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BY MOIRA MACDONALD | September 25 2019

They affirm that universities have a vital role to play in helping society navigate through the deepest challenges of our time, from climate change to the dangers of misinformation and rising intolerance.

How will Canadian universities change over the next 20 years? What challenges will they face and what opportunities lie ahead? In honour of University Affairs’ 60th anniversary, we put questions like these to seven people representing different regions and facets of the university enterpr...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/7-university-leaders-contemplate-the-future-of-higher-education-in-canada/
Features
BY MOIRA MACDONALD | January 10 2024

With the integrity of the international student system under fire, what can universities do?

Sunil Semplay arrived in Thunder Bay, Ont. in early 2022 to a winter of “unrelenting cold,” when locals were breaking their shovels just trying to dig out of the snowbanks. But things felt pretty good to Sunil, besides missing his home in decidedly warmer Punjab,...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/time-to-rethink-canadas-international-education-strategy/
Features
BY DIANE PETERS | March 06 2019

Research suggests that student evaluations of teaching are often badly designed and used inappropriately. But change is underway.

Bob Uttl’s first academic job seemed to be going well. As an assistant professor in psychology at Oregon State University, hired in 1999, he was publishing regularly and developing a good rapport with students, even those taking his challenging courses in research methods and psychometrics. “Som...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/do-universities-put-too-much-weight-on-student-evaluations-of-teaching/
News
BY CHRISTINE TAUSIG FORD | September 12 2011

Growing interest in the liberal arts in China reflects a return to traditional learning.

Academics from China and Canada found out just how much they had in common at the first-ever China-Canada forum on the liberal arts, held in Beijing this summer. Organized by Mount Allison University’s president Robert Campbell and its vice-president, international and student affairs, Ron Byrne, ...
https://universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/chinese-and-canadian-universities-meet-to-discuss-liberal-arts/
News
BY NATALIE SAMSON | January 09 2020

Dozens of students, professors and researchers from universities across the country have been identified among the 176 victims.

Editor’s note: this story has been updated. Canada’s university community is stunned and in mourning as the scope of the tragedy becomes clear from the crash of a Ukraine International Airlines flight outside of Tehran on January 8. Dozens of students, professors and researchers from...
https://universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/canadas-university-community-reeling-from-the-devastating-losses-from-iran-jet-crash/
In my opinion
BY IAN D. CLARK | March 08 2010

Or, Steve and Di’s evening on the Internet.

It’s budget season in Canada. With the federal budget still in the news, Steve and Dianne have agreed to prepare opening remarks for next week’s constituency roundtable organized by their local member of the legislature, who is parliamentary assistant to the provincial minister of finance. Th...
https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/a-taxpayers-view-of-university-funding/
News
BY NATALIE SAMSON | March 31 2020

Here’s how several universities have responded so far to Ottawa’s appeal for critical supplies, expertise and labour in response to the pandemic.

A week after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Continue reading for help in the fight against COVID-19, institutions and researchers a...
https://universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/canadian-universities-heed-the-call-for-help-in-the-fight-against-covid-19/
In my opinion
BY THOMAS PEACE & CANDACE BRUNETTE-DEBASSIGE | September 30 2022

Indigenous histories often go unrecognized in institutional university memories.

Universities pride themselves on their founding stories. These stories, however, tend to privilege Continue reading and reproduce settler memories — and erase https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/national-day-for-truth-and-reconciliation-universities-need-to-revisit-their-founding-stories/
Features
BY TEMA FRANK | March 13 2013

Alumni departments turn to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more, to engage alumni.

This past October, when Felix Baumgartner became the first person to break the sound barrier in a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, the alumni relations department at McGill University realized that the person who designed the outfit used for the jump was a McGill graduate. Within hours, the dep...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/reaching-out-to-university-alumni-through-social-media/
Features
BY PAUL GOOCH | November 20 2019

A visitor who hasn’t set foot on a campus for many years would be impressed by the wide array of services dedicated to helping students succeed nowadays, according to this excerpt from Course Correction: A Map for the Distracted University.

Imagine yourself a graduate returning to campus for your 50th reunion. You would exclaim about how some of your old classmates hadn’t changed, while trying to remember that lecture on Locke’s theory of personal identity over time, because you can’t quite figure ou...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/is-the-modern-university-now-all-about-students/
Features
BY IAN MUNROE | August 18 2021

While some Indigenous scholars say there’s been significant progress, others see mostly rhetoric.

When Asima Vezina learned the remains of 215 Indigenous children had been discovered in unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., it set in motion a chain of events at her own educational institution thousands of kilometres away. As president ...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/where-truth-and-reconciliation-stand-at-canadian-universities/
Features
BY PETER MACKINNON | February 11 2015

An excerpt from University Leadership and Public Policy in the Twenty-First Century: A President’s Perspective.

It was February in the university’s centennial year of 2007 and I was out of the country but had reached the provost by phone. He was on his way into Deans’ Council and wanted to know what message I had for the deans on the immediate prospect of a faculty strike. Collective bargaining had become...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/collision-course-collective-bargaining-university-governance/
News
BY LÉO CHARBONNEAU | September 12 2011

Group will pool resources and share best practices of small universities committed to research.

There is a new university group in Canada: the Alliance of Canadian Comprehensive Research Universities. Created at a meeting in Ottawa in June, ACCRU brings together the vice-presidents, research, of the smaller comprehensive universities in Canada that have “a strong commitment to research,” s...
https://universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/research-vice-presidents-of-smaller-canadian-universities-form-new-alliance/
News
BY HANNAH LIDDLE | April 12 2023

Most provinces are targeting new funding to expand health care programs and student financial assistance.

Nine provinces released their budgets in the lead up to April and the start of a new fiscal year. While they have all shifted their gaze beyond pandemic spending, a nationwide labour shortage in health care continues to impact how funding for postsecondary institutions has been allocated this year. ...
https://universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/provincial-budget-round-up-2023-highlights-for-the-university-sector/
In my opinion
BY SHANNON DEA | October 22 2021

We should use what we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic to make university study and work more equitable and inclusive.

Since the coronavirus landed early last year, the situation in academia has been grim. Continue reading and fu...
https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/imagining-the-post-pandemic-university/
In my opinion
BY JULIA EASTMAN | July 24 2018

The decision-making authority of universities appears to be shrinking, and that’s cause for concern.

Canadian universities have traditionally enjoyed high levels of autonomy from governments, relative to their counterparts in other parts of the world. As recently as the 1990s, a couple of studies (Richardson and Fielden, 1997; https://universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/university-autonomy-in-canada-its-time-for-a-checkup/
Features
BY ROSANNA TAMBURRI | April 09 2014

It is crunch time in Eastern Canada.

Cape Breton University is a long way from home for Chinese student Qiang Zhang, who prefers to go by his chosen English name “Kelex.” But he has nothing but praise for CBU, where he is pursuing a bachelor of hospitality and tourism management degree. Not even the unusually harsh winter has dampe...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/crunch-time-in-atlantic-canada/
Features
BY PASCALE CASTONGUAY | November 13 2023

Denis Harrisson looks back on his years as president of Université du Québec en Outaouais.

After writing about his five-year term (2015-2020) as president of Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) in his book Un rectorat sous tension : projets, o...
https://universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/the-balancing-act-of-being-a-university-president/
News
BY NATALIE SAMSON | June 06 2018

Colleges seeking university status aren’t just looking to change their institutions – they’re aiming to change what a university can be.

In the span of a week, the future of three Alberta colleges was set. On February 22, Minister of Advanced Education Marlin Schmidt announced that Continue reading (GPRC) had been approved for degree-granting status, with a view to becoming a unive...
https://universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/across-canada-more-colleges-are-transitioning-to-universities/
News
BY ANQI SHEN | April 24 2019

In most provinces, it was the status quo for operating grants, but some budgets had a few surprises.

For most provincial governments across the country, it was business as usual in terms of their fiscal plans announced over the past few months. The only two provinces that haven’t yet released annual budgets this year are Alberta and Prince Edward Island, both of which were, until recently, in the...
https://universityaffairs.ca/news/news-article/provincial-budget-round-up-2019-university-highlights/
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