All Posts Tagged With: "University of Saskatchewan"
Saudi Arabian student still missing
Officials comb South Saskatchewan River
A jacket that may have belonged to a missing student from Saudi Arabia prompted an unsuccessful search of the South Saskatchewan River on Saturday, reports CKOM radio. Hamza Alsharief, a 23-year-old chemical engineering student at the University of Saskatchewan, went missing in December. Alsharief’s wallet and identification were found in his residence. Investigators believe he may have taken his own life. He’s described as 5’8″ with a slim build, brown hair and brown eyes.
Canada’s Top Five university comics
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.
New president reflects a new University of Saskatchewan
She’s a Jewish-American engineer with research cred
Photo by Colin O'Connor/Maclean's
Under President Peter MacKinnon’s 13-year reign, the University of Saskatchewan was transformed from a staid Prairie school into an institution that attracts not only plenty of research dollars for things like the Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation and the Canadian Light Source synchrotron, but also a diverse faculty and student population.
That’s makes it unsurprising that the U of S’s new president is a Jewish-American female engineer who has helped lead top research institutions
Ilene Busch-Vishniac, originally from Philadelphia, Penn. has worked for Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Texas-Austin, Johns Hopkins University and McMaster University, where she currently serves as provost and vice-president academic.
Busch-Vishniac is an accomplished acoustics researcher and engineering education advocate. In the past, she’s advocated that women don’t need to give up motherhood to have successful careers in academia, encouraged more minorities and women to pursue engineering and worked with the Six Nations in Ontario to increase access to education for Aboriginal Canadians.
Continue reading New president reflects a new University of Saskatchewan
This degree is practically a job guarantee
And Saskatchewan may give you $20,000
For students who want a guaranteed job after graduation, nothing comes closer than nursing in Saskatchewan. According to the Regina Leader-Post, the government has hired 900 nurses since 2008, but could need as many as 2,000 more in the next two years if those set to retire do so as planned. There were already 449 nursing jobs being advertised in the province last month.
The government has increased seats at post-secondary schools for registered nurses dramatically in the past four years: from 300 in 2006 to 690 now, but that likely won’t be enough.
That’s why, in last week’s Throne Speech, the government announced that seats in universities to train nurse practitioners—highly-paid advanced nurses who often have the ability prescribe drugs—will grow from 30 to 50 per year. The shortage is also the reason the government says it will forgive $20,000 of student loans for recent nursing graduates who work in rural and remote communities for at least five years. It’s easy to see why Saskatchewan is being so agreesive about training, wooing and keeping nurses: neighbouring Alberta is on a nurse hiring spree right now too.
Why Alberta’s education system is better
The reasons may surprise you
Snowy Edmonton, Alta. by Stella Blu on Flickr
Alberta is as a maverick when it comes to higher education. The province prepares students for post-secondary better than its neighbors, has some of the country’s most satisfied students and punches above its weight in research.
Now there’s even more evidence that the rest of Canada should pay attention to how Wild Rose Country approaches higher education.
New University of Saskatchewan research, which included 12,000 first-year students, found that grades for Albertans tended to drop just 6.4 points from Grade 12, but fell as much as 19.6 points on average for students from another province. In other words, a student from Alberta who graduates with an 86 average is likely to end first-year as an 80 student, while students from that other unnamed province would average 66.
One reason Alberta’s students are much better prepared is that they study long and hard to pass provincial standardized exams, which account for 50 per cent of their Grade 12 marks. Students in other provinces are graded more subjectively, making it easier for teachers to give high marks.
The higher standards are well-known. In recognition of the high standards, the University of British Columbia automatically raises Albertan students’ grades two per cent when they apply.
But it’s a lot more than standardized tests that make Alberta’s schools succed. Here are six more reasons the rest of Canada ought to pay closer attention to Alberta’s higher education system.
1. Public funding of universities is highest in Alberta.
Statistics Canada says that 72 per cent of funding for Alberta universities came from public sources in 2009. The next highest was Newfoundland at 69 per cent. It was only 49 per cent in Nova Scotia.
2. Albertans outperform their peers well before university.
Alberta’s 15-year-olds came second in the world in reading and fourth in the world in science in the 2009 PISA study, the gold-standard international test. Those were the top scores in Canada.
3. Alberta has two teaching-focused universities that work.
Grant MacEwan and Mount Royal Univeristy have faculty who spend most of their days teaching, rather than conducting research—unlike nearly every university east of Edmonton. And both institutions score exceptionally well on the National Survey of Student Engagement. When asked “if you could start over, would go to the institution you are now attending?,” 50 per cent of Mount Royal seniors and 60 per cent of Grant MacEwan seniors said yes. The average is just 45 per cent.
5. Alberta’s transfer system works.
In Sept. 2009, nearly 12,000 post-secondary students transferred between schools in the province. Many of the transfers are from the provinces’ teaching-focused institutions and community colleges into big research institutions. Harvey Weingarten, then-president of the University of Calgary, told the authors of Academic Reform that transfer students are “academically indistinguishable.”
6. Even with teaching-focused universities, Alberta remains a research leader.
Despite having more students in teaching-only institutions and only 11 per cent of Canada’s population, Alberta holds 17 per cent of the Canada Excellence Research Chairs, which come with up to $10-million apiece. Alberta also has 12 per cent of the prestigious Vanier Scholarships. The University of Alberta has the second highest per-faculty research funding in Canada at $309,332.
Saskatchewan MLA is a PhD student and a mom
Jennifer Campeau balances motherhood, school and politics
Saskatoon Fairview MLA Jennifer Campeau
Running for office isn’t easy. But how many politicians can say they won their seats while parenting and working on their PhDs?
Not many. But Jennifer Campeau, the newest member the Saskatchewan Legistlature can.
Campeau, 38, is pursuing her PhD in Native Studies at the University of Saskatchewan.
The Yellow Quill First Nation members’ election in Saskatoon Fairview on on Nov. 7 marked only the second time a First Nations woman was elected to the Legislative Assembly in Saskatchewan and the first time an Aboriginal Canadian woman snagged a seat for the Saskatchewan Party, which cleaned up with 49 out of 58 ridings this month.
Despite the rigours of campaigning, Campeau chose not to take any time off from her studies.
“You’ve really got to be out there knocking on doors at least 3 hours a night, if not more,” she says. Still, Campeau doesn’t take the opportunity of post-secondary education for granted. A single mother, it took her a long time to earn her first degree. It was simply too difficult to study full-time while working to support her young daughter. ”It was just the two of us so I didn’t have the support that I could have had to do well in school; I had to work to support us both,” she says.
“[But] when I was 30 and she was old enough to be in school all day, I’d had enough of telling her that education was important when I didn’t have a degree myself,” she says. Sometimes she would bring her daughter to class, explaining “it instilled in her the value of post-secondary education.”
Campeau now has a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Saskatchewan.
She’s pursing her doctoral degree in Native Studies to learn more about aboriginal policy. She says the economic challenges facing Yellow Quill First Nation are part of the reason she chose her field of study.
As an MLA, Campeau hopes to provide a voice for both Aboriginal Canadians and newcomers alike. “The Saskatchewan economy and population is growing, so we have a lot of people new to Saskatchewan in Saskatoon Fairview,” she says. “I want to bring their concerns to the table.”
You’re forigiven if it all sounds tiring. ”In the last eight years, I haven’t really had a life of leisure, I’ve always been working and going to school,” jokes Campeau, “so I kind of got used to a fast pace.”
Aboriginal Canadian baby boom could boost economy
$90-billion possible for Saskatchewan: economist
Lakehead University students. By Andrew Tolson.
A new report by University of Saskatchewan economist Eric Howe shows just how much Saskatchewan’s economy could gain by closing the Aboriginal education gap. Howe explains that higher education causes earnings to grow, so if Aboriginal Canadians were to become as highly-educated as non-Aboriginals, the province would increase its economic output by $90-billion. “To put this into context,” writes Howe. “The total production of potash in Saskatchewan back to the start of the industry is… four‐fifths of $90 billion.”
That said, academics often argue about how much education increases economic output. Some think gains in human capital (better skilled workers) have a large impact on economies. Others argue that credentials don’t increase employee performance much, but instead act mainly as “signals” to employers about who is likely to succeed. (To learn more see the book Academic Reform.)
Continue reading Aboriginal Canadian baby boom could boost economy
Saskatchewan installs bike repair station
Total cost: $4,868
The University of Saskatchewan is the first Canadian school to install a new type of unmanned bike repair station, which has taken off in the U.S., reports The Sheaf. Students can use the outdoor Dero Fixit station to pump up tires, tighten screws and more. The University of Saskatchewan Students’ Union and the Arts and Science Students’ Union split the $1,868 cost of the unit itself. The Office of Sustainability paid $3,000 for the construction of its concrete foundation. Many other schools in Canada have indoor bike repair shops, which are often staffed by volunteers.
Click to read about Canada’s best cycling schools. From the Maclean’s University Rankings.
University of Saskatchewan president defends endorsement
It’s not the first time a president has praised a politician
Photo by waferboard on Flickr
A University of Saskatchewan professor says President Peter MacKinnon’s endorsement of a Saskatchewan Party minister is unprecedented and constitutes an “abuse of power.”
MacKinnon is quoted in a brochure saying: “Rob Norris is the finest minister responsible for post-secondary education that I have been privileged to work with in my (13) years as (president).”
Len Findlay, Director of the Humanities Research Unit at the university, said presidents are required to stay neutral. “It’s a publicly funded institution and it’s a provincial responsibility,” Findlay told the StarPhoeix. “Provincial governments change and the interests of the institution and the public interest is best served by the university not being seen to align itself with one party…”
MacKinnon said there’s nothing wrong with the comment. He said that it’s important to be careful during election campaigns, but the comment was made in a speech before the writ was dropped.
But are such endorsements, even during elections, really unprecedented as Findlay suggests?
Here are some recent examples of how university and college presidents have praised political parties. You be the judge.
In March, University of Guelph President Alastair Summerlee endorsed federal Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s “Learning Passport,” calling it “absolutely amazing” and “a very, very positive contribution,” reported the Guelph Mercury.
In September, York University President Mamdouh Shoukri said in response to the Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal platform that: ”the goals of having the highest postsecondary attainment rate and most educated workforce in the world are the right ones.”
That same week, Sheldon Levy, President of Ryerson University, said that the Ontario Liberal’s platform included “the most progressive change in tuition policy I have seen in 40 years.”
And while their words came after the election in October, both University of Manitoba President David Barnard and Red River College President Stephanie Forsyth offered their gratitude to the NDP for promises of new funding that came in Manitoba’s Throne Speech, according to CKNW.
MacKinnon’s comments may be controversial, but such endorsements aren’t unprecedented.
To read more about what the Nov. 7 Saskatchewan election means for you, click here and here.
USask “levelling the playing field”
Students can be admitted without provincial exams
Photo by daryl_mitchell on Flickr
The University of Saskatchewan is hoping to attract more students from Alberta, British Columbia and the territories by “levelling the playing field,” reports the StarPhoenix.
The university will now waive provincial and territorial final exam marks and will base admissions and scholarships decisions entirely on the grades teachers assign throughout grade 12—should those marks be higher.
For Albertan students, diploma exams count for 50 per cent of students’ final grades. Clearly, if they can choose whether to include the test or not, it means some students will be considered by Saskatchewan who might not have been in the past.
The reason for the change is equity, Dan Seneker, undergrad recruitment manager for the U of S told the newspaper. He argued that admissions standards haven’t changed. “We’re not dropping our average, we’re not dropping our scholarship averages or anything like that, we’re not increasing space in programs. We’re keeping everything status quo, we’re just admitting students on a more equitable basis,” he says. A message on the U of S website echoes that sentiment. It reads: “we don’t want to penalize you if you have a bad test day.”
U Sask. senators wants board chair to resign
Is seat on uranium company’s board a conflict of interest?
University of Saskatchewan senators want the chair of the Board of Governors to resign because she is also a board member for uranium producer Cameco Corp., reports the StarPhoenix. The handful of senators argue that Nancy Hopkins has a conflict of interest in selecting a new president.
Rumblings began earlier this year when university senator and lawyer Stefania Fortungo suggested that the university’s increasing focus on nuclear research was the result of Hopkins’ influence. ”Any time that the University of Saskatchewan enlarges the role of the nuclear sciences on campus… the share prices of Cameco Corporation correspondingly increase,” she wrote in a letter.
Hopkins called the conflict of interest allegations “absurd” and said that the nuclear research centre was the provincial government’s idea, not hers.
President Peter MacKinnon said the calls for Hopkins resignation are “without any grounds at all.”
The bicycle thieves are arrested
Baiting programs are cutting down on theft
Photo courtesy of Simply Bike on Flickr
Students wallets, laptops and bikes are common targets of professional thieves.
So it’s encouraging to read that four bicycle thieves have been caught and charged at the University of Saskatchewan. None of those charged were against students and, in this case, the culprits were youths.
Even better news: The Sheaf reports that the number of bikes reported stolen on campus has fallen from roughly 75 to 100 per year a decade ago to around 15 per year. That’s because Campus Safety officers have fought back against with “bait bikes” that lure theives.
RCMP at the University of British Columbia, which has a persistent problem with thefts from lockers, has introduced a “bait locker” program.
We can only hope other schools follow suit.
Mystery of the disappearing artwork
Why would someone steal a student’s prints?
A Unversity of Saskatchewan student says that 72 pieces of his art disappeared from the campus printmaking shop. Kevin Bishop, 23, doesn’t know who would have wanted the work that he’s spent six months producing for his Master of Fine Art thesis. The most money his work has sold for is $750, making the stolen collection worth $54,000 “in an ideal world,” he told the StarPhoenix newspaper. ”It was a year of my life,” he said. “I just want it back.”
Law student gets year in jail for child porn
Collection of 70,000 images “shocking and horrible”
Man in Jail courtesy of Mr.Thomas on Flickr
A 27-year-old University of Saskatchewan law student will go to jail for one year after a judge reviewed some of the 70,000 “shocking and horrible” child pornography images found on USB sticks in his pocket at the Saskatoon Airport on May 31. Among the images were photos of men abusing infant girls and men having sex with animals.
Eran Michael Pinsky, who pleaded guilty, had already been charged with possession of one of the largest collections of child porn ever found in Canada in 2009. In fact, it was as a result of bail conditions following that charge that police knew he was planning to leave the city in May and decided to check up on him at the airport.
During his three-year probation, Pinsky will be not be allowed internet access outside of work, he will be required to abstain from all pornography, he will take sex offender treatment and his name will remain in the national sex offender registry for ten years.
On Campus grades six university apps
One school gets an A-grade. Another failed the assignment.
Photo courtesy of UBC Alumni and University Relations
Universities in Canada are rushing to get their apps onto your phones and tablets. When done right, those apps can help potential students see into the soul of a campus. Even better, they can help current students find their way to lunch, to class and to enriching events. But when done poorly, apps can make a school look out totally of touch with technology. The lesson? Don’t rush your app schools. Here’s what we think of six Canadian universities’ apps for iPhone.
University of British Columbia — Grade: A
If every school made an app this good, then there would be no more paper brochures arriving in the mailbox, no one will ever get lost on campus, and no student would ever have an excuse to say that they’re bored.
Saskatchewan law student guilty of child porn
Faces one to two years in prison
A 27-year-old law student from the University of Saskatchewan pleaded guilty in provincial court Tuesday to possession of 70,000 pieces of child pornography, including photos of men abusing girls as young as two-years-old, reports the Star Phoenix newspaper. A city police officer testified that he found the images on Eran Michael Pinsky’s backpack at the Saskatoon airport on May 31.
It’s at least his second alleged offense. More than onne year ago, he was charged with possessing and making illegal material available to others over the Internet — a charge that he has pleaded not guilty to. The case has not yet been to trial.
But it was bail conditions related to those charges that helped officials catch him the second time. He was forbidden from using any device with internet access or from leaving the city without permission. It was when he was on his way home to his parents house in Vancouver last month that he was met at the airport by a police investigator who wanted to check his laptop for anything illegal. The officer found four USB flash drives in his pocket that included the 70,000 pieces of pornography, Crown Prosecutor Mike Segu told the court.
Pinsky’s lawyer said that his client admits he has a problem and has been seeing a doctor.
Segu has asked for 12 to 24 months in prison. Sentencing has been reserved until July 4th.
Canada’s best teachers: Fred Phillips
How accounting can be ‘exciting’
In 1986, to recognize the importance of university teaching, the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and 3M Canada created the 3M National Teaching Fellowships. Ten university faculty members are recognized each year for their educational leadership and exceptional contributions to teaching. Here we continue our series profiling all 10 of the 2011 3M Teaching Award winners, with a look at Fred Phillips, an accounting professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
University of Saskatchewan accounting professor, Fred Phillips is rarely discouraged by the fact that students often view accountants as dull, humourless money counters. “In a lot of ways, it is to my advantage,” he says, before adding wryly, “The bar is very low.”
For him, accounting is not dissimilar to detective work. Financial statements tell a story and “that story doesn’t always go in the same direction as the cover story that people tell.” A solid grasp of accounting principles allows for uncovering what is actually going on in a firm. “It’s really a fun puzzle,” he says.
For years, Phillips used PowerPoint presentations in the classroom, but starting in 2009, he compiled all his lectures into video form. This solved a dilemma he had been facing. By making the video lectures available to students before class, time was freed up to discuss specific case studies—a valuable resource when studying a profession that demands “deep, contemplative critical thinking.”
Unfortunately, another obstacle arose. “The problem was that there weren’t a lot of suitable resources like this to draw on,” Phillips says. So he set about developing his own case studies. He produced videos highlighting well-known cases such as the fraud trial of former Computer Associates chairman, Sanjay Kumar, and the bankruptcy of Circuit City, to illustrate key accounting practices and principles. He then wrote his own hypothetical problems to present to his classes. Phillips enjoys helping his students learn: “It’s fun to help them discover where their perceptions are and are not on point,” regarding what accountants do.
Phillips’ approach does appear to be working. One of his students, Samuel Clarke, switched majors from arts to accounting, because Phillips helped him to see that the material was “exciting.”
Didn’t pay the fee? No grades for you!
Sask. prof threatens to withhold grades in dispute over additional course fee
Students were informed by professor Gordon Sparks that the $30 fee was mandatory to pay to use materials made available on the course’s Blackboard homepage at the beginning of the class and in their syllabus. However, most students viewed the fee in the same way as paying for an assigned textbook, and that it was not necessarily required to complete the course.
Sparks’ view apparently differed on the fee, as he wrote to students in an email that if they didn’t cough up the $30, “you will be ‘cutoff’ access to Blackboard and therefore will not get a grade in the class!”
In the past, Sparks has simply denied access to the materials on Blackboard until students had paid the fee, which allows students to use course materials from former University of New Brunswick professor Barry Bisson.
Some students felt Sparks was not justified in threatening academic repercussions for students who don’t pay. U of S student Steve Bachiu told The Sheaf that he felt the threat “seems a lot like extortion” since he’s already paid his tuition fees for the course.
“My issue, essentially, is that it’s material that I don’t want. There are a lot of other classes that I’m taking where I haven’t bought the textbook” and have still been given a grade in the class, Bachiu said.
The materials the fee covers include review exercises, quizzes and weekly assignments. According to The Sheaf, Sparks has argued that students were obliged to pay the fee because they had made use of Bisson’s intellectual property by completing the quizzes and assignments.
However, Bachiu said that he felt that instructors shouldn’t be allowed to charge access fees for tests “and that is, essentially, what’s happening.”
Bachiu has brought his concerns to University of Saskatchewan Students Union (USSU) vice-president academic affairs Kelsey Topola, who said she is planning on bringing them before the university’s teaching and learning committee, academic support committee or copyright advisory committee.
Isn’t a sick note for when you break your leg?
Honour system at U of S puts more responsibility on students to suck it up
Everyone always seems to fall ill at exam time. After three years of university, I now expect that a runny nose or headache will probably accompany me into my English final. Weeks of chronic stress and fatigue have to catch up with us sometime.
I presumed that a sick note was only for times when I physically could not get myself out of bed. Apparently this was not the case for students who were flooding the health clinic during exam season at the University of Saskatchewan. The university’s Student Health Centre stopped writing sick notes in early September and is instead encouraging instructors to accept self-declaration forms from students who were absent for medical reasons. Students will now have to go off-campus to obtain sick notes for professors who continue to require them, and the clinic will still write notes for its regular patients.
The clinic changed its policy after line ups during exam periods overwhelmed medical staff and sometimes forced them to turn people away who needed more pressing medical care. The clinic was writing almost 2,000 such notes a each year.
By encouraging the use of self-declaration, it may seem as if the U of S is creating an opening for wide spread absenteeism. However, traditional sick notes don’t really verify whether or not a student has a legitimate medical reason for being absent. It was difficult for physicians at the clinic to determine how incapacitated a student was in the single visit they would make to the clinic demanding a note. In some cases, notes were handed out to students after they were no longer sick. The self-declaration forms actually puts more onus on students than sick notes do. Falsifying a form would be considered academic dishonesty.
Lynn Kuffner, U of S’s manager of student health and counselling pointed out to the Star Phoenix that in practice sick notes are not much different than a self-declaration form. “University is about academics, but it’s also about becoming a responsible adult,” she said. When the self-declaration forms were tested such as this past spring, the university found no difference in the number of absences compared to when sick notes were used.
Similarly, in January, the University of Alberta also replaced sick notes with a self-declaration policy, except that, unlike the U of S, the change is not optional for individual professors. “Physicians were often acting as a rubber stamp and saying, ‘the patient indicates this’ and signing it. So really, what is this doing that a patient couldn’t do in a signed declaration anyways? They’re just taking the student at their word,” Kevin Friese, Assistant Director of the U of A Health Centre, told the Gateway.
The University of British Columbia, University of Toronto and McMaster have also implemented comparable policies.
Part of the learning curve involved in becoming a responsible adult is figuring out how to deal with illness. Learning when it’s worth it to call in sick and when you should just suck it up and get through the day is part of becoming productive and successful. Self-declaration puts more responsibility on students to find that balance, as it doesn’t give students a doctor’s signature to hide behind.
Where do I belong?
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
