By Liz Koblyk. Last month, I wrote about evaluating whether volunteering was worth your time. Let’s move up from unemployment to insecure employment! What do you do when you see an interesting short-term contract advertised. More...

By Jennifer Polk. After the success of last year’s conference, Maren Wood (from Lilli Research Group) and I are once again hosting Beyond the Professoriate, a two-day online conference for graduate students and PhDs. The conference will take place on two consecutive Saturdays this spring: May 2, and May 9, 2015. Day one will feature panel discussions with PhDs from a variety of educational backgrounds and careers. Day two is Professional Development Day, and will consist of several special presentations from experts in the field. For a fuller sense of things, check out last year’s schedule and speaker bios. More...

By Jonathan Thon. Today’s young academic scientists are trapped in the lab, which is not so different from a cave. Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is therefore a fitting analogy, and as a young academic scientist I have often felt that I was facing a blank wall where shadows of things passing in front of a fire behind me were projected. It is only by leaving the cave that I have come to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all. More...

By Peter Ricketts and Jennifer Humphries. Internationalization has long been an important part of Canadian higher education, and in the 21st century we have become increasingly international in all of our activities. For over 20 years, Canadian universities have been seriously competing for international students and this has intensified as revenues from provincial governments have tightened and overall domestic enrolment projections fall. More...

By Natalie Samson. Playwright, director and dramaturge Bruce Barton will be the first permanent director of the University of Calgary’s school of creative and performing arts. The school is a multidisciplinary research and performance hub formed in 2013 through the consolidation of the departments of dance, drama and music. More...

By Natalie Samson. A new report reveals that there is no uniformity in how Canada’s libraries, archives, galleries and museums are adopting digital technologies and practices. On Feb. 4, the Council of Canadian Academies released Leading in the Digital World: Opportunities for Canada’s Memory Institutions, a report commissioned by Library and Archives Canada to look into the current state of digital practices and processes at “memory institutions” and how these institutions – libraries, archives, art galleries and museums – can remain relevant in an era of digital communications and emerging technologies. More...

By Léo Charbonneau. Mountain climber TA Loeffler says she wants to inspire people to be more active and to have big dreams.
Climbing mountains has its own intrinsic appeal, but Memorial University Professor TA Loeffler recognizes that it is also a powerful metaphor, which adds to its attraction among the public. “People have their own relation to the idea of the mountain and having an ‘Everest,’ and what that means to them,” she says. More...

Les formations à l’anglais, en particulier celles préparant au TOEIC, vont rapidement être éligibles au CPF, indique le ministre du Travail, de l’Emploi, de la Formation professionnelle et du Dialogue social, François Rebsamen, lors de ses vœux à la presse, jeudi 29 janvier 2015. Voir l'article...

Au 3 février 2015 à minuit, 472 734 CPF étaient activés, selon le pointage effectué par le ministère du Travail. Un mois après le lancement effectif du dispositif, ce bilan est d’autant plus positif pour l’administration que le rythme d’activation des comptes, après une baisse au milieu du mois de janvier, est reparti à la hausse en fin de mois. Une évolution probablement liée à l’envoi des relevés de DIF par les employeurs. Voir l'article...

Les partenaires sociaux et le ministère du Travail ont finalisé, jeudi 29 janvier 2015, l’annexe financière 2015 à la convention-cadre État/FPSPP. Cette annexe s’établit à plus de 1,17 milliard d’euros, soit 161 M€ de plus que le projet d’entrée en négociation sur lequel les partenaires sociaux s’étaient entendus il y a quelques semaines. Voir l'article...