Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I just graduated from McMaster with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art. I started in 2012 and had somewhat like a rough start; changed my mind, left, worked in between and then came back. It took me a while to figure out that Studio Art was the right progran for me but when I did I feel like it really paid off and shaped who I am today.
What is “I’m the Bomb”?
I created two, large scale banners that depict two women, one who wears the hijab or a veil and the other one does not. Both are wearing shades and they’re also wearing t-shirts that say “I’m the bomb” in the two pieces hanging beside one another. The piece kind of works on a few different levels. One of the most obvious levels is addressing our innate prejudice against certain groups of people and who is more privileged than others to wear or represent certain things or what kinds of stigma do we attach to certain groups of people versus others. It’s also a piece that, at least for me the way I view it, is empowering for the Muslim community. In the face of radical groups like ISIS today kind of making a claim for Islam and using the Muslim identity to do heinous acts, this is sort of to address,in an unapologetic way, that people have created this idea of who Muslims are based on falsehood. We can’t express ourselves in a way like that without certain questions being raised about whether or not we as just people are safe to be around. A lot of people took this piece in the opposite direction. It infuriated a lot of people and I was aware that it could possibly do that. I was aware that people might think it’s just recycling the image of violence back out there again. But I would claim maybe it could do that if the woman on the left was by herself. She’s not, she’s contrasted with another image, and in that conversation that happens between them is the point of the piece. The last level, at least based on the feedback that I got, was that a lot of people who identify as female are excited about how empowering it is. We don’t often get to say “I’m the bomb”, like I’m awesome, or wear shirts that say that. We often come across items of clothing that have different kinds of messages on them.
“This is sort of to address in an unapologetic way, that people have created this idea of who Muslims are based on falsehood We can’t express ourselves in a way like that without certain questions being raised.”
Can you tell me more about the feedback you received?
The first week that it was up, it went viral on social media and a lot of people thought that it was an advertisement on a subway done by H&M. So, in light of what H&M did in December, they took it as that. So some people got it, some people didn’t, but I was also aware of that when I made it. I knew what H&M had done and I knew that there was a possibility that people would take it that way and that’s okay, because it plays into the dialogue or the conversation surrounding the work. It’s upsetting that people didn’t dig a little deeper, didn’t try to figure out what it really was. Not for recognition or anything like that, but that it wasn’t an act of racism towards anybody and actually there’s a deeper message behind it. That was a tough weekend. I had a lot of hate mail but it was good overall.
Why did you choose to display this piece in the Student Centre?
For a while I had been creating work for gallery spaces and museums, and I actually struggled with getting people who were part of a community that didn’t interact with art to view the work. I was creating work for Muslims to view as well as other people and unfortunately, although there’s a move towards the arts in the Muslim community, most of the time the spaces, especially in Hamilton and the surrounding areas, are not occupied by people of color, let alone Muslims or religious people or people who like to create artwork about their religious identity. I knew that if I wanted to reach Muslims and talk about the things that address us and who we are and have that seen by everyone and not just Muslims, I had to bring it into a public space. I had never done anything on a public level before so I thought that since I had my graduating show happening at the McMaster Museum of Art that having it somewhere close by would be a good idea. I liked the idea of it being on display in the University specifically because it’s an institution of education, it’s a place where people are still shaping who they are. So it’s just a great opportunity to educate people in a place where they’re already learning.
“Community projects like this, where learning is happening outside of a classroom and you get to interact with it is a type of learning that’s more accessible...”
Why is this piece important to the McMaster community?
Other than the fact that there’s a big Muslim community at McMaster, I think that, at least from my time here, the arts program itself isn’t really known all that much. One thing that I find is really great about this piece is that if people get intrigued by it and dig a little deeper about where it came from they’ll discover the program. It’s good representation for something that brings a lot of experiential learning to the McMaster community and I think often gets overlooked. At the end of the day, you get a degree and you go to classes and stuff like that, but community projects like this, where learning is happening outside of a classroom and you get to interact with it is a type of learning that’s more accessible and it’s relatable to everybody. It’s that connection between the artist and the viewer that doesn’t necessarily happen in a classroom or a lecture setting for everybody because it just crosses that boundary and crosses hierarchies too. I’m not there when people are looking at the work. I’m not like some authoritative figure. So I’m able to just speak to people without having that baggage with me. It’s a form of experiential learning and I think McMaster can really benefit from having more of it outside of the McMaster Museum of Art. Not to say that what’s going on in the museum is an amazing, it is. But I’d like to see more artwork on campus because I feel like people enjoyed it.
By: Donna Nadeem
Almost four weeks into the faculty and staff strike at Ontario’s 24 public colleges and McMaster students whose programs are conjoined with Mohawk College are beginning to wonder how they will make up for all the missed class.
Since Oct. 16 students in McMaster’s nursing, Bachelor of Technology, medical and radiation sciences, specific social science classes, have all had clinical placements and labs put on hold. As Nov. begins, students in these programs have been unsure of what was going to happen with their classes.
Negotiations were first being held since the strike began on Oct. 15. The most recent negotiation was on Nov. 3, between the Ontario Public Sector Employees Union, which represents the 12,000 striking college workers, and the College Employer Council, which represents the province’s colleges. As the strike continues, students have been updated via email.
The average tuition of a full-time student is $5,000 for two 13-week semesters which means that a students tuition divided throughout the year is closely equivalent to paying $40 a day. Students are concerned that they are losing out.
McMaster maintains they have worked to minimize the strike’s effects on McMaster students.
“We are supposed to be conducting our own research as a practicum and we can’t do that so we’re all kind of wondering how those hours will be made up later on.”
Camille Ramsperger
Nursing student
“Since the strike started, classes, labs, tutorials and clinical placements delivered by McMaster employees at McMaster locations have continued. Access to the Main Street campus has not been impacted by pickets and the classes led by McMaster faculty in our sites have continued,” said Gord Arbeau, a representative from the university in a press release statement.
Nevertheless, Ella Han a second-year medical radiation sciences student has had all of her midterms postponed and her classes have been cancelled because all her professors are from Mohawk college. Other than her elective, all her medical radiation-related courses are on hold.
“They sometimes send us emails and in the first one they said that we aren’t going to miss a semester or redo anything, but then the second one we got was that if the strike lasted more than three weeks our exams would be moved to January, and we got one a couple days ago saying that we might need to do night classes and class on weekends to catch up and that exams might not be pushed. So I think they don’t really have a plan for us at the moment,” said Han.
Camille Ramsperger is in the last year of her nursing program and is missing out on a research course because of the strike. She is concerned because the strike happened before they were allowed to pick their topics and figure out where they would be doing their research and with whom.
“So far in the course I have done nothing worth marks, so at the present I have zero per cent [in the course],” Ramsperger said. “We even missed our midterm. We are supposed to be conducting our own research as a practicum and we can’t do that so we’re all kind of wondering how those hours will be made up later on.”
Mohawk College has pushed back the end date for its fall semester. If the strike ends by Nov. 11, classes and final exams will continue up to Dec. 22. Originally, classes and final exams were scheduled to end by Dec. 15.
If the strike extends beyond Nov. 11, classes will continue through to Dec. 22 and final exams will be held in early January. Students have been told they should now expect to be attending school during the week of Dec. 18 to 22 and that the completion of the semester may require them to attend evening and weekend classes.
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By: Elizabeth Ivanecky
With course evaluations available until Dec. 8, McMaster University needs to adjust the structure of tutorials that often accompany lecture-sized classes. Tutorials simply do not accommodate all types of personalities and learners.
The choice to remain anonymous in lecture halls isn’t present in tutorials. This tutorial strips more reserved students of this anonymity and forces them to share their opinion.
What do shy students do then? Do you let the system change you or show the system it doesn’t own you, but lose easy marks in the process?
Thankfully, many professors and TAs are aware of students who have more difficulty expressing themselves among their peers and do offer ways for such students to make up their participation mark in ways that go beyond oral expression in classrooms. They opt for giving such students the opportunity to write up written responses to a set of issues discussed in tutorials. Even with professors and TAs who are more attuned to the personalities of their students, there are other problems with the tutorial set-up that need to be addressed.
The main problem is the fact that tutorial discussions benefit a certain kind of learner or student. Those of us who absorb information best through lectures are most likely going to excel in tutorials where we learn by listening to our peers and expressing ourselves. No doubt those of us that learn by reading and writing can take notes during tutorials in order to retain some discussion material.
However, for those of us that learn by doing things, there are few alternatives. Unless our professor gives us an assignment where we find examples in the Hamilton community of what Marshall McLuhan meant by “The medium is the message,” then we are probably not going to get much out of a discussion of issues.
Similarly, those of us who are visual learners will also have difficulty in this rigid setting. It does help when professors and TAs show diagrams of the functioning of body systems or flow charts showing timelines of historical changes, as it would with any learner. For a visual learner, these actions need to be consistent.
Perhaps the faultiest thing about tutorials is the mark breakdown. In a typical tutorial worth anywhere from 10, 15 or 20 per cent of our grade, we are expected to make at least three to four significant comments showing we engaged with the readings discussed to gain full marks.
But the math doesn’t add up. Say you have a 50-minute tutorial with 14 other peers and on a regular basis, the TA or professor leading this tutorial is guaranteed ten students who come to class. In an ideal world, if all 15 students were determined to receive full marks for tutorial participation, they would each have to make three or four strong points for discussion. With the assumption that these points take time to develop in an oral delivery, you’re looking at around five minutes of class time for each student to make these points.
The main problem is the fact that tutorial discussions benefit a certain kind of learner or student.
This does not even include the regular commenting that a TA or professor would provide during such discussions. Already, the time allotted for these small-group discussions is not nearly adequate in meeting the student’s bare minimum needs of success let alone inspiring thought-provoking discussions.
Although tutorials are meant to be spaces where students have the opportunity to voice their opinions, they often either get led by a select few students or become strings of awkward silences echoing in the minds of students reluctant to be present for that.
It’s time to say goodbye to tutorials that are led by the few and welcome a space that makes students actually want to come to tutorials.
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By: Sabrina Lin/ Meducator and Sarah Ge
Frustrated by the inefficiency of the therapy model used to support children with special needs in schools, McMaster School of Rehabilitation Science professor Cheryl Missiuna decided it was time for change. At the onset of her journey, she didn’t realize how her team’s innovative service delivery model would revolutionize the field of special needs therapy in elementary schools across Canada.
Prof. Missiuna has served as Senior Scientist and Director at the CanChild Research Centre for seven years and is leading the Partnering for Change project. The project introduces a novel service delivery model that allows occupational therapists to provide services to school-aged children with Developmental Coordination Disorder.
Touching nearly one in five children across Canada, DCD is a motor disability that affects a child’s ability to complete everyday self-care and academic tasks such as zipping up a jacket, folding a piece of paper or using a pencil for schoolwork.
In Ontario, children identified with DCD are referred to school health support services for occupational therapy, after which they spend up to 24 months on waitlists to receive in-school treatment. Without the proper support, children with DCD remain at a standstill in these crucial years of development. Meanwhile, secondary academic, mental health, and physical health issues unfold, making their needs more complex and difficult to cope long-term.
Promoting collaboration between families, educators, and therapists, Partnering for Change is distinct from previous therapy models as it takes a more holistic approach to special needs therapy. “We have had traditional models in the past of servicing children one child at a time. At Partnering for Change, we recognize that this one-child-at-a-time model is not effective in large part because the kids spend so long on waitlists. Even if we had an intervention that was effective, children are waiting two years to see a therapist,” Missiuna said.
In response to this issue, she has worked with families, educators, therapists and other stakeholders to create a socio-educational therapy model that sees the whole school as the client. This is a departure from the current medical model characterised by referrals, check-ins, and long wait times.
“[Partnering for Change] helps to support features within the school to change or improve the environment around the child,” she said. Unlike previous methods, the development of the model centers around the needs of the children it services. It provides support with a focus on the child, and employs strategies in the classroom to resolve problems the child is having.
Occupational therapists play an important role in the process. After observing the child in the education setting, they assist in the development of individual learning profiles that are catered to the needs of the child. OTs will then provide knowledge and resources to educators and parents by either suggesting specialized instructional strategies or recommending specific tools that enhance learning.
In Ontario, children identified with DCD are referred to school health support services for occupational therapy, after which they spend up to 24 months on waitlists to receive in-school treatment.
P4C has seen widespread success in the school community. Missiuna explained that this is largely due to participatory action research, an approach that incorporates the opinions of families into the project design. “From the very beginning, we made sure that we were developing a model that was going to target issues that were identified by families, educators, and the health care system,” she said.
As the John and Margaret Lillie Chair in Childhood Disability Research, Missiuna hopes to continue to develop P4C in the next four years, systematically expanding its outreach both provincially and nationally. The program has already been implemented in 40 schools across three school boards, including the Hamilton Wentworth Catholic District School Board.
In addition to contributing to the field of childhood disability research, the new integrated delivery model has the potential touch the lives of nearly 400,000 Canadian children who are affected by the disorder.
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Over the past few years, McMaster has steadily worked on efforts to improve its course delivery. By implementing animations, social media and online modules, McMaster is gradually bringing university education into the 21st century.
This new approach to course structure, called blended learning, aims to flip the classroom. Lecture content is made available online so instructors can use actual class time to explore specific elements in more detail. While McMaster is not currently considered a leader in the development of this method of teaching, Zafar Syed explained that this is starting to change. Syed is the Associate Director of Digital Technology at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching & Learning, the institution that has been the main driver of this change.
“For the past three to four years there's been a concentrated effort to increase the digital footprint that McMaster has, whether that means setting up and supporting an institute like ours here to help faculty with technology integration, or funding courses to be redesigned for blended or online delivery,” he said.
The cost of redesigning a course ranges from $12,000 to $75,000. “That's not to say that one course is better than the other. It just depends on how much media production is necessary,” explained Syed. He added that a course that uses social media or Avenue to Learn in a unique way are additional ways courses can be technology-infused.
Instructors have approached blended learning in a variety of ways. As a cohort, the Biology Department decided to revisit two courses: the first year cellular and molecular biology class as well as its second-year continuation with a greater focus on cell biology. The former was launched in the spring of 2014, while the previous fall saw the beginning of the cell biology modules. According to Prof. Rosa da Silva, the department worked together to update the curriculum by creating a type of narrative structure for the course to follow. “We thought how can we make our first year experience better, how can we add more to the classroom without taking away, and we thought going blended would be the best way, so that we could offer core material online, and then really bring in class the opportunity to diversify material,” she explained.
The blended learning approach is being explored in other faculties as well. Prof. Emad Mohammad, who bridges the faculties of Commerce and Engineering, has worked to make his course Commerce 1AA3, an introductory financial accounting class, customizable. He has implemented a strategy where students read the course material on weekends and explore it through animations and videos. They are quizzed on the material and based on the results, Mohammad tailors his in-class lectures to focus on the areas students struggled with.
“Blended learning works best not because you put some content online, but because of what happens during the face-to-face component."
Both da Silva and Mohammad agreed that the blended approach has helped boost marks in their respective courses. While Mohammad admitted that not all students like the blended approach, he has noticed more A+ grades and fewer failing marks. “The results are indisputable,” he said. Da Silva was also enthusiastic about the effect of modules in her biology courses. “We’re seeing that student grades are going up with blended learning, which is great.”
Both professors also mentioned the fact that despite the improvements in grades, not all students are satisfied with the new approach to lecture content. Da Silva explained that frequently, students in her courses who do not enjoy the mix of modules and lectures have a more difficult time focusing. “Students who have a harder time managing time… are the students that are hating it, they’re not scheduling it in as part of their week to week classes that they should be watching,” she explained.
Despite the enthusiasm faculty have for blended learning, they seem to be moving forward without a concrete plan. Syed and da Silva both mentioned long-term studies of the lasting effect of blended learning courses at McMaster, but neither offered specific ways in which the content will continue to develop beyond constantly improving modules. Syed is looking forward to the opening of the LR Wilson building as a way to encourage more active and blended learning in the Humanities and Social Sciences. “Blended learning works best not because you put some content online, but because of what happens during the face-to-face component. That people are able to engage in content in a deeper and more personal way and not just passively sit and listen to lecture, which they can do in their own time,” he explained.
Although there is more room for the assessment of blended learning’s overall impact, it is clear that McMaster is determined to continue implementing learning technologies into a greater variety of courses.
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By: Lauren Beals
Many students on campus have developed a relationship with T-13. The home of first-year math exams and chemistry tutorials, this supposedly temporary building has been a student staple for over 40 years.
But room 127 is creating a new type of legacy. Recently outfitted with upgrades including projectors, white boards and student seating on wheels for easy movement, 127 has transformed into an active learning space created for student interaction.
The changes mark one step in a larger movement away from passive learning and towards the active learning missing from many university classrooms.
Arshad Ahmad, McMaster’s Associate Vice-President of Teaching & Learning says that there are many drawbacks to traditional lectures. “It really is an old-school thought. [Lectures] were an efficient way of conveying information when information was not accessible, but now the information is very accessible. If a student can go online and read the information they are not going to find it very interesting in class,” he explained.
Unlike traditional lecture halls, 127 provides students with the opportunity to apply knowledge and collaborate with peers to solve problems.
Projector screens along all four walls allow instructors to display multiple resources, while white boards encourage students to actively work out practice problems. A central screen and command system also preserves instructor control over the busy classroom and its technology.
Ahmad thinks that students want to learn actively from an early age. “It brings out the best in people by giving them the opportunity to show motivation and interest,” said Ahmad. “If you ask a parent how their child completes a project, it isn’t just by sitting and watching them. They are moving around, they are doing things, that is how they learn.”
Despite the advantages, the spread of active learning across campus requires more renovations, smaller class sizes and the commitment of instructors to reshape course structures. Students must also prepare to embrace group work and more frequent problem-based evaluations.
“There are definitely a lot of real challenges associated with this type of learning, that is for sure. But we need a cultural shift where this type of learning is the norm. This needs to be the norm. Students and teachers need to demand this type of learning,” said Ahmad.
Currently, room 127 can be requested for use by student groups by contacting student Conference and Event Services. Faculty can request academic booking by contacting the registrar’s office.
“We need a cultural shift where this type of learning is the norm.“
For students who wish to pursue active learning in other ways, Ahmad urges them to speak with professors and peers about how they learn beyond the course outline. “You would be surprised how many people are willing to have that conversation,” he said.
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With the start of the new school year, McMaster has begun the process of phasing out the old Learning Portfolio platform. Just before the start of the classes, the university completed the purchase of licenses for a new system run by PebblePad, a company based in the United Kingdom.
The Learning Portfolio is designed to be a virtual scrapbook for students to collect achievements, reflections, and goals and share them with friends, professors, and employers.
Historically, the Learning Portfolio has had a negative reputation, with students complaining about the tool’s clunky interface. However, with the purchase of the PebblePad platform, the university is hoping to change that.
“Over the last couple of years we’ve been collecting information, [by] asking faculty what they like and don’t like about the portfolio,” said Catherine Swanson, Learning Portfolio Program Manager at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Swanson explained that over the course of several months, students and staff from all of McMaster’s faculties tested different portfolio tools and eventually agreed on PebblePad. “It has so much more flexibility and it’s much easier [to use] and the students who tested it for us absolutely loved it,” she said.
Unlike the old portfolio system, which was run by Desire2Learn (D2L), the company that also runs Avenue to Learn, PebblePad’s specialty is its e-learning portfolio system.
Swanson is eager to see how the change affects both students and faculty. Once the system is fully up and running, students will be able to access PebblePad directly through Avenue to Learn just like the D2L platform. She emphasized the fact that unlike D2L, PebblePad is constantly releasing new versions so the system remains up to date with developments in web design.
The PebblePad platform certainly looks more polished than D2L’s design. It features built-in help videos and pop-ups to guide students through an online reflection. Its design is intuitive and streamlined. In the past, many students struggled with sharing their portfolios with professors who were using the system for assignments, but the new platform has clearer sharing instructions to ensure only those marking the Learning Portfolio can access it.
Despite the change in platform, the number of students who will be engaged by the Learning Portfolio is still uncertain.
Patricia Kousoulas, a third year Life Sciences student and President of the McMaster Science Society, has conflicting thoughts on the tool. She has used the Learning Portfolio in her studies at McMaster to explore specific skills such as leadership and communication in tutorials.
“The tool was a good way to capture my thoughts, however because it was for marks, people didn’t appreciate it […] the academic factor honestly scares people away—it scared me away too,” she said.
Kousoulas said that in addition to the PebblePad help videos, she would love to see a student testimonial to promote extra-curricular uses for the portfolio.
“The problem is that the first time students hear about [the portfolio] is during class time, and then it doesn’t excite them.”
She thinks that it will likely take a long time to find students who genuinely want to use the platform. “If someone like me who is involved with the project [...] isn’t really jumping up and down to do it, I don’t know how other students will feel about it,” she said.
PebblePad will be gradually implemented over the course of the year, and while the system’s features look modern, it may still have a long way to develop.
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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.
Fariha Husain
The Silhouette
On Jan. 10, McMaster president Patrick Deane hosted a lecture, featuring guest speaker Dr. Andrew Furco, on community engagement as a part of the McMaster Seminar on Higher Learning series.
The seminars were inspired by Deane’s letter “Forward with Integrity,” and were organized to address the issues surrounding the institutionalization of education at the university level and specifically to foster the development of innovative ideas at McMaster in the realm of education, teaching and student involvement.
Furco, the Associate Vice President for Public Engagement at the University of Minnesota, looked at the increasingly significant contribution community engagement can make to the university institution and how it can translate into funding for universities.
Furco began his lecture with an statistic pertaining to the increase in service-learning (volunteering, community internships and other activities) available in American universities, which increased from 49 per cent five years ago to 90 per cent now. The increase in such community engagement opportunities stands as a testament to the resurgence of the idea that universities and colleges are institutes that exist to benefit society.
This important idea may seem obvious to many students, faculty and staff alike. Furco, however, noted that educational institutions such as the University of California at Berkley, where he was the founding director for the Service-Learning Research and Development Centre, had many world renowned experts on issues ranging from homelessness to cancer yet ust across the street from Berkley there was, and had been some for time, a growing poverty issue.
Community engagement in an educational context refers to the consolidation of educational endeavours into it’s implication for the surrounding community, which Furco referred to as the “So what?” factor. All of this research, education and training must be undertaken in order to accomplish certain goals and community engagement seems to be a way to do exactly this.
Community engagement through service-learning is certainly relevant in an institution such as McMaster which is located in the city of Hamilton, often regarded as one of the only cities where housing is cheaper when individuals move closer to the downtown core. Some of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada can be found in Hamilton’s downtown core.
McMaster’s reputation lingers among those of world-renowned institutions and as such attracts immense talent in its students and faculty. McMaster is also situated in close proximity to some of the poorest districts in Canada, and is well equipped with the experience and skill to put forth the effort to create viable and long lasting change in order to meet the societal needs of this city.
This fundamental goal is central to McMaster’s mission, as stated, “At McMaster, our purpose is the discovery, communication, and preservation of knowledge. In our teaching, research, and scholarship, we are committed to creativity, innovation, and excellence.” McMaster students are encouraged to incorporate community engagement in their educational pursuits in order to gain the most from their experience, explained Furco.
Christina Pugliese
Silhouette Staff
Keen on learning a foreign language?
Before hastily reaching for pen and paper, one might first consider availing oneself of an arguably more valuable tool – the power of conversation.
Indeed, it was such a premise upon which this year’s biannual Language Café was based; an event hosted by McMaster’s International Student Services at Bridges Café on Nov.8.
With 15 language workshops to choose from and an array of appetizing vegetarian dishes, the evening served as a venue for both local and international students as well as members of the greater community to exchange knowledge and explore their interests in the realm of language.
An idea put forth by a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Health Science program in March 2010, the interdisciplinary event acts as a foregathering of various student cultural societies, including the McMaster French Club, McMaster Japanese Connection, the Organization of Latin American Students (OLAS), as well as individual exchange students from around the world.
During the one hour Language Café, participants were offered basic instruction by volunteer facilitators whose role was to guide conversation within small group settings.
A myriad of language workshops were available for those in attendance, including English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, German, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, Punjabi, Urdu, Farsi, Polish, Hindi, Malay, and American Sign Language.
Matthew Kubicki, one of the primary organizers of the event and Polish workshop facilitator, feels that the casual atmosphere encompassing the Café is instrumental in fulfilling its mission.
“Learning a language formally in a classroom can be stressful, whereas here you are learning among people who are your age in a more informal environment. It’s more conversational,” explained Kubicki.
Although one can hardly expect to emerge speaking fluently after merely an hour-long tutorial, Kubicki noted that this is “not necessarily the goal.” Rather, the Language Café aims to “expand people’s views of the world and broaden their exposure to different languages and cultures.”
In this regard, the event served as a springboard for individuals to discover what various cultures have to offer and to learn from their like-minded peers.
Andres Krisch, member of OLAS and third-time Language Café Spanish facilitator, mirrored this sentiment.
“It’s really cool to be able to educate people on the culture and the language, to provide that spark of interest,” said Krisch.
Having come a long way since its inception in 2010, event coordinator Amy Tang hopes to see the Language Café expand in subsequent years.
She further discussed preliminary plans “to create an online database that would allow students to speak different languages and interact with each other.”
Whether a beginner or fluent speaker, “there are many ways [for students] to get involved,” she noted.
