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Portable battery

Not sure about you, but I always find myself frantically looking for an outlet. I use my phone quite a lot, and the battery life often struggles to keep up with my social media life. A great way to prevent unnecessary frenzy and stress is to carry around a portable charger. This way, whether you’re in lecture or in between classes, your phone will always be fully charged and happy.

Good book 

Although school days are often filled with meetings and classes, it’s important to find some down time to unwind and chill out. Whether you’re a Kindle fan or a paperback fiend like myself, having some leisure reading material in your backpack is always a great idea. Read it during lunch, read it in between classes, read it on the bus ride home—you’re always learning, but in the best, self-directed way possible.

Snacks

You’re filling your backpack with quality goods, so why not fill yourself with some as well? You never know when you’re going to get a little hungry between classes. Instead of the usual sugary granola bars or greasy bag of snack-sized chips (is the bag half full, or half empty?), it may be a good idea to have a CLIF bars or kale chips as replacements. Not only are these tasty alternatives, they’re also considerably healthier. Your body is a temple—if you want to have a great year, treat it with great stuff!

MUJI Stationary

We often stray towards places like Staples and Walmart for back to school supplies when, in fact, there are options for both higher quality and better value. One of my favourite stores right now for all things lifestyle is the Japanese retailer “MUJI.” MUJI is a leading power in minimalist goods, with their notebooks and stationary as prime exemplar of their unparalleled skill.

Moleskine Agenda

My agenda is the most important item in my backpack. While the convenience of devices nowadays has downgraded traditional agendas from necessity to novelty, I continue to enjoy the physical comfort of writing down my schedule with a pen. Available in various sizes, textures, and shades, the Moleskine agenda is my personal favourite with its supreme quality and no-fuss design.

Laptop

For those who are fortunate enough to have a laptop, you may find yourself unable to leave the house without it. While many people prefer writing in notebooks (it’s scientifically proven as the best method to retain information due to muscle memory), laptops are great for efficiency and containing all of your information in one, organized place. Laptops are also great for down time, as you can virtually do anything with them (from watching Netflix to getting ahead on assignments).

Headphones 

Sometimes, people can be overwhelming and we just need to tune the world out for a little bit. Some students also prefer working in the library while listening to their own music. Whatever your reason, having a pair of headphones in tow is never a bad idea. If you’re looking to invest in a pair of quality headphones, check out Bose.

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With the second half of the 2014-15 academic year now underway, students’ thoughts are inevitably turning to the future and potential new roles and responsibilities to inherit.

It’s a season of transition, and it’s where MSU President Teddy Saull is planning to lay the groundwork of his biggest projects, even with his successor soon to be elected in the presidential elections this month.

“Now’s the time when people are starting to think about what they’re going to do next year, and I get excited about people getting excited about leadership [roles],” Saull said.

But with four months still left in his tenure, Saull’s legacy will certainly be influenced by what he has in place for the coming months.

The Peer Tutoring Network is one such example, for which Saull is expecting a soft launch by May 2015, followed by a bigger launch for the beginning of next year.

Although similar programs already exist in a number of capacities throughout the university, Saull emphasized the affordability of the plan, as well as the type of engagement it will be able to create for students. The idea for the program is to adopt a more social capacity with student use, in a system that acts in a similar vein to RateMyProfessors.com.

“One of the really neat things I like is that the tutors on the site will have a profile, a tutor profile, kind of like a LinkedIn. So if you’re going to get a tutor, you can learn about your tutor: [for] other people who have taken this tutor, how have they rated them?”

As a part of his role as President, Saull will also reveal the finalists for participatory budgeting through the Student Life Enhancement Fund, which will be voted on during the same period as the MSU presidential elections this year. Based on the information provided at the Jan. 11 SRA meeting, roughly $680,000 will be available for a couple ideas to be implemented, by the students, for the students.

At the SRA meeting Saull also noted his intention to thoroughly discuss the year-end celebration over the next two SRA meetings before proposing an allocation of funding.

“I’m kind of really excited... I actually think it’s a good thing that it got shot down the first time. What we’ve come back with is more for every student,” said Saull.

With the experience of Frost Week now under his belt, Saull expressed his excitement to continue that similar planning for the end of the year.

“The biggest thing I liked about Frost Week is that it was a collaborative effort... It wasn’t perfect, but it was good, it was a strong start... Frost Week this year, we planted a seed, it’ll be better next year, and I want to plant another seed for the year-end, because I think it’s an important thing to have as a university,” he said.

“If you create something that brings people together, they want to do it. So it’s with that same energy that I’m excited to approach the year-end [celebration].”

Earlier this year, new reports on cheating at Canadian universities circulated online, along with CBC's re-airing of its documentary Faking the Grade. I decided to take a deeper look at the issue since it serves as a flashpoint for the state of higher education and how seriously students take the privilege of attending university. It was also around this time when one of my professors called out the class on Avenue2Learn, announcing discoveries of plagiarism.

I found the accounts more surprising and depressing than I could have ever imagined. Exact statistics to reveal the full scope of the problem are very hard to estimate. However, a CBC survey of 54 Canadian universities showed that 7,086 students were disciplined for cheating in the 2011-2012 school year. This may not seem like a lot, but 12 of the universities declined to give their stats. Then, factor in cases which did not progress to actual disciplinary action. But most importantly, factor in those students who go undetected. So it's not a shock that the documentary states that 50 percent of university students admitted to cheating, hinting that whatever the actual number really is, it is undoubtedly extremely significant.

There are many reasons why these revelations are disturbing. First of all, cheaters are passing themselves off as something they are not. Anyone who has cheated three times would most certainly be expelled from school, and if one has received a degree and bypassed detection, it's undeniable that these people falsely hold this credential. To be fair, though, academic dishonesty can cover a wide range of offences, some of which are not cheating. But it is clear here that we are mainly dealing with those harbouring intentions to deceive.

Another ethical problem is that with so many people cheating we have an exceptionally high number of people arbitrarily choosing which rules they deem important and which they feel no guilt about breaking. The cheater also wishes to break rules they want others to follow so that they can benefit at their expense.

For academic purposes, the extent of cheating in universities necessitates us to realize that having a degree doesn’t mean that one is “highly educated.” In fact, with the overabundance of degree holders in the job market it is disconcerting to admit how many of them are frauds.

But with a bachelor’s degree being more crucial than ever, it is inevitable that education has become even more of a commodity. This drives the standard for doing whatever it takes, ironically raising the bar further, and pushing us even harder. Cheating normalizes these unrealistic expectations by creating the illusion that a much higher number of people are succeeding than is actually the case. Though fair marks don't mean you'll clean toilets, these do mean being several rungs below your peers.

The things I read while trying to get a handle on this problem were enough to make one cynical. The videos online, for instance, of “students” sharing methods to cheat your way through school were particularly disgraceful.

But as distasteful as this all is, what ought to be done about it?

Cheating is as old as humankind and will always be here in some form. To try to eradicate it is a huge waste of time, though we can be vigilant and guard against a slippery slope. Though it's definitely worth discussing, solutions seem to be out of reach.

I think what's more important is to try to determine what our attitudes towards cheating are. Consider a brilliant, caring doctor who grossly cheated during his undergrad and lost a fortune from bad investments. Some could say that had he been found out early on he never would have gotten into medical school and made so much money to begin with.

What about a person who has cheated five times during university and finally gets caught? Does she deserve to have all her other work negated because of that? Personally, I might be persuaded to say no if said hypothetical person was also very well-read, truly passionate about learning, and graduated as someone who was intellectually literate versus someone who never cheated but rarely cracked open a book. These are the sort of moral dilemmas that ought to be considered.

But whether or not the above is even worth considering, and as abhorrent as cheating can be, I think the point is that we can't always judge people and their actions with an abstract label, good or bad. It is all too easy to condemn someone as this or that, seeing everything as black and white. This topic could be hotly debated, but in the end one can only offer their opinion at the expense of leaving a lot of unanswered questions.

By: Stephen Clare

I’ve been to every lecture of GEOG 3EE3. I’ve taken good notes, reviewed them regularly, and understand the course material. I’ve even gone to the professor’s office hours a few times.

Please don’t tell the Geography department.

You see, I guess, technically speaking, I’m not actually in the course, per se. Like, it doesn’t show up on my timetable or SOLAR. I also haven’t done any assignments or written any tests. The registrar’s office wouldn’t be able to tell you where I learned about the physics of solar heating or the future of global oil demand.

I honestly tried to get into the course, but repeated emails and course waiver submissions fell on deaf ears (or rather, blind eyes) and the drop/add date passed without me being able to register. I was disappointed, because the course content is super relevant to my capital-F, capital-P “Future Plans.”

So, I thought, screw them. What are they going to do, drag me out of the lecture hall? I just took the class anyway.

I attended lectures, took good notes, and checked up on my fantasy hockey team while the professor gave advice about assignments and reminders of upcoming test dates. Instead of furiously copying the minutiae of each slide, I noted what interested me and ignored what I found boring. For homework I browsed articles on whatever concepts struck my fancy rather than writing lab reports and article summaries.

“Taking” GEOG 3EE3 has been positively relaxing.

It’s made me think about how often I’ve let going to school get in the way of me learning things. We’ve all been there, robotically putting pencil to paper and mirroring the writing on the chalkboard while our thoughts turned to the Leafs’ latest embarrassment or what exactly she meant by “see you later” (like “later tonight” later or just “see you around” later?). Some days you can fill a page of notes without even knowing what course you’re in.

That’s why it’s been so nice to learn for the sake of learning rather than learning for my degree. It’s a whole different mindset, like the difference between opening up a novel and opening up a textbook. These are the same classmates, the same powerpoint designs, the same sickly yellow glow barely illuminating the same grim lecture halls. It’s just that I love this room when I’m left to focus on the material, but resent it when learning carries the added pressure of knowing all-important marks are on the line.

Obviously there’s a big, scary system that needs us to do assignments and write tests. It’s a machine that eats transcripts and craps scholarships. And like all horrible, impersonal systems it makes us feel small and powerless.

But there’s joy and value in the learning itself. And at university, I’m surrounded by thousands of people that know a whole lot and do this weird thing where on a weekly basis they stand at the front of a room and just talk about what they know. It’s good to hear them talk. It’s good to learn from them.

Sometimes, it’s just good to know stuff.

In elementary school, we were taught how to use rulers to measure lines. Since those halcyon days, this fascination with measurement has cemented itself in how we view the world. We use grades to measure how well we do on tests, time to measure how long we take to get ready in the morning, and medals of various colours to measure how good we are in comparison to others. Comparison through standardized measurements is almost second nature in university. Only now, we no longer measure lines. Our GPAs are the new standard by which we measure ourselves – and this is a downfall for many.

In an education system that places such great importance on numbers, it often feels as though these marks are a direct reflection of our abilities. Don’t get me wrong, I think university is incredible. There is always more to learn, always something to do. There’s something for everyone. But we often leave out the less glamorous side of post-secondary education, one where hundreds of students fall through the cracks each year into a state of poor mental health.

Mental illness is a real issue, one that is extremely prevalent at McMaster and across the country. By the end of the year, likely half of the people you know will have experienced some sort of mental breakdown. Hundreds of students with bloodshot eyes will have burned themselves out trying to do everything at once by fuelling endless all-nighters with caffeine. Unforeseen circumstances, coupled with a variety of pressures, will send many of our peers into a dangerous spiral. Depression is among one of the most common mental illnesses in university students, but many more hide in the silence that we encourage.

Unsurprisingly, academic stress is a leading cause in mental health issues among university students. A major contributing factor is our susceptibility to tunnel vision. We zero in on getting high marks, and neglect everything in the periphery. Regardless what program you’re in, competition is stiff. We’re young and ambitious. Our blood runs hot and thick, our dreams are big and daring. The bar for success is continually rising, and with that so is the pressure we put on ourselves. When there is a blip in our planning, difficulties and other emotional vulnerabilities are magnified.

A couple weeks ago, I received a set of marks that were the lowest I had ever gotten. I remember being so overwhelmed, I felt paralyzed. All I heard were the humble responses of friends who did well, and all I wanted was to leave the lecture hall and hide in my comforter. I didn’t feel like I belonged in my program anymore. But talking to an upper year student put everything back into perspective. I realized that one mark, no matter how important it may seem at the time, was no measure of my capabilities. The isolation I felt dissipated, and I realized the importance of finding a healthy way to cope with setbacks.

Everyone needs an outlet. It can be anything, as long as it’s something that will give you some time to yourself and help relieve stress. It’s important to schedule in activities that make you happy and recognize how much more there is to life than whatever it is you’re worried about. Some hit the gym. Some dance, some paint, some jog. Some people choose to sit back with a tub of ice cream and Netflix. I write, play volleyball, or spend time with my guitar. Your outlet could be going out and doing something you love, or staying in and doing absolutely nothing at all.

Nobody is immune to pressure. Both the feeling and the effects of stress are harrowing. While finding your outlet is important in maintaining a healthy mind, it is by no means a solution to mental illness. Going to the gym will not end breakdowns, and playing the guitar doesn’t guarantee nirvana. Staying healthy is about taking care of your body and mind, a fact that we often forget.

Our experience at McMaster cannot be measured by how badly we did on that organic chemistry mid-term, or by how we failed last week’s English paper. This isn’t easy to grasp. But by gaming, knitting, or just chilling out, we make numbers and measurements seem a little less important.

The Faculty of Science has released its Academic Plan, which maps out the changes and improvements that will be made by the faculty from 2014 to 2019.

Five major initiatives for the Faculty of Science have been outlined in the report: improving undergraduate experience, reinvigorating and creating new graduate programs, focusing on research excellence, supporting faculty, and managing resources.

The first of the initiatives will improve undergraduate experience by establishing a new academic unit called interdisciplinary sciences that would house life sciences, medical radiation sciences, integrated science, and Science Career and Cooperative Education.

The interdisciplinary unit will be created as a result of many factors, especially the need for an academic home for life sciences students, who do not currently have their own department.

“We want to create a department of interdisciplinary science that would house the Life Science program,” said Robert Baker, Dean of Science. “There would be actual faculty appointed to it […] but still we would have a lot of contributions from other departments in teaching that program as well.”

The reorganization of the life sciences program into its own academic unit will also help with allocating resources to the program.

“Right now the director has to come to me, and come to various chairs to get enough resources to offer the [life sciences] program and that’s not the appropriate way to run a program," said Baker.

The life science program, under the direction of the interdisciplinary unit, will see some changes in the next five years. A review of the program conducted in 2012 found that class sizes were too large, courses overlapped, and students run the risk of graduating with an unfocused degree. To address these concerns, a working group will be established to look into creating specific streams of study, such as health policy or global health.

The Faculty also plans to create more research positions for undergraduate students, starting in second year. This could be achieved by encouraging professors to hire undergraduate students for their labs or by creating shared undergraduate research spaces for individual and group projects.

Additional ways to improve the undergraduate experience include lowering the entrance average to Honours programs to a cumulative average of five, hiring more undergraduate teaching assistants, and teaching stress management to first year students through Science 1A03.

For graduate students, the Faculty of Science plans to establish three professional Master’s programs by July 2015 in areas such as environmental monitoring, genomic analysis, and ergonomics.

Along with improving undergraduate and graduate programs, the Faculty of Science looks to improve research excellence through their Strategic Research Plan.

“The SRP makes it clear that to succeed during economically challenging times, the Faculty must focus its efforts to support leading edge research while managing expenditures prudently,” the report said.

As a result, science research will now be focused on four main areas: biological systems and health, environmental science, fundamental exploration, and materials discovery and characterization.

The report also highlighted the need to hire and maintain quality faculty members.

“Demographic analysis indicates that there may be many retirements in the Faculty over the next several years, allowing us to plan for faculty renewal. However, financial forecasts indicate the Faculty may need to decrease our faculty complement over the next five years,” the report said.

Despite these financial restrictions, the Faculty of Science is looking to hire more diverse candidates.

“Given the evidence that students benefit from being taught by role models with whom they identify, whether it be a woman professor or someone from a similar ethnic group, it is vital to the future of undergraduate and graduate teaching programs that the Faculty encourages the hiring of excellent candidates who reflect the diversity of our student population, particularly with the hiring of more female faculty members,” the report said.

The report also outlines the importance of both teaching and research excellence within the faculty, stating that all faculty must teach at least six units each year.

The last initiative examined is the management of resources. In particular, the lack of budget to fund incoming international students is addressed. Since international students make up only four percent of the science undergraduate population, the Faculty of Science must work to find new models of funding to support more international students.

With files from Rachel Katz

By: Abi Kirubarajan

With midterms looming and the temperature plummeting, it’s easy to forgo walks outside and other physical activity. However, the benefits of exercise are not limited to the body as physical activity also ameliorates mental health.

Unfortunately, stress is a major issue for today’s university student. From strenuous examinations to living away from home, university students do not have it easy. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 30 percent of university students have symptoms of depression that affect day-to-day activity. In addition, a 2008 survey found that over 40 percent of college students are stressed often, with over 20 percent of students feeling stressed for the majority of their day.

However, according to a recent McMaster study, less than half of Canadians use exercise to cope with stress and anxiety.

Researchers from the Department of Family Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, as well as the Department of Kinesiology, used data from over 36,000 Canadian to find their results. Exercise, out of thirteen possible coping behaviors, was ranked to be the eighth most popular. Only 40 percent of Canadians stated that they exercise regularly to purge anxiety. More popular coping mechanisms included communicating with friends, problem-solving, denial and attributing failures to others. Exercise as a stress-reliever was found to be more common in young, female, single and non-smoking demographics. The study also found that people who exercised regularly were less like to abuse alcohol or drugs, in pursuit of coping mechanisms.

John Cairney, a lead investigator, said, “we know stress levels are high among Canadians, and that exercise is effective at managing stress and improving health and well-being, so the fact exercise is number eight and that less than half of the population use it is worrisome.”

Exercise is a known stress-reliever, as it floods the body with endorphins. Endorphins are neurotransmitters that inhibit pain and reduce stress. They trigger feelings of happiness, by also modulating appetite, releasing sex hormones and enhancing immune response. Moreover, regular workouts ease the physical symptoms of stress. For example, exercise relaxes tense muscles and tissue, alleviating pain from stress-related neck aches and back pains. Exercise also helps individuals sleep sounder, combatting the insomnia that can arise from anxiety. In addition, exercised muscles generate copious amounts of a protein known as PGC-1(alpha)1. This protein eliminates stress-related neurochemicals, such as kyneurenine, in the brain. When a Swedish study genetically modified animals to contain this protein, they found that the GMO animals were less likely to get depressed and anxious in unsettling environments.

Thus, it’s a shock that a majority of Canadians do not take advantage of exercise to combat stress. So next time you feel overwhelmed about exams or relationships, consider taking a walk. It will not only clear your head, but also trigger a plethora of physiological responses to help you feel better.

As Cairney said, “exercise as a coping strategy for stress can be a ‘win-win’ situation.”

By: Sally Musa

“[Colonialism] turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today.” These words, written half a century ago by philosopher Frantz Fanon, are still relevant today. Colonialism is the vestige of European imperialism that imposes unbalanced power structures that favour colonists over other groups. As university students, our most common and intimate relationship with colonization is through our education. University education, as well as ideas of what constitutes higher education, has become a gear in the machinations of colonial practices.

We regularly witness colonialism in the content of our courses, in the manner and the setting in which courses are taught. At McMaster, a quick glance at the undergraduate calendar for programs like Art History, English or Sociology shows that only about 25% of those courses are concerned with non-European subjects. General or introductory courses are almost completely European in subject matter. Areas of study including the Humanities, Social Sciences and Business are used to critically examine the human condition. Through the omission of non-European groups, realities of racialized and marginalized groups have been shelved. To decolonize education would be to redefine what it means to be human.

The manner of discussion surrounding non-European people, ideas, and history is problematic. The “objective” discourse of these groups of people can reduce those very people to objects. Education systems place a specific group as dominant and normative, and all other groups become just that – the “other.”

The setting in most university classes can reaffirm the colonial foundations suspected of being taught. University classes are often structured to have a single teacher, with the complete lexicon of knowledge, surrounded by learners. The structure in itself reaffirms power hegemonies similar to that of a colonizing power towards a colony. The roles in the classroom are not interchangeable, and when a learner is unable to assume the role of a teacher it reduces classroom experiences to a single narrative. This narrowed view can diminishes a learner’s capacity for critical approaches to education.

The questions remains: how do we decolonize education? To clarify, decolonization here does not refer to the integration of different communities, whether African, Asian, Indigenous, etc. The tolerance of colonized people within a colonial system appears as progress, but it is merely a step in a circular path. Rather, decolonization involves shifting from a culture of denial to the creation of space for new philosophies and systems of knowledge. This can alter cultural perception and power relations in material ways. In Canada, the call for indigenous knowledge in education has been met with the establishment of Aboriginal Focus Schools. This school teaches skills and knowledge within the context of aboriginal cultural values.

I’ve heard many people use the phrases “decolonize your mind” or “decolonize your thoughts” and although I agree with the sentiment, it is only the first step. Recognizing the structure and implications of colonization on our education is a massive hurdle, but it is not the end of the path. To once again quote Frantz Fanon, “no phraseology can be a substitute for reality.” Decolonization is not a metaphor used for social justice or awareness. It is a tangible goal.

Since colonialism is foundational in institutions of higher education, it will persist if met with indifference. Thus, decolonization needs to be engaged directly and consciously. To combat colonialism in higher education, the voices of all groups must be brought into the discussion of course curricula and instruction. McMaster currently has programming in Indigenous Studies, Jewish Studies, Asian Studies and most recently, African and African Diaspora Studies. Having personally witnessed the growth of the African and African Diaspora Studies Program, I have an appreciation for the deliberate establishment of cornerstone programs. These areas of study address the longstanding gaps within university programming. Educational reform can only be the result of analysis, problem solving and discussion – so let’s continue the conversation.

This article was first published in Incite Magazine

By: Sophie Hunt

The first few weeks of school are when I miss my spot on the couch at home the most. Especially when the only seat I can find during my four-hour break is on the floor of the JHE basement.

As an off-campus student, it is incredibly difficult to find a place to put my feet up and neglect to do my homework. With roughly thirty thousand students currently attending the university, there is a surprising lack of seats to accommodate students who have nowhere to go in between classes. Many of the spaces on campus designated for student use are either always full, or lack enough furniture to accommodate the number of students looking for a spot to sit.

The hunt for a quiet space to study, hang out with friends and even eat my lunch is one that I have tried to perfect over the course of my time at Mac. I’ve learned to accept the fact that I will most likely have to resort to using loud music to drown out the constant noise that is usually associated with communal study areas, if I can find a spot at all. And I know many others who experience the same thing.

Despite student complaints and half-hearted promises made by the McMaster Students Union, not much has been done to create more student-friendly spaces on campus. There was some discussion about expanding the Student Centre when the MSU had a surplus of $1 million in their budget in 2012. But as of yet, there has been no concrete attempt to follow through with a plan to increase the amount of space available for student.

So what alternative do students have?

Roomer, an app available for download on Android phones, allows students at McMaster, Waterloo, and Western to find available lecture halls and tutorial rooms throughout the school day. After some extensive testing, I have discovered the app to be fairly accurate (and by testing I mean choosing random rooms within a short walking distance and cautiously peeking through the window on the door). It uses McMaster’s master timetable to look for available rooms on campus. It does not, however, account for any changes made to class locations throughout the term.

The app includes all of McMaster’s main buildings and covers all rooms in each building, allowing students to choose where on campus they want to spend the duration of their break. Whether students want to meet to work on a group project, hang out with their friends, or even get some quiet studying done, this app allows anyone to easily avoid crowded communal areas in favour of a room more separate space.

Roomer is a good start, but McMaster is going to need a lot more than an app to accommodate the constantly growing number of students in search of a place to spend their breaks in relative comfort. Whether the university decides to add another communal seating area, expand the Student Centre, or even invest in better furniture for the areas that already exist, something needs to be done to give students a constructive space to spend their free time when they have no where else to go.

After a decade of operation, students will no longer have the option to explore the beginnings of the universe.

The Faculty of Science has decided to discontinue the undergraduate Origins Research Specialization. The ORS will be phased out over three years, meaning that the students currently enrolled in levels two through four will be the last to complete the specialization.

Robert Baker, Dean of the Faculty of Science, explained that the decision to close the program was a financial one.

“Our main concern over the research specialization is the low number of students who take it so we have to put on courses for the relatively new students taking it,” said Baker. “We just don’t think that’s very effective.”

The ORS enrolled 18 new students in level II for the 2014-2015 academic year, two shy of its enrolment goal.

The Institute was opened in 2004 and is one of few such institutions in North America, aiming to provide “broad interdisciplinary courses aimed at fundamental questions in science.” In addition to the ORS, the Origins Institute continues to run a graduate program in astrobiology.

Jonathan Stone, Associate Director of the Origins Institute, admits that he and his colleagues were somewhat surprised by the closing of the specialization.

“It was very informal,” he said of the discussions surrounding the closing of the ORS in the spring. “From my perspective […] it disappeared overnight.”

Stone speculated that it was because of the lack of protection by any one faculty that the ORS was so quickly shut down.

“I understand the faculty is in dire financial situation,” he said. “And I think we were just the easiest member of the herd to trim.”

Students in the specialization, as well as faculty, are disappointed at the decision to end the ORS.

“I think it’s a huge shame, because I think the Origins courses are really what a science course at McMaster should be,” said Julie-Anne Mendoza, a fourth-year Arts and Science student pursuing a combined honours in Origins studies.

“The current format [of science courses] is boring, and it’s not a great way to learn. But the Origins courses take a very creative approach. We talk about problems from a much more holistic approach.”

As VP Academic of the Origins Undergraduate Society, Mendoza has helped to collect letters from students and alumni who are unhappy with the decision from the Faculty of Science. The letters were submitted to the Academic Planning committee in the hopes of appealing the closure.

Though the decision is not technically final, Stone has little hope that the decision would be overturned, considering the committee’s previous comments.

“I would say the odds are literally 99 percent against,” he said of the possibility for a reversal of the cut.

Despite this, Stone, with the support of the OI, has proposed that Origins be preserved at the undergraduate level in the form of a stream in the Life Sciences program. He envisions a collection of courses, hosted by a variety of different departments within the Faculty of Science, that can be combined into a form of origins studies and would enroll a larger number of students.

The OI submitted a document proposing this option to the Dean.

“It is a possibility,” Baker said of a potential Origins stream. “We haven’t made that decision yet.”

He explained that the current stages of academic planning are still preliminary, and before any final commitments are made the committee will convene working groups to explore different curriculum options.

A new stream in Life Sciences would fit with the Faculty’s new priorities.

“What we really want to do is try and take some of the things we’ve learned from things like Origins Research Institute and the iSci program and bring some of those ideas to a much larger range of students so more of them can profit from that interdisciplinary hands-on type of approach,” said Baker.

The committee is considering establishing a stream in health geography and health policy, as well as one focused on human health, toxins, and environmental issues.

The Dean recognized that the closing of the ORS was not ideal, but was a pragmatic choice.

“It’s not like we’re saying it’s not a good program and students aren’t learning from it,” he said. “It is simply that we need the resources to improve other programs that need improvement and we will reach more students.”