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By Ryan Bullock, Gayle Broad, Lynn Palmer and Peggy Smith. Joining together to assert control over forests. There is a rich and romantic cultural history associated with natural resources and communities in Canada, one reinforced by images and narratives of self-reliant white northerners eking out an existence in isolated communities and rugged landscapes, surrounded by pristine and endless resources. A more modern and less positive view of resource communities is that they are antiquated, marginal settlements, wrought with social conflict and racial tension, whose glory days passed when the last resource industry left town.
However, municipal leaders, Aboriginal and government representatives, academics, businesses and community groups recently came together at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario for an interdisciplinary conference on building resilient communities through community-based forest management. The goal was to learn about new cross-cultural networks and grassroots collaborations that are initiating transformative change by rethinking rural economies, cultures and landscapes. As the meeting organizers, we contend that universities and natural resource-related departments, in particular, have much to learn from communities about the changing nature of resource sectors, societal needs and the role of universities in partnered research. Read more...

By Jonathan Thon. One way of recovering costs for federally funded research is by having governments proportionately included in intellectual property agreements resulting from their angel investments. While not all projects are ultimately profitable, funds allocated to university investigators for basic research should be regarded as a diversified investment portfolio from which successful ventures offset risk. As lab-bench discoveries are translated to bedside technologies, funding agencies can earn profits from their grants, encouraging further funding through re-investment. Crafting a mutually beneficial relationship of this sort would keep politicians from having to choose between funding basic research (popularly believed to be a welfare practice) and supporting economic growth; which is a false dichotomy. Read more...

By Carolyn Steele. On September 26, 2008, we launched Career Sense as a conversation, or as a forum among academics across Canada about professional issues unique to them. For University Affairs, Career Sense was an experiment of sorts. Online technologies have provided a valuable way for a community with shared interests to come together and share their thoughts. Career Sense was to be one such resource.
Indeed, over the past 19 months or so some good conversations have emerged through reader comments. For instance the open forum on reference letters and the discussion on making the best of a dismal job market each generated some interesting, and sometimes contentious comments. The post which was e-mailed out most often was my open letter to John Milloy, the Minister of Training Colleges, and Universities. And 407 people responded to polls about various topics in the posts. Read more...