Formation Continue du Supérieur

2 juin 2013

Trent University alumni starting to reclaim a past that’s been trashed

Just last year, furniture maker Rob Tuckerman pushed past old mattresses and fibreglass insulation to pull, from a dumpster at Trent University, iconic wooden chairs – known as the Ant and Series 7 – by the Danish great Arne Jacobsen. Dumpster diving was something Tuckerman did not exactly relish. At 58, he is educated as a biologist and has enjoyed an extensive career illustrating books for the likes of David Suzuki. But he is also a passionate Trent alumnus, and has been doing whatever it takes to salvage at least part of the Ontario university’s vast collection of mid-century furniture, which has been trashed for decades. That same day, in the freezing cold, Tuckerman fashioned a slide from old mattresses and eased out of the dumpster a 1960s wood-frame couch that had been designed by Toronto architect Jack Diamond with the Muller and Stewart furniture studio, and showcased in a Habitat suite at Expo 67. Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:57 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 juin 2013

Parts of (great convocation) speech: Funny, personal, inspiring – and short

By Kathryn Blaze Carlson. U.S. President Barack Obama took on race. Media mogul Arianna Huffington called for a “third women’s revolution.” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo noted how much the world has changed in his lifetime, saying, “When I was your age, we didn’t have the Internet in our pants. We didn’t even have the Internet not in our pants.” Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:55 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 juin 2013

Libraries into career centres, campus residences into senior homes

By Rey Rosales. Imagine it is the year 2030 and the former student centre at Big University X is full of people dancing to a new comeback tune from an aging pop star named Psy. Twenty years ago, the place would have been full of young college students playing video games, working on an assignment, or simply chatting with friends. Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:53 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 juin 2013

Few academic jobs, but Canada’s need for PhDs grows

By Brent Herbert-Copley. It sounds like the lead-in to a bad joke: “How many PhDs does it take to …..”?
In this case, however, the question is a serious one: How many doctoral graduates does a country like Canada need to fuel an innovative, creative economy and society? There’s a current of pessimism circulating at present, with tough labour market conditions prompting doubts about our ability to make good use of the stream of doctoral grads from Canadian universities. Before we jump to conclusions, however, some perspective may be in order. Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:51 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 juin 2013

Nothing about us, without us

By Joey Fitzpatrick. How the new credo for community-engaged research is making a difference both in communities and at universities. Emergency youth shelters serve a vital purpose, providing sanctuary to young people in crisis. Staff at these shelters are all too familiar with “revolving door syndrome,” in which the same vulnerable young people cycle through the social service network. Ideally, a person stays in a shelter temporarily before finding a suitable housing solution. But in most cases, the supports are not in place for that to happen. It’s a problem with no easy solution. The problem of revolving door syndrome was not specifically on her mind when Naomi Nichols began her doctoral studies at York University’s faculty of education in 2006. But she did have a clear vision of the direction of her research. “I knew I wanted to work in the area of service provision for marginalized youth, and was thinking about a participatory-activist research project with young people.”
Dr. Nichols (she now has her PhD) had just returned to Peterborough, the city where she was raised, and a mutual friend introduced her to Walter Johnstone, executive director of the city’s Youth Emergency Shelter. “We chatted, and saw some real lines of convergence between what he wanted to do at the shelter and what I was proposing.” Read more...

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2 juin 2013

There’s no place like here

By Melonie Fullick. Though it isn’t the topic of my current research, I’ve been interested in the Internet (as an object of study) for some time, in particular its possibilities for connecting people and helping them generate new relationships and forms of social support that might not otherwise have been available. I think this is because I’ve been engaging in forms of distance-networking for over ten years now, starting with snail mail and leading all the way to Twitter. I’m not particularly sociable by nature, because unfamiliar social situations tend to tire me out; all social interaction is a form of performance, but some people find it more taxing than others. Over time I’ve discovered that for me personally, it’s easier to cultivate an initial level of familiarity through mediated interactions, rather than through increased in-person socializing, because the latter tires me out too quickly. Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:42 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 juin 2013

The so-so state of science communication in Canada

By Léo Charbonneau. The recent public outreach efforts of International Space Station Commander and Canadian Chris Hadfield – his explanatory videos, photos and remarkable cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” shot from outer space, not to mention his nearly one million Twitter followers – was a triumph for science communication, says science writer Kyle Hill, writing for Scientific American. Who could argue with that? Read more...

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2 juin 2013

Practical ways to shorten graduate program lengths

By Nicola Koper. In my last blog, I talked about the lengths of graduate students’ programs. I noted that often, longer times to completion are in the best interests of the graduate students, and we shouldn’t try to shorten all completion times regardless of individual circumstances. In general, I still think this way. However, I also appreciate the benefits of finishing up and getting on with one’s life; I also had an interesting discussion with a reader, who noted that long completion times can raise red flags with hiring committees. So, assuming that sometimes it really is in the best interests of students to just get on with it, already, this week I’m going to talk about some of the practical steps that we can take to encourage students to complete their graduate programs in a timely fashion. Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:40 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 juin 2013

In defence of the three-minute thesis

By Martha Radice. Making us proud to be part of academia. Hot on the heels of tedx talks and Pecha Kucha nights, there’s a new knowledge mobilization craze sweeping the world of higher education: the Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. It started in Australia and in 2011 reached Canadian shores at the University of British Columbia. 3MT has been spreading ever since, making it to the East Coast and my university, Dalhousie, in 2013. The idea is that graduate students present their research in three minutes flat, using only a single static slide as a visual aid – no props, extra audio or video allowed. Presentations are judged by professors and other experts, such as university communications staff, on criteria of comprehension, engagement and communication. A 3MT contest can involve several heats, with winners from each heat going to the next round. Ontario and Quebec have run provincial competitions, so a pan-Canadian one might be next. Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:37 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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2 juin 2013

Your degree is not a waste of time

By Maureen Mancuso. Grim tales are taking over our story. If there is one virtue that university education values above all else it is critical thinking. Doubt, not the false security of certainty, is what we seek to instill in our students; we value questions over answers, because only in withstanding the most challenging questions can an answer begin to satisfy the truly critical mind. Oh, we are hardly immune to the paralysis of orthodoxy, but the very essence of scholarship is to relentlessly question what is known, how it is known, and whether there is some further insight to be had by a mind open to what it does not yet know. This is why “revolutions” – disruptive events in the political sphere – are so essential, and so frequent, in the academic world. Maybe too frequent, and appearing to outsiders as a ferment of undirected, purposeless chaos. Read more...

Posté par pcassuto à 13:35 - Commentaires […] - Permalien [#]

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