelan says the Canadian military is one of Bionic Power’s sponsors, he also stresses that the technology could have massive emergency response implications as well.
“Imagine after Hurricane Katrina, or another massive disaster, when communications and electrical systems are down and emergency workers need to find the people who need help the most,” he says. “You’ll need two-way radios, GPS and all sorts of other technology, but how do you supply them with that portable power? That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Yad Garacha, the company’s chief executive officer, agrees that the technology is ultimately about freedom, particularly for soldiers, emergency workers, users of mobile medical devices and those who depend on portable power.
The device attracted international media attention last February after it was featured in the prominent academic journal Science.
It is joined on Time‘s prestigious list by other inventions including the Tesla electric roadster, the Large Hadron Collider, and Michael Phelps’ controversial Speedo LZR Razor swimsuit in which he won eight Olympic gold medals.
Simon Fraser, Victoria and Cape Breton vote to leave CFS
Canada’s largest national student group loses referendum votes, but signals that it may not recognize some results
Students at Simon Fraser University and Cape Breton University, and graduate students at the University of Victoria, last week voted resoundingly to cease membership in the Canadian Federation of Students.
The electoral committee at SFU announced Friday that students voted 66 per cent in favour of cutting ties with Canada’s largest student lobby organization. At Cape Breton, 92 per cent of student voters were reported to have cast their ballots against the CFS. And at the University of Victoria, 58 per cent of graduate students voted against the CFS. Undergrads at Victoria did not take part in the referendum and remain within the CFS.
“This is a clear democratic mandate. There is no way to read these results as anything but a clear indication that SFU wants to leave the Federation,” Simon Fraser Student Society President Derrick Harder told the campus newspaper, the Peak. “Students have excellent bullshit detectors and those were going off like crazy over the past two weeks.”
The votes, however, may not spell the end of the matter. CFS national chairperson Amanda Aziz hinted to the Peak that her organization had concerns about the accuracy and fairness of the process. “Some of the things that I saw were ballots being found outside of the polling locations, people from the no campaign campaigning right beside the polling station[s], in fact, directing people in terms on how they should be voting on each of the questions, polls running out of ballots, [and] ballots being found outside of polling locations,” Aziz said.
Last week, before the results were announced, Aziz told Maclean’s that “the campaign at SFU has been quite positive,” though she did say that she believed that “there is a lot of misinformation being spread by the SFSS (Simon Fraser Students Society) executive that we are unfortunately spending a lot of time having to correct.”
As for the referendum at Cape Breton, Aziz said that the CFS would not recognize its result. “Whatever vote that may have taken place at Cape Breton University would not relieve Cape Breton University Students’ Union of its contractual obligations to the other student unions which comprise the Federation,” Aziz wrote to Maclean’s.
The CFS is not expected to recognize the referendum because it says proper procedures were not followed. The CFS says that it never received notification of CBU’s intention to hold a referendum. CBU claims that notice was served—along with a petition signed by 500 students—six months in advance of the vote as required by CFS bylaws.
CBU’s student government also says that the vote was representative of student sentiment. “We made our quorum and when you look at it there were about 200 more people who voted this election then voted when we joined CFS,” Ian Lindsay, CBU students’ union president, told the Cape Breton Times and Transcript. “Obviously we would have liked more students to vote, but we are happy we had this turnout.”
The Martlet, the student newspaper at UVic, reported that the referendum campaign there was dominated by those supporting the CFS. The CFS side held a barbecue for graduate students and had a visible presence on campus with colourful pamphlets and numerous supporters. The “No” campaign claims it barely had a campaign at all. “We only had one banner, [a website], and one set of buttons. That’s our entire campaign,” said Tayfun Ince, a member of the No campaign and former chair of the Graduate Students’ Society. “We had nothing for material. We didn’t use a single sheet of paper.”
At SFU, both campaigns were highly visible, although the pro-CFS side initially appeared to be stronger. As the vote neared, students seemed to be growing tired of the constant solicitation from both sides. In a letter to the Peak, one student complained about “thousands of imposing posters on every wall and [... people] trying to intercept your every move.”
Meanwhile, the Kwantlen Students Association (KSA), of BC’s Kwantlen University College, claimed victory last week after a BC Supreme Court hearing regarding their upcoming referendum. The CFS sought to delay the vote until the fall. However, the court ordered that the vote, that was originally scheduled at the same time as the SFU and UVic referendums, be delayed until April 8. “In regards to Kwantlen,” Aziz said, “we are satisfied with the outcome of the injunction, and that the judge recognized that the KSA executive had broken the rules.”
The CFS is Canada’s largest student lobby organization. Half a million students at more than 80 universities and colleges are members of the organization. Each student organization that is a member of the CFS pays dues to the national and provincial arms of the organization. According to the most recent available numbers, SFU students paid $400,000 in 2005 to the CFS.
