News
The poems of William Blake (1757-1827) are celebrated as some of the finest in the English language, but what is not well known by scholars is that he set many of his poems to music. “Some of his contemporaries talk in their memoirs about hearing Blake sing these songs at literary salons in London,” says […]
Two universities joined the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada in October – the Canadian Mennonite University based in Winnipeg and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver. Kwantlen has four campuses serving 9,500 full-time students pursuing degrees in the South Fraser region of B.C. Established in 1981, it gained official university status this past September […]
Creative writing students at UBC strike compromise with the university to protect their future works
Research share significantly higher than the average for other OECD countries
Athabasca University bills itself as “Canada’s open university,” a philosophy it has maintained since it began to offer distance-education courses to Canadian students in 1970. Last spring, the university took this philosophy further, launching Athabasca University Press, an open access (OA) scholarly press offering books, journals and websites to the public – free of charge. “It […]
Canadian universities will soon have a national marketing tool to help them in their efforts to recruit more foreign students. The Council of Ministers of Education, Canada unveiled a marketing campaign for international education developed jointly by the federal, provincial and territorial governments. The campaign includes a logo – a stylized Canadian Maple Leaf – […]
Academic style authority proposes new ways of citing web sources
Released this past summer, the province of New Brunswick’s postsecondary education plan is certainly ambitious. Its stated goal is to create the best such education system in Canada, to increase provincial higher education participation rates, to make university education affordable, to increase the number of graduate students, to add 11,000 places for community college students […]
International group advises universities to stop using patents to measure IP success
Bringing an international dimension to the curriculum can seem daunting, especially at smaller universities where funding and resources may be limited. But at a recent workshop on internationalization for smaller institutions, one speaker reminded attendees that a university’s greatest resource – its students – can help faculty to integrate global or intercultural dimensions into the […]
Countries are eyeing this vast resource as a potential energy source
Weeks before the start of classes, first-year students at Trent University had already received their first assignment: read the novel Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden and come prepared to discuss it in seminar classes offered during orientation week in September. The idea, according to the university, was to alleviate students’ anxieties as they prepare […]
Some roadblocks remain for universities that want to join U.S. sports group
Re-launched website enables readers to comment on articles, features video and blogs
Look up, way up. A new canopy walkway at UBC Botanical Garden allows visitors to take a stroll 20 metres off the ground amidst the garden’s 100-year-old fir trees. If they’re lucky, visitors might get a glimpse of a piliated woodpecker tapping out a rhythm on a nearby trunk, or an owl wondering who is […]
At a standing-room-only panel at the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education congress held at the University of Windsor in June, contributors read from Silences, a book of essays collected by the Council of 3M National Teaching Fellows and centred on the silences in teaching that can “threaten, inspire and shape teaching and […]
It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. Actually, University of Windsor professor Aaron Fisk doesn’t think his job is really all that dirty, even though it was showcased on a recent episode of the Discovery Channel’s much watched Dirty Jobs show. The program features jobs that have particularly unpleasant aspects which the […]
Millennium study provides details on the amount of need-based aid and merit scholarships institutions award to undergraduate students
In August 1999, hunters traveling along a glacier edge in Tatshenshini-Alsek Park in British Columbia found the frozen remains of a young man. With him were a woven hat, the remnants of a squirrel robe, some tools and a medicine pouch. The glacier fell within the traditional territory of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, […]
What are the potential risks of nanotechnology? How can we extract gas hydrates in a socially and environmentally acceptable manner? These are two of the thorny issues ruminated upon recently by expert panels convened by the Council of Canadian Academies. The council, which began operations in the spring of 2006, appears to be picking up […]