News
Two University of Toronto debaters won the 2008 North American Debating Championships, beating a team from Harvard University in a rousing final debate. Jon Laxer, a first-year law student, and Jason Rogers, a first-year graduate student in economics, won the cup for Hart House, the student centre that supports most extracurricular activities at U of […]
The reviews are in: “powerful,” “evocative,” “transformative,” say those who’ve seen the Unruly Salon, a series of free public performances by artists with disabilities that’s running until the end of March at the University of British Columbia. The performances are paired with academic presentations on issues surrounding disabilities. “The performers have been fabulous, the scholars […]
Recent studies point to an urgent need for harmonized data on the Canadian postsecondary sector
During a five-week odyssey last spring that took him 26,000 km across Canada’s northern extremities, University of Toronto professor emeritus Franklyn Griffiths asked the aboriginal inhabitants how they liked having a front row seat to the great climate change drama. They told him, but the answers were not always what one might expect from popular […]
A series of newspaper articles this past fall seemed to herald the demise of the campus pub because students are generally drinking less. But that impression of widespread closures is simply not accurate, says Jeff Dockeray, the executive director of the Campus Hospitality Managers Association, a group that represents campus-based restaurant and pub operators. “You […]
The new campaign aims to have a single clear message for foreign students
It’s called Espresso, but this machine at the University of Alberta bookstore doesn’t brew coffee. Rather, it prints paperback books on demand in mere minutes. The bookstore has the only Espresso Book Machine in Canada and just the fourth in the world. Since the machine’s arrival in early November, it has been running virtually non-stop, […]
Clear policies are needed on how they’re used
The stethoscope has undergone few changes since its invention in 1816, but a cheap MP3 player may push it into retirement if early research from the University of Alberta proves correct. Bill Hodgetts, a U of A audiologist, is part of a research team that is exploring the use of a $40, off-the-shelf MP3 player […]
The University of Manitoba is putting its money where its mouth is, so to speak, with the creation of a new Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture, where scholars, students and storytellers from many disciplines and cultures will gather to research oral traditions and create new oral works. Reportedly the first such institute in […]
André Costopoulos has been digging for bones in an animal cemetery – and no, this isn’t the plot of a Stephen King novel. The McGill University anthropology professor was called into action when a zoo an hour’s drive south of Montreal approached the university with a request to dig up some animal skeletons buried on […]
Universities are calling on the federal government to invest in three key areas to meet some of the challenges facing Canada. In a brief to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty leading up to the 2008 federal budget, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada proposed that the government increase financial support for graduate students, contribute […]
But rising workload a concern as demands on professors’ time multiply
Canadian universities graduate plenty of people who can deal with the intricacies of molecular biology and genetic manipulation, but few who understand the basic mechanics of defending the country’s plants, including crops and forests, from biological threats responsible for billions of dollars worth of damage every year. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency wants to fill […]
Teaching conference attracts hundreds of faculty
University of Alberta part of UNESCO program to train teachers
Touched by a chance encounter on an earlier trip to Cambodia, Toronto-based photographer V. Tony Hauser returned to that country in May 2006 to photograph Cambodian children who had survived land-mine accidents. The 14 children live in Siem Reap in the Cambodia Land Mines Museum, which offers a dormitory, schooling and a medical clinic. Not […]
When you’re given lemons, the old saying goes, make lemonade. That’s the situation at the University of Northern British Columbia, where at least a dozen researchers are working on 28 different projects to understand and mitigate the devastating impact of the mountain pine beetle. Over the past several years, large swaths of the normally green […]
Here’s some good news for a change from northern B.C.’s pine-beetle ravaged forests: a PhD student at the University of Northern British Columbia has discovered an ancient rainforest with massive red cedars, some estimated up to 2,000 years old. This type of forest is more typically found in B.C.’s southern coastal regions, but the stand […]
Five totem poles located in Simon Fraser University’s Naheeno Park were once considered a landmark but in recent years risked being forgotten as trees and brush filled in the area where they were standing. This prompted the university this past fall to remove the poles, which will be restored and relocated to a more prominent […]