All Posts Tagged With: "University of Victoria"

Victoria student Sol Kauffman says profs talk too much

Photo by Laura Mills

From the Maclean’s Student Issue, on sale now.

It’s 3 p.m. on a Monday and I’m sitting in my afternoon writing lecture. The professor has been reviewing PowerPoint slides for half an hour now. In one window of my laptop, I’m brewing ideas for the paper due at the end of this week; in another, I’m editing a photo shoot I did on the weekend. In my busy life, this is the perfect opportunity to get some work done. I half listen to the lecture, perking up when a question is asked. Lots of chairs in front of me are empty. Obviously the usual number of people are skipping class today. Maybe they’re sick, maybe they’re working a part-time job; hell, maybe they just slept in. In front of me, I see a student on Facebook, another writing in her journal, another texting on a phone. I know these students and they’re strong writers; I’m confident they’ll all pass with at least a B+. It’s not that the assignments are easy. On the contrary, we’ll all spend some sleepless nights grinding away at them. So why are so many of us absent, physically or mentally, from lectures?

Continue reading Stop lecturing students

Texas requires vaccines

The University of Victoria mourned Wednesday at a funeral service on campus for a student, Leo Chan, who died on Jan. 18 from meningococcal disease, also known as bacterial meningitis.

The disease kills roughly one-tenth of those who get sick and disables another 10 per cent.

Because of the elevated risk in young people who are in close contact with each other, a new law in Texas requires that all students under the age of 30 have proof of vaccination by Jan. 31.

Health Canada recommends vaccinations for children under five, adolescents, and young adults. Coverage varies by province. Some meningitis vaccines are free in Ontario for those aged 15 to 19.

An average of 298 cases are reported annually in Canada. Symptoms include weakness, fatigue, fever, vomiting, stiff neck and sometimes a blotchy rash. The disease spreads mainly among people who are in close contact with each other and swap saliva through smoking, drinks, food or kissing.

Chan lived in on-campus housing. Nineteen people who are at risk of exposure have been given preventative antibiotics, Vancouver Island Health Authority officials told Saanich News.

Two-wheel transport speeds ahead on campus

Cyclist at Dalhousie. By Andrew Tolson.

From the 21st Maclean’s University Rankings—on newsstands now. Story by Jason McBride.

If you were to design the perfect bicycling environment, it would include safe, well-maintained and lit streets. It would have almost no car traffic, dedicated bike paths and ample secure parking and storage. It might even have showers purpose-built for sweaty commuters and a well-equipped repair shop where cyclists can get help fixing a flat tire. In short, it would look quite a bit like the campus of McMaster University.

McMaster is located in blue-collar, largely car-centric Hamilton, Ont.—an unlikely champion of the bicycle. But in the past two years, the city has been in the vanguard of sustainable travel, expanding cycling infrastructure, improving regional transit and adding carpooling programs. Municipal support has, in turn, emboldened the university, and encouraged both students and faculty to take up, in great numbers, alternative modes of transportation. According to Kate Whalen, manager of McMaster’s office of sustainability, a 2010 campus survey revealed that 37 per cent of students walked or cycled to school. “We have a very engaged population,” she says. And the university is very responsive to the needs of that population. Just one example: after a civil engineering student did a systematic geographic information survey of the use of university bike racks, underutilized racks were relocated to more optimal spots on campus. Ten additional racks are installed each year, Whalen says.

Continue reading Canada’s best cycling schools

Woman was trying to bail out boyfriend

Photo courtesy of davisonscott15 on Flickr

Police in Saanich, B.C. arrested a 19-year-old for impaired driving after she drove to the police station to try and bail her under-aged boyfriend, reports the Times Colonist.

The 18-year-old boyfriend had been picked up at the University of Victoria on Sunday around 10 p.m., because he was slurring his speech and barely able to stand, police spokesman Sgt. Dean Jantzen said. The legal drinking age in B.C. is 19.

The girlfriend arrived at the police station half an hour after he was picked up. She told police she had taken a taxi there, but surveillance cameras revealed she had not. When she left, police followed her back to a vehicle where she was administered a breathalyzer test, which she failed. The car will been impounded for 90 days.

There could even be more noisy student housing

I’ve just returned from a short trip to Victoria, where I can sadly report that the post-secondary story dominating the minds of ordinary citizens is no longer the fate of refugee bunnies.

Don’t get me wrong—those creatures, whose plight is one of the great tragic stories of our times, still commandeers our attention from time to time. But the story is many months old at this point, and there’s only so many ways you can shoot a dead rabbit horse.

However, I’m happy to report that the local media has moved on to a slightly more important topic about their university.

Instead of “Cute Animals Under Threat,” it’s now “Concerned Residents Don’t Like Change.”

Last year, the university bought a six-hectare parcel of land, the “Queenswood Property,” which is two blocks away from its boundaries. Previously owned by the Sisters of St. Ann, UVic naturally wants to rezone the land to give them maximum flexibility when they decide what exactly they want to do with it. People who live in the area, naturally, are concerned.

“What they proposed was clearly not respectful in any way of the comments they received from the residents,” a resident of the area said to a local paper.

Both articles on the issue raise the specter of student housing (noises from young people! boo!) as a possibility, and while UVic hasn’t exactly said what they would do with the land, it has to be a possibility for them. They currently have 2,100 students living in university housing and with an overall population of around 20,000, that’s not a great ratio.

UVic, surrounded as it is by residential land, has finite space, and this rezoning will give them a tremendous opportunity to shape future development. The only question is; what will it be?

Thanks, Diesel, for being the first-ever entity to induce library fantasies in sleep-deprived law students.

Some students at Brooklyn Law School are all a-twitter about the fact that their law library serves as the backdrop for a new racy ad campaign for Diesel that features law books far less prominently than it does the underwear-clad derrieres of models. (That link falls just south of NSFW.)

“It’s gross. I work on those computers every day!” fumed a female student, referring to a shot showing two bra- and panty-clad women climbing over the machines toward an open-mouthed man.

“Ugh. The library fantasies are now relentless.”

Right. Thanks, Diesel, for being the first-ever entity to induce library fantasies in sleep-deprived law students. Now we’ll never get any work done!

I don’t really see what the big deal is. I assume most people looking at the photos aren’t pulling out their magnifying glasses to see what law texts the half-naked people are crawling over, and there’s no indication of the school’s name in the photos as far as I can see. As far as I can tell, the school is just getting a boatload of free publicity out of this and the students there have a fun story to tell to their friends at other law schools.

But if they’re really that worked up about it, the folks at Diesel may want to consider winging their way across the continent to the UVic Law Library if they need a new backdrop for their next ad campaign. I can only assume that is exactly what these chairs, which are spread liberally through the library, were designed for.

How large classrooms can work for you

Moving from the small, intimate, setting of a high school classroom to a university lecture hall with hundreds of students can be intimidating. At first you may feel lost and nameless in the mob, and perhaps a bit awkward when raising your hand. In fact, the size of class might not matter all that much and a large classroom might even be to your advantage.

Tom Haffie, who teaches a first-year biology course at the University of Western Ontario, that has two sections of 700 students each, disagrees that smaller is always better. “It’s easier to have a more in-depth experience in a small class,” he admits. “But that’s all it is, it’s easier.”

Haffie, who is a 3M Teaching Fellow and describes his student evaluations as “average to above average,” relies heavily on technology to assist his students in getting the most out of his lectures. Notes are posted online beforehand, and audio is posted after class.

Each student is provided with a clicker, so when he poses a question, everyone has the chance to answer. When they do, Haffie can get a better idea of what was understood, and where students are having trouble. “It’s a way to have a kind of conversation . . . It’s a cliché that technology shrinks the room, but it’s true,” he says.

Students are still exposed to a small classroom experience. Similar to large classes everywhere, a small army of teaching assistants run labs and tutorials to groups of 40 students.

What really makes or breaks a large class like Haffie’s may have less to do with room shrinking technology, and everything to do with the professor’s performance as a lecturer. Emily Rodriquez, one of Haffie’s students, says he is “intriguing” and entertaining. “I want to go to that class. He lectures in a way that makes you want to learn biology,” she said.

A survey of 5,886 students conducted by consulting firm Higher Education Strategy Associates, and released  in August, supports the notion that who is in front of the class matters more than its size. Participants were asked to rank nine factors that contributed to their favourite class. At the top of the list was “Interesting subject matter,” followed by “Instructor’s engaging teaching style.” Near the bottom, in second last place, was “small class size.”

One common complaint about large classes is that students will get less face time with their professor, or even their TAs. The reality might be the same as it is for other classes: students simply don’t take advantage of a professor’s office hours. “For the most part, office hours are very underutilized,” Haffie says. He’s even tried holding court in the cafeteria and sending TAs to residences to hold their hours. Still, the students don’t come.

Rodriquez might have an explanation. “One-on-one with the professor is kind of intimidating,” she says, preferring to ask her questions by email.

Student faculty ratios remain one of the most common metrics when administrators and professors consider the quality of education. University “accountability” measures, often posted on an institution’s website, will usually prominently feature average class size.

A September study published by the Ontario Confederation of Faculty Associations (OCUFA) found that 57 per cent of academic staff in the province say education quality has been declining over the past year. Growing class sizes was seen as the main  culprit, as 55 per cent of respondents reported larger class sizes and 38 per cent said retiring or departing faculty had not been renewed. As a result, 38 per cent said that out-of-class support for students had declined, and 39 per cent were using fewer essay-style exams to compensate for larger classes.

OCUFA advocates an investment from the Ontario government to bring student-faculty ratios down from 26 to 1 to the national average of 19 to 1.

James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers says “anecdotes” from across the country suggest similar trends are occurring elsewhere. While Turk is not too concerned by class size in and of itself, noting that “it doesn’t make a difference” if classes have 100 or 1,000 students, he is worried about what he says is a decline of resources invested in the classroom. Professors are “reporting the number of TAs [per class] are getting worse,” he says.

While Turk is sceptical that technology and quality lecturers can mitigate the challenges of large classes, Meaghan Coker of the Ontario Undergraduate Students’ Alliance says that it would be more efficient for the government to invest in instructor training aimed at encouraging more active learning techniques. Reducing class sizes alone may not make much of a difference. “You could have the same horrible boring teachers, just teaching more classes,” she says.

Similarly, Jeffrey Niehaus, a psychology instructor at the University of Victoria isn’t so sure that more TAs is the answer. His first year psychology class has 300 students, and is coordinated along with two other sections of equal size. In total, there are only three TAs, plus a senior TA who oversees the others. That’s 225 students per TA, but Niehaus insists it hasn’t been an obstacle. “We work them pretty hard and we automate as much as we can,” he says. “If we had 30 students for every TA, I’m not sure we would have put the effort into getting things online.”

Each week Niehaus’ students complete small assignments online that the course website marks automatically. The students are also asked to do several short essay assignments throughout the term, also online, that the TAs are required to grade. Like Haffie at the University of Western Ontario, Niehaus employs clicker technology to pose questions to the class, but also to survey students to quickly illustrate psychology lessons with a live sample.

Krystal Dash, one of Niehaus students, cites his energy, use of pop culture references and humour, as factors that contribute to the success of the class. “You don’t feel that it is a huge class,” she says. Though Dash admits that large classrooms are not always ideal and more intimate settings allow professors to more easily have a back and forth conversation with students. “I do like the smaller classes,” she says.

Teachers like Niehaus represent a new brand of professor in Canadian universities, those dedicated predominately to teaching. While most universities have some sort of position for teaching-only professors, compensating them and putting them on tenure track, similar to traditional research oriented faculty is only starting to take form. Niehaus was recruited from the University of California-Santa Barbara last year, and is on tenure track to become a Teaching Professor, a tenure stream that didn’t even exist at the University of Victoria five years ago.

The growing trend of putting the best teachers—those who are engaging, tech savvy and up to date on the latest pedagogical techniques—in front of large lecture rooms may mean students in those classes, at least in first and second year, are actually at an advantage over their peers in smaller classrooms.

While small classes offer more opportunities for students to interact directly with their professor during class time, unless the instructor is capable of controlling the class, it can often degenerate into a situation where only a handful of students actually get the professor’s attention. “[Small classes] tend to be more easily monopolized by some students,” says Jennifer Marinucci, a third-year English student at the University of Guelph.

What is really needed says Haffie is more research into what classroom techniques actually work. “There’s a whole lot of teaching going on,” he says. “There’s not a lot of investigation into it.”

Fuelled by late-blooming entrepreneurs, business schools see doctoral enrolment double

Valerie Sheppard’s been self-employed, she’s worked in government (in the tourism sector), and now she’s headed back to school. Sheppard, 50, who says she has an entrepreneurial streak, is one of four candidates in the University of Victoria’s new business Ph.D. program (UVic welcomed its first cohort this month). “I don’t see myself retiring,” says Sheppard. “Getting a Ph.D. will give me the flexibility to keep working.” After spending years out in the workforce, going back to school is a bit “scary,” she admits, but she’ll have someone close for support: daughter Leah, 26, is doing a Ph.D. in business, too, at the University of British Columbia.

A mother and daughter both doing business Ph.D.s might sound unique, but it speaks to the booming popularity of the degree. The number of doctoral candidates enrolled in business programs nearly doubled in a decade, from 696 in 1998 to 1,227 in 2008, Statistics Canada figures show. (That year, about 31 per cent of students were aged 30 to 34, and 24 per cent were 40-plus, the two biggest age groups.) UVic decided to offer the Ph.D. because “there’s a shortage of business school professors out there, and we knew there’d be a demand for graduates,” says academic director Charlene Zietsma.

Indeed, as countries like Brazil, China and India became financial hubs, the number of business schools worldwide tripled from the 1980s to the mid-2000s, drawing North American-trained academics, says John Fernandes, president and chief executive officer of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a leading accreditation agency. (Most of the grads leaving for developing regions were international students, he says, heading back home.) At the same time, North American business schools cut back on Ph.D. programs, investing in the more lucrative, and high-profile, M.B.A. instead.

Job prospects have suffered in this gloomy economy, but they’re expected to improve. “The market for academics with a business Ph.D. has been good, and will be again,” predicts Debbie Compeau, who directs the Ph.D. program at the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business.

But academia isn’t the only option. Many of those who pursue a doctorate in business have past work experience, and about 20 per cent of all students will take their degrees into the workforce, Fernandes says. Among these people, a new type of degree is gaining traction: the doctorate of business administration. Unlike a Ph.D., which is scholarly and research based, the D.B.A. encourages “applied research that’s relevant to the real world,” says John Ingham, who directs the three-year D.B.A. program at the Université de Sherbrooke, one of two in Canada to offer the degree. (The other is Athabasca University.)

Richard Vaillancourt, 54, is completing a D.B.A. online through Athabasca while serving as CEO of OMISTA Credit Union in Moncton, N.B. “I thought a D.B.A. would be more relevant and practitioner-oriented, whereas a Ph.D. is more research,” says Vaillancourt, who’s considering a career in credit-union consulting or teaching, post-retirement.

In January, Valerie Sheppard left her government job to take on an associate faculty position at Royal Roads University; getting a Ph.D. will “solidify my ability to teach in a university setting,” she says, and keep working for many years to come. And, she argues, the so-called Ivory Tower and the real world aren’t so far apart. As a professor, “you’ve got your own courses, and students; there’s some flexibility,” she says. “In a sense, it’s entrepreneurial. That’s what I’m looking for.”

Photo by Darren Stone

Court ruling removes injunction against trapping and killing rabbits that have taken over the campus

University of Victoria’s legendary rabbit infestation will soon be coming to an end. An injunction against trapping and killing the feral rabbits, filed by animal rights activist Roslyn Cassells, was withdrawn by a B.C. Supreme Court judge on Monday. The university was hoping to have all but 200 of the 2,000  rabbits, that dig holes, eat vegetation and litter the campus with feces, removed before students return to class. Instead, because of the delay, they hope to have as many as 500 removed by the end of September, and continue removing them at a rate of about 100 a week if the plan proves successful. The university has now committed to using non-lethal methods for controlling the rabbit population.

In his ruling, Justice A.F. Cullen concluded that the case does not lend “itself to legal action because it lacks the indicia of a private interest or special damage peculiar to Ms. Cassells.” The judge added that Cassells “has failed to establish that she has the requisite standing.” Cullen also noted that the case was “amenable to the sort of social and political activism which the petitioner has, with her supporters, pursued vigorously and successfully.”

By Monday afternoon, the university had begun setting traps. “We had hoped to have five weeks, now we only have one week,” Tom Smith, UVic’s executive director of facilities management, said. “We felt that there was no authority for [the injunction] to be put in place.”

While Cassells’ injunction, which was filed on July 30th, was dismissed, it appears to have served its purpose. At the end of June, the university released its Feral Rabbit Management Plan. Although the university apparently committed to trapping, sterilizing, and releasing rabbits to sanctuaries, it did not rule out lethal methods if enough homes could not be found. That posed a hurdle for groups, such as the Coalition for the Ethical Treatment of UVic Rabbits, because many of the sanctuaries did not have the requisite permits. The injunction halted the university’s plans, which were to start at the beginning of August.

During that time, permits were secured from the Ministry of the Environment, for at least four sanctuaries. A Texas sanctuary will be taking 1,000 rabbits, while the rest will likely go to B.C. sanctuaries located in Coombs, Cowichan Station and Saltspring Island. “We recognize that there are sufficient permits,” Smith said.

Cassells is happy that sanctuaries received their permits but remains skeptical about UVic promises not to kill any rabbits. “We’re going to hold them to it,” she said.

Although the court ruling placed no restrictions on the university killing rabbits, it was noted that a “non-lethal population control plan,” would best serve the community, the university, as well as the rabbits. The university will incur the costs to trap the animals, but sterilization and relocation costs will be paid for by activist groups and the sanctuaries.

Photo courtesy of Heather Clebo

To be perfectly frank, I still don’t think I know what a good reason to pick one law school over another is.

I don’t know how most incoming law students spend their summer before school, but I personally opted to quit my job two months early for a hiatus from thinking and in order to have enough time to move cities without causing undue stress.

I spent the first two weeks of my newfound temporary freedom on vacation in Ottawa, where I lived for six years before I moved to Edmonton. I also have a lot of family here, so basically I’ve spent the last two weeks frantically running around trying to meet up with people I haven’t seen in awhile. An interesting pattern emerged in the majority of the conversations, wherein at some point the person I was meeting with would lean back and just look at me and say, “Why Victoria?”

To be perfectly frank, I still don’t think I know what a good reason to pick one law school over another is. The most common advice I heard was to go to school close to where you want to practice, because it’s just easier to get jobs at employers the more proximate they are to your school. Another frequent piece of advice is to go to a school that specializes in the kind of law you think you want to practice, but as previously discussed in this space, I’m not sure that’s something m0st people really know. In the States, rankings play a huge role in what schools people aim for, but that’s not the case up here.

So, given that I’m quite flexible on where I’d want to practice and what kind of law I want to do, when people ask me why I picked the University of Victoria’s law school over the others I was accepted to, a little part of me panics because I don’t have one good solid answer. I generally sort of throw out a combination of any and all of the following points:

• The current and former students of UVic law school have got to be the happiest unrepresentative sample I’ve ever canvassed. Literally everyone I’ve talked to who went or goes there has nothing but fantastic things to say about the law school, it’s professors and course options and fostered attitude of non-competitiveness. It’s kind of stunning. This is not true of any other law school I’ve come across in this country
• UVic’s law school is smaller than most, and having grown up in a town of 5,000 people, I’m slightly agorophobic. I had to drive in Toronto last weekend and it took me an hour for me to stop shaking from the stress of it.
• UVic has cheaper tuition than most Canadian law schools. I believe it’s lower than everywhere except Quebec schools for Quebec resident.
• I’ve never lived there before. Most everyone, including myself, expected that I would go to Ottawa when I was accepted there because of the aforementioned family-and-friend factor, but this seemed like more of an adventure.
• It doesn’t snow in Victoria. This is almost certainly the worst reason I have, but it is, nonetheless, one of my actual deciding factors. I had to give UVic an answer on admissions by February 1 this year, and while I’m sure there were practical reasons for that date, I’m also sure that it’s a shrewd marketing technique on the part of the law school because the weather is complete shit everywhere else in Canada on Feburary 1.

That’s pretty much it. I kind of cringe at the lack of law-related reasons on that list, but that’s kind of my whole point: What is a good reason to pick a law school? I’d love if other incoming law students could weigh in in the comments about why they h0nestly picked their school.