Compiled by Aissa Boodhoo-Leegsma and Julia Redmond

McMaster holds annual Remembrance Day ceremony on campus

Dawn Martin-Hill began lobbying for a Native studies program during the final year of her undergraduate degree at McMaster 23 years ago. Her departure as director from the Indigenous Studies Program (ISP) in July was bittersweet; she leaves her post just as the program turns 20, and now takes on the new role of the Paul R. MacPherson Chair in Indigenous Studies.

But the future is uncertain for the program she once headed.

The position of director has been vacant for four months, with McMaster’s Associate Vice-President (Academic) Peter Smith stepping in as acting director.

In October, the McMaster First Nations Student Association hosted a send-off for retired elder-in-residence Bertha Skye, as well as professor Hayden King, who has accepted a position at Ryerson.

Martin-Hill’s role as Chair in Indigenous Studies is an exciting development for her, but it means her new office is in the Department of Anthropology in Social Sciences.

The ISP does not reside under any faculty, nor does it offer a degree to its students – only a combined honours option.

“There are many discussions underway on how the Indigenous Studies Program could evolve, including the possibility of a four-year degree,” said Smith.

The program is expected to get some new space in the Wilson Building, to open in 2014. Its current department office is in the basement of Hamilton Hall.

The early years

Since its infancy, the Indigenous Studies Program has stood on shaky legs.

Martin-Hill began the paperwork to set up a Native studies program shortly after former McMaster president Peter George set up a committee on Native issues.

“The program didn’t go anywhere for three years,” said Martin-Hill, who said she wanted to start a program, not simply a wellness or student services centre for Native students.

Things were also difficult for Martin-Hill at the time on a personal level.

When she was writing her dissertation, Martin-Hill was homeless and lived in a friend’s basement. After getting her PhD in anthropology, Martin-Hill was teaching 18 units, developing the program and raising two daughters.

Upon returning from maternity leave, Martin-Hill found that her contractually limited appointment no longer existed, and the position of ‘academic director’ was widely posted.

“I didn’t know if I was going to have a job,” she said.

“I look back on [that time] and I was struggling with poverty. I don’t know how I did it,” she said.

Martin-Hill applied and ended up getting the job, but the hardships didn’t stop there.

Funding troubles

It’s an elaborate process to apply to the provincial government for Aboriginal funding. There’s more paperwork than other faculties are required to complete, said Martin-Hill. And although ISP has been successful in receiving funding, she says it has been a bittersweet triumph.

ISP currently runs on Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education and Training (PSET) funding.

“PSET tripled our budget, and it was so exciting because we were going to be able to have our own recruitment officer, elders-in-residence and everything we’d dreamed of over the years,” she said. “But we pretty much lost control over where the funding was going at that time.”

“The funding is for student services – not exactly what we wanted, which was someone to promote indigenous studies. You see it all the time; no one knows we’re here,” said Martin-Hill.

“The President’s Committee wanted us to open the doors to health sciences because there were no Native doctors [at McMaster],” she said.

Martin-Hill wrote a proposal to start the Aboriginal Student Health Sciences (ASHS) office, and ISP received funds to pay a salary for someone to have an Aboriginal office in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

“It was a lot of work and it didn’t benefit ISP financially. But it was something the community [component of the President’s Committee] wanted,” said Martin-Hill.

The ASHS team works to help promote the success of current and incoming Aboriginal students in the health sciences.

What will the future hold?

In her new position, Martin-Hill no longer has the same administrative responsibilities.

“As senior faculty, I’m still here to assist in key decisions,” said Martin-Hill, who has been doing work on a stand-alone degree for the program.

“Research shows that the students want to complete a degree, and the President’s Committee has agreed. We have the application pretty much ready to go, but it needs to go through budget approval,” she said.

“We really need faculty. We’ve been asking for a very long time and it’s been a dream of ours for 20 years,” she said.

She expressed concern and hesitation about where things will go with provincial funding geared toward student services.

Still, Martin-Hill says she has faith in the Program and the views McMaster’s president Patrick Deane has expressed.

“There’s also discussion going on for a graduate program, which would be thrilling. I do think we have an excellent program and I hope we can build on that. That’s my goal.”

Remember the feeling of getting your report card? McMaster was faced with that feeling this October, as the Globe and Mail published its annual Canadian University Report.

The assessment, released on Oct. 25, tried to get away from the largely data-based rankings of other organizations, instead assigning letter grades to different aspects of the university’s performance based on student surveys.

And McMaster’s administration was certainly pleased with the report card results.

“It’s extremely gratifying to be ranked by students as providing the highest quality teaching and learning experience in Canada,” President Patrick Deane told the Daily News, referring to McMaster’s first-place finish in its division for quality of teaching and learning.

Most notably, Mac ranked first in campus atmosphere, research opportunities and quality of teaching and learning, as well as second in student satisfaction, where it placed behind Western.

It also made an impression at the lower end of the large school division, placing second to last in city satisfaction and information technology. And naturally, McMaster’s infamous SOLAR system earned the university last place in course registration.

“If you take all the rankings, they add up to an interesting perspective that we’re strong, but there are some areas which need our attention,” said Deane.

The premise of the Globe’s rankings is a survey of current undergraduate students. For the 2013 rankings, 33,000 undergrads responded to a survey, and their responses, given on a scale of 1 to 9, were converted into corresponding letter grades. But the entire premise of this style of ranking is problematic, said Lonnie Magee, an economics professor at Mac.

“How would a university student be able to know about another school?” he asked. “It’s so driven by how you compare it with what you’re expecting.” He explained that since students attend only one university, such a comparison not particularly useful.

The Globe and Mail addressed this criticism in its 2012 Canadian University Report, released last October. Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, an education consulting firm that advises the Globe on the annual report, argued that student surveys are a reliable method of devising rankings.

“Another criticism [of the report] was that student[s] … had no idea what was available at any school other than their own. That’s true to some extent – but if year after year a particular institution gets results which are particularly good or particularly bad compared to other institutions of its type, then the results start to gain in validity,” Usher argued.

Magee notes that such results come from the “temptation to make the results more objective, to accumulate statistics and present them to show that your rankings are based on these ‘hard facts’ that have been collected.” He cautioned that qualitative factors like student satisfaction are tough to compare.

The Canadian University Report is one of two major Canadian university ranking publications. The other, administered by Maclean’s, is the more well-established of the two. It will release its 22nd annual rankings issue this year, while the Globe has just published its 11th.

Rather than following the Globe and Mail’s approach of a heavily student-based survey, Maclean’s compiles a number of factors to generate its rankings. Schools are divided into three categories: medical-doctoral, comprehensive and primarily undergraduate, in order to improve the comparison.

But the factors it uses for this comparison, made up largely of data from Statistics Canada and federal funding agencies, are sometimes criticized for not being entirely relevant to students or administration.

Mike Veall, an economics professor at McMaster, has published work on the effectiveness of the Maclean’s rankings. He described their methods as being a “little bit suspect in terms of gaining indicators.”

“It’s not quite clear that the indicators match quite well with what students or administrators should care about,” he said.

While there are many factors, the rankings do consider data like the number of library holdings and amount of money available for current expenses per weighted full-time-equivalent student.

McMaster has also been rated by broader, global organizations. But these, too, have their limitations.

The Times Higher Education (THE), for example, produces a rankings issue considered to be one of the best in the world.

This year, McMaster placed 88^th overall in their report. But the THE also ranks by faculty, and in the “clinical, pre-clinical, and health” category, McMaster earned 14th place in the world, making it the top school in the category in Canada.

Meanwhile, QS, a British firm, ranked McMaster 152nd. A Shanghai-based organization Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) placed McMaster this year at 92nd.

International rankings methods provide a different set of criteria. While Maclean’s and the Globe consider student satisfaction, such firms as QS and THE factor in a school’s industry influence and international impact – an area where McMaster can’t compete as well, especially when factors like number of Nobel Prize winners are considered.

But in the end, a bad report card doesn’t have a huge effect on a school, Veall said. In his 2005 study, co-authored by Qi Kong, a Mac undergrad at the time, he concluded that a change in ranking has little effect on a school’s enrolment share or the entrance average of its students. A shift of one place in the rankings can, at best, change the mean entrance average by 0.3 percent, although Veall emphasized that this conclusion was “not particularly robust.”

But even though the rankings may not matter much in the end, it doesn’t mean McMaster can’t be happy with a good report card.

Part 1 of an ongoing series

How is experiential education framed in Forward with Integrity?

It’s been just over a year since McMaster’s president Patrick Deane issued his visioning letter, “Forward With Integrity,” to the McMaster community.

The letter introduced new strategic priorities for the University. It planted notions of “a student-centred research intensive institution,” “internationalization” and “experiential learning experiences” in the forefront of the campus’ consciousness. FWI stated that McMaster had an obligation to engage with the community and enhance student experience by increasing self-directed and interdisciplinary opportunities.

Following the release of the letter last September, four task forces were formed to examine McMaster’s current environment. The task forces were responsible for making recommendations to improve the institution’s standing in the fields of Community Engagement, Student Experience, Internationalization and Research.

The task forces concluded their work in May 2012 and compiled their findings and recommendations into four separate reports.

Broadening Experiential Opportunities

The Student Experience Task Force report explored how to increase experiential opportunities. The term “experiential education” often implies a co-op or internship type experience that involves “learning outside the classroom.” The report sought to broaden this definition and re-envision how experiential opportunities could be offered to all students, regardless of faculty.

Several faculties already provide experiential opportunities. The Faculty of Engineering, the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Life Sciences program provide academic or co-op placements, while opportunities for co-curricular activities exist in Arts and Science, Integrated Science and Health Science.

Smaller programs and faculties such as Arts and Science and Integrated Science have had experiential components embedded in their curriculum since their inception. Both of these programs have also been at the forefront of submitting proposals for new interdisciplinary courses that feature field work and co-curricular experiences.

Carolyn Eyles, director of the iSci Program, spoke about the new ARTSCI/ISCI 3EI1 course, which was developed as a result of the renewed focus on interdisciplinary and unique experiential courses. Students taking the course participate in a field trip to the world’s largest known cave system in Kentucky.

For Eyles, courses like these are about being flexible in providing learning and research opportunities to students not normally available in lecture-based format.

“[It’s about] how to recognize and validate the student experience … and creating linkages between different groups,” she said.

But the Student Experience task force also aimed to fundamentally alter how McMaster understands experiential opportunities. In their findings, they proposed not only new systems to organize these experiences, but also looked to introduce a more reflexive approach to offering experiential education.

Dr. Susan Denburg, Associate Vice-President Academic Health Sciences and Strategic Advisor to the President noted that there are many forms that an experiential program can take on, whether it is inside or outside the classroom.

“We can create an experiential learning environment … by having [students] reflect on their learning goals … if we [make] it a habit of identifying learning goals, if students think about why they’re here and what they hope to achieve in their various courses or extracurricular activities or volunteer work they undertake,” she said.

Creating a “Made-in McMaster” Solution

Denburg stressed the need for a “McMaster-made solution” that incorporates experiential components into the entirety of one’s time at McMaster. She asserted that these opportunities could be delivered within the classroom.

Problem-based learning (PBL), another McMaster-made solution, is one specific method of incorporating experiential opportunities into the classroom. The teaching method, while impossible to define and open to various interpretations, advocates plunging students into issues with limited frameworks and allowing them to present their conclusions.

“In discipline-centered learning, the teacher has filtered the information, presenting a body of information they feel the student should know. In PBL … students wrestle with information themselves,” said Dr. Patangi Rangchari, Professor Emeritus of Medicine.

The PBL model is not discipline-centered, but has typically been associated with smaller programs and class sizes. However, Rangachari reiterated that PBL-type methods can easily be applied to larger environments.

Similarly, Dr. Denburg discussed the importance of engaging students in large classes and how opportunities in the learning portfolio can do this.

“You can change a large group experience into something very personal and very group-oriented with not that much difficulty,” said Denberg. “We’re seriously committing to a lot of faculty professional development … people are going to need help in new ways of teaching. It’s a question of how…we scale up.”

Developing a learning portfolio

A major recommendation to come out of the task force was the creation of “learning portfolios.” Learning portfolios are meant to encompass both the co-curricular and academic experiences that students complete throughout their degree. The portfolios would function as a holistic marker of a student’s “learning journey” through university.

What differentiates the learning portfolio from simply being a tracking mechanism is that learning portfolios would be self-directed and would include self-tracked learning goals.

Although in its infancy, the learning portfolio concept has spurred numerous potential initiatives. One example suggested by the task force was a learning goal journal, where students would track and reflect on their experiences. Other examples included a multi-year course that stretched across the duration of a student’s time at McMaster and implementing a mentorship network to aid in supporting students’ learning goals.

The learning portfolio and the push towards incorporating more experiential opportunities is compatible with what has already been going on for years in the institution, but could also kick-start some new ideas.

The University has put out a call for proposals related to programs that will provide self-directed or experiential learning opportunities. These projects are meant to be academically oriented and focused on advancing the learning portfolio.

Proposals from faculty, staff and students can be submitted to be reviewed by the FWI Advisory Group. The first deadline is Nov. 15 for pilot projects to tentatively be launched in the spring, and there is also a second-round deadline in January.

The prioritization of experiential learning was most recently re-iterated in the Sept. 28 submission of McMaster’s Strategic Mandate Agreement to the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. The letter specifically proposed a partnership with the province to establish an Experiential Learning Centre.

 

Next Week: Exploring more flexibility in the student experience and community engagement

After over seventy-five years of invading our eyes, ears and minds with national and international news and information, the CBC is ready to open its own mind to a larger dialogue.

Friends of Canadian Broadcasting (FRIENDS) hosted a public forum dubbed “The CBC We Want” Tuesday afternoon in Innovation Park. The goal of the event was to foster an open discussion between key Hamilton media personalities and any Hamiltonians who had a bone to pick with the national media organization.

This dialogue was spurred on by the upcoming CBC license renewal, an event that is the first of its kind, as the CRTC reviews the funding allocated to the non-profit media provider. This event promised the direction of major concerns and suggestions towards the CRTC in time for the review process, the deadline for which is this Friday, and facilitated the procedure through the use of an individual video booth where attendees could film one-minute proposals to the review board.

“For many years, the CBC has been an integral player in promoting discussion,” said McMaster President Patrick Deane, as he commenced the event and welcomed to the stage the moderator and former prima ballerina Veronica Tennant.

“Many of us are disappointed in the continued budget cuts to the CBC,” said Tennant as she introduced the six panelists responsible for responding to questions raised by the audience later in the event, each an expert in the field in their own right.

The event marks the penultimate stop in the eight-city tour that has already hit Victoria to Halifax and most of central Canada, ending in Kingston on Oct. 11.

After a brief recess to meet the panelists, the event resumed and the floor was open to questions from the audience.

An audience member asked the panel if the CBC would become irrelevant in the future due to subsequent budget cuts. Philip Savage, McMaster Associate Professor of Communication Studies answered, “Canada and the CBC is the most efficient by far [in their funding model], the problem is when you get to that point when CBC can no longer work from a [non-profit] basis.”

The CRTC review process will begin after the deadline for submission closes this Friday, Oct. 12. For the first time in 76 years citizens of Canada have a chance to either redefine or maintain the mandate of the CBC to educate, enlighten and inform.

The annual State of the Academy address is meant to be an opportunity for the Provost’s office to share information with the rest of the university on the school’s progress over the year. But this time, it was supposed to be different.

The 2012 State of the Academy was promoted for its “new format,” a conversation between university administrators and the greater campus community, rather than a speech. According to current Provost David Wilkinson, it was meant to “engage [McMaster] in a cross-campus dialogue.”

Convocation Hall, equipped with two audience microphones, reflected this change. Wilkinson and university president Patrick Deane, who joined him for the presentation, were seated comfortably in armchairs at the front of the room.

In elaborating on talking points offered by moderator Gord Arbeau, Director of Public and Community Relations, the two administrators made it clear that their impression of McMaster’s current situation was positive.

“When you look at the [McMaster University Factbook], what it would show you is that…as an institution we’re doing very well in difficult times,” said Wilkinson.

“There are lots of great things going on, lots of challenges, but the future really looks rosy at McMaster.”

Although a variety of topics were offered for discussion, the speeches from both Deane and Wilkinson circled back to “Forward with Integrity,” the president’s 2011 letter that offered a set of guiding principles for McMaster as it moves forward.

The emphasis of the presentation, in conjunction with “Forward with Integrity,” was to “rephrase” the goals of McMaster, and to reemphasize the “research-focused, student-centred” nature of Mac.

“We’re at a phase in laying out our sense of the institution’s future in which we need to build on what has been strong historically here and that very close connection between teaching and research, which is part of the Mac culture [and] has been since the beginning,” Deane explained. The president was intent on underlining McMaster’s reputation, reaffirming that “we are an institution devoted to learning through inquiry and discovery.” He encouraged students and faculty to “bring...[the] power of the critical and inquiring mind.”

It was broader ideas like these that made up the bulk of the presentation.

In addition to the university’s culture, Deane and Wilkinson also touched on such initiatives as the “learning portfolio,” a new emphasis on experiential education that was encouraged by “Forward with Integrity.”

“[We want] students [to] actually have a portfolio of experiences that extends beyond what shows up on their transcripts,” said Wilkinson.

The most controversial topic of discussion was the internationalization of McMaster, something the president has admitted to not always being comfortable with.

“I am very much averse to what I regard as an exploitative model of higher internationalized higher education,” Deane said, elaborating further to say that he is “not persuaded, either in terms of the long-term benefits or the ethical compulsions of this model which basically sees the world as a market to be drawn on to subsidize our current operations.”

International students now make up roughly five per cent of McMaster’s student body. The recruitment of these students is seen by many universities to be an economic benefit because of the hefty additional fees they pay. Deane emphasized that true internationalization would involve “being changed by the students who are invited to come here.”

It seemed that the audience, made up primarily of faculty and staff, with only a small representation of students, was not moved by this, or any other topics. When the floor was opened to questions, no one in the audience stepped up. Despite the insistence on dialogue, the new townhall format did not result in the high amount of audience participation that was initially envisioned.

Something was unmistakably amiss on Oct. 1 when walking through the outdoor Mills Plaza. The Chinese Cultural Festival, hosted by McMaster’s Confucius Institute, was in full swing, full in this case meaning a single, subtle tent and a modest display of staff.

Compared to last year, when the festival encompassed the entire MUSC Atrium in an ostentatious display of cultural pride, song, dance and prizes, it was an unfamiliar offering from the usually grandiose faculty.

Dr. Angela Sheng, Associate Professor of Art History and Director Chair of the Confucius Institute, explained the reasoning behind this massive shift in festivities. “I want [the festival] to be in the open, to attract student attention and I would like it to be driven by grassroots needs,” said Sheng.

The festival, scheduled to run from Oct. 1 to 3, encompassed many aspects, such as martial arts demonstrations, student presentations and a myriad of film screenings on Thursday, still seemed oddly cut down, sporting an almost subtle profile with few students stopping their daily activities to check out the event.

The Institute, recently scrutinized for its allegedly controversial hiring and training practices overseas for prospective teachers according to a Globe and Mail investigative report, seems to be in the process of restructuring its outward appearance to appeal to a larger student body.

“The Confucius Institute is synchronous with humanities and with President Deane’s Forward With Integrity message, and we want to highlight student endeavours and give them a platform to express their work,” said Sheng.

The festival itself, while smaller in scale, promoted a single, unified message. It highlighted spirituality as a means to promote overall well-being, as well as stressing the importance of values shared between heritage students and students without a Chinese background at McMaster.

Looking forward in the year, Sheng has further plans to engage the student body in Chinese culture. “We have the upcoming Distinguished Speaker Series to look forward to. On October 30 an archeologist is going to speak about the first emperor of China. Later in November a linguist will come and speak about the phonetic system [of Mandarin].”

The Institute’s current plans do not end at festivities alone, as it is currently engaged in a proposal to found a new Chinese business course.

“It would be a language course that focuses on business language, and business etiquette and know-how that is different in China,” said Sheng.

The proposal has been submitted to the Curriculum Committee of the Faculty of Humanities and if passed will move on to review by the Senate’s Undergraduate Planning Committee this fall.

“I’d like to know what students would like [to know about China]. These projects have to be initiated by students and then they can be incorporated into next year’s budget proposal,” said Sheng on how students could get involved in the faculty.

The Confucius Institute will continue to run events throughout the year, but it remains to be seen if future showings by the organization will be equally toned down.

By: Jaslyn English and Mary Ann Boateng

 

On Sunday Sept. 23, McMaster hosted its first Open Streets event - a day in devotion to the idea of closed off streets making a more open community. The event lasted from late morning to late afternoon, running in conjunction with Open Streets Hamilton happening on James St N.

Open Streets Hamilton brings together different communities within the city in an attempt to bridge the gap between residents, small businesses, cultural organizations and special-interest groups.

The McMaster event featured a closed off portion of Sterling Street, turned completely pedestrian for the day, as well as a campus section stretching the length of University Ave. from the student center to the edge of the BSB field.

The Hamilton event is part of a broader movement in various cities across North America. According to its website, openstreetsproject.org, the object of Open Streets is to “temporarily close streets to automobile traffic, so that people may use them for walking, bicycling, dancing, playing, and socializing.”

Hamilton has been running the event biannually on James St North since spring 2010, and this is the first time it has come to the McMaster campus.

Mary Koziol, former MSU President and Assistant to the President on Special Community Initiatives, was one of the organizers of the event.

“We started the project because we wanted to eliminate some of the barriers people perceive to be around campus,” she said of Open Streets. “We wanted a way to welcome community members onto campus and vice versa.”

University Ave. was lined with booths representing several clubs, organizations, and events within McMaster itself. The campus was also equipped with a stage for live performances.

The festival continued down Sterling Street, where booths of many Westdale shops as well as community-based organizations were located. This area of the event promoted the idea of outer-campus community that Westdale provides for McMaster’s students.

“I’ve seen a lot of familiar faces,” said the vendor at the Hotti Biscotti table, commenting on the similarities between this event and Clubsfest, hosted during Welcome Week on the McMaster campus.

Nate Walker, owner and operator of Nate’s Cakes, an eco-friendly alternative to the food truck, explained how vendors benefit from a festival like Open Streets.

“The event provides me the opportunity to know all the university students, he said on Sunday. “Festivals like this are where it’s at… If [it] happens again, I will definitely come back.”

Vendors and community members alike remarked that the event brought the community together, a notion mirrored by McMaster president Patrick Deane’s message recorded before the event took place.

The president saw the event as “bring[ing] down the boundaries between the university and the community” and was hoping for a “cross-pollinating effect” between McMaster and the broader Hamilton area.

While there was a diversity of age groups and walks of life from both the university and neighboring communities, the event failed to grasp the attention of the “broader Hamilton community” that the President was seeking to attract.

“It’s too bad there aren’t more people,” remarked a Westdale woman to her family, two hours after the event had started.

Yet after using one of the every-half-hour shuttles equipped with its own student tour guide, and taking in the atmosphere of the downtown portion of the event, it became evident that a crowdless, laid back vibe was as much a part of the Open Streets project as were the street vendors, and added to the neighborhood feel of the event.

McMaster participated in Open Streets as part of its celebration of the University’s 125th anniversary, but Koziol hopes the festival will continue in the coming years.

“What we are trying to do is a better job of opening our arms and welcoming the community and creating more and more partnerships and a broader network so that people don’t see McMaster as a community in itself but as just one part of this broader tapestry.”

 

McMaster University has received funds from two former grads to establish a $25,000 award for students who want to take a detour from academia.

The university held an open information session yesterday on the Drs. Jolie Ringash and Glen Bandiera Renaissance Award, open to all McMaster students studying on a full-time basis.

The award offers a maximum of $25,000 to a student with an innovative idea for a project that will span 4 to 12 months.  The project must be outside of applicants’ academic activities and have a distinct societal benefit.

The same amount of money will be available in the same capacity each year for the next five years.

The donors, Ringash and Bandiera, funded the award in hopes that students could have an opportunity to expand their learning experience in an unconventional way.

“Both of us had a fairly standard trajectory from high school through our undergraduate experience,” said Bandiera.

“We had an opportunity to travel for a year not too long ago. It was a challenge for us to wrap our heads around taking a year off from our professional careers,” said Bandiera. “We thought, it’s a real shame that two people would have to wait X number of years to do this."

The award is meant to embody the principles outlined in President Patrick Deane’s 2011 letter, “Forward With Integrity.”

“The award puts particular emphasis on developing the whole person. As an organization, [the MSU] has been reflecting on the question: what is the real reason people come to university?” said Siobhan Stewart, MSU President. “It’s very much to get an education but with the dialogue we’re having on campus, it’s becoming evident that education is taking on a new meaning."

The panelists emphasized that the award encourages students to step outside of their current academic path.

"Initially, the idea was to go completely out of your field of study," said Carolyn Eyles, director of the Integrated Science Program.

"If it's something that follows quite naturally from what you're already doing, you aren't really taking a chance or expanding yourself. It shouldn't be something you could be getting credit for in your program,” said Allison Sekuler, dean of graduate studies.

“We have never done this before – we have no role models. We’re kind of just flying by the seat of our pants, but we have some idea of what the shape of this might be,” Sekuler said before opening the floor to questions.

The application is a two-part process, the first being a letter of intent due on Oct. 15. From there the field of applicants will be narrowed down. There will be a second application in the form of an enrichment plan describing objectives, a timeline and budget. The panel elaborated that the second application will be due likely in December. Following that, there might be some presentations from final candidates. The panel said the goal is for the winners to know by January.

Kacper Niburski

Assistant News Editor

 

As administrative committees start to blossom around the themes dictated in President Patrick Deane’s letter Forward with Integrity, various faculties and student groups are voicing their concerns.

Among the many, McMaster Humanities Society (MHS) hosted an open forum on Jan. 12 to discuss both the possibility of introducing experiential education into the faculty and general concerns within the given disciplines.

Unlike many faculties, Humanities lacks an experiential education component. Lisa Bifano, president of McMaster Humanities Society (MHS) and student representative for Humanities, stressed this as one of the main inciting factors for the forum itself.

“This project is something I took on as a part of my year plan for MHS president, as well as an SRA representative,” said Bifano. “My main priority as an SRA member and as the Humanities Society president is to ‘Put Student’s First,’ so I am constantly ensuring that my constituents are well represented and allowing them the opportunity to be involved.”

Experiential education does exactly that. Unlike many of the other typical education venues, experiential education offers an opportunity to engage in learning outside the confines of a classroom. Students involved in the program have often been provided with the advantage of internships, volunteer positions, and a variety of other experience-based learning opportunities. Considering that the Humanities faculty has yet to institute the option, there is great potential, especially if there is “a joint effort amongst all,” said Bifano.

The open forum acted as the beginnings of such a unified effort. Organized with the help of MHS VP Academic Heather Watson and SRA Humanities Tanya Kuzman, the event saw both faculty and students.

President Deane himself spoke at the event, as well as listened to the students as they gauged the possibility of experiential education.

Despite speaking only a week after the forum, Bifano claimed that concrete action is being felt. “I am pleased to say that I have been approached on several occasions by students and faculty members.” She added further that, “A few points that were raised in the discussion are being further examined.”

One of these is the fear of unemployment after graduation. While it is true that such a fear is pervasive to all faculties, it could be argued, and often has, that unemployment directly affects humanities students. The diatribe of, “What do I need humanities for? I’m already a human” are all too common. Although not saying exactly that, students were concerned about their future perspectives.

Bifano couldn’t disagree with such a stigma and concern in humanities. “Our faculty is so diverse in that each discipline can lead a student down a different path, as opposed to other programs.”

As it stands, the forum tied the two together. Experiential education would utilize this breadth of options offered by the Humanities faculty in unique ways that have not been done before.