All Posts Tagged With: "UPEI"

Stole $4,200 from school

A former University of Prince Edward Island student was sentenced Tuesday to one week in jail for stealing $4,200, reports CBC News. Steven Mitchell Colp worked as a room booker for the school. After he graduated, he still had access to the computerized booking system and he used it to request fake refunds that were credited to his own card. Colp is now a graduate student in psychology at the University of Calgary. He wept in court as he apologized for his crime.

Government delays legislation that would permit degree granting authority to new schools

Plans to erect a private university in Prince Edward Island have been put on hold. The government had planned to introduce legislation that would permit institutions other than the University of Prince Edward Island grant to degrees. After opposition, including from outgoing UPEI president Wade MacLauchlan, who said similar experiences in other provinces has been closer to “fraud,” and a petition from the university’s alumni association with 1,300 signatures, the government postponed the new legislation.

Amendments to the Island’s Degree Granting Act were intended to pave the way for a new private university pitched by Halifax developer, Richard Homburg, that would focus on education and research in real estate.

On Friday, premier Robert Ghiz directed UPEI to work with Homburg to come to a solution to the impasse. “Today I am pleased to announce that government is committed to try to facilitate a discussion between Homburg and UPEI,” the premier said, as reported by the CBC.

UPEI released a statement praising the government’s change of plans. “The University of Prince Edward Island appreciates this decision and Premier Ghiz’s leadership in finding a path forward, together with the underlying affirmation of UPEI’s role and mandate as our provincial university,” the statement read.

Look east to see that all universities are not the same.

I am getting really tired of people protesting too much the state of Canada’s universities in general but describing big, central and western Canadian research universities in particular.

Oil executive Gwyn Morgan gives us the latest salvo, blasting today’s universities. At our modern universities, he contends:

1. Little attention is given to the teaching abilities of faculty when it comes to hiring and promotion.

2. Faculty hate undergraduate teaching and get their grad students to do it if they can.

3. Students, at least in first year, sit silently, listening to dry recitations of  material that could easily be found in the textbook or online.

4. Students only attend classes because they are coerced by pop quizzes and other underhanded methods.

I’m not entirely certain this is broadly true at any university in Canada, and I can say with confidence that it is generally not the case at other small eastern Canadian universities. Indeed, I can say with certainty that none of the above matches very well with the reality at my own august institution. To wit:

1. At my university, teaching is taken just as seriously as research when it comes to hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions.

2. Small universities like mine don’t have grad students for the most part so teaching is not foisted upon them. In any case, I can’t think of a single colleague of mine who hates teaching. Perhaps there are one or two who would do only research if they were allowed to, but those are, by far, in the minority. Based on my interactions with faculty at places like Acadia and UPEI, the same seems to hold true at other small maritime institutions. If  you are a faculty member at a small east coast Canadian school and you despise teaching, let me know.

3. Unlike classes at the big research schools that Morgan seems to have in mind, classes at my university are small, even at the first year level. In my department, first year classes are capped at 30-45 students and upper-year classes rarely have more than 20 students in them. But even in my first year class (enrollment of about 40), the emphasis is on learning to read literature as a set of skills and as a habit of mind. Most students are reluctant to talk in first year, but even so, the class is not simply a monody of cold facts; I help my students understand what it is to read creatively and to think critically. It’s a year-long dialogue.

4. Some professors may reward attendance with grades, but I certainly don’t. To my mind, the benefit of attending classes should be obvious to students: you learn interesting things and take part in interesting discussions.

Indeed, it’s amazing to me that Morgan concludes his essay by wishing for something that already exists:

What if formal lectures were eliminated altogether, in favour of informal, smaller group discussions with those talented scholars? Think of how much richer the teaching and learning experience could be.

Could be? Nay, Morgan, it is. You just have to know where to look for it.

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