University Affairs - April 2014

Transcription

PM40064644 R09831
04 14
Realize. Sustainable teaching and learning.
P
lanet earth – shared by more than seven billion people – is
ours to care for. At the University of Regina, we're doing our
part to protect the environment by putting sustainability at the
heart of our teaching, research, and campus life.
Last year, the University was awarded the Regina and District
Chamber of Commerce Paragon Award for Environmental
Excellence. The honour reaffirms that our sustainability efforts are
good for Regina, the province, and the world.
Pictured are sustainability co-ordinator, Carol Reyda (right)
and intern Nwakaku Okere.
Our commitment to sustainability includes initiatives like the
President's Advisory Committee on Sustainability, energy-conscious
planning, promoting alternative transportation options, and
programs like Regina's Edible Campus – on-site gardens planted
by volunteers who harvest and donate the produce to local
charities.
At the University of Regina, we're working hard to be a leader in
environmental responsibility and the most sustainable university
campuses in Canada.
www.uregina.ca
04/14
Sommaire
Contents
22
10/ Super CERC me !
110 10,340 340,860 330,920/2005-Q3 322,520 37,040 15,730 11,59
34,530 16,130 ST QW 11,670 381,700 367,610/2006-Q1 283,620 26,
540/SLKJDF SLF GO 2006-Q2 350,020 38,350 17,730 EKCO 13,170 4
3 384,790 SKDJF SK 40,150 19,090 13,120 457,150 425,770/FKFJG 2
0 13,720 FKG SL 2 SLK459,350 439,740/2007-Q1 312,110 28,670 15
357,710 40,810 17,990 11,730 428,240 415,550/2007-Q3 374,700 41
930 408,390/2007-Q4 316,990 36,690 16,390 5,630 SEKF 375,700
LK DH JFLK 24,800 10,160 DLF 3,840 245,940 SF GFDDFG 295,380/
280 262,700 WKJFATAQ SK GG 258,220/2008-Q3 171,290 22,500 SL
08-Q410155,750 18,9508,430162,980 186,110 174,660 SJKD HF/2009-Q
F2,570 141,800 171,030/S GKD 2009-Q2 167,270 17,530 8,700 3,590
210,100 20,110 10,100 4,080 2OP POI 44,390 223,650/2009-Q4 237
5,070 259,760/2010-Q1 SLKDJF155,840 SP3O C 14,100 7,430 3,060
Choosing the right nominee for a
prestigious research chair can be a
high-stakes gamble for universities
by Mark Cardwell
10/ Chaire recherche
chercheur
Choisir le bon candidat pour une
prestigieuse chaire de recherche est
un pari risqué pour une université
par Mark Cardwell
16/ The rise of Big Data
Canadian researchers and their
students make sense of vast amounts
of disparate data in this new and
growing research field
by John Lorinc
Voir le sommaire en français
« L’explosion de mégadonnées », à la
page 20.
22/ Dirt
An interdisciplinary course breaks
down barriers between faculty and
students, and between disciplines
by Moira MacDonald
Voir le sommaire en français
« La saleté », à la page 27.
COVER:
The topic for a new spring
course at Nipissing
University was Dirt.
COUVERTURE :
Un nouveau cours offert
à l’Université Nipissing
portait sur la saleté.
COVER PHOTO / PHOTOGRAPHIE DE LA PAGE
COUVERTURE : LUIS ALBUQUERQUE
UA AU
Volume 55. No. 4
University
Affairs
Affaires
universitaires
Sommaire
Contents
April / avril 2014
Editor / Rédactrice en chef
Peggy Berkowitz
[email protected] / [email protected]
At least 10 students in your class of 100 are likely to have a hidden disability.
Deputy Editor / Rédacteur en chef adjoint
Léo Charbonneau
[email protected]
Web Editor / Rédactrice Web
Tara Siebarth / [email protected]
Christine Nieder and Mahadeo Sukhai, volunteers with the National Educational Association
of Disabled Students, p. 52.
Digital journalist / Journaliste Web
Natalie Samson / [email protected]
Publisher / Éditrice
Christine Tausig Ford / [email protected]
Associate Publisher / Éditeur adjoint
Dick Seldenthuis / [email protected]
Career Ads / Annonces de postes
[email protected] / [email protected]
(613) 563-1236, ext./poste 294
6
33
Editorial Display Ads / Publicité
Glen Ashworth
[email protected]
(613) 563-1236, ext./poste 248
Martin Seto, Reflex Media Sales
[email protected]
(416) 907-6562
Circulation / Diffusion
Stella Mazzarolo
[email protected]
(613) 563-1236, ext./poste 235
Translation / Traduction
Geneviève Legault, Lydia Lalonde,
Idem Traduction
Graphic Design / Graphisme
3/ Editor’s note / Éditorial
Chantal Fournier
Art Direction / Direction artistique
Underline Studio
University Affairs is published by the Association of
Universities and Colleges of Canada.
Regular annual subscription rates: $39 Canada; $55
USA; $75 other countries. Free subscriptions available
if mailed to an AUCC member campus address.
Affaires universitaires est publié par l’Association des
universités et collèges du Canada.
Prix réguliers d’un abonnement annuel : Canada 39 $;
É.-U. 55 $; autres pays 75 $. Abonnement gratuit
lorsque le magazine est posté à une adresse située sur
le campus d’un établissement membre de l’AUCC.
University Affairs
Affaires universitaires
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Suite 600
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We acknowledge the ﬁnancial support of the Government
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Department of Canadian Heritage.
Nous sommes reconnaissants de l’appui financier du gou
vernement du Canada par l’entremise du Fonds du Canada
pour les périodiques, qui relève de Patrimoine canadien
ISSN 0041-9257
37/ In my opinion
42/ Careers / Carrières
The risks of real-world
consulting
Our job listings/
Annonces de postes
38/ People / Que font-ils?
41/ From the
administrator’s chair
52/ Career advice
Hidden in plain sight
HERE AND THERE / ICI ET LÀ
THIS MONTH / CE MOIS-CI
Students cross knives at interuniversity Iron Chef competition
29/ Universities see benefits with online
Enseigner la création d’entreprise :
un modèle à revoir
31/
Campus
5/
6/
6/
Gambling as addiction
8/ Scavenger hunt promotes Ontario
research
Professor’s Surgery 101 podcasts are a
huge hit
8/
PM 40064644 R09831
52
Nota bene
process for student evaluations
Les évaluations en ligne ont de
nombreux avantages
33/ Quebec ruling supports confidentiality
of researchers’ interviews
35/ Une décision appuie le caractère
confidentiel des entrevues réalisées par les
chercheurs
Éditorial
Editor’s note
Making sense of data
Emerging research
Interpréter les données
Recherche émergente
I
JE
Peggy Berkowitz
Peggy Berkowitz
Editor
Rédactrice en chef
just finished reading a couple of articles about a conference
session led by Eric Horvitz, managing co-director for Microsoft
Research. He was explaining how analyzing data in Twitter feeds
and Google searches can point to trends in the population. One
study showed that an increase in admissions for heart failure to
a large city hospital around holiday periods corresponded with a large
number of Internet searches for recipes for salty, fatty foods in nearby
neighbourhoods.
This is just one example of the emerging field of big data, a topic
that John Lorinc reports on this month. Making sense of huge collections of different types of data is gaining importance with industry
and also attracting academics and their students, who see a chance to
get into an emerging knowledge-intensive profession. It’s not only
engineers and scientists who are getting involved – a session on the
impact of big data for social sciences and humanities research is in
the lineup for the annual conference of the Canadian Federation for
the Humanities and Social Sciences in Montreal on March 28.
We also have a story describing the effort that goes into bidding
for, winning and retaining a prestigious Canada Excellence Research
Chair. When Mark Cardwell, our regular freelancer in Quebec City,
pitched this idea, I wasn’t sold on it – the mechanics of competing for
a government research program didn’t sound like a riveting topic. But
his behind-the-scenes tale of high-stakes competition is engrossing.
Nonetheless, I can anticipate objections from some readers: the
article doesn’t discuss whether the CERC program is the best method
for awarding scarce government research funding. But that’s another
story. This one is about the elaborate strategies involved in finding the
right person to fill a chair, and the unfortunate consequences when
the person doesn’t pan out. I think it’s tailor-made for our readers and
hope you find it useful.
Finally, a note about our cover story: Nipissing University took a
gamble last spring, offering their first undergraduate interdisciplinary
course – on dirt. Our art directors matched their move with a risky
cover for this issue. Claire Dawson and Fidel Peña, the partners behind
Underline Studio, are wizards at finding fresh ways to illustrate a story,
and they execute their idea with enthusiasm and precision. For this
photo shoot, they printed the cover before trying out various ways of
camouflaging it with dirt. We are extremely grateful to have Fidel and
Claire giving visual life to our words.
viens de lire quelques articles portant sur une séance
d'une conférence, dans lesquels Eric Horvitz, codirecteur
général pour Microsoft Research, explique comment
l’analyse des données issues de fils Twitter et des recherches
sur Google peut permettre de dégager des tendances dans
la population. Une étude a montré qu’une augmentation des admissions pour insuffisance cardiaque dans un grand hôpital pendant la
période des Fêtes correspondait à un grand nombre de recherches sur
Internet de recettes à haute teneur en sel et en gras dans les quartiers
avoisinants.
Ce n’est qu’un exemple de ce qui se fait dans le nouveau domaine
de recherche captivant sur les mégadonnées, un sujet qui fait l’objet
de l’article de John Lorinc ce mois-ci. L’interprétation d’immense quantité de données attire les universitaires et leurs étudiants qui y voient
une occasion de participer à l’émergence d’une profession axée sur le
savoir. N’allez toutefois pas croire que ce sujet n’intéresse que les ingénieurs et les scientifiques. Une séance portant sur les répercussions
des mégadonnées en sciences humaines est prévue dans le cadre de la
conférence annuelle de la Fédération canadienne des sciences humaines
qui se tiendra à Montréal le 28 mars.
Le présent numéro propose un autre article sur la recherche, à
savoir sur les efforts qui sont déployés pour obtenir une prestigieuse
Chaire d’excellence en recherche du Canada et maintenir en poste son
titulaire. Lorsque notre collaborateur régulier de Québec, Mark
Cardwell, m’a proposé l’idée, je n’étais pas convaincue. Les rouages
des concours visant à obtenir une subvention gouvernementale ne me
semblaient pas un sujet très captivant. J’avais tort. Le récit qu’il nous
fait de ce qui se trame dans les coulisses de ces concours, où la mise
est élevée, est fascinant.
Enfin, un mot au sujet de l’article en page couverture : Le printemps
dernier, l’Université Nipissing a relevé le pari d’offrir un cours interdisciplinaire au premier cycle sur le thème de... la saleté, et pour accompagner ce thème, le directeur artistique du magazine a conçu une audacieuse page couverture. Claire Dawson et Fidel Peña, partenaires
d’Underline Studio, ont d’abord imprimé la page couverture, puis testé
plusieurs façons de la couvrir de terre. Nous sommes extrêmement
reconnaissants de pouvoir confier à ces incroyables créateurs qui
exécutent leur art avec enthousiasme et précision, le soin d’illustrer
nos propos.
www.affairesuniversitaires.ca / avril 2014 / 3
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Enseigner la création d’entreprise
Ici et là
Here and there
Scavenger hunt promotes Ontario research
Professor’s Surgery 101 podcasts are a huge hit
Campus
A University of Toronto team member prepares a dish at the competition.
Student life
Students cross knives at inter-university
Iron Chef competition
PHOTO: RAPHAËL LAROCQUE-CYR
Four teams take part in inaugural culinary cook-off hosted by McGill
it was a battleground in a McGill University
kitchen as four teams from Canada and the United
States faced off at the inaugural inter-university
Iron Chef competition. Teams from McGill, the
University of Ottawa, University of Toronto and
University of Massachusetts Amherst competed
to impress the judges and win the coveted
bragging rights that come with being named
culinary champions.
Teams were judged based on presentation,
portion sizes, creativity and taste. Organiza-
tion, cleanliness and technique were taken into
account as well. UMass tied with McGill at the
Feb. 8 event, but was then declared the winner
after the McGill team was docked marks for being 40 seconds late in plating their dishes.
“I told people we were doing an Iron Chef
and that it won’t be as exciting as you see on
TV. But I have to say the first 15 minutes were
almost exactly like television, just with students
who knew a little bit less about what they were
doing,” says chef Oliver de Volpi, who created
and organized the extracurricular event.
Teams had to create separate vegetarian and
non-vegetarian meals, including a starter, main
and dessert, in two hours. Mr. De Volpi threw a
curveball at the teams when he announced at
the start that five mystery ingredients had to be
worked into the recipes.
“We expected that, because before we’d had
an inter-residence competition with similar
rules,” says Priscilla Wang, a first-year biology
student and member of the McGill team. “We
kind of just made it work.”
This isn’t the end for the competition, says
Mr. de Volpi. Both UMass and U of T indicated
they’d like to host the tournament next year,
and Mr. de Volpi says he sees it expanding to
more than four teams. – cassandra hendry
Campus
Person / Place / Thing
New chair holder at U of Lethbridge says
gambling abuse similar to substance abuse
Entrepreneurs
Enseigner la création d’entreprise :
un modèle à revoir
l’université doit-elle revoir sa manière
d’enseigner la création d’entreprise? C’est la
question lancée par HEC Montréal et le
Centre d’entrepreneuriat ESG UQAM, qui
ont créé à quelques mois d’intervalle
deux programmes spécifiques destinés à
aider les étudiants ou les jeunes diplômés
de toutes les facultés à mettre le pied à l’étrier
de la création d’entreprises.
En janvier, le Parcours entrepreneurial
Rémi-Marcoux a accueilli sa première cohorte d’une dizaine d’étudiants venant de
HEC Montréal, de l’Université de Montréal
et de l’École Polytechnique de Montréal.
Lancée grâce à un don de 2,5 millions de dollars de Rémi Marcoux et de TC Transcontinental, cette formation s’échelonne sur 12 à
18 mois en complément du Baccalauréat
et s’appuie, au niveau pédagogique, sur
une proposition pratique renouvelée. « Il y a
actuellement un décalage entre les cours de
gestion, de finance et de marketing offerts
aux étudiants et les compétences nécessaires
sur le terrain de la création d’entreprises »,
explique Luis Cisneros, directeur du
Parcours Rémi-Marcoux.
Ce n’est d’ailleurs pas un hasard si, selon
lui, les meilleurs élèves des écoles de gestion
atterrissent plutôt dans des postes de cadres
dans des grosses entreprises qu’à la tête de la
leur. Ainsi, la qualité du réseau d’affaires, le
charisme, la créativité, la capacité à gérer le
stress, à avoir une vision globale, à savoir pro6 / www.universityaffairs.ca / April 2014
poser des événements et des initiatives sont
tout aussi importants, sinon plus, que les connaissances théoriques. Pour y répondre, le
Parcours prévoit entre autres des activités expérientielles comme des sauts en parachute,
des stages de survie en forêt, un stage de vente
et des voyages à l’étranger.
De son côté, le Centre d’entrepreneuriat
ESG UQAM accueille dès le mois de février
la deuxième cohorte de Mon entreprise
Sciences Techno,
un programme de « Il y a un décalage entre les
soutien à la création cours offerts aux étudiants et
les compétences nécessaires
d’entreprise desti- sur le terrain de la création
née aux jeunes dans d’entreprises. »
le domaine des
sciences et de la technologie. Comprenant
trois fins de semaine de développement d’un
plan d’affaires et des ateliers d’appoint, le programme se démarque par l’accompagnement
personnalisé de chaque projet d’entreprise.
Puisque « chaque projet est unique, différent », selon Julie Laporte, coordonnatrice
du programme, des conseillers en entrepreneuriat encadrent les jeunes dans toutes les
étapes de démarrage du projet, de l’idée
jusqu’à la recherche de financement, de la
mise en place de ses structures et des premières transactions. Le programme mise
également sur le réseautage et la visibilité
par des présentations devant des investisseurs potentiels, ainsi que des concours entrepreneuriaux. – assia kettani
the university of lethbridge is
adding to its already considerable
expertise in gambling research with the
addition of Darren Christensen, who arrived
on campus in January to take up the Alberta
Gambling Research Institute’s Chair in
Gambling, a five-year appointment. A native
of New Zealand, Dr. Christensen was most
recently a research fellow at the University
of Melbourne’s Problem Gambling Research
and Treatment Centre in Australia.
Dr. Christensen says what attracted him
to Lethbridge was the chance to work with
gambling researchers “who are well-known
internationally.” As well, being sponsored by
the Alberta Gambling Research Institute “is a
big positive,” he says. The institute is a consortium of the University of Lethbridge, University of Alberta and University of Calgary.
“What is exciting is that there are so
many collaborative opportunities here,”
he says. “It allows me the chance to work
with behavioural neuroscientists, addictions
counsellors and public health practitioners,
among others.”
Dr. Christensen says his research is
quite broad. “I look at the theoretical overlap between gambling and substance addiction generally. I’ve also been looking at
assessing and evaluating new treatments for
gambling,” he says, including behavioural
predictors of treatment outcomes.
The development of a gambling problem “to me, seems very similar to the development of a substance-use problem,” says
Dr. Christensen. Individuals may start to
gamble to escape the pressures of the day and
alter their mood, “similar to an experimentation phase with substance use.” Then, in later
stages, problem gamblers begin to show the
classic physiological symptoms of substance
abuse, including tolerance and withdrawal.
Dr. Christensen says he likes the public
messages in Canada about how gamblers
should know their limit and stick to it. “Although it might not stop a problem gambler
from gambling, it may at least give somebody pause,” he says. – léo charbonneau
Campus
PHOTO: DANIEL WOOD
Gambling expert Darren Christensen comes to Canada
from the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Campus
Surgery 101, now with Muppets!
Public awareness
Scavenger hunt promotes Ontario research
Overheard
‘‘
‘‘
I had never been so well-dressed in my life
and had never felt so hollow.
Michael Ignatieff, professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs
at the University of Toronto and former Liberal Party of Canada
leader, quoted from his book, Fire and Ashes: Success and
Failure in Politics.
8 / www.universityaffairs.ca / April 2014
Teaching
Professor’s Surgery 101 podcasts are
a huge hit
type “surgery 101” into a Google search and
at least the first 10 results that appear relate
to Professor Jonathan White’s Surgery 101
podcasts. It’s a testament to the worldwide
popularity of the online tutorials, which
collectively have been downloaded more
than 1.2 million times in 175 countries.
Dr. White, who holds the University of
Alberta’s Tom Williams Endowed Chair in
Surgical
Education, created the
“I’m 45 and here I am
first audio podcasts
playing with Lego and
Muppets. It’s a lot of fun.”
in 2008 with his
then senior resident Parveen Boora. The idea was to create
a simple study aid for their surgical students.
Dr. White posted the first few episodes
online and then basically forgot about them.
Months later, when he received an email
from Australia asking about future episodes,
he decided to check the stats: the podcasts
were being downloaded about 50 times a
day, with no marketing or advertising.
Encouraged, he and his team began to
produce additional episodes. Now, 130 audio podcasts are available for free download
at the website surgery101.org or on iTunes.
Users can also sign up to receive bonus content, including surgical notes, for a yearly fee
of $4.99. His efforts earned him the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Education in 2010, and just this past
February he was named a 2014 3M National
Teaching Fellow.
Impressive, but “we’re really only getting
started,” says Dr. White. Last summer, with the
help of two film students from the Northern
Alberta Institute of Technology, he developed
a number of video-based projects. The first,
called “Muppet Surgery,” was posted online
Jan. 1.
“Initially we thought we’d do something
like ‘Operations 101’ [in a live operating
theatre], but once we got the film students
involved, it took a different turn,” he says.
“We started talking about narratives and
storytelling, and how you make it not just
informative but immersive, too.
“I was worried about the whole thing,
but the Muppets were a hit,” he says. The
team has also produced several episodes of
stop-motion animation using Lego characters. “I’m 45 and here I am playing with Lego
and Muppets,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun.”
Dr. White is not concerned about running out of ideas for episodes. “There’s an
enormous amount of stuff we haven’t covered yet.” The time commitment, though, is
an issue. “I’d love to be able to hand it off to
somebody else. The problem is I still want to
have control over it because it’s kind of my
baby,” he says. “I’m going to have to stop doing this eventually, but I’m not at that point
yet.” – léo charbonneau
PHOTO COURTESY OF JONATHAN WHITE
a virtual scavenger hunt was held during
the month of February, inviting the public
to get a taste of the diverse research projects
under way at Ontario’s 21 publicly funded
universities. “Most people probably don’t
even know what’s going on and it’s exciting
stuff,” says Abby Goodrum, vice-president,
research, at Wilfrid Laurier University and
chair of the committee for Research Matters,
a public awareness campaign organized by
the Council of Ontario Universities.
Each weekday in February on COU’s Research Matters website, a new video clue from
one of the 21 universities was released that
discussed a specific researcher and their current project, says Stacy Costa, the fourth-year
anthropology and semiotics student at the
University of Toronto who created the contest.
Using the video, that particular university’s
website and a bit of deduction, players could
unlock a code word each day that would complete a final phrase at the end of the month.
Contestants could win daily and grand prizes,
including five $500 cash prizes reserved for
student participants. When choosing researchers to be featured in the puzzle, Ms. Costa said,
she picked people who were doing unique
work that anybody, not just other researchers,
could relate to. – cassandra hendry
CANADA’S THREE MINUTE THESIS
®
(3MT ) COMPETITION
ONE TAKE
NO PROPS
180 SECONDS
Sponsored by:
The challenge:
Master’s and PhD students are
invited to one of three regional
competitions to present their
research in an engaging and accessible way before a live audience.
Judges will choose two national
winners from videos of the nine
regional finalists. Public voting for
a People’s Choice winner begins
May 23, 2014 at www.cags.ca
Competitors are required to
register through their individual
institutions for local and regional
competitions.
Ontario:
McMaster University, April 24
Western Canada:
University of Calgary, May 2
Eastern Canada:
Dalhousie University, TBD
For more information and rules visit
www.cags.ca.
CAGS is also partnering with the
Association francophone pour le savoir
(ACFAS) to present a national francophone competition. This live event takes
place May 14 at Concordia University.
News. Careers. Ideas.
www.universityaffairs.ca
Super CERC me!
Choosing the right nominee for a prestigious
Canada Excellence Research Chair is a high-stakes
gamble for universities
by Mark Cardwell
Illustration by Denis
Carrier
Chaire recherche
chercheur
Choisir le bon candidat pour une prestigieuse
Chaire d’excellence en recherche du Canada est
un pari risqué pour une université
par Mark Cardwell
Illustration par Denis
Carrier
W
inter came early to much of Canada this year, but
weeks of bitter cold, snow and freezing rain haven’t
chilled Luda Diatchenko’s enthusiasm for life in
Montreal. “I’m from Moscow,” says the world-class
expert on the genetics of pain, who moved from
North Carolina in September to take up her duties
as holder of McGill University’s first Canada Excellence Research Chair, or CERC. “The winter is nothing new for me. And I love hockey, so this is great.”
A candidate’s willingness to live in a country
with severe winters was just one of the myriad factors to consider for the eight universities that were
awarded 11 CERCs in the second round of the so-called “super chair”
program in November 2012. As the deadline approached for those eight
universities to nominate prospective candidates, the pressure mounted
to identify world-class researchers who would come and stay for the
duration of the lucrative seven-year, federally funded positions.
Under the CERC program, approved nominees have a year to take
up their positions. If they fail to do so, or leave before the end of their
tenure, federal funding for the non-transferable, non-renewable chair
is withdrawn.
Universities that were awarded a CERC had until the end of February to nominate a candidate, although nothing prevented a university from nominating a candidate before the deadline. The nominations
were forwarded to a review panel for assessment and approval – a process that usually takes about two months, says a CERC spokesperson. At
the time University Affairs went to press, only Dr. Diatchenko had been
assessed, approved and appointed.
“It’s a very intense process,” says Yves De Koninck, a biochemist with
the department of psychiatry and neuroscience at Université Laval. He
and his brother, fellow Laval biochemist Paul De Koninck, spearheaded
the university’s successful effort to land a CERC in 2012 in neurophotonics, a field that harnesses the power of photonics to better understand disorders and diseases of the brain. It is the second CERC for the university,
which received one in the first round in 2010.
Laval’s CERC proposal was one of 46 submitted by 27 universities in
this latest round. Yves De Koninck likens his university’s successful bid
in this highly competitive process as akin to winning a bid to host the
Olympics. But, he says, the euphoria quickly waned once the daunting
task began of recruiting a nominee from among the three dozen people
they solicited directly and the two dozen others who were recommended
to them by experts in their field.
“It’s tough because you want to find someone senior who has established themselves so that the [assessment and review] panel will give the
green light, but young enough so that their best or good work is still ahead
of them,” notes Dr. De Koninck.
He adds that after shortlisting several potential candidates based on
their demonstrated research abilities at the leading edge of neurobiology,
the members of Laval’s recruitment panel then weighed “practical considerations” like timing and availability. “Eligible people are at different
stages in their careers,” explains Dr. De Koninck. “Some are involved in
major projects or are working in places where they want to stay for a few
more years. But this is a now-or-never opportunity.”
Then come “softer” issues like a potential candidate’s ability to speak
or learn French (considered a must for a place like Quebec City) or to
live in a cold-weather country like Canada. “The number one question
we keep asking ourselves about every potential candidate is, ‘Will this
person come here and stay?’” says Dr. De Koninck. “We can’t force them
to do either, and if they don’t come or stay, we have no recourse. This is a
one-shot deal, so you have to make sure you make the right bet.”
To be sure, the stakes are high for universities that decide to throw
their hat in the CERC ring. Created in 2008 as part of the federal Conservative government’s effort to strengthen Canada’s research advantage by
attracting the world’s best researchers in four fields – environmental sciences, natural resources and energy, health and related life sciences, and
information and communications technologies – the program provides
selected universities with up to $10 million over seven years for each
CERC hosted at their institution. The university also usually matches federal funding and attracts millions more from industry partners.
The CERC program “supports our commitment to ensuring Cana-
M
ême si, cette année, l’hiver est arrivé plus tôt que
d’habitude dans la majeure partie du Canada, le froid
mordant, la neige et la pluie verglaçante n’ont pas
refroidi l’enthousiasme de Luda Diatchenko à l’égard
de sa vie à Montréal. « Je suis originaire de Moscou »,
explique cette spécialiste de renommée mondiale de
la génétique de la douleur qui, en septembre dernier, a
quitté la Caroline du Nord pour devenir titulaire de la
première Chaire d’excellence en recherche du Canada
(CERC) de l’Université McGill. « L’hiver n’est pas une
nouveauté pour moi. Et comme j’adore le hockey, que
demander de mieux! »
La volonté des candidats de vivre dans un pays aux hivers rigoureux
n’était qu’un des nombreux facteurs évalués par les huit universités ayant
reçu 11 des « super » chaires pendant la deuxième phase du programme
des CERC en novembre 2012. À mesure qu’approchait la date d’échéance
de la période de sélection des candidats pour ces huit universités,
l’urgence de trouver des chercheurs de renommée mondiale qui accepteraient d’occuper pendant sept ans ces postes lucratifs financés par le
gouvernement fédéral se faisait de plus en plus sentir.
Les candidats retenus dans le cadre du programme des CERC ont
un an pour intégrer leurs fonctions. S’ils ne respectent pas cette exigence
ou quittent leur poste avant la fin de leur mandat, le financement non
transférable et non renouvelable accordé par le gouvernement pour leur
chaire est interrompu.
Le 28 février 2014 était la date limite de sélection des candidats par
les universités choisies. Les candidatures ont été envoyées à un comité
d’évaluation aux fins du processus d’évaluation et d’approbation, qui
dure normalement deux mois. Au moment de mettre sous presse ce
numéro d’Affaires universitaires, seule la candidature de Mme Diatchenko
avait été évaluée et approuvée.
« Le processus est très intense », affirme Yves De Koninck, biochimiste au Département de psychiatrie et de neurosciences de l’Université
Laval. Aidé de son frère, Paul De Koninck, lui aussi biochimiste à
l’Université Laval, il a supervisé les efforts déployés avec succès par
l’Université pour d’obtenir une CERC 2012 en neurophotonique, un
domaine qui exploite la puissance de la photonique pour mieux comprendre les troubles et les maladies du cerveau. L’Université avait déjà
reçu une CERC pendant la première phase du programme en 2010.
La proposition soumise par l’Université Laval était l’une des 46 soumises par 27 universités pendant la plus récente phase du programme
des CERC. Yves De Koninck compare la réussite de son université dans
le cadre de ce processus très concurrentiel au fait d’obtenir le titre de
ville hôte des Jeux olympiques. Il ajoute toutefois que l’euphorie s’est
rapidement estompée dès qu’il a fallu sélectionner le candidat parmi la
trentaine de personnes sollicitées directement par son Université et la
vingtaine d’autres recommandées par des spécialistes du domaine.
« Ce qui est difficile, c’est de trouver quelqu’un qui est à la fois expérimenté et renommé, mais assez jeune pour avoir un avenir prometteur,
afin d’obtenir le feu vert du comité [d’évaluation international du programme des CERC] », explique M. De Koninck.
Il ajoute qu’après avoir présélectionné plusieurs candidats en fonction de leurs capacités en recherche neurobiologique de pointe, les membres de l’équipe de recrutement de l’Université Laval ont évalué certains
aspects pratiques comme le moment de l’entrée en poste et la disponibilité. « Les candidats en sont à différentes étapes de leur carrière, explique
M. De Koninck, participent à des projets importants ou ne souhaitent pas
quitter leur lieu de travail avant quelques années. Mais une telle occasion
à saisir est rare. »
D’autres aspects moins importants sont également à considérer,
comme le fait de parler ou d’apprendre le français (un impératif à
Québec) ou à vivre dans un pays froid comme le Canada. « Le point central est de savoir si le candidat acceptera de venir ici et d’y rester, affirme
M. De Koninck. Il ne s’agit pas d’une obligation. En cas de refus de ces
conditions, nous n’avons aucun recours. Nous devons viser dans le mille
du premier coup. »
La barre est haute pour les universités qui participent au programme
des CERC. Créé en 2008 par le gouvernement fédéral conservateur en
vue de renforcer l’avantage du Canada en matière de recherche en attirant les chercheurs les plus réputés au monde dans quatre domaines – les
sciences environnementales, les ressources naturelles et l’énergie, les sciences de la santé et de la vie, et les technologies de l’information et des
communications – le programme verse aux universités choisies jusqu’à
10 millions de dollars sur une période de sept ans pour chaque chaire
qu’elles hébergent. Ces universités versent habituellement un financement de contrepartie équivalent et reçoivent des millions de dollars supplémentaires de la part de partenaires de l’industrie.
Le programme des CERC « soutient l’engagement du gouvernement
envers la croissance économique du Canada en investissant dans
l’innovation et la recherche au profit de secteurs prioritaires », affirmait
en mai 2010 Tony Clement, ministre de l’Industrie de l’époque, lors
d’une cérémonie de bienvenue organisée à l’Université de Toronto pour
Frederick Roth, biologiste de l’Université Harvard, et Oliver Ernst,
neurobiologiste allemand, deux des premiers titulaires des 19 chaires
attribuées pendant la première phase du programme.
Le ministre a toutefois omis de mentionner qu’un des candidats retenus, un chercheur européen spécialiste de la douleur courtisé pour occuper une CERC à l’Université McGill, s’était finalement désisté. C’est la
raison pour laquelle 19 chaires plutôt que 20 ont été annoncées à ce moment-là. « Le candidat choisi avait obtenu une chaire, mais son employeur
« Nous devons viser dans
le mille du premier coup. »
“This is a one-shot deal,
so you have to make sure
you make the right bet.”
da’s future economic growth by investing in innovation and research
capacity in priority areas,” said then-Industry Minister Tony Clement in
May 2010 at a welcoming ceremony at the University of Toronto for
Harvard biologist Frederick Roth and German neurobiologist Oliver
Ernst, two of the 19 CERCs awarded in the first round.
The minister failed to mention, however, that one of the approved
nominees – a European pain researcher who had been courted to fill a
CERC awarded to McGill in the first round – had informed the university that he would not be coming. That’s why there were 19 CERCs announced at the time, instead of an even 20. “The selected candidate was
awarded a chair, but his institution in Europe was determined to retain
him and outbid the CERC program,” says Fernando Cervero, director of
McGill University’s Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain.
Then the CERC program suffered another setback, this time more
publicly. The University of Alberta was considered the big winner in
the first round, having landed four of the $10-million chairs. However,
one of the four chair holders, world-renowned diabetes researcher Patrick Rorsman, forfeited his position after only seven months on the job
and returned to Oxford University. In addition to immigration issues for
some of his research staff and family complications, Dr. Rorsman blamed
Alberta’s weather for his decision to leave.
“[Edmonton] is quite a nice place and the university is also ambitious,
but they suffer from the climate,” Dr. Rorsman told the National Post in
November 2012. “A lot of the people I would be interested in recruiting
from other places would hesitate to move to Edmonton,” he said. “So basically you are left with people who are local and maybe from surrounding
areas, which is not bad but it’s good to have some influx of talent from
other places as well.”
Though disappointed by the British researcher’s departure, a U of A
spokesperson notes that the three other CERCs named in 2010 are still
in place and are making “excellent progress.” For her part, the executive
director of the CERC program downplays both the impact and import of
Dr. Rorsman’s decision to leave. “We do an extremely robust peer-review
exercise and evaluate nominees to ensure they are at the very highest
level in their field, but if someone doesn’t respect their commitment to
come and stay there’s nothing we can do,” says Michèle Boutin. “And
when you are dealing with so many people over a seven-year period, you
can’t expect to keep everyone happy.”
For the universities that have been awarded CERCs, concern about
whether or not nominees will come and stay is lessened by the extensive legwork that was put into the application process. “Getting your
federal ‘hunting license’ to go looking for a star researcher depends on
two prior steps: building consensus that this is an area where we have
strength, and distilling your arguments when making the presenta14 / www.universityaffairs.ca / April 2014
tion to the CERC panel,” says Wade MacLauchlan, past president of the
University of Prince Edward Island. For Dr. MacLauchlan, who was
deeply involved with UPEI’s successful bid to get a CERC in aquatic
epidemiology in 2010, “making a logical case for a CERC helps to create
an organic path to how you identify your candidate.” That path led to
Ian Gardner of the University of California Davis, a world-class expert
in the health of fish stocks, who is now working at UPEI’s internationally
renowned Atlantic Veterinary College.
Dr. Gardner, he adds, was part of an “intimate group” of animal and
fish epidemiologists who knew each other through symposiums and
summer research projects and group meetings. “Scientifically, we were
looking for someone in terms of supporting a cluster of skill sets and
disciplines (and) how their research fits in with what we’re doing,”
recalls Dr. MacLauchlan. “Then you get into leadership and personal
skills. With Ian, we had some insights into his person and where he was
in his career, and we felt he was a good fit.”
As for Dr. Gardner’s willingness to move to tiny, remote Prince
Edward Island, Dr. MacLaughlan responds: “People in that kind of work
don’t expect to be living in a big city. Their colleagues and team members
tend to live in coastal areas.”
McGill’s Dr. Cervero says finding a candidate who would be happy to live in Montreal was front and centre in the minds of selection
committee members who eventually settled on Dr. Diatchenko. “For the
second CERC process, we concentrated on selecting a candidate that, as
well as meeting all expectations of quality and excellence, was also likely
to move to McGill University, thus avoiding the final pitfall of the first
CERC process,” he says.
In addition to being a world-class expert in human pain genetics,
Dr. Diatchenko “had an established research collaboration with members of the pain research community at McGill, and appreciated and respected the quality of the research at McGill and was keen to come,” says
Dr. Cervero. “We therefore managed to identify a superb candidate that
was perfectly suited to enhance an already strong research program.”
For her part, Dr. Diatchenko, who moved to the U.S. from Russia
in 1994 and spent seven years at a private lab in Palo Alto, California,
before taking an academic position at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill, the move to McGill is a match made in heaven. “For me
it was not a difficult decision to come here, in fact the timing was perfect
in both my professional and personal lives,” she says.
“Montreal is a lovely, vibrant, elegant and beautiful city. And I love
the fact that I am now working at one of the top pain research centres
in the world. I know that I can leave anytime. But I don’t want to – and I
hope they don’t ask me to.”
européen a tout fait pour le retenir en lui faisant une offre supérieure à
la nôtre », raconte Fernando Cervero, directeur du Centre Alan-Edwards
de recherche sur la douleur de l’Université McGill.
Le programme des CERC a ensuite essuyé un autre revers, cette fois
sur la scène publique. L’Université de l’Alberta, hôte de quatre des chaires
de 10 millions de dollars, était considérée comme la grande gagnante de
la première phase du programme. Puis, un des quatre titulaires de ces
chaires, Patrick Rorsman, chercheur de renommée mondiale spécialiste
du diabète, a démissionné pour retourner à l’Université d’Oxford après
seulement sept mois. En plus des problèmes d’immigration de certains
membres de son équipe et de difficultés familiales, M. Rorsman a indiqué
que les conditions climatiques de l’Alberta ont constitué un motif déterminant à son départ.
« [Edmonton] est une ville plutôt agréable et l’Université a de grandes
ambitions, mais le climat y est rude, a expliqué M. Rorsman au National
Post en novembre 2012. Plusieurs des personnes que j’aurais aimé recruter hésitaient à déménager à Edmonton, poursuit-il. Ne restent donc
que les personnes originaires de la ville ou des environs, ce qui n’est pas
un problème en soi, mais il est aussi utile de profiter du talent de gens
venus d’ailleurs. »
Même si le départ du chercheur britannique a constitué une grande
déception, le porte-parole de l’Université de l’Alberta souligne que les
trois autres titulaires de chaire nommés en 2010 occupent toujours leur
poste et font « d’excellents progrès ». Pour sa part, la directrice générale
du programme des CERC minimise les répercussions du départ de
M. Rorsman. « Nous suivons un processus très strict d’examen par les
pairs et évaluons les candidats afin de nous assurer qu’ils comptent parmi
les meilleurs de leur domaine, mais nous ne pouvons les forcer à aller
au bout de leur engagement, explique Michèle Boutin. Nous devons
nous occuper de nombreuses personnes pendant sept ans : nous ne pouvons donc pas nous attendre à un taux de satisfaction total. »
Pour les universités qui ont obtenu des CERC, les préoccupations
liées à la volonté des candidats de s’établir ici sont atténuées par les démarches laborieuses qu’elles ont dû entreprendre dans le cadre du processus de demande. « Le permis de recrutement d’un chercheur-vedette
est accordé une fois que deux étapes préliminaires ont été franchies : atteindre un consensus sur notre expertise de pointe dans le secteur concerné et présenter nos arguments devant le comité d’évaluation des
CERC », affirme Wade MacLauchlan, ancien recteur de l’Université de
l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard.
Selon M. MacLauchlan, qui a joué un rôle actif dans le succès de la
demande de CERC en épidémiologie aquatique déposée par l’Université
de l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard en 2010, « le fait de détenir des arguments
irréfutables en vue de l’obtention d’une CERC oriente naturellement le
mode de sélection d’un candidat ». C’est de cette façon que son université
a recruté Ian Gardner, spécialiste de calibre mondial de la santé des
stocks de poissons de l’Université de Californie (Davis). Celui-ci travaille
maintenant au Collège vétérinaire de l’Atlantique de l’Université de l’Îledu-Prince-Édouard, qui jouit d’une renommée internationale.
Il ajoute que M. Gardner faisait partie d’un « petit groupe » d’épidémiologistes s’intéressant aux animaux et aux poissons qui se côtoyaient
à l’occasion de colloques, de projets de recherche estivaux et de réunions
de groupe. « Sur le plan scientifique, nous étions à la recherche d’un
candidat aux compétences bien précises dans certaines disciplines et
dont les travaux de recherche cadraient avec les nôtres, se souvient
M. MacLauchlan. Nous nous sommes ensuite attardés au leadership et
aux compétences personnelles. Nous connaissions assez bien M. Gardner
et son évolution professionnelle. Nous avions donc l’impression qu’il
était un bon candidat. »
En ce qui concerne la volonté de M. Gardner de déménager sur la
lointaine et minuscule Île-du-Prince-Édouard, M. MacLaughlan affirme
que « les spécialistes de ce champ de recherche ne s’attendent pas à vivre
dans une grande ville. Leurs collègues et les membres de leur équipe
vivent souvent dans les zones côtières. »
Du côté de l’Université McGill, M. Cervero indique que la recherche
d’un candidat qui serait heureux de vivre à Montréal était au cœur des
priorités des membres du comité de sélection, qui a finalement arrêté son
choix sur Mme Diatchenko. « Pour la deuxième phase du programme des
CERC, nous avons axé nos efforts sur la sélection d’un candidat qui, en
plus de répondre à toutes nos attentes en matière de qualité et d’excellence
en recherche, serait enclin à venir à l’Université McGill, et ce, dans le but
d’éviter les problèmes qui se sont manifestés au cours de la première
phase », explique-t-il.
En plus d’être une spécialiste mondialement reconnue de la génétique de la douleur humaine, Mme Diatchenko « entretenait une collaboration avec les membres du milieu de la recherche de l’Université McGill.
Elle appréciait et respectait la qualité de leurs travaux et était emballée à
l’idée de se joindre à eux, raconte M. Cervero. Nous avons donc réussi à
trouver une candidate exceptionnelle, parfaitement outillée pour améliorer un programme de recherche déjà excellent. »
Selon Mme Diatchenko, qui a quitté la Russie en 1994 afin de s’installer
aux États-Unis pour travailler dans un laboratoire privé de Palo Alto, en
Californie, avant d’obtenir un poste de professeure à l’Université de la
Caroline du Nord à Chapel Hill, sa nomination à l’Université McGill
tombait à point. « La décision de venir ici a été facile à prendre pour moi.
En fait, le moment était parfaitement choisi aussi bien dans ma vie professionnelle que personnelle », explique-t-elle.
« Montréal est une belle ville à la fois agréable, vivante et raffinée. Je
suis également emballée à l’idée de travailler pour l’un des meilleurs centres de recherche sur la douleur dans le monde. Je sais que je peux partir
n’importe quand. Mais je n’en ai pas envie – et j’espère qu’on ne me demandera pas de le faire non plus. »
05-Q2 283,570 32,840 14,110 10,340 340,860 330,920/2005-Q3 322,520 37,040 15,730 11,59
6,900/ 2005-Q4 319,370 34,530 16,130 ST QW 11,670 381,700 367,610/2006-Q1 283,620 26,
320 334,680 FJGH D 397,540/SLKJDF SLF GO 2006-Q2 350,020 38,350 17,730 EKCO 13,170
404,840/LSKDJG 2006-Q3 384,790 SKDJF SK 40,150 19,090 13,120 457,150 425,770/FKFJG 2
386,280 39,070 EIJ 20,280 13,720 FKG SL 2 SLK459,350 439,740/2007-Q1 312,110 28,670 15
6,940 439,970/2007-Q2 357,710 40,810 17,990 11,730 428,240 415,550/2007-Q3 374,700 41
BM SLDK 18,510 8,680 4,930 408,390/2007-Q4 316,990 36,690 16,390 5,630 SEKF 375,700
4,590/2008-Q1 207,140 FLK DH JFLK 24,800 10,160 DLF 3,840 245,940 SF GFDDFG 295,380/
6,750 SD 30,110 11,560 4,280 262,700 WKJFATAQ SK GG 258,220/2008-Q3 171,290 22,500 SL
960 205,450 188,480/2008-Q4 155,750 18,9508,430 2,980 186,110 174,660 SJKD HF/2009-Q
430 6,340 23LK0 JA LKDF2,570 141,800 171,030/S GKD 2009-Q2 167,270 17,530 8,700 3,590
7,090 193,060/2009-Q3 210,100 20,110 10,100 4,080 2OP POI 44,390 223,650/2009-Q4 237
350 4,560 KE POHJWN 275,070 259,760/2010-Q1 SLKDJF155,840 SP3O C 14,100 7,430 3,060
610/2010-Q2 193,700 19,480 9,830 3,790 226,800 SLKDJ SLD DJF 223,970/D DKJ DK 2010DFGH 0,630 9,950 3,930 lL KJ247,860 227,440/2010-Q4 LDK 198,110 18,910 10,050 3,610 LK
0,680 211,010/SLDK EK S 2011-Q1 150,000 LKDJF 13,120 7,400 2,860 173,380 214,030/2011-Q
3,020 18,130 9,110 3,370 MBNV D 213,630 211,950/2011-Q3 218,580 DKF 20,820 DDJ SLW 10,
3,890 227,100/SLKJLK 2011-Q4 210,540 18,670 DJF DK 10 750 3,930 243,890 230,770/2012
K 15,470 8,520 3,530 209,550 247,010/2012-Q2 191,140 19,320 9,660 3,580 223,700 221,930
3,130 19,430 10,100 RKG D 4,050 246,710 227,730/2012-Q4 217,500 19,610 11,000 4,410 252,5
5,120/2013-Q1 SLD DK IW77,490 15,360 3,710 205,000 SKE 245,220/2013-Q2 R 217,650 21,83
260 254,520 253,660/2013-Q3 R 256,450 23,860 12,200 5,110 297,620 273,770/2013-Q4 P 27
510 5,610 320,370 298,570/2005-Q2 27,780 2,400 1,520 1,350 33,050 32,870/2005-Q3 28,6
90 1,230 33,900 8,440 234,200/2005-Q4 27,830 2,5901,560 1,280 33,260 32,860 2006-Q1 2
2,750 1,520 1,200 33,930 33,530/RIKFN 4 N98GH 2006-Q2 28,120 2,580 SKDJF DKD SL 4 1,6
,720 33,750/2006-Q3 27,250 2,530 1,470 FKE 1,150 32,400 33,570/2006-Q4 29,190 3,020 1,7
Making sense of vast amounts of data is
rapidly becoming the new currency for research,
government and commerce
by John
Lorinc
THE
RISE
OF
BIG
DATA
N
ot long after dalhousie university launched its Institute for
Big Data Analytics last year, the new research unit struck up an
innovative partnership with the Department of Foreign Affairs,
Trade and Development and an Ottawa-based firm, GSTS. The
goal, says Stan Matwin, a computer scientist and the Dalhousie
institute’s director, is to sift through massive amounts of satellite data on ship movements as a way of analyzing typical and
atypical trajectories of large freighters and other sea-bound
vessels. Since satellites gather about four million readings per day, says
Dr. Matwin, “This, by definition, is a big-data problem.”
If scientists can use the data to develop models for normal ship movements along a particular ocean route, they will be in a better position to
identify ships that are travelling erratically – due to inclement weather,
for example, or for more nefarious reasons like piracy. Coast guard agencies can use the information to deploy security vessels or assist ships navigating into busy ports of call, explains Dr. Matwin. It’s an exciting oppor-
tunity, he says, for the institute’s data scientists and graduate students to
apply sophisticated technical solutions to real-world problems.
Such undertakings reveal a sharp uptick in interest – among both academics and their students – in big-data research at universities in Canada
and around the world. Computer science faculties have been teaching
and researching very technical topics related to database management,
data mining and machine learning for many years, but the potential of
big data and its applications go well beyond these bounds.
Indeed, with dramatic increases in computing power and the exponential growth in the amount of data being collected, many universities
are connecting sophisticated big-data analytics with applications in areas
such as business, health care and public policy. In some institutions, like
the University of Toronto, these connections are emerging organically
through interdisciplinary research teams. In others – Dalhousie, as well
as Ryerson University, Simon Fraser University and the University of
Calgary – administrators are responding to mounting student and industry
Managing and understanding data sets
that contain so many types of information
represents an entirely different
sort of analysis from more traditional
research approaches.
12KEJ
1CF70
demand by establishing specialized big-data departments, courses, degrees
and external partnership arrangements. Some of these institutions have
nominated candidates for Canada Research Chairs in big-data analytics
research; Dalhousie’s Dr. Matwin holds one of the first such posts.
With all this interest in big-data analytics, it appears to have reached
a tipping point – or an “inflection point,” as Tamer Özsu puts it. Dr. Özsu,
a University of Waterloo professor of computer science, compares the
surge in interest to the explosion in genomics research in the early part
of this century.
Funding agencies are taking note. In the United States, says Dr. Özsu,
the Obama administration has made big-data research a priority. There’s
no comparable program here, but Canada’s three major research granting
agencies – the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health
Research plus the Canada Foundation for Innovation – released a consultation document asking for feedback on the components of a granting
program that would support research into the management of big data.
As the document notes, “The focus of data analysis is rapidly shifting to embrace not simply technical development but also new ways of
thinking about social, economic and cultural expression and behaviour.
Indeed, innovative information and communications technologies are
enabling the transformation of the fabric of society itself, as data becomes
the new currency for research, education, government and commerce.”
Despite its potential, there is no generally agreed-upon definition for
what is big data, a catch-all phrase that seems to apply to a very broad
range of information. Wikipedia defines it as “a collection of data sets
so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand
database management tools or traditional data processing applications.”
Some examples of big data include the torrent of GPS signals emitted
by cell phones, the transaction records that accumulate in the servers of
companies with busy e-commerce sites, or the enormous amount of keyboard strokes from workplace computers to monitor, perhaps, employee
performance. As Wikipedia notes, managing and understanding data sets
that contain so many types of information represents an entirely different sort of analysis from more traditional research approaches.
In fact, standard statistical tools may not generate meaningful predictions because samples that appear to be large by conventional research
standards may represent only a tiny slice of the overall data set. Programmers may be able to gather and analyze tens of thousands of tweets on
Twitter, for example, but these may account for a mere fraction of the
total, thus limiting generalizations about the data.
Because of this, says Dr. Özsu of U of Waterloo, data experts focus
on the four Vs – volume, velocity, variety and validity – when they work
with big data. Volume refers to the amount of data; variety to the number
of types of data; velocity to the speed of data processing; and validity (or
sometimes “veracity”) to the uncertainty of data.
By definition, then, there is a great deal of data in many different
formats, and the programming tools must be capable of analyzing them
quickly and accurately. In some cases, the information may be extremely
heterogeneous – a vast soup that can include snippets of text and images
and all sorts of background noise.
To begin to explain the patterns involves techniques to categorize the
types of data and tools to “clean” databases of extraneous information.
Periklis Andritsos, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s
faculty of information, says one useful tool he uses measures connections between data points that aren’t numerical in nature – for example,
the frequency with which certain words or names come up in relation
to other search phrases. These analytical methods can be used in a wide
range of contexts. “Everywhere you see data,” he says, “you see opportunities for these applications.”
The world of finance is one important area. Dennis Kira, a professor
of supply chain and business technology management at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, says different applications exist for fields like credit-card fraud detection, equity trading and forensic
accounting, with systems designed to sift through billions of transactions
and look for anomalies. “That’s why the banks are really gung-ho,” says
Dr. Kira, who has taught a data-mining course for five years for finance,
marketing and management students. “It’s like looking for a needle in a
haystack,” but with the new applications “you know it when you see it.”
Not surprisingly, most universities that have moved to establish
big-data programs have done so with industry partnerships. Besides the
marine project, Dalhousie in 2011 established a $7-million relationship
between its computer science department and Boeing Co. to research aviation safety by mining and assessing the reams of data produced by every
120-Q4
7,400
“Students from fields such as engineering,
architecture and the social sciences are
excellent at figuring out what stories the
data is telling.”
aircraft. The institute has also embarked on an environmental monitoring project with the World Wildlife Fund.
Ryerson University has partnered with OMERS Ventures and the
Ontario Centres of Excellence to launch a technology-oriented accelerator known as One Eleven, says Mohamed Lachemi, the university’s
vice-president, academic. Based in a Google Canada facility in downtown
Toronto, it will provide space and facilities to entrepreneurs with startup ventures related to big data. Besides hiring two research chairs and
establishing a master’s program in big data, Ryerson plans to seek senate
approval to offer a certificate in big-data analytics through the Chang
School of Continuing Studies.
Dr. Lachemi recently found himself discussing the potential of using
big-data analytical techniques with an administrator at a Toronto hospital. “They don’t necessarily have the infrastructure to do this,” he says. “If
we create a platform with people from all different disciplines around
the table, we can address problems in a better way.”
Meanwhile, research teams at U of T, University of California Berkeley and New York University’s Centre for Urban Science and Progress,
or CUSP, are looking at using repositories of “urban informatics” – from
311 service calls to real-time traffic-sensor signals to energy-consumption
levels of buildings – to develop models that help decision makers deploy
resources more efficiently and make large-scale infrastructure investments. Research of this kind may help answer the question of how to
improve urban quality of life.
CUSP will offer graduate degrees in urban data science and will
sponsor research that uses the city itself as both a lab and a source of
raw material. One team at the centre will deploy sensitive sound-detection equipment around Manhattan to develop topographical maps of
the city’s infamous noise levels. Aristides Patrinos, CUSP’s deputy director for research, says the analysis could be used to develop strategies to
mitigate noise pollution in residential areas and around schools. “These
[measures] are not huge leaps of faith,” he says.
Many students are drawn to the field of big data because it offers
them a chance to get involved in an emerging knowledge-intensive profession. When it launched its master’s program on big data, Simon Fraser University cited a 2011 McKinsey Global Institute study that projects
huge demand for people with skills in big-data management and analysis.
By 2018, the study said, there could be a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000
workers in a field the Globe and Mail described as the “fastest-growing job
market you’ve never heard of.”
Dr. Matwin agrees that many doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows drawn to Dalhousie’s Institute for Big Data Analytics are looking to
equip themselves with skills that will be in high demand in the future.
To that end, Dalhousie, as well as Université de Montréal, are developing
proposals for a master’s program in big-text data as well as an undergraduate computer science degree with a specialization in big data. SFU,
meanwhile, recently announced that its school of computing science is
offering a new, four-semester professional master’s program in big data
starting this fall.
Universities are marketing these programs as interdisciplinary in nature. Dalhousie’s big-data students can work on applications in business
or medicine. In U of T’s information faculty, the students are about evenly
split between those who want to learn the technical elements and those
who are interested in its potential applications, says Dr. Andritsos. These
students, from fields such as engineering, architecture and the social sciences, “are excellent at figuring out what stories the data is telling.” Some,
he says, want to pursue academic research and some want to get involved
with start-up companies.
What’s clear is that the big-data skills that students acquire through
these programs are increasingly valuable outside academia. Dr. Matwin
says the practical experience Dalhousie’s new institute can provide is extremely important for the growing private- and public-sector jobs that
rely on the analytical skills the students are learning. “We are working to
meet the demand,” he says.
John Lorinc is a Toronto-based journalist who frequently writes about urban issues.
Sommaire de l’article « The Rise of Big Data » débutant à la page 16.
L’EXPLOSION DE
MÉGADONNÉES
Interpréter de vastes quantités de données : la nouvelle
monnaie pour les chercheurs, les gouvernements
et les commerces
par John
peu de temps après son lancement par l’Université Dalhousie l’année
dernière, le nouveau Institute for Big Data Analytics a scellé un partenariat
avec le ministère des Affaires étrangères, Commerce et Développement et
l’entreprise GSTS d’Ottawa. Selon Stan Matwin, directeur de l’Institut,
l’objectif est d’explorer une immense quantité de données satellites sur les
mouvements des navires en mer afin d’analyser leurs trajectoires typiques
et atypiques. Les satellites produisent environ quatre millions de relevés
par jour, ce qui, « par définition, engendre un problème de gestion des
mégadonnées », affirme M. Matwin.
Les données recueillies aideront les scientifiques à créer des modèles
sur les mouvements normaux des navires le long de routes maritimes
données et donc à repérer ceux qui se déplacent de façon imprévisible, à
cause du mauvais temps ou, plus tristement, de la piraterie. M. Matwin
ajoute que les agences de garde côtière peuvent utiliser ces renseignements pour envoyer des navires de sécurité ou apporter leur soutien pour
la navigation vers des ports d’escale très fréquentés.
Ces projets témoignent de l’intérêt accru des professeurs universitaires
et de leurs étudiants pour la recherche sur les mégadonnées au Canada
et ailleurs dans le monde. Les professeurs d’informatique enseignent et étudient depuis longtemps les aspects techniques de la gestion des bases de
données, de l’exploration de données et de l’apprentissage automatique,
mais les mégadonnées ont un potentiel bien plus vaste.
Les administrateurs de certains établissements répondent à la demande croissante des étudiants et de l’industrie en créant des départements de mégadonnées ainsi que des cours, des diplômes et des ententes
de partenariat en la matière. Tamer Özsu, professeur d’informatique à
l’Université de Waterloo, compare la brusque popularité du sujet à
l’explosion de la recherche en génomique au début des années 2000.
Il affirme qu’aux États-Unis, l’administration Obama a fait de la recherche sur les mégadonnées une priorité. Aucun programme comparable n’existe au Canada, mais les organismes subventionnaires fédéraux se
sont déjà renseignés sur les éléments d’un programme de subventions qui
appuierait la recherche sur la gestion des mégadonnées.
Le terme mégadonnées n’ayant pas de définition établie, il est utilisé à
toutes les sauces pour décrire un ensemble d’information très vaste. Selon
Wikipédia, il s’agit d’un ensemble de données volumineux et complexe qui
s’avère de plus en plus difficile à traiter avec les outils actuels de gestion de
base de données et les applications de traitement de données habituelles.
Prenons l’exemple du déluge de signaux GPS émis par les téléphones cellulaires et des relevés de transaction qui s’accumulent sur les
serveurs de populaires boutiques électroniques. Pour comprendre ces
ensembles de données de types tellement variés, une toute nouvelle
forme d’analyse est requise.
Lorinc
En fait, les outils statistiques standard peuvent échouer à générer des
prédictions significatives parce que des échantillons volumineux selon les
normes de recherche classiques ne représentent peut-être qu’une infime
portion de l’ensemble complet des données. À titre d’exemple, même si
des programmeurs sont en mesure d’analyser des dizaines de milliers de
gazouillis sur Twitter, ceux-ci constituent un échantillon si limité qu’il ne
permet aucune généralisation au sujet des données.
Par conséquent, il existe un grand nombre de données sous de nombreux formats différents, et les outils de programmation doivent permettre de les analyser rapidement et efficacement. Dans certains cas,
l’information peut rappeler une énorme bouillie de fragments de texte et
d’images et de toutes sortes de bruits de fond. Pour arriver à en dégager
des tendances, il faut avoir recours à des techniques de catégorisation des
types de données et éliminer les parasites à l’aide d’outils.
Le monde de la finance constitue un secteur clé de l’univers des mégadonnées. Selon Dennis Kira, professeur à l’École de commerce John Molson
de l’Université Concordia, les grandes banques s’intéressent beaucoup,
entre autres, aux différentes applications disponibles dans les domaines
de la détection des fraudes par carte de crédit, de la négociation d’actions
et de la comptabilité judiciaire. « Trouver l’information voulue, c’est comme chercher une aiguille dans une botte de foin, affirme-t-il. Les nouvelles
applications facilitent donc les choses. »
La plupart des universités qui sont allées de l’avant en créant un programme sur les mégadonnées l’ont fait en partenariat avec l’industrie. En
plus de son projet sur les mouvements maritimes, l’Université Dalhousie
étudie la sécurité aérienne en partenariat avec Boeing Co. et travaille sur
un projet de surveillance environnementale avec le Fonds mondial pour
la nature. Des équipes de l’Université de Toronto, de l’Université de
Californie à Berkeley et de l’Université de New York s’intéressent à la
possibilité d’utiliser les répertoires de banques de données urbaines pour
créer des modèles qui aideront les décideurs à déployer leurs ressources
plus efficacement et à faire des investissements à grande échelle dans
l’infrastructure.
De nombreux étudiants sont attirés par l’étude des mégadonnées,
parce qu’elle leur donne la chance de participer à l’émergence d’une profession axée sur le savoir. En conséquence, l’Université Dalhousie,
l’Université Simon Fraser et l’Université de Montréal offrent un programme de maîtrise sur les mégadonnées de texte et un grade de premier
cycle en informatique avec spécialisation en mégadonnées. Leurs premiers étudiants seront admis à l’automne prochain. Il va sans dire que les
connaissances sur les mégadonnées qu’ils acquerront seront de plus en
plus utiles à l’extérieur du milieu universitaire.
THE
ASSOCIATE
When he was a wet-behind-the-ears assistant professor,
Alan MacEachern delighted our readers with his witty take on how
the university works in “The Academic Alphabet.”
Now a world-weary associate professor, Alan hopes his new
column, “The Associate,” will spur him to personal reinvention.
Hang on for the journey!
Follow “The Associate” in every second issue
– and always online at universityaffairs.ca
News.
Careers. Ideas.
How two course designers launched
their university’s first-ever interdisciplinary
undergraduate course – and gave students
the intellectual ride of their lives
by Moira
MacDonald
Photography by Luis Albuquerque
was an appropriately messy theme for Nipissing University’s first interdisciplinary undergraduate course in the spring of 2013: Dirt.
Dirt as in soil and how to clean it up after
industrial contamination. People who are considered worse than dirt, making them marks
for genocide. “Dirty” desires. The landscape of
human interaction with dirt as exemplified in
a cholera map of 1850s London. Urban dirt and
the advent and politics of sewage systems. Dirt
that students could dig their hands in at a sustainable food garden.
Such an attempt to link the perhaps far-flung dots between Bram
Stoker’s Dracula and Sudbury’s smelter-impacted landscape, while also
coordinating the efforts and expertise of 10 faculty members from eight
disciplines across the arts and sciences, might seem like an invitation to
chaos. But it is the sort of intellectual hodgepodge that Nipissing interdisciplinarians Sal Renshaw and Renee Valiquette revel in, and one that
they had hoped to bring their students into as well.
“We had long thought that a course taught by many faculty members
could be successful,” says Dr. Renshaw who, like Ms. Valiquette, teaches
in gender equality and social justice/philosophy at the three-campus university, based in North Bay, Ontario.
“People have shown reticence in the past about questions such as
‘How do you get coherence?’” she explains. “That was probably the biggest obstacle: How can this be anything other than a whole bunch of people doing a version of whatever their perspective might be on a topic?”
But the pair knew that with the right coordination, that concern could
be overcome. When the call came in early 2013 from the interim arts and
science dean for ideas to expand the faculty’s options for undergraduate
breadth courses (that is, courses outside of a student’s major program of
study) in the coming spring term, they spied their opportunity.
Dirt, created in a mere eight weeks, “exceeded all our expectations,”
says Ms. Valiquette.
Interdisciplinarity thrives on the messiness of the world and the multitude of approaches that try to make sense of it. At its most basic, it is the
collaboration of two or more disciplines in pursuit of answers to a broader
question. In practice, it challenges the notion that the world will obediently
conform to intellectual labels and systems of knowledge, and it seeks to
integrate different disciplined modes of thinking to produce new knowledge. That makes it particularly well-suited to “wicked problems”: dilemmas that defy solutions because of their complexity and changing nature.
“When you’re studying in an interdisciplinary context, you’re not in
a process of learning something that has already been figured out,” says
Ms. Valiquette, who usually teaches at Nipissing’s Muskoka campus but
travelled to its main North Bay campus to deliver Dirt. “You are exploring
something that needs to be figured out still. And you are being invited to
be a participant in the figuring out.”
Throwing second-year students from business, accounting, English,
geography and psychology into that kind of stew might seem foolhardy,
but those involved with Nipissing’s inaugural experiment say the approach promotes the innovative thinking that many believe university
graduates must have. “We need people who are capable of thinking what
hasn’t been thought yet,” Ms. Valiquette says.
After the interim arts and science dean, Ann-Barbara Graff, put out
the call for new spring-term course proposals, the idea for an interdisciplinary course was put to a committee selection process. It didn’t hurt
that most of those who sat on this committee were interdisciplinarians
too. Dr. Renshaw and Ms. Valiquette were adamant this course wouldn’t
merely skim the disciplines but rather would offer a deep, integrated engagement with the material. The course’s formal title was “Introduction
to Cross-disciplinary Analysis.”
Dr. Renshaw credits her university’s commitment to innovative
teaching as part of the reason the course got the green light. The fact that
“Interdisciplinarity challenges the
notion that the world will obediently
conform to intellectual labels and
systems of knowledge.”
Nipissing is a smaller university made it easier to set up meetings and
quickly get approvals, consult with potential faculty and students, and
generate excitement about the course. And, after she and Ms. Valiquette
had spent so many years considering how a course like it could happen,
much of the prep work for its structure and pedagogy had been done.
Offered during the shorter, more intense spring semester, the sixcredit course was programmed for four days a week, three hours at a
time over six weeks. All arts and science faculty were invited to offer lecture proposals. Participating faculty would have their efforts
counted as service and could, but were not required to, attend lectures
they weren’t delivering. To set a framework around what was to come,
the first week’s lectures focused directly on interdisciplinarity and
what it is, asking students to reflect on the traditionally disciplined
nature of most higher education and the challenges and possibilities
interdisciplinarity poses.
While traditional thinking in one discipline is valuable, says Dr. Graff,
“one of the things you get in specialization is a kind of blinkering: ‘We
don’t ask these kinds of questions.’ Well, why not and what happens when
you do?”
Dr. Graff, a Victorianist who considers her own specialization interdisciplinary, says the aim of a course like this one is to make students
“really excited about their own disciplinary work because of the possibilities of refining or tweaking or asking different kinds of questions.”
Ms. Valiquette was designated to be the glue that held everything together, a role considered critical to the course’s success. As the coordinating course director, she was responsible for making the linkages among
the material from other faculty.
Half of the scheduled sessions were given to guest lectures and half
were run by Ms.Valiquette, sometimes as lectures and sometimes as opportunities for students to discuss and digest what they’d heard from guest
speakers. As interesting a theme as Dirt was, the course ultimately was
about learning to look at ideas in an interdisciplinary way. The non-guest
lecture times were the opportunity for students to develop and practise
those skills, guided by Ms. Valiquette and sometimes with Dr. Renshaw.
Intrigued by the concept, English professor Cameron McFarlane
chose to give two lectures on notions of social disruption and “unclean”
fantasies in Dracula, following a stimulating planning session with
other faculty. Besides his metaphoric link to infection, Dracula’s character also had a material connection to the course theme: the only possessions he brings with him to London are his coffin and 40 boxes of
Transylvanian dirt.
“Disease, filth and contamination were going around the table and I
thought, ‘Dracula, that’s the thing to do,’” recalls Dr. McFarlane. “Whatever concerns I might have had, like how well will all these things fit
together, totally disappeared.”
Geographer James Abbott kicked off the first guest lecture with a discussion about physician John Snow’s mid-19th century map of a London
cholera epidemic. Students learned how the map helped challenge the
prevailing theory that cholera and similar diseases were spread by inhaling “bad air,” instead of drinking infected water. When his turn came
three weeks later, Dr. McFarlane linked one of Dracula’s manifestations
as fog back to what students had learned about previous miasmatic beliefs around disease.
Biologist Jeffrey Dech’s discussion of soil recovery in Sudbury from
the nickel mine tailings and smelting activities was followed by fine arts
professor Susan Cahill’s lecture on photographer Edward Burtynsky’s industrialized landscape images. Political aspects of cleanliness were taken
up by political scientist Serena Kataoka, in her lecture on differing attitudes towards management of human and animal waste, and by historian
Stephen Connor’s talk on modern genocide. A field trip to a local vegan
farm-stay operation called Piebird got students mucking around in the
gardens, learning about the politics of sustainable food production.
The interdisciplinary approach to learning helped students see how
“dirt” is a values-based concept, used to reinforce social and cultural
“I could almost feel the brush of my invisible
toga. There were many points when I
thought, ‘This is exactly what Socrates had in
mind: put thoughtful people together in a
room, ask some really interesting
questions, and let the fun begin.’”
standards and boundaries. During Dr. Dech’s lecture on soil recovery,
students learned that he would never use the word “dirt” in his world
because it would be considered derogatory. That prompted a discussion
of key understandings and principles in biology that students would not
have encountered in a traditional biology lecture.
Students who had skeptically signed up to fulfil breadth-course requirements gradually became converts to what Dirt had to offer.
“It has created an appreciation for disciplines that I haven’t studied
before, that I otherwise may have thought of as useless,” wrote Stephanie
Dickson, an accounting student. “The course has rekindled my curiosity
in the world and all the things I may one day come to know.”
The presence of one consistent professor along with other guest professors who openly engaged one another in debate and dialogue “set a
standard for the students” to ask their own questions, wrote Julia Robbins, a student in history, gender equality and social justice. “The intimidation that most students feel was no longer there, for the hierarchies
between professors and students, as well as among disciplines, [were] being broken down in front of our eyes.”
Students were expected to keep an electronic reading-and-lecture
journal for critical reflection on each set of readings and lectures, which
was marked weekly for 30 percent of their grade. They had to integrate
what they had learned by writing a paper (worth 20 percent) on interdisciplinarity or one using an interdisciplinary analysis. A final teambased debate (10 percent) gave students a chance to show their integrated
thinking skills on their feet, and a final exam accounted for 30 percent.
Ten percent of the grade was based on participation. Ms. Valiquette was
responsible for all evaluation.
To some, Dirt represents a return to the traditional idea of what a
university experience ought to be about: a place for the free-flowing exchange and growth of ideas among people with different viewpoints,
grounded in fundamental knowledge. Gillian McCann, a professor of
religions and cultures who lectured on gender, purity and Hinduism,
says there were times teaching or sitting in on someone else’s lecture
when she could “almost feel the brush of my invisible toga. There were
many points when I thought, ‘This is exactly what Socrates had mind:
put thoughtful people together in a room, ask some really interesting
questions, and let the fun begin.’”
As Dr. Graff puts it, students, are “getting the intellectual challenge
that’s rumoured to take place at university but often doesn’t. It’s about
conversation and about active thinking.”
Where there might have been initial reticence among faculty the first
time around, there has been no such hurdle for the course’s next iteration
this spring. Faculty have been enthusiastic, submitting ideas for potential
themes, proposing lecture subjects and how those could fold in around
other lectures. This year’s winning theme? Sloth.
There is also the hope of embedding the course in the regular academic year – delivered weekly for three hours at a time – as well as adding
courses at other levels so that students can develop their interdisciplinary skills across a continuum. An upper-year course could have students
working on a wicked problem such as climate change.
As they continue to plan and blue-sky about what will come next,
Ms. Valiquette and Dr. Renshaw are learning more themselves about the
limits and possibilities, and delighting about what they too have yet to
find out.
“Does interdisciplinarity just mean a conversation between English
and cultural studies? Or can you have a conversation between mathematics and poetry?” asks Ms. Valiquette. “What it means to teach interdisciplinarity – I think we’re still working that out.”
Moira MacDonald, based in Toronto, reports and writes about education at all levels and
is a frequent contributor to University Affairs.
Sommaire de l’article « Dirt » débutant à la page 22.
LA SALETÉ
Deux professeurs créent le premier cours
interdisciplinaire de leur université au premier cycle
et mènent les étudiants sur un chemin peu fréquenté
par Moira
le thème de la saleté a donné le ton au premier cours interdisciplinaire
de premier cycle de l’Université Nipissing au printemps 2013. La saleté
qui se trouve dans le sol et qu’il faut nettoyer après une contamination
industrielle. Les personnes considérées comme la lie de la société et qui
deviennent victimes de génocide. Les désirs « sales ». La cohabitation des
humains avec la saleté illustrée par la carte du choléra dans le Londres des
années 1850. La saleté urbaine ainsi que l’invention du système d’égouts
et ses répercussions politiques. Et la saleté, ou plutôt la terre, que les
étudiants peuvent malaxer avec leurs mains, dans un potager écologique.
La tentative d’établir un lien entre le personnage de Dracula et les
fonderies de Sudbury, tout en coordonnant le travail et l’expertise de
10 professeurs issus de huit disciplines des arts et des sciences, peut
sembler être une invitation au chaos. C’est en fait le genre de méli-mélo
intellectuel dans lequel baignent les professeurs Sal Renshaw et Renée
Valiquette, adeptes de l’interdisciplinarité, et qu’ils souhaitaient partager
avec leurs étudiants.
« Il y a longtemps que nous pensions qu’un cours donné par une
équipe de professeurs serait une réussite », indique M. Renshaw qui, comme
Mme Valiquette, enseigne l’égalité des sexes et la philosophie à l’Université
Nipissing située à North Bay, en Ontario. Au début de 2013, lorsque le doyen
par intérim de la faculté des arts et sciences leur a demandé de bonifier
l’offre de cours au premier cycle, ils ont sauté sur l’occasion. Créé en tout
juste huit semaines, le cours de deuxième année sur le thème de la saleté « a
dépassé toutes nos attentes », soutient Mme Valiquette.
L’interdisciplinarité est, à la base, la collaboration entre plusieurs disciplines dans le but de trouver des réponses à de vastes questions. D’un point
de vue pratique, elle défie les diktats des étiquettes intellectuelles et des
systèmes de connaissances, et cherche à intégrer des modes de réflexion
inspirés d’autres disciplines pour produire un nouveau savoir. Cette démarche est particulièrement bien adaptée aux problèmes qui paraissent
insolubles en raison de leur complexité ou de leur nature changeante.
M. Renshaw et Mme Valiquette savaient pertinemment que ce cours ne
ferait pas qu’effleurer les disciplines, mais déboucherait plutôt sur un engagement profond et intégré. Offert pendant l’intense et court semestre
du printemps, ce cours de six crédits durait six semaines, à raison de quatre séances de trois heures par semaine. Tous les professeurs de la faculté
des arts et sciences ont été invités à y contribuer et pouvaient assister, s’ils
le souhaitaient, aux exposés des autres.
La moitié des séances ont été données par des conférenciers et l’autre
MacDonald
moitié, par Mme Valiquette, la coordonnatrice du cours. Les étudiants en
profitaient parfois pour discuter des thèmes soulevés par les conférenciers. La saleté était bien sûr un sujet très intéressant, mais l’objectif ultime du cours était d’apprendre à observer les idées dans une optique
interdisciplinaire.
Par exemple, Cameron McFarlane, professeur d’anglais, a choisi de
donner deux séances sur la notion de perturbation sociale et la fantasmagorie basée sur la saleté du personnage de Dracula. De son côté, James
Abbott, géographe, a présenté une carte de Londres présentant l’épidémie
de choléra du milieu du XIXe siècle. Les étudiants ont appris que la cartographie avait permis de remettre en question la théorie voulant que le
choléra et d’autres maladies similaires se propageaient par inhalation
d’air vicié plutôt que par l’ingestion d’eau contaminée.
L’apprentissage interdisciplinaire a permis aux étudiants de comprendre que la saleté est un concept fondé sur les valeurs et utilisé pour
renforcer les normes ainsi que les frontières sociales et culturelles. Les
aspects politiques de la propreté ont été abordés dans le cadre d’une conférence sur les différentes conceptions de gestion des déchets humains et
animaux et d’un exposé sur le génocide moderne.
Les étudiants sceptiques s’étant inscrits simplement pour obtenir les
crédits requis ont élargi leur conception de la saleté. « J’ai appris à apprécier des disciplines que j’aurais autrement jugées inutiles, indique
Stephanie Dickson, étudiante en comptabilité. Le cours a éveillé ma curiosité naturelle pour le monde qui m’entoure. » Un autre étudiant explique que « le clivage entre professeurs et étudiants n’existait plus puisque
la hiérarchie entre professeurs et étudiants ainsi qu’entre les différentes
disciplines, n’existait tout simplement plus. »
Les étudiants devaient rédiger un journal électronique de réflexion
critique sur chacun des blocs de lecture et de séances, qui comptait pour
30 pour cent de la note finale. Ils devaient également rédiger un essai en
y intégrant ce qu’ils avaient appris, participer à un débat en équipe et
passer un examen final.
Pour certains, le cours sur la saleté représente un retour à l’idée traditionnelle de ce que doit être l’expérience universitaire : un lieu d’échanges
libres et de circulation des idées entre personnes défendant différents
points de vue, tous ancrés dans un savoir fondamental. Après une certaine
réticence initiale de la part des professeurs, les concepteurs n’ont eu aucune difficulté à préparer l’édition de cette année qui sera offerte au
printemps. Le sujet de cette année? La paresse.
ATTENTION:
CAREER ADVICE
AHEAD
Be prepared for all the unexpected turns
in your university career…
Fast forward to the last page of every issue of
University Affairs for helpful tips and opinions in our Career Advice
column to help you successfully navigate your way.
Looking for more? Check out more career articles online
at universityaffairs.ca/careers
28 / www.universityaffairs.ca February 2013
Quebec ruling supports confidentiality
of researchers’ interviews
Ce mois-ci
This month
Au Québec, une décision appuie le caractère confidentiel
des entrevues réalisées par les chercheurs
Nota bene
Online course evaluation
NOT
AT ALL
SOMEWHAT
MODERATELY
MOSTLY
A GREAT
DEAL
I found the course intellectually stimulating.
The course instructor encouraged a
collaborative atmosphere in the classroom.
The course provided instruction on
how to evaluate the credibility of various
sources of information.
The course instructor explained
concepts clearly.
Student evaluations
Universities see benefits with online
process for student evaluations
But many seek effective strategies to compensate for lower response rates
the last day of class used to be reserved for
course evaluations – short surveys meant to canvass students about their experiences in the class
and with the instructor. But as more universities
move to online evaluations, some of them are
struggling with what to do about low studentresponse rates.
Samer Saab, chief executive of eXplorance,
a Montreal company that develops and operates
course-evaluation software, said more postsecondary institutions are moving to an online pro-
cess because of the many benefits the system
provides. “We’re doubling our business on a
year-over-year basis,” he said.
Online forms are less costly because they
eliminate printing costs as well as the need for
administrative staff to scan and input data. Universities are able to prepare reports for faculty
members and senior administrators in days
rather than months, said Mr. Saab. This is critical, he adds, because the faster you can produce
results, the faster professors and staff can act on
the information and the more that students feel
their feedback has been heard. “When they feel
heard they will want to be part of the process for
the long-term,” Mr. Saab said.
However, online evaluations present challenges too, and one of the biggest is lower
response rates. The proportion of students completing paper forms is usually higher, at about
70 or 75 percent, because “you have a captive
audience,” said Mr. Saab. Students must complete
online forms outside the classroom on their own
time, so fewer of them tend to do it. Response
rates are important, not least because the evaluations are used, among other things, as part of
faculty assessment for tenure and promotion.
Universities can take measures to boost participation, he said. They can ask students to
Nota bene
Teaching at the
edge of research
Dr. David Hornidge
PHYSICS
2013 PAUL PARÉ MEDAL RECIPIENT
Immersed in emerging ideas, Mount
Allison professors are pursuing research
endeavours that have real world
applications in destinations around the
globe. These passionate interests find their
way into classrooms, relating subjects to
students in tangible ways, and reflecting
what is happening in our world today.
mta.ca/teaching
complete online evaluations in the classroom,
just as they did with paper forms, but using their
mobile devices. Another option used effectively
by some U.S. schools, he added, is to give students
an incentive to complete the forms, such as early
access to their final grades.
Mr. Saab advises universities to implement
strategies that will lead to a sustained increase
in response rates, rather than a one-time spike.
These include giving students access to the survey results and, perhaps more importantly, acting
on the feedback. “Then students will be very
motivated to be a part of it,” he said.
When Dalhousie University moved to an
online system in 2012, the average response rate
fell to 48 percent in the winter term, down from
60 percent the previous year; the rate fell again
to 41.7 percent in the fall of 2013. Dalhousie has
launched a marketing campaign to educate students about the importance of evaluations for
assessing faculty and informing future course
design, said Brad Wuetherick, executive director
of the school’s Centre for Learning and Teaching. Dalhousie also integrated course evaluations
with its learning management system so that
when students log on to the LMS they get a
reminder to complete the forms. It plans to create a mobile app so that students can complete
evaluations on their smartphones and tablets.
Dalhousie administrators hope some of these
changes will improve response rates, but even
with the lower rates, the university is confident
the data is “robust, valid and reliable,” said Mr.
Wuetherick.
University of Toronto started online evaluations in 2011 and has been gradually phasing in
the process across faculties and departments. Its
online evaluation form includes 20 questions,
eight of them selected at the institutional level
for all divisions. The remainder are chosen by
faculties, departments and instructors to reflect
their particular priorities. Instructors can select
questions from a question bank maintained by
the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation
or formulate their own in conjunction with the
centre’s staff. Students can access all the data
derived from the institution-wide questions and
in most cases to the data derived from questions
selected by divisions. Responses to the instructor-chosen questions are not available unless the
professor chooses to make them so.
“One really important thing we’ve learned
about response rates is that you don’t just go
online and deal with course evaluations the same
way as when they were on paper,” said Carol
Rolheiser, director of the teaching support centre and a professor in the department of curriculum, teaching and learning. “There needs to
be investment across the entire institution
around response rates.”
U of T’s mean response rates for online surveys range from 40 percent in some faculties
and departments to about 75 percent. While the
mean response rates are lower with the online
system, the quality of the data is vastly improved,
said Cherie Werhun, course evaluation support
officer. Because students have two weeks to complete the evaluations, they tend to provide longer
and more thoughtful responses to open-ended
questions. She said instructors are pleased with
the reports they receive because they are of a
higher quality and about 14 pages long, rather
than the single page they might have received
previously.
The U of T centre for teaching support has
looked at departments with high response rates
to identify factors that can improve participation.
One of the most important is instructor support
for the process and the extent to which they use
the feedback to improve course development.
At Wilfrid Laurier University, the plan to go
online in 2015 was prompted by a move to a new
course evaluation form that was longer and more
complicated than previously, said Pat Rogers,
associate vice-president, teaching and learning.
Laurier plans to mount a marketing campaign
to educate students about the importance of evaluations and how they are used by the university.
“Teaching is very important at Laurier,”
Dr. Rogers said. Course evaluations are just one
way of measuring a faculty member’s effectiveness but “it’s an important one because it gives
students a voice.” Laurier wants to avoid punitive
measures, she said, such as blocking access to
final grades to induce students to participate.
Faculty members at some universities have
questioned the validity of the data from online
evaluations due to low response rates. At least
one institution, University of Calgary, reverted
to paper surveys in 2008, three years after adopting online forms; participation rates fell to as
low as 31 percent in one year.
“We felt we couldn’t live with that,” said Don
Best, director of the Office of Institutional Analysis. The figure has rebounded, ranging from 64
to 68 percent, since moving back to paper.
– rosanna tamburri
Nota bene
Évaluations des cours
Les évaluations en
ligne ont de nombreux
avantages
On tente toutefois de remédier au faible taux de
participation que ce processus entraîne
le dernier jour de cours est normalement
réservé aux évaluations, présentées sous forme
de questionnaires visant à sonder les étudiants
sur leur expérience en classe et avec le professeur.
Maintenant que de nombreuses universités se
tournent vers les évaluations en ligne, on observe
que le taux de réponse des étudiants a chuté.
Samer Saab, président-directeur général de
l’entreprise montréalaise eXplorance, qui élabore des logiciels d’évaluation de cours, affirme
que bon nombre d’établissements postsecondaires ont recours à un système en ligne en raison des avantages qu’il procure. « Notre chiffre
d’affaires double chaque année », dit-il.
Les formulaires en ligne n’entraînent ni
coûts d’impression ni frais administratifs pour
la saisie de données. En outre, il ne faut que
quelques jours, et non quelques mois, pour
produire des rapports pour les professeurs et les
hauts dirigeants, déclare M. Saab. Le temps est
un élément critique. Plus les résultats sont
dévoilés rapidement, plus les professeurs et le
personnel peuvent réagir rapidement aux commentaires des étudiants, et « lorsqu’ils se sentent
écoutés, les étudiants ont tendance à vouloir
répéter le processus », poursuit M. Saab.
Les évaluations en lignes présentent toutefois certains points faibles, dont le principal est
le taux de participation. La proportion d’étudiants qui répondent au questionnaire papier
se situe généralement autour de 70 à 75 pour
cent, car il s’agit d’un auditoire captif, explique
M. Saab, contrairement aux étudiants qui remplissent le formulaire en ligne qui sont moins
nombreux à le faire parce qu’ils doivent le faire
en dehors des heures de cours. Les taux de
réponse sont importants, car les évaluations sont
utilisées dans le cadre de la promotion et de la
permanence des professeurs.
Les universités pourraient prendre des
mesures pour stimuler la participation, poursuitil. Elles pourraient demander aux étudiants de
remplir le formulaire en classe, comme pour les
formulaires papier, mais sur leurs appareils
mobiles. Une autre option utilisée efficacement
par de grandes écoles aux États-Unis consiste, par
exemple, à offrir aux étudiants qui remplissent le
formulaire un accès anticipé à leurs notes finales.
M. Saab conseille aux universités d’adopter
des mesures qui favoriseront l’augmentation des
taux de réponse à long terme, plutôt qu’une
hausse soudaine et unique. Les étudiants pourraient, par exemple, avoir accès aux résultats du
sondage, et ce qui est peut-être encore plus
important, les universités pourraient agir en
fonction de leurs commentaires. « Voilà qui motiverait les étudiants à participer », dit-il.
En 2012, lorsque l’Université Dalhousie a
opté pour le système d’évaluation en ligne, le
taux moyen de participation, qui était de 60 pour
I HAVE THE
POWER
OF DAL
The father of Canada’s evolutionary cell biology community,
Dr. Ford Doolittle has dedicated over 40 years to exploring
evolution’s impact on the mystery of the genome, and the
early evolution of cells. Now he’s the winner of the prestigious
Herzberg Medal presented by the Natural Sciences and
Engineering Research Council of Canada, the first recipient in
Atlantic Canada. It is undeniable that our understanding of the
“Tree of Life” has been fundamentally broadened by Dr. Doolittle’s
work, and Dal congratulates him on this momentous achievement.
Dal.ca/dalpower
That’s the power of research.
That’s Dal.
Nota bene
Faculty of Education
Vancouver Campus
cent l’année précédente, a chuté à 48 pour cent
au semestre d’hiver et à 41,7 pour cent à
l’automne 2013. L’Université a alors lancé une
campagne de marketing afin d’informer les étudiants de l’importance de leur participation pour
l’évaluation des professeurs et la conception des
cours, explique Brad Wuetherick, directeur principal du Centre for Learning and Teaching.
L’établissement a aussi intégré l’évaluation à son
système de gestion de l’apprentissage (SGA) de
sorte que, lorsque les étudiants ouvraient une
session sur le SGA, ils étaient invités à répondre
au questionnaire. Il est aussi projeté de créer une
application mobile pour tablettes et téléphones
intelligents. Les administrateurs espèrent ainsi
améliorer le taux de participation, mais malgré
la diminution des taux, l’université estime que
« les données sont valides et fiables », affirme
M. Wuetherick.
L’Université de Toronto est passé au mode
d’évaluation en ligne en 2011, et le processus a
graduellement été intégré dans toutes les facultés et les départements. Le questionnaire en ligne
comporte 20 questions dont huit sont communes
à l’ensemble de l’établissement. Les autres sont
choisies par les facultés, les départements et les
professeurs afin de refléter les particularités. Les
professeurs peuvent choisir des questions à partir d’une banque qui est maintenue par le Centre
for Teaching Support and Innovation, ou encore
en formuler de nouvelles en collaboration avec
le personnel du Centre. Les étudiants ont accès
à toutes les données provenant de la banque
de questions communes à l’ensemble de
l’établissement, et à la plupart des données provenant des questions choisies par les divisions.
Les réponses aux questions rédigées par les professeurs ne sont accessibles que si le professeur
l’autorise.
« Ce que nous avons appris de vraiment
important au sujet des taux de réponse, c’est
qu’on ne peut pas simplement modifier le format
et traiter les évaluations de cours en ligne comme
si elles étaient des évaluations papier, déclare
Carol Rolheiser, directrice du centre de soutien
à l’enseignement et professeure au département
des programmes, de l’enseignement et de
l’apprentissage. Il faut que l’établissement dans
son ensemble se penche sur le problème du taux
de participation. »
Le taux de participation à l’évaluation en
ligne pour l’Université de Toronto oscille entre
40 et 75 pour cent selon les départements et facultés. Bien que la moyenne du taux de réponse
PHOTO: HANDOUT, SERVICE DE POLICE DE LA VILLE DE MONTRÉAL
Nota bene
ait baissé, la qualité des données est grandement
améliorée, selon Cherie Werhun, agente de
soutien à l’évaluation des cours. Comme ils disposent de deux semaines pour faire les évaluations, les étudiants ont tendance à fournir des
réponses plus complètes et précises aux questions ouvertes. Mme Werhun soutient que les
professeurs sont satisfaits des rapports qu’ils
reçoivent qui sont de grande qualité et plus précis qu’auparavant (environ 14 pages plutôt
qu’une seule).
Le centre de soutien à l’enseignement de
l’Université de Toronto s’est penché sur les
départements qui avaient de forts taux de participation afin de cerner les facteurs de réussite.
L’un des principaux facteurs concerne l’appui
des professeurs au processus et la mesure dans
laquelle ils tiennent compte des commentaires
des étudiants pour améliorer les cours.
À l’Université Wilfrid Laurier, le projet de
passer aux questionnaires en ligne en 2015 a été
motivé par l’adoption d’un nouveau formulaire
plus long et plus précis que le précédent, explique Pat Rogers, vice-rectrice adjointe, enseignement et apprentissage. L’établissement prévoit
lancer une campagne de marketing afin
d’informer les étudiants de l’importance de leur
participation et de la manière dont leurs
réponses seront utilisées. « L’enseignement est
très important à l’Université Wilfrid Laurier,
insiste Mme Rogers. L’évaluation des cours n’est
qu’un des moyens utilisés pour mesurer
l’efficacité des membres du corps professoral,
mais c’est un moyen qui compte, car il donne
une voix aux étudiants. » L’Université veut éviter
les mesures punitives, poursuit-elle, comme
d’empêcher l’accès aux notes finales pour inciter
les étudiants à participer.
Les professeurs de certaines universités ont
remis en question la validité des données recueillies à partir d’évaluations en ligne en raison
des faibles taux de participation. Après avoir
opté pour les formulaires en ligne en 2005,
l’Université de Calgary est retournée aux formulaires papier en 2008. « Les taux de participation
avaient chuté à 31 pour cent en une année,
raconte Don Best, directeur du bureau de
l’analyse de l’établissement. Depuis le retour
des formulaires papier, les chiffres ont grimpé
pour atteindre 64 à 68 pour cent. » – rosanna
tamburri
Police return Luka Magnotta to Canada in June 2012 after his arrest in Berlin.
Research ethics policy
Quebec ruling supports
confidentiality of
researchers’ interviews
Court case shows that researchers must design
their confidentiality protocols to conform to
Canadian law
a recent ruling by a Quebec superior court has
major ramifications for researchers who offer
confidentiality to people they interview for their
research.
On Jan. 21, Justice Sophie Bourque of the
Quebec Superior Court ruled in favour of Christine Bruckert and Colette Parent, professors of
criminology at the University of Ottawa, and
quashed a warrant that would have allowed
police to unseal a confidential interview. The
decision means that researcher-participant communication is privileged when deemed appropriate by a judge, even though, in Canadian law,
the relationship is not automatically privileged
the way that a doctor-patient or lawyer-client
relationship is.
The case dates back to May 2012, when
Dr. Bruckert heard from Adam McLeod, a
former undergraduate research assistant.
Mr. McLeod informed Dr. Bruckert that he
had contacted the Montreal police about a 2007
interview he had conducted with a male escort
as part of Dr. Bruckert’s and Dr. Parent’s research
on sex work and intimacy. He had identified the
escort as Luka Magnotta, an internationally
wanted fugitive suspected in the murder and
dismemberment of Concordia University student Lin Jun.
“Because I work with very vulnerable populations, I take seriously that it’s the responsibility of
the researcher to protect [participants],”said Dr.
Bruckert, whose research primarily involves sex
workers. When the police followed up on the tip,
Dr. Bruckert and Dr. Parent refused to hand over
the interview and sought legal counsel. “We kind
of had this idea that once they caught Magnotta,
it would simply disappear,” Dr. Bruckert said. (Mr.
Magnotta was arrested on June 4, 2012, in Berlin.)
But instead, pressure mounted on them to
release the transcript of the interview. So the pair
went to the university’s research ethics board,
the chair of their department, the dean of their
faculty and the Canadian Association of University Teachers. “What became clear is that people
were quite prepared to be supportive, but had
no concrete advice,” Dr. Bruckert said.
At the time, the only precedent came from a
1994 Vancouver coroner’s inquest. The coroner
had subpoenaed Russel Ogden, then a master’s
student at Simon Fraser University, to testify to
confidential information he had collected while
researching assisted suicide among people with
AIDS. To refuse would mean facing a contempt
of court charge and possibly jail, so Mr. Ogden
mounted a defence that his research met the
Wigmore test.
Nota bene
The Wigmore test is a legal tool for determining evidentiary privilege under common
law that is also applied when determining confidentiality between journalists and anonymous
sources. Under this test, the onus is on the
researcher to satisfy four criteria: the communications between researcher and participant
must originate in confidence that they will not
be disclosed; confidentiality must be essential
to the relationship between researcher and participant; the community must deem this relationship as one to be “sedulously” [that is, diligently] fostered; and the damage to the
relationship must be greater than the benefit
gained through disclosure.
John Lowman and Ted Palys, professors with
SFU’s department of criminology, took great
interest in Mr. Ogden’s case and have since
become experts on research ethics and the legal
parameters of research with vulnerable populations. They also became a rare source of practical
information for Professors Bruckert and Parent.
Their initial advice to the Ottawa researchers
was to secure their data. “There are two ways
you can do that,” Dr. Bruckert said. “One is under
a rock in the Gatineau Hills. The other is with a
lawyer.” The researchers sent the data in question – an audio recording and printed transcript
of the interview – to lawyer Peter Jacobsen (who
had been hired by CAUT). Justice Bourque’s
judgment states that on June 22, 2012, police officers seized these documents, which had been
packaged and sealed due to Mr. Jacobsen’s
motion to quash the search warrant.
In her decision, Justice Bourque also notes
that the content of the interview (which she had
read) would be of little value to police or Crown,
had no bearing on determining Mr. Magnotta’s
state of mind, and the breach of confidentiality
in this case could greatly harm the “free flow of
accurate and pertinent information” between
researchers and a marginalized community such
as sex workers. Furthermore, she found that the
interview had hinged on the promise of confidentiality and that Dr. Bruckert and Dr. Parent
had gone to great lengths to ensure it.
As part of the researchers’ protocol, participants provide oral consent only and choose a
pseudonym (Mr. Magnotta went by “Jimmy”).
The pseudonyms are used when the interviews
are transcribed, any other identifying information is removed, and the participants provide a
final verification of the data.
Justice Bourque said, moreover, that the university’s research ethics board and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council require
researchers to have such protocols in place for
protecting confidentiality before a project meets
approval and gets funded – all in accordance with
the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for
Research Involving Humans, the policy guiding all
research ethics boards at Canadian postsecondary institutions.
Dr. Bruckert said she is pleased with the ultimate result – she found out in February that the
decision would not be appealed – and that she
feels largely supported by her colleagues, CAUT
and the University of Ottawa (which committed
to covering half of the researchers’ legal costs –
about $150,000 – and to raising additional funds
in case of an appeal). However, observers said
the case has made it clear that there’s room for
I am nIne
I am not afraId to help.
Nota bene
improvement to the research ethics infrastructure in Canada.
Barbara Graves, chair of U of Ottawa’s social
science and humanities research ethics board,
said that institutions, REBs and funding bodies
should support clear legal protections for confidentiality so that research in sensitive areas
remains a viable option. “Sources would dry up
if they felt the minute the cops came knocking,
you would give it up,” she said. As a result of the
Jimmy interview case, Dr. Graves said the U of
Ottawa REB is considering writing a position
paper on research ethics and that U of Ottawa’s
office of research ethics and integrity is developing a statement clarifying the university’s position on research ethics and confidentiality.
For his part, Dr. Lowman of SFU points to
the Tri-Council policy, dating from 2010, as
needing clarification. As it stands, the policy
advises researchers to “maintain their promise
of confidentiality to participants within the
extent permitted by ethical principles and/or
law.” Said Dr. Lowman, “Why don’t the granting councils in that document talk about the
mechanisms for legally defending researcherparticipant privilege” for the rare cases where
law and ethics policy are at odds?
The case also shows that despite the strictest
of measures, “the impossible happens,” said Dr.
Bruckert. “The big take-away for researchers is
that they have to design their research in a way
that it will pass Wigmore,” she said. “I hope it
inspires vigilance on the part of researchers so
things never go this far.” – natalie samson
Politique sur l’éthique en recherche
Au Québec, une décision
appuie le caractère confidentiel des entrevues réalisées par les chercheurs
Les chercheurs doivent concevoir des protocoles
de recherche conformes à la loi canadienne
une décision récente de la Cour supérieure du
Québec a de grandes répercussions sur les cher-
cheurs qui réalisent des entrevues confidentielles
dans le cadre de leurs travaux.
Le 21 janvier, la juge Sophie Bourque a donné
raison à Christine Bruckert et à Colette Parent,
professeures de criminologie à l’Université
d’Ottawa, et cassé un mandat qui aurait permis
à la police de prendre connaissance du contenu
d’une entrevue confidentielle. Un juge peut ainsi
décider que la relation entre le chercheur et le
participant a préséance, même si aux termes de
la loi canadienne ce n’est pas automatiquement
le cas, comme pour la relation entre un médecin
et son patient ou un avocat et son client.
L’affaire remonte à mai 2012, lorsque Adam
McLeod, un ancien adjoint à la recherche au
premier cycle de Mme Bruckert, a informé celleci qu’il avait communiqué avec le Service de
police de la Ville de Montréal au sujet d’une
entrevue réalisée en 2007 avec une escorte mâle
dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche de
Mmes Bruckert et Parent sur la prostitution et
l’intimité. M. McLeod avait reconnu Luka
Magnotta, un fugitif recherché internationalement parce qu’il était l’auteur présumé du meurtre
I want to lift this rock and study what’s underneath. I want to climb
this fence and explore the other side. But I cannot do it alone. I am still
a child, but I understand that the more help I have, the further I can go.
years old.
Since before my days as a Medical student here, I have enjoyed working
with others towards a common goal. Now I travel around the world
and collaborate with local experts to study issues such as HIV/AIDS
and maternal and child health firsthand. We are bringing public
health programs and science together to improve the lives of the
most vulnerable. What we learn in these communities helps create
more effective global health policies. Building and sharing our
knowledge has helped us do more than we ever thought possible.
The University of Manitoba has been a constant partner from the
beginning, understanding that the road to new discoveries is best
walked together.
I am an explorer.
James Blanchard is a professor of community health sciences and medical microbiology,
a Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology & Global Public Health, and the
director of the Centre for Global Public Health at the University of Manitoba.
umanitoba.ca/trailblazer
Nota bene
et du démembrement de Lin Jum, étudiant à
l’Université Concordia.
« En tant que chercheuse auprès de populations très vulnérables, je prends très au sérieux
ma responsabilité de protéger [les participants] »,
explique Mme Bruckert, dont les travaux portent
principalement sur des travailleurs du sexe.
Mmes Bruckert et Parent ont donc refusé de
remettre le contenu de l’entrevue aux policiers et
sollicité l’aide d’un avocat. « Nous croyions que
la police laisserait tomber lorsqu’elle aurait attrapé
M. Magnotta », se rappelle Mme Bruckert. (Luka
Magnotta a été arrêté le 4 juin 2012 à Berlin.)
Au contraire, la pression s’est exacerbée une
fois M. Magnotta aux mains de la justice. Les
deux chercheuses ont donc sollicité l’aide du
comité d’éthique de la recherche (CER) de
l’Université d’Ottawa, du chef de leur département, du doyen de leur faculté et de l’Association
canadienne des professeures et professeurs
d’université (ACPPU). « Tous étaient prêts à nous
appuyer, mais personne n’avait de conseils pratiques à nous donner », explique Mme Bruckert.
Le seul précédent, une enquête du coroner
à Vancouver, datait de 1994. Russel Ogden, alors
étudiant à la maîtrise à l’Université Simon
Fraser, avait été assigné à comparaître en raison
de renseignements confidentiels recueillis dans
le cadre de travaux de recherche sur le suicide
assisté chez les personnes atteintes du sida.
Comme un refus de témoigner se serait traduit
par une inculpation pour outrage au tribunal,
un crime passible d’emprisonnement,
M. Ogden s’est défendu en démontrant que ses
travaux respectaient le critère de Wigmore.
Le critère de Wigmore est un outil juridique
qui permet de déterminer si la règle du secret
attachée à certains éléments de preuve en common law doit s’appliquer, et si la confidentialité
des sources anonymes des journalistes doit être
préservée. Pour que le critère s’applique, la communication doit satisfaire à quatre critères : elle
doit avoir été transmise confidentiellement, avec
l’assurance qu’elle ne sera pas divulguée; le caractère confidentiel doit être un élément essentiel
au maintien complet et satisfaisant des rapports
entre les parties; les rapports doivent être de la
nature de ceux que la collectivité souhaite voir
entretenus; le préjudice que subiraient les rapports en cas de divulgation de la communication
doit être plus considérable que l’avantage à
retirer d’une divulgation.
Les professeurs John Lowman et Ted Palys,
du département de criminologie de l’Université
Simon Fraser, se sont intéressés de près au cas
de M. Ogden, et sont depuis devenus des
spécialistes de l’éthique en recherche et des
paramètres juridiques régissant la recherche
auprès de populations vulnérables. Ils se sont
également révélé une précieuse source
d’information pour Mmes Bruckert et Parent.
Ils ont tout d’abord conseillé aux chercheuses
de protéger leurs données. « Il existe deux façons
d’y parvenir, précise Mme Bruckert. Les cacher
sous une roche dans les collines de la Gatineau,
ou s’adresser à un avocat. » Elles ont remis les
données en question – un enregistrement audio
et une transcription de l’entrevue – à l’avocat
Peter Jacobsen (embauché par l’ACPPU). La
décision du juge Bourque indique que la saisie
des documents par des policiers a eu lieu le
22 juin 2012, mais les documents avaient été scellés après le dépôt, par M. Jacobsen, d’une motion
visant à casser le mandat de perquisition.
Dans sa décision, la juge Bourque précise que
le contenu de l’entrevue (dont elle a pris connaissance) aurait été peu utile à la police ou à la
Couronne, qu’il ne permettait pas de déterminer
l’état d’esprit de M. Magnotta, et que la violation
de la confidentialité risquerait de nuire fortement à « la libre circulation de renseignements
exacts et pertinents » entre les chercheurs et un
groupe aussi marginalisé que les travailleurs du
sexe. Elle ajoute que l’entrevue a été réalisée sous
promesse de confidentialité, et que Mmes Bruckert
et Parent ont déployé de grands efforts pour en
préserver le caractère confidentiel.
Conformément au protocole des chercheurs,
les participants donnent leur consentement oral
uniquement et choisissent un pseudonyme
(M. Magnotta s’est fait appeler Jimmy). Les
pseudonymes sont utilisés dans la transcription
de l’entrevue. Tout autre renseignement pouvant
mener à l’identification est supprimé, et les participants procèdent à une dernière vérification.
La décision de la juge Bourque précise par
ailleurs que le CER de l’Université d’Ottawa et
le Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines
(CRSH) exigent que les chercheurs mettent en
place de tels protocoles pour protéger la confidentialité des participants avant même qu’un
projet soit approuvé et financé, conformément
à l’Énoncé de politique des trois Conseils : Éthique de
la recherche avec des êtres humains, sur lequel
s’appuie tous les CER des établissements
d’éducation postsecondaire au Canada.
Mme Bruckert se dit heureuse de la conclusion
de l’affaire (elle a appris en février que la pour-
suite n’irait pas en appel) et de l’appui qu’elle a
reçu de ses collègues, de l’ACPPU et de l’Université d’Ottawa, qui s’est engagée à couvrir la
moitié des frais juridiques des chercheuses (environ 150 000 $) et à trouver des fonds s’il y avait
appel. De l’avis des observateurs, l’affaire a
cependant montré que l’infrastructure d’éthique
en recherche au Canada doit être améliorée.
Selon Barbara Graves, présidente du CER de
l’Université d’Ottawa, les établissements
d’enseignement, les CER et les organismes subventionnaires devraient appuyer la mise en place
de mesures claires de protection de la confidentialité afin que la recherche dans les domaines
sensibles demeure possible. « Les sources se
tariront dès qu’elles auront l’impression que les
chercheurs révéleront tout à la demande de la
police. » À la suite de cette affaire, le CER de
l’Université d’Ottawa envisage de rédiger un
exposé de position sur l’éthique en recherche, et
le bureau d’éthique et d’intégrité en recherche
de l’Université travaille à l’élaboration d’une
déclaration visant à préciser la position de
l’établissement en matière d’éthique en recherche et de confidentialité.
De son côté, M. Lowman, estime que l’Énoncé
de politique des trois Conseils, qui date de 2010,
nécessite des éclaircissements. Dans sa forme
actuelle, l’énoncé conseille aux chercheurs « de
maintenir leur promesse de confidentialité
envers les participants dans la mesure que le
permet l’application des principes éthiques ou
la loi ».
« Pourquoi les organismes subventionnaires
n’enchaînent-ils pas avec les mécanismes
juridiques de défense de la relation privilégiée
qui unit un chercheur et un participant? »,
demande M. Lowman, dans les rares situations
où les exigences de la loi concordent mal avec
les recommandations découlant des principes
éthiques présents dans la Politique.
L’affaire montre également que l’impossible
survient, malgré l’application des mesures les
plus rigoureuses.
« Ce que les chercheurs doivent avant tout
retenir, c’est que les protocoles de recherche doivent être conçus de façon à satisfaire au critère
de Wigmore. J’espère que notre expérience les
incitera à faire preuve de vigilance afin qu’une
telle situation ne se reproduise plus », conclut
Mme Bruckert. – natalie samson
À mon avis
In my opinion
Cet article est également
disponible en français
sur notre site web,
www.affairesuniversitaires.ca
Be prepared to take some flak
The risks of real-world
consulting
by
Emmett Macfarlane
M
ost academics want to try to contribute something to the world through
their research, be it knowledge, new
ways of thinking, or social or political
change. Despite the privileges that
come with possessing academic freedom, engaging directly with policy-makers, the media and
the general public can be a daunting task. While
it can be rewarding to provide input on a particular public policy issue, academics will discover a number of challenges, too.
My most recent experience of this sort was
the result of non-partisan consulting I did for
the Liberal Party of Canada on options for Senate reform. I was asked to provide advice about
the constitutional feasibility of certain changes
and to assess issues relevant to the Supreme
Court’s ongoing deliberations over what types
of changes to the Senate might require formal
constitutional amendment. I reviewed a draft
discussion document and took part in a conference call. I was asked not to divulge any details
before an announcement was made, and I agreed.
In January, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau
announced that Liberal senators would no longer
be members of the Liberal caucus and that, as
prime minister, he would seek to remove patronage and partisanship from the Senate selection
process. That day I made public my own involvement, on Twitter and in an op-ed for Maclean’s
magazine. Much of the reaction was positive, with
reporters requesting interviews and other people
asking questions, debating the issues or just
expressing their happiness that the Liberals had
consulted with an expert in the area. Some of the
reaction, however, highlighted the uphill battle
that academics may face when engaging in “real
world” consulting or policy work.
The most obvious and banal allegation you
could face is to be labeled a partisan or ideologue. Providing advice to a political party would
inevitably cause some to attack me as a Liberal
hack (credit goes to Trudeau’s team, since they
know I am non-partisan, that I have criticized
their party and leader on occasion, yet still
sought my advice). Another criticism is that it is
inappropriate for you to consult in confidence
with policy-makers. I was accused of conspiring
to hide the truth or not being transparent about
my involvement (even though I wrote an op-ed
detailing my involvement). More disturbing is
the suggestion that any commentary you provide
on an issue is automatically “biased” because you
had a role in policy.
Academics who are associated with political
or partisan issues must accept that there will be
some medium- to long-term risk, particularly
perceptions of bias, however misguided those
judgments may be. You also risk being linked to
the policy itself, regardless of how much influence your advice had on its final design – even
if you disagree with it. At least one media report
stated falsely that the ideas in the Liberal Senate
policy were mine. While these misperceptions
can sometimes be corrected, they also are something you must be prepared to swallow on occasion as a by-product of your involvement.
However, the idea that academics should not
Emmett Macfarlane is an
assistant professor of political
science at the University of
Waterloo.
“Your arguments stand
on their own merits, but
not everyone will see it
that way.”
be free to give expert advice behind the scenes
is tantamount to saying academics should not
be involved in giving policy advice at all. If you
believe that policy-makers should be taking
advantage of more expert and evidence-based
policy advice rather than less, then you also need
to accept that professionalism will require simple confidentiality rules when policies are in
development. Criticism that policy work makes
you or your research “biased” reflects ignorance
about the way that academic research and expert
advice work. My analysis regarding the constitutionality of proposals was not influenced by my
advice, it was the source of the advice. The opinion you as an academic express about a topic
will reflect the thinking and evidence you bring
to bear on that topic, whether before, during or
after the policy consulting work has been performed. As long as you are transparent, your
arguments stand on their own merits. Unfortunately, not everyone will see it that way.
In an atmosphere where the role and relevance of universities are sometimes called into
doubt, this sort of outreach beyond the mythical
“ivory tower” should be encouraged. Just as
scholars need to engage more directly and frequently with the media and general public, so
too they should not shy away from opportunities
to make a substantive contribution on policy or
social issues. If my experience has taught me
anything it is to continue to be forthright and
transparent, but also to recognize that in a political and hyper-partisan world, some criticisms
are not worth worrying about.
Que font-ils?
People
Two brothers, both biologists, win the Brockhouse Prize
They’re half-brothers who have
published some 40 scientific papers
together and co-authored over 50
conference presentations, primarily on
the impacts of environmental pollutants
on Canada’s ecosystems. And now John Smol (left) and Jules Blais
have been named co-winners of the 2013 Brockhouse Canada
Prize for Interdisciplinary Research, awarded by the Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Dr. Smol is
a professor of biology at Queen’s University, where he holds the
Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change and founded
the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab.
His younger sibling, Dr. Blais, also a professor of biology, is
founding director of the Laboratory for Natural and Synthetic
Environmental Toxicants at the University of Ottawa. In 2008,
they were jointly named Canada’s Environmental Scientists of the
Year by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Dr. Smol is also
a past winner of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for
Science and Engineering, also awarded by NSERC.
Trent University
appointed Leo
Groarke the university’s next president
and vice-chancellor. Dr. Groarke
will begin his tenure this coming
July. He currently serves as vicepresident, academic, and provost
at University of Windsor, a
position he has held since 2010.
Before that, he was a professor of
philosophy at Wilfrid Laurier
University, where he held a
number of administrative
positions: chair of the philosophy
department, assistant dean of arts
and science, dean of the Brantford
Campus, acting provost, and
principal/vice-president of the
Brantford Campus.
In July, Trevor Davis
becomes Vancouver
Island University’s
associate vicepresident, scholarship and
community engagement, the first
person to hold this new position.
Dr. Davis is currently associate
vice-president, research, at Mount
Royal University, where he
developed MRU’s first strategic
research plan and launched four
new research institutes. Prior to
holding this role, he was assistant
professor and research office
director at Thompson Rivers
University and taught geography
at the University of Utah.
The University of
Victoria appointed
David Castle
vice-president,
research, effective July 1.
Dr. Castle is currently professor
and Chair of Innovation in the
Life Sciences at the University of
Edinburgh’s school of social and
political science. Before moving
to the U.K., Dr. Castle held
the Canada Research Chair in
Science and Society at the
University of Ottawa.
The University of
Alberta appointed
Olive Yonge deputy
provost as of Feb. 1.
From 2005 to 2010, Dr. Yonge
served as vice-provost, academic
programs, where she oversaw the
founding of U of A’s centre for
teaching and learning. Dr. Yonge,
a member of the faculty of
nursing, will step down as chair
of the Campus Alberta Quality
Council and as the university’s
Vargo Teaching Chair.
The Society for Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education
and 3M Canada have revealed the
2014 3M National Teaching
Fellows, which recognize
excellence and leadership in
postsecondary teaching. This
year’s winners are Philippe
Caignon (études françaises,
Concordia University), Carol
Duncan (religion and culture, Wilfrid Laurier University), Donna
Marie Eansor (law, University of
Windsor), Pippa Lock (chemistry
and chemical biology, McMaster
University), Patrick Maher
(outdoor recreation and tourism
management, University of
Northern British Columbia),
Jacqueline Murray (history,
University of Guelph), Rosemary
Polegato (commerce, Mount
Allison University), Cameron
Tsujita (earth sciences, Western
University), Maureen Volk (school
of music, Memorial University)
and Jonathan White (surgery,
University of Alberta). Fellows
receive a lifetime STLHE
membership and will be honoured at STLHE’s annual
conference this June in Kingston,
Ontario. They will also attend a
four-day study retreat at the
Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in
November.
Que font-ils?
People
Le gouvernement du
Québec a nommé
Pierre Dumouchel
directeur général de
l’École de technologie supérieure
(ÉTS), un établissement du réseau
de l’Université du Québec. Entré
en fonction le 13 février dernier
pour un mandat de cinq ans,
M. Dumouchel est aussi
professeur titulaire et directeur
du Département de génie
logiciel et des technologies de
l’information de l’ÉTS depuis
1995. Il a été auparavant directeur
du programme de maîtrise en
technologie de l’information, un
programme conjoint entre l’Université du Québec à Montréal, la
Télé-université et l’ÉTS.
Acadia University
appointed Susan
Mesheau vice-president, recruitment
and student services, effective
March 10. Ms. Mesheau was
previously executive director of
U First: Integrated Recruitment
and Retention at the University of
New Brunswick and, prior to that,
UNB’s director of recruitment and
integrated marketing. A graduate
of Mount Allison University,
Ms. Mesheau spent 23 years with
the New Brunswick Department
of Economic Development and
Tourism before joining UNB.
Lakehead University has renewed
the appointment of Gillian Siddall
as dean of the faculty of social
sciences and humanities. Dr.
Siddall joined Lakehead’s department of English in 1998 and was
the founding director of the
university’s instructional development centre from 2005 to 2009.
Her research interests include
representations of improvisation
in Canadian literature and the use
of a software interface to facilitate
music making for people with
limited mobility.
Jean-Paul Loyer a été
nommé directeur
adjoint du recrutement au Bureau de
l’international et du recrutement
de l’Université du Québec à
Trois-Rivières (UQTR). M. Loyer
occupait auparavant le poste de
directeur des services aux
étudiants et de coordonnateur des
études à Québec, Trois-Rivières et
Sherbrooke, à l’École nationale
d’administration publique. Il a
aussi agi à titre de coordonnateur
du Centre universitaire de Québec
de l’UQTR, de 2011 à 2013.
Trent University
appointed Bryan
Davies chair of its
board of directors,
effective July 1. Since 2012,
Mr. Davies has been vice-chair and
chair of the executive committee.
Outside of the university, Mr.
Davies has held numerous senior
1.
2.
3.
How do I use e-portfolios
more effectively?
What ‘soft skills’ can make
me a better job candidate?
What kind of cross-border research
connections exist between Canada
and the U.S.?
Career Corner at Congress 2014
Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences • Brock University • May 24-30, 2014
Attend Career Corner to get answers to these questions, and more!
Workshops will feature topics geared towards grad students and faculty
at all levels, including:
starting your academic career
grant proposal writing
• teaching best practices
• non-academic career options
•
•
View session schedules at
www.congress2014.ca
Follow #congreSSH on Twitter
Que font-ils?
People
positions within the government
of Ontario, including deputy
treasurer and deputy minister of
economics. He also served as
vice-president, administration at
the University of Toronto and was
senior vice-president, regulatory
affairs, at the Royal Bank
Financial Group. Mr. Davies is
the current chair of the Canada
Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Le gouvernement du
Québec a renouvelé
le mandat de Sylvie
Beauchamp qui est à
la présidence de l’Université du
Québec depuis mai 2009. Son
deuxième mandat de cinq ans
débutera le 19 mai prochain.
Conseillère du sous-ministre au
ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir
et du Sport de 2002 à 2007, elle a
été vice-principale adjointe aux
affaires publiques de l’Université
McGill de 2007 à 2008. Enfin, de
2008 jusqu’à sa nomination à la
présidence de l’Université du
Québec, Mme Beauchamp était
directrice de l’administration et
des finances à l’Institut national de
la recherche scientifique.
Beginning July 1, Rick
Halpern will serve a
second five-year term
as vice-principal,
academic, and dean of the
University of Toronto Scarborough. Dr. Halpern joined U of T in
2001 as the first Bissell-Heyd
Professor of American Studies in
the department of history, and he
has since been director of the
Centre for the Study of the United
States at the Munk School of
Global Affairs and principal of
New College.
Robert Lamb was
named executive
director of the
Canadian Light
Source, the national synchrotron
housed at the University of
Saskatchewan. Dr. Lamb, who
joins CLS from the University of
Melbourne, will also be a full
professor with the department of
chemistry at U of S. Dr. Lamb was
Educational Policy Institute’s
Retention Certification
Workshop
founding director of the Australian Synchrotron and served as
chair of the CLS’s scientific
advisory committee. He begins his
new duties Aug. 1.
In February, William Litchfield
became director, advancement and
alumni relations, at Vancouver
Island University. Mr. Litchfield
joins VIU from Parkland College
in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, where
he was director of advancement
and led the institution’s first-ever
capital campaign. Prior to this, he
was international project coordinator and auxiliary business
instructor with the College of the
Rockies in Cranbrook, British
Columbia.
www.educationalpolicy.org
SAVE THE DATE
Join us this fall for
EPI’s EDUCATION WEEK
San Antonio, Texas • Sep 28 - Oct 3
• EPI Retention 101 Workshop
(Sep 28-30)
• EPI Retention 2014 Student
Success Symposium - CALL FOR
PRESENTATIONS OPEN!
(Sep 30-Oct 2)
Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel • July 6-8
Join EPI this July in the Canadian Rockies for the EPI Retention Certification
Workshop. Participants from across Canada and the US will come together
to learn more about the root causes of student departure and the policies
and practices associated with higher graduation rates at the college and
university levels. Our experts will help you build a plan to improve access
and success in post-secondary education. This summer’s faculty include
Watson Scott Swail & Kimberly Landis (EPI), Peter Dietsche (UToronto),
and Dolan Evanovich (The Ohio State University). Institutional teams of
four or more receive special registration discounts.
www.educationalpolicy.org
• EPI International Forum on
Education & the Economy
(Oct 2-3)
From the
administrator’s
chair
Maureen Mancuso is provost
and vice-president, academic,
at the University of Guelph
and a 3M National Teaching
Fellow. Her column appears
in every second issue.
Explaining the Program Prioritization Process
It’s one way for institutions
to become sustainable
by
Maureen Mancuso
A
number of canadian universities are
engaged in a Program Prioritization
Process (PPP). Others are contemplating
related initiatives. As with any significant
trend that involves change to traditional
ways, anticipation leads to legitimate questions
but also to sloPPPy thinking. There are a lot of
myths about just what PPP is, many of them
straw-man distortions of what the process actually involves. My university just completed the
first and most attention-getting part of such a
process – the ranking of programs – so I feel wellplaced to state what PPP is and is not.
PPP is a process, not a project. If you intend
to do it once only, don’t bother; pay lip-service
to accountability some other way. Like ongoing
strategic, operational and integrated planning,
it is an iterative process that will not yield optimal value at first try but, like any form of learning, becomes easier and more effective over time.
Robert Dickeson’s often cited book (Prioritizing Academic Programs and Services) does not
provide a checklist for performing assessment,
and those who compare it to facile and discredited
(but easily and disastrously replicable) management schemes like “rank and yank” need to read
the book more carefully. Rather, it offers a variety
of suggestions to use and principles to keep in
mind when devising an institutionally specific way
of addressing a common system-wide problem:
figuring out how to achieve sustainability in a
time of declining resources. The crucial principle
is to ensure the process respects the institution’s
unique characteristics and values.
PPP is about information, not automation. It
doesn’t tell institutions what to do (or where to
cut); it is about resource allocation in general
and in the long-term, not just about budget cuts.
It tells institutions where they need to pay more
attention and resolve conflicts between investment and return, cost and benefit, strength and
weakness. It is deliberative and analytical – and,
when done right, consultative, not executive. PPP
helps managers base key decisions on more reliable, more transparent evidence instead of subjective, piecemeal determinations and intrainstitutional politics.
Some claim PPP is wasted effort because
administrators “ought to know as a matter of
course” where the problem programs are and
how to fix them. If so, then why hasn’t anything
been done? Does anyone think that budget and
program cuts will be accepted more readily by
the community if these are justified purely by
parochial assertions, rather than the institutionwide accumulation of evidence? Yes, administrators should know where to focus attention; PPP
is a tool – a recipe, a process – for developing that
knowledge base and making a reliable case for
action when change will inevitably be disruptive
and contentious. The information that PPP
extracts and organizes comes from the units and
programs themselves, not the perceptions and
predilections of administrators.
PPP requires integration, not imposition. It
needs to fit within the institution’s established
governance processes, not override them. It is an
advanced step in evidence-based decision-
“Change is as difficult
to manage as it is to
undergo.”
making. If the campus community has not been
prepared to take that step, then fear and balking
are natural reactions. At my university we carefully devised our implementation of PPP to build
on a decade of consultative, transparent, evidence-based decision-making processes. Even
so, I will admit that instituting PPP cost me a
significant chunk of the political capital I had
built up during those years. Change is as difficult
to manage as it is to undergo.
Undertaking PPP is a lot of work that can end
up as a source of friction: it is about documenting
and disclosing, warts and all, what programs and
services are about and how they contribute to the
overall strength of the institution. It improves
accountability to our stakeholders and reveals
details that may not be flattering but which we,
as public institutions, have no right to conceal or
obscure. It is about measuring program sustainability, not academic quality. This is an important
distinction because some of the loudest objections
to our process have come from those who mistook
PPP rankings as comments on quality. We could
have done better to communicate this.
Although I have advised some universities
about our experience, I am not trying to proselytize here. There is no false dichotomy of “do PPP
or bust.” But institutions need to take whatever
steps they can to better understand and inform
and justify transparently the hard decisions that
will be necessary to survive the next decade
while preserving their vital academic missions
and identities. “Know thyself,” because the unexamined institution won’t be worth saving.
Listes d’emplois
Job listings
Biology/Environment and Sustainability
Western University - The Department of
Biology and the Centre for Environment
and Sustainability (CES) are pleased to
announce a search for a strategic, senior
hire in the area of Adaptation to a Changing
Environment. The successful applicant
would be appointed at the Full Professor or
Associate Professor level (tenured). The
intended starting date is January 1, 2015;
however an earlier or later start is possible.
The successful candidate will be an outstanding and innovative researcher whose
accomplishments have made a major
impact in the area of adaptation to a changing environment and who is recognized as
an international leader in the field as evidence by influential publications in top tier
international journals, impact on government policy, giving keynote presentations at
international conferences, holding active
membership on advisory boards and international panels and/or editorship on major
journals. The candidate will also have a
superior record of attracting and supervising graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The successful candidate will provide
leadership in research, promote interdisciplinary scholarship, increase knowledge
mobilization and societal benefits, and
facilitate development of research clusters
in areas related to the adaptation of biological organisms to a changing global environment, a major subtheme of the Sustainability and the Environment research theme
at Western. Western is one of Canada's top
research intensive universities and is home
to over 1400 faculty, with an interdisciplinary cluster studying responses to environmental change at scales ranging from the
organism to the ecosystem. Faculty are supported by state-of-the-art infrastructure for
environmental simulation and analyses at
scales that uniquely situate Western to
address global challenges in sustainability
and the environment. These facilities
include the Biotron (www.thebiotron.ca/),
AFAR (www.birds.uwo.ca/AFAR/Welcome.
html), ESW (www.uwo.ca/esw/), WINDEE
(www.eng.uwo.ca/windeee/facilities.html),
and the computational support of Sharcnet
(www.sharcnet.ca/) and SOSCIP (www.soscip.org/). The successful candidate will be
expected to utilize this infrastructure to
push the boundaries of experimental climate change research. As an integral part of
La ressource canadienne pour les
emplois en éducation postsecondaire
Canada’s career resource for
higher education
the leadership in the area of sustainability
and the environment and through involvement with the CES, the successful candidate
will have opportunities for building collaborations with researchers elsewhere on
campus, especially in the Faculties of Engineering and Social Sciences. The successful
applicant would be expected to teach relevant undergraduate and graduate courses in
the programs administered by the Department of Biology and the CES. The Centre
for Environment and Sustainability (www.
uwo.ca/enviro/) is an interdisciplinary initiative that involves undergraduate and
graduate programs. It also facilitates and
promotes interdisciplinary research, and
has affiliated faculty members from over 25
departments. The Department of Biology
(www.uwo.ca/biology) is a vibrant community of 47 full-time faculty and instructors,
30 support staff, approximately 180 graduate students and 16 postdoctoral fellows.
Research in the Department of Biology
ranges from sub-cellular to ecosystem processes, using both theoretical and experimental approaches. Review of applications
will commence June 30, 2014, and continue
until the position is filled. A complete application includes a cover letter, a complete
curriculum vitae, a two-page research plan,
a one-page teaching philosophy, and contact
information for three referees, sent to: Dr.
Bryan Neff, Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Science, [email protected], Western
University, London, Ontario Canada N6A
5B7. Positions are subject to budget
approval. Applicants should have fluent
written and oral communication skills in
English. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.
Western University is committed to
employment equity and welcomes applications from all qualified women and men,
including visible minorities, aboriginal people and persons with disabilities.[29173]
tory facilities and a history of excellence in
geotechnical engineering , particularly
focused on research and innovation in the
infrastructure and resource-development
industries in Western Canada. Candidates
must hold a Ph.D. in geotechnical engineering and will be expected to develop a strong
research program, to teach undergraduate
and postgraduate courses in the Civil and
Geological Engineering programs, and to
participate in the administrative activities
of the Department, the College of Engineering, and the University. Applicants must
have a strong commitment to undergraduate and graduate teaching. Among the various duties assigned will be teaching of
graduate and upper-year undergraduate
courses in advanced soil mechanics and
geotechnical numerical analysis. It is therefore required that candidates have a background in fundamental soil mechanics and
strong skills in geotechnical numerical
analysis. In addition to capabilities in
numerical analysis, candidates must also
demonstrate experience and expertise in
specialized laboratory testing and/or innovative field-based research. The candidate
must have demonstrated the ability to
develop a strong research program in collaboration with industry, government agencies and consulting engineering firms. It is
anticipated that the area of research and
professional practice may involve emerging
geotechnical specialties such as: ground
improvement; reinforcement of poor quality soils; innovations in geosynthetics;
insitu reinforcement; innovations in instrumentation and/or monitoring systems;
innovative trenchless and insitu construction; cold regions/permafrost geotechnics;
or innovations in energy and sustainability
in heavy construction. Professional geotechnical engineering experience in Canada
(outside academia) will be highly valued in
considering candidates. Only candidates
who demonstrate the ability or strong
potential for collaboration with industry
will be considered. Registration as a P.Eng.
with the Association of Professional Engineering and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan
is a requirement of the position. An individual appointed as Assistant Professor who
registers with APEGS as an EIT, will be
required to obtain registration as a P.Eng.
for future award of tenure. The University
of Saskatchewan is located in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, a rapidly-growing city with a
Careers
Carrières
Civil and Geological Engineering
University of Saskatchewan - The
Department of Civil and Geological Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan
invites applications from outstanding candidates for a tenure-track faculty position in
Geotechnical Engineering at the Assistant
or Associate Professor level. The Department has high-quality geotechnical labora-
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Les tarifs pour la publicité et les dates limites
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AFFAIRES UNIVERSITAIRES, 350, RUE ALBERT, 6E ÉTAGE,
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Carrières Careers
Canada’s Premier School of Engineering
invites applications for the following Faculty of Engineering positions:
Chemical Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering
» BIOENGINEERING The department invites candidates in all areas of
» LECTURER The successful candidate will be part of a small team
» POLYMER ENGINEERING Applicants’ expertise should include
Polymer Reaction Engineering, Polymer Production Technology,
Polymer Property Characterization, Polymer Property Modification/
Optimization and/or Polymer Processing/Rheology.
Civil and Environmental Engineering
» ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING Applicants should have
expertise in the application of quantitative methods to problems
in one or more of the following research areas: indoor or outdoor
air quality, treatment and remediation of hazardous waste,
environmental microfluidics, or subsurface energy resources.
» TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING Preference will be given to
applicants with expertise in one or more of the following research
areas: traffic operations, urban and regional planning, safety, asset
management, public transportation, and freight/goods movements.
that teaches and mentors students in the first-year program,
assisting with the crucial transition from high school to university.
» RFIC/MM-wAVE/TERAhERTz INTEGRATEd CIRCUITS
ANd SYSTEMS Preference will be given to experts in the
field of RF/mm-wave/ terahertz Integrated Circuits & Systems
and micro-nano electronics, High Frequency Integrated Chip
Transceivers, or other related emerging areas.
» TIER 1 CANAdA RESEARCh ChAIR IN SOFTwARE
Applications are invited from outstanding candidates in software
systems for a tenure-track/tenured faculty position. Suitable
candidates will be considered for a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair.
Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering
» NANOMATERIALS Applicants are sought with expertise in
one or more of the following research areas: nanoscale surfaces/
interfaces, processing, characterization and properties of
nanostructured materials, nanomechanics, nanoscale sensing
materials and technologies. Research in other areas that support
nanoscale materials engineering will also be considered.
The University of Waterloo encourages applications from all qualified
individuals, including women, members of visible minorities, native peoples,
and persons with disabilities. All qualified individuals are encouraged to
apply, however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.
C004661
bioengineering research, but is particularly interested in applications
from candidates with research interest in bioprocess engineering,
bioenergy and biomedical engineering.
For complete job descriptions and application
details visit uwaterloo.ca/engineering
Carrières Careers
Université de Moncton
Céline Bergeron
Rose Leblanc
Carrières
février 2014
MTL012513B
Affaires universitaires
5,9563 x 9,125
L’Université de Moncton, fondée en 1963, est un établissement d’enseignement supérieur
de langue française en milieu acadien. Avec ses trois campus situés à Edmundston,
à Moncton et à Shippagan, elle offre des programmes d’études universitaires de
baccalauréat, de maîtrise et de doctorat dans plusieurs disciplines. Près de
6 000 étudiantes et étudiants provenant de partout au Canada et de l’étranger la
fréquentent. Pour de plus amples renseignements sur l’Université et ses programmes
d’études, vous êtes invités à consulter le site Internet au www.umoncton.ca
Le Campus de Moncton sollicite des candidatures au poste suivant :
DOYENNE OU DOYEN DE LA
FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES DE L’`ÉDUCATION
La Faculté des sciences de l’éducation compte 32 professeures et professeurs réguliers et
temporaires répartis dans deux départements. Elle offre des programmes de 1er, 2e et 3e
cycles incluant plusieurs programmes à temps partiel. Elle comprend aussi le Centre de
recherche et de développement en éducation, un Centre de ressources pédagogiques et un
Service de stages.
La doyenne ou le doyen devra faire preuve de vision afin de diriger un important travail
de planification en tenant compte des réalités changeantes, des projets variés dans les
modèles de formation à la Faculté.
Fonctions :
Sous l’autorité du vice-recteur à l’enseignement et à la recherche, la personne titulaire de ce
poste assure la direction des études et des services administratifs de la Faculté. Elle dirige le
corps professoral, veille à l’établissement des priorités, analyse et fait valoir les besoins de la
Faculté, assure son rayonnement aux niveaux régional, national et international, coordonne
les activités d’enseignement et de recherche, s’assure du maintien d’un milieu favorable aux
études et aux activités professionnelles. Elle veille au développement et à l’excellence des
programmes et représente la Faculté au Sénat académique et autres comités de l’Université.
Exigences :
Toute personne intéressée par le poste devra posséder un doctorat dans une discipline
reliée à l’éducation. Elle devra avoir un solide dossier académique en enseignement et en
recherche ainsi qu’une expérience pertinente de gestion avec démonstration de leadership
et de collégialité. La maîtrise de la langue française, tant à l’oral qu’à l’écrit, est essentielle. La
connaissance de la dynamique de l’enseignement dans un milieu minoritaire serait un atout.
Mandat, entrée en fonction et traitement : Il s’agit d’un mandat de cinq ans débutant le
1er juillet 2014. Le traitement est établi selon la formation et l’expérience.
Les candidatures doivent être reçues au Bureau du vice-recteur à l’enseignement et à la
recherche par voie électronique au plus tard le 28 mars 2014. Les personnes intéressées
sont priées de faire parvenir un curriculum vitae, un dossier professionnel complet,
une copie conforme à l’original de leurs diplômes ainsi que les coordonnées de trois
personnes à titre de répondants au : Comité consultatif de sélection de la doyenne ou du
doyen de la Faculté des sciences de l’éducation, a/s M. Neil Boucher, Ph.D., vice-recteur
à l’enseignement et à la recherche, Université de Moncton, Moncton (N.-B.) E1A 3E9.
Téléphone : (506) 858-4112; télécopieur : (506) 858-4096; courriel : [email protected]
L’Université de Moncton souscrit à l’exigence d’équité en matière d’emploi et encourage les candidatures de toute
personne qualifiée, femme et homme, y compris les autochtones, les personnes handicapées et les membres des
minorités visibles. Conformément aux exigences relatives à l’immigration au Canada, ce concours s’adresse en priorité
aux citoyennes et citoyens canadiens ainsi qu’aux personnes ayant obtenu le droit d’établissement au Canada.
diverse and thriving economic base, a
vibrant arts community and a full range of
leisure opportunities. The University offers
a full range of undergraduate, graduate, and
professional programs to a student population of about 20,000. The Department of
Civil and Geological Engineering offers
undergraduate programs in Civil, Geological and Environmental Engineering and
postgraduate programs at the M.Eng., M.Sc.,
and Ph.D. levels to over 400 students. Interested applicants are invited to provide curriculum vitae, statements of research and
teaching interests, and the names of at least
three suitable references to: Professor Jim
Kells, Head, Department of Civil and Geological Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK
S7N5A9; Email: [email protected].
Electronic submissions by email are preferred. The appointment will commence
July 1, 2014 or as soon as possible thereafter.
Applications will be reviewed until the
position is filled. The University of Saskatchewan thanks all applicants for their
interest; however, only applicants selected
for interviews will be contacted. The position is within the scope of the University of
Saskatchewan Faculty Association. The University of Saskatchewan is strongly committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace
that empowers all employees to reach their
full potential. All members of the university
community share a responsibility for developing and maintaining an environment in
which differences are valued and inclusiveness is practiced. The University welcomes
applications from those who will contribute
to the diversity of our community. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply;
however, Canadian citizens and permanent
residents will be given priority.[29216]
Community Health and Epidemiology
Dalhousie University - The Department
of Community Health and Epidemiology at
Dalhousie University seeks outstanding
candidates for a tenure-stream faculty position at the rank of Assistant or Associate
Professor in Clinical Epidemiology beginning July 2014. Academic qualifications
required include a Ph.D. or equivalent in
clinical epidemiology or relevant field, with
expertise in screening, diagnosis, prognosis,
therapy and/or palliation of persons with
illness or injury. Priorities will be given to
candidates who demonstrate evidence of: 1)
a clinical degree in a health-related discipline; 2) academic excellence in evidence
synthesis; 3) leadership of a research team
including a track record of Tri-Council
Agency research funding; 4) national and
international collaborations; and 5) strong
teaching ability. The successful candidate
will enhance and complement existing clinical epidemiology activities in the Department, attract funding from major granting
agencies and engage in Departmental graduate and medical education teaching. The
Department (see http://che.medicine.dal.
ca) is a vibrant and research-intensive unit
with major grant funding from the Cana-
Carrières Careers
Dean, Faculty of Medicine
The University of Toronto is conducting an extensive
international search for the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine
and invites applications, nominations and expressions of
interest, with the appointment to be effective January 2015.
Established in 1827 by royal charter, the University of
Toronto, with one of the strongest research and teaching
faculties in North America, is ranked in the top 20
universities in the world and 1st in Canada. The University
has more than 20,000 faculty and staff and some 80,000
students enrolled across three campuses, an annual budget
of almost $2 billion and research grant and contract support
of more than $1.2 billion. Its library is consistently ranked
as one of the top three research libraries in North America,
with over 21 million holdings. Setting a new high water
mark for philanthropy in Canada, the University’s Boundless
Campaign has secured more than $1.4 billion towards its
goal of $2 billion. Additional information is available at the
University’s website www.utoronto.ca.
Founded in 1843, the Faculty of Medicine is at the centre
of one of North America’s and the world’s largest and most
unique health science complexes. Located in the heart of
a large, multicultural city, the Faculty works in harmony with
its nine fully affiliated hospitals, 18 community affiliated
hospitals and health facilities, and internationally recognized
academic and research centres to continuously produce
major breakthroughs in health research and support
internationally recognized researchers. It is the second
largest of 17 divisions in the University with over 7,700
faculty members, 8,300 students, 140 endowed chairs
and 121 Canada Research Chairs, and offers programs in
undergraduate and postgraduate medicine, rehabilitation
sciences, medical radiation sciences, community and
public health, physician assistant education, and doctoral
and professional graduate degrees. For more information,
please visit www.medicine.utoronto.ca.
The Dean will be a distinguished and visionary leader,
researcher and educator with outstanding academic and
professional achievements. A record of leadership success,
with experience in developing and empowering faculty
and staff, building collaborative teams, fundraising, and
relating to a wide range of internal and external partners,
will be required in the ideal candidate. The Dean will foster
academic innovation, promote and support research and
effectively manage the resources of the Faculty. He or
she will possess an open and collegial style, outstanding
management, communication and interpersonal skills,
a creative approach to problem solving, and a strong
commitment to academic excellence in research, practice
and teaching. Spearheading the Faculty’s collaborations
within the Toronto Academic Health Science Network
(TAHSN), the Dean will be a lead contributor in setting
directions for the University and its health science partners.
The successful candidate will also assume the role of
Vice-Provost, Relations with Health Care Institutions.
Recently named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers for
the 7th year and one of Canada’s Best Diversity Employers
for the 6th consecutive year, the University of Toronto is
strongly committed to diversity within its community and
especially welcomes applications from visible minority
group members, women, Aboriginal persons, persons with
disabilities, members of sexual minority groups, and others
who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.
The advisory committee will begin the consideration of
candidates immediately and will continue until the position
is filled. Applications should include a letter of introduction,
curriculum vitae, and the names of three references (who
will not be contacted without consent of the applicant) and
should be submitted electronically, in confidence, to the
University’s executive search consultants:
Laverne Smith & Associates Inc.
1 Yonge Street, Suite 1801
Toronto, Ontario M5E 1W7
[email protected]
Carrières Careers
In academic excellence and research
performance, U of T is Canada’s leader.
Civil Engineering
Paediatrics
Claudette MacKay-Lassonde Chair in Mineral Engineering
Child Maltreatment Paediatrics
Assoc/Full Professor - 1400112
Closing Date: April 30, 2014 or until ϔilled
The successful candidate will be appointed to the prestigious Claudette MacKayLassonde chair in Mineral Engineering and be expected to take an active role in the
Lassonde Institute of Mining. Candidates must hold a Ph.D., have or be eligible for
registration as a Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario, and must have
demonstrated leadership, administrative capabilities, communication skills and a strong
vision to develop the potential synergies that are available at the University of Toronto.
Assistant Professor -1400205
Closing Date: March 31, 2014 or until ϔilled
We are recruiting a Pediatrician with a clinical and academic focus in Child Maltreatment Paediatrics and medical education. The Division has an interprofessional
child maltreatment program, the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Program, which provides clinical assessments, teaching/training and engages in leadership
activities and scholarship. This program also offers fellowship training opportunities.
The Division of Pediatric Medicine plays a major role in the teaching and education
of trainees and professionals and offers fellowship training opportunities in Academic
General Paediatrics.We are seeking an individual with expertise and leadership experience/potential in medical education, preferably a graduate degree in this area.
Dentistry
Orthodontics
Assistant Professor - 1400182
Closing Date: July 31, 2014
The successful candidate will conduct outstanding and innovative research in a field
related to Orthodontics and advance the teaching in Orthodontics at undergraduate
and graduate levels. Applicants must meet the following requirements: (i) an advanced
research degree, preferably a Ph.D., and evidence of excellent research accomplishments in a relevant area of research; and (ii) excellent teaching skills and clinical expertise in Orthodontics. Eligibility for Fellowship in Orthodontics in the Royal College
of Dentists of Canada is preferred.
Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology
Anatomic Pathology
Assist/Assoc/Full Professor - 1400127 Closing Date: April 11, 2014 or until ϔilled
Applicants must have an M.D. and be certified in Anatomic Pathology by the Royal
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, or equivalent. Requirements include
formal training and experience in general surgical pathology, cytopathology, and excellent diagnostic skills. The position involves diagnostic service, teaching, and development of a collaborative research program in clinical, applied or basic research.
Neuro-Oncology Research
We are seeking a candidate with an outstanding track record in the area of basic brain
tumour biology and therapeutics, who will be expected to build and lead a world-class
research program. Full salary and a substantial startup package are available to support the successful applicant. Candidates must have an M.D., M.D.-Ph.D., or Ph.D.
degree(s) and be eligible for an appointment at the Senior Scientist level at the Ontario
Cancer Institute and an academic appointment at the University of Toronto at the rank
of Associate/Full Professor.
Medicine
Nephrology
The successful candidate will lead a large, academically successful Nephrology Medicine Division with 21 full time Staff Physicians and large programmes in peritoneal
and hemodialysis and renal transplantation. The successful applicant should have leadership experience and a track record of achievement in research, education, creative
professional activity, system design and/or quality and safety.
Psychiatry
Neuro-Psychiatry
Assistant Professor - 1400180
We are seeking a full-time Neuro-Psychiatrist for its Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic.
The successful candidate should possess strong leadership skills with a capacity for
team-building and fostering multi-disciplinary collaboration. The selected psychiatrist
will be responsible for a combination of patient care and teaching of medical students,
residents and fellows. He/She should be a clinician-scientist with a proven track record
of independent scholarship in the neuroscience field with a focus on traumatic brain
injury.
Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Endowed Chair in Global Health
Professor - 1400135
We are seeking a senior academic with a proven track record in scholarship, evidence
of excellence in teaching and research, funded research and program development in
global health. The latter is defined as an area of study, research and practice that places
a priority on improving health and achieving health equity for all people worldwide,
and that emphasizes transnational health issues, determinants, and solutions. Experience
is also required in one or more of the following disciplines: disease prevention and
control, epidemiology, social & behavioural health sciences, biostatistics, health policy
and/or global health ethics, or occupational & environmental health. We are seeking
an individual with substantial peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals and
sustained research funded by development agencies and/or national and international
foundations.
Historical Studies, UTM
Hindi-Urdu Language and South Asian Studies
Lecturer - 1400230
Closing Date: April 16, 2014
Candidates must demonstrate evidence of excellence in teaching the Hindi-Urdu language (including both scripts) along with courses in South Asian Studies from the
introductory to advanced levels. Native or near native fluency in Hindi-Urdu is expected, together with an excellent command of English. The successful candidate will
also take on a leadership role in the University’s Centre for South Asian Civilizations
and will join a vibrant intellectual community of world-class scholars at the Mississauga
Campus of Canada’s leading university.
All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply, however Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.
The University of Toronto is strongly committed to diversity within its community and especially welcomes applications from visible minority group members, women,
Aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, members of sexual minority groups and others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.
For details on these and other career opportunities, visit www.uoftcareers.utoronto.ca
46 / www.universityaffairs.ca
UA 2014 April.indd 1 / April 2014
2/21/2014 6:56:01 PM
Carrières Careers
YORK UNIVERSITY is helping
to shape the global thinkers and
Schulich School of Business
TENURE-STREAM POSITION IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
thinking that will define tomorrow.
York U’s unwavering commitment to
excellence reflects a rich diversity
of perspectives and a strong sense of
social responsibility that set us
apart. As a globally recognized
research centre, York U’s
11 faculties and 28 research centres
are thinking bigger, broader and
more globally, partnering with
288 leading universities worldwide.
York U’s community is strong –
55,000 students, 7,000 faculty and
staff, and more than 250,000 alumni.
yorku.ca/acadjobs
Consistently ranked in the top tier
of the world’s best business schools
and #1 in Canada, the Schulich School
of Business is known for its global
reach, innovative programming and
the diversity of its student body,
faculty and staff. Schulich enrols some
3,000 students in undergraduate,
graduate and postgraduate business
degree programs leading to careers in
the private, public and not-for-profit
sectors. Located in Toronto, Canada,
the School’s multimillion-dollar, awardwinning complex is on York University’s
main campus. Schulich’s downtown
Miles S. Nadal Management Centre
is situated in the heart of the city’s
financial district.
The School has pioneered unique offerings
in areas such as financial engineering,
financial services, real property, business and
sustainability, health industry management
and global mining management. In addition,
it launched Canada’s first comprehensive
degrees leading to careers in international
business – the International MBA (IMBA) and
the International BBA (iBBA). The KelloggSchulich EMBA, established in partnership
with Northwestern University’s Kellogg
School of Management, is North America’s
first cross-border Executive MBA. Each year,
the Schulich Executive Education Centre
provides executive development programs
to more than 12,000 executives in Canada
and abroad.
As Canada’s Global Business School™,
Schulich has strategic linkages in more than
80 countries around the world, including
academic exchange partnerships with leading
international management schools. The
School has International Satellite Centres in
Beijing and Shanghai, China; Mumbai, India;
Seoul, South Korea; Mexico City, Mexico; and
São Paulo, Brazil, to support initiatives related
to recruitment, executive education, career
development, alumni relations and media
relations. Schulich faculty have earned global
recognition for their research in such fields
as finance, strategy, marketing, business and
sustainability, organizational behaviour and
international business.
The Schulich School of Business is seeking to
fill a tenure-stream position at the rank of
Assistant or Associate Professor in Operations
Management to commence January 1, 2015.
The successful candidate should be able to
analyze the increasingly large public and
private datasets that support managerial
decision-making in services and supply
networks. Preference will be given to
candidates who are able to communicate
effectively with both undergraduate and
senior managerial audiences in graduate
and executive education settings. Ideally
the candidate will hold a PhD in Operations
Management and will be eligible for prompt
appointment to the Faculty of Graduate
Studies. The successful candidate will have
demonstrated potential for outstanding
research and scholarship with publications
or late-round revisions in top-tier journals
relevant to Operations Management,
and excellence or promise of excellence
in teaching. Experience in curriculum
development is an asset. Salary and Benefits
are competitive. All York University positions
are subject to budgetary approval.
Applicants should send an electronic
application, including application letter,
curriculum vitae, samples of research papers,
names and addresses of three referees,
and information regarding teaching to
Professor Richard Irving, Area Coordinator,
Operations Management and Information
Systems, Schulich School of Business,
York University, 4700 Keele Street,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3J 1P3 at
[email protected]. The deadline
for applications is June 15, 2014.
York University is an Affirmative Action Employer.
The Affirmative Action Program can be found on the
York web site at www.yorku.ca/acadjobs or a copy
can be obtained by calling the Affirmative Action
office at 416 736 5713. All qualified candidates are
encouraged to apply; however, Canadian Citizens
and permanent residents will be given priority.
Carrières Careers
Executive Scientific Director
Ontario Health Study
The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is seeking an Executive Scientific
Director, Ontario Health Study (OHS), to lead a longitudinal study of over 200,000
Ontarians on risk factors for cancer and chronic diseases. The Executive Scientific
Director will partner with regional Principal Investigators of the Canadian
Partnership for Tomorrow Project in building a national research platform.
The Executive Scientific Director will report to the Executive Committee of
the OHS and to the Chief Scientific Officer of OICR for other academic and
administrative matters.
Qualifications
• PhD and/or MD with substantial experience in epidemiology and related
areas of research;
• Track record in conducting large-scale cohort studies;
• Eligible to hold the rank of associate or full professor at an Ontario
university;
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively and collaboratively in support of a
multidisciplinary community that makes use of the new research platform;
• Research experience in the field of cancer services or cancer control is an
advantage but not necessary.
Conditions of Employment
The position will be based at a university or research institute in Ontario or at
OICR, which will provide research space and academic/clinical appointments.
The initial appointment will be for five years, renewable pending satisfactory
review. A competitive salary and benefits package will be negotiated.
The appointee will devote upwards of 80 percent of time to research. A candidate
who is medically qualified may maintain some clinical duties, but they may not
take more than 20 percent of the individual’s time.
Application Process
Ontario academic institutions may submit applications on behalf of existing
faculty or propose new recruits. However, the OICR also encourages applications
from individuals who are not already affiliated with an Ontario university or
research institute; in these instances, OICR will assist in identifying a suitable host
facility.
Candidates are invited to submit a curriculum vitae, vision statement, and names
of three references electronically to [email protected]. For more information
about OICR, please visit the website at www.oicr.on.ca.
The position will remain open until a suitable candidate is found, however
applications would be preferred by March 31, 2014.
dian Institutes for Health Research and
ration processes, process systems engineerother granting agencies. The Department
ing , process safety and risk, process
hosts a Master of Science graduate program
equipment design, or mineral processing.
and is developing a PhD in Epidemiology
Experience working in or collaborating
and Applied Health Research. Research
with the oil and gas, chemical and metallurprograms and infrastructure led by Departgical process industries will be an asset. The
mental faculty members include the: Marisuccessful applicant will be expected to regtime Strategy for Patient Oriented Research
ister as a P.Eng. with the Professional EngiSUPPORT Unit; Research Methods Unit;
neers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland
Canadian Longitudinal Study of Health and
and Labrador (PEG-NL). The Faculty offers
Aging; Health and Environments Research
accredited undergraduate programs in Civil
Centre; and Health Data Nova Scotia. DalEngineering, Computer Engineering, Elechousie, with 17,000 (3,800 graduate) stutrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineerdents, is consistently ranked as a top
ing, Process Engineering, and Ocean &
Canadian research universities. In 2003 and
Naval Architectural Engineering following
2004, The Scientist magazine placed Dala fully integrated cooperative education
housie among the top five places in the
model. Thesis-based and course based masworld, outside the United States, for postter's programs, as well as doctoral programs
doctoral work and conducting scientific
are offered in the various engineering disciresearch. Dalhousie topped The Scientist's
plines. For more information on the Faculty
2007 list of “Best Places to Work in Acaof Engineering and Applied Science, visit
demia”. Halifax, the largest city in Atlantic
www.engr.mun.ca. Memorial University is
Canada, offers outstanding, maritime qualNewfoundland and Labrador's only univerity of life (www.halifaxinfo.com). Candisity, and plays an integral role in the educadates should submit their curriculum vitae,
tional and cultural life of the province.
a statement of current and proposed
Offering diverse undergraduate and graduresearch objectives,
a 29275
teaching dossier, and
ate programs to over 18,000 students,
ad
arrange to have three letters of reference
Memorial provides a distinctive and stimu1/2 pg
verticalsent
w/color
(two of which must
be academic)
lating environment for learning. St. John's is
under separate cover directly to the Chair of
a safe, friendly city with great historic
$2,300
the Search Committee
by email (via jodi.
charm, a vibrant cultural life, and easy
[email protected]) to Adrian Levy, Departaccess to a wide range of outdoor activities.
ment of Community Health and EpidemiolFor further information about Memorial,
ogy, Dalhousie University, #425-5790
please visit www.mun.ca. Applications
University Avenue, Halifax, Nova Scotia, should include a curriculum vitae, names
B3H 1V7. Telephone Inquiries are directed
and addresses of three referees, and a oneto 902-494-3860. Review of applications
page statement of teaching and research
will be accepted until the position is filled. interests. Copies of three relevant technical
All qualified candidates are highly encourpublications may also be included. Please
aged to apply; however, Canadians and persend applications electronically to: Dr. G. F.
manent residents will be given priority.
Naterer, Dean, Faculty of Engineering and
Dalhousie University is an Employment
Applied Science, Memorial University of
Equity/Affirmative Action employer. The
Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland,
University encourages applications from
Canada, A1B 3X5; Email: dean.engineerqualified Aboriginal people, persons with a
[email protected]; Reference: ENGI-2014-001.
disability, racially visible persons and
Deadline to receive applications is April 30,
women. [29290]
2014. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens
Engineering
and permanent residents will be given priority. Memorial University is committed to
Memorial University of Newfoundemployment equity and encourages applicaland - Applications are invited for a contions from qualified women and men, visitractual faculty position as a three-year term
ble minorities, aboriginal people and
appointment in the area of process engipersons with disabilities.[29206]
neering at the Assistant/Associate level. Salary and rank will be commensurate with
Environmental Engineering
qualifications and experience. The successful applicant will be expected to teach effecMemorial University of Newfoundtively at the undergraduate and graduate
land - The Faculty of Engineering and
levels, to supervise graduate students, to
Applied Science at Memorial University of
participate in other educational, scholarly
Newfoundland is experiencing an exciting
and professional activities, to liaise with
period of major expansion. Applications are
industry, and to develop a research program
invited for a Canada Research Chair (CRC
by working with other researchers in the
Tier 2) in Environmental Engineering with
Bruneau Centre for Research and Innovaa focus on Marine and Coastal Environtion at Memorial University. The successful
mental Engineering and Management. This
applicant is expected to actively participate
is a tenure-track faculty position at the
and contribute to the undergraduate proAssistant or Associate Professor level. Salary
gram of Process Engineering. Applicants
and academic rank will be commensurate
should have a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineerwith qualifications and experience. Appliing, Process Engineering or closely related
cants must hold a Ph.D. in civil or environdiscipline and have research interests in
mental engineering and have relevant
areas related to transport phenomena, sepaexperience in one or more of the following
Carrières Careers
areas: offshore oil spills, decision making in
harsh environments, marine wastewater
treatment, or environmental management
in arctic/sub-arctic coastal regions. The successful candidate should possess strong
capabilities and experience in integrating
modeling and experimental approaches to
develop innovative engineering solutions of
environmental problems associated with
offshore oil and gas operations. The chair
will be expected to build upon existing
institutional research strengths and lead an
actively funded research program in the
above-mentioned areas that are strategically
important for Memorial University and the
Province. Memorial University is Newfoundland and Labrador's only university,
and plays an integral role in the educational
and cultural life of the province. Offering
diverse undergraduate and graduate programs to over 18,000 students, Memorial
provides a distinctive and stimulating environment for learning. St. John's is a safe,
friendly city with great historic charm, a
vibrant cultural life, and easy access to a
wide range of outdoor activities. For further
information about Memorial, please visit
www.mun.ca. The deadline to receive application is April 30, 2014. Applications should
include a curriculum vitae, names of three
referees, and a one-page statement of teaching and research interests. Copies of three
relevant technical publications may also be
included. Please send applications electronically to: Dr. Greg Naterer, Dean, Faculty of
Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's,
Newfoundland, Canada, A1B 3X5; E-mail:
[email protected]; Reference:
ENGI-2014-002. All qualified candidates
are encouraged to apply; however, citizens
and permanent residents of Canada will be
given priority. Memorial University is committed to employment equity and encourages applications from qualified women
and men, visible minorities, aboriginal people and persons with disabilities.[29215]
Geography
York University - The Department of
Geography, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University, invites
applications for a one-year Sessional Assistant Professor position in Physical Geography to begin July 1, 2014. The Department
seeks a physical geographer in the area of
biogeochemical processes, preferably in
Arctic environments. Applicants should
have demonstrated strengths in research in
terrestrial or aquatic element cycling and its
relationship to hydrology, vegetation and/or
soil dynamics. Preference will be given to
scholars conducting research and teaching
that complements existing departmental
strengths in biophysical processes. Teaching
will include courses in both Geography and
Environmental Science undergraduate programs. Applicants must hold a PhD at the
time of appointment and demonstrate
excellence or promise of excellence in
teaching and in scholarly research. The
appointment carries a teaching load of
THE
UNIVERSITY OF
BRITISH
COLUMBIA
Division of Pediatric Dentistry, Department of Oral Health Sciences, University of British Columbia
& Department of Dentistry, BC Children’s Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada
FULL-TIME FACULTY POSITION IN PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY
The Faculty of Dentistry and BC Children’s Hospital (BCCH) invite applications for a full-time faculty position at the rank of
Assistant Professor, with consideration of a higher rank depending on qualifications, in the Department of Dentistry at BCCH
and the Division of Pediatric Dentistry at UBC. Applicants must have postgraduate training in pediatric dentistry and be, or be
eligible to be, a licensed specialist in pediatric dentistry in Canada. The successful candidate will be required to demonstrate
potential for teaching excellence. Preference will be given to individuals whose research will contribute to improved oral
health of the children of British Columbia and will enhance existing research. Individuals with research, academic and hospital
experience are encouraged to apply. Experience in treating patients and educating trainees using pharmacological and nonpharmacologic behaviour management techniques is essential.
The successful candidate will be expected to teach in the DMD and Pediatric Dentistry graduate programs at UBC and BCCH
sites, to develop a robust research program and to supervise graduate research.
The successful candidate will hold an Active Staff position at BCCH and a full-time faculty appointment at UBC with salary,
rank and appointment status commensurate with qualifications and experience. UBC hires on the basis of merit and is
committed to employment equity; Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada will be given priority. Review of
applications will begin June 1, 2014 and will continue until position is filled.
Send applications with a curriculum vitae, evidence of teaching effectiveness and contact information for three referees to:
Dr. Rosamund Harrison, Head, Department of Oral Health Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, UBC, 2199 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver,
BC V6T 1Z3; [email protected].
For more information about the Faculty of Dentistry and BCCH, see our websites at www.dentistry.ubc.ca; www.bcchildrens.ca.
three full courses or the equivalent. Applicants should submit, in hard copy, a letter of
application, an up-to-date curriculum vitae,
and a teaching dossier and names and
addresses of three referees. Apply to: Professor Steven Tufts, Chair, Department of
Geography, North 402 Ross Building, York
University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ontario,
Canada, M3J 1P3. Applications will not be
accepted via fax or email. The deadline for
applications is March 31, 2014. All York
University positions are subject to budgetary approval. York University is an Affirmative Action (AA) employer and strongly
values diversity, including gender and sexual diversity, within its community. The AA
Program, which applies to Aboriginal people, visible minorities, people with disabilities, and women, can be found at www.
yorku.ca/acadjobs or by calling the AA
office at 416-736-5713. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however,
Canadian citizens and permanent residents
will be given priority. For contractually limited appointments, temporary entry for citizens of the U.S.A. and Mexico may apply
per the provisions of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[29186]
Library
York University - Business Librarian -
Continuing Appointment. York University
Libraries seeks a motivated and service-oriented librarian to serve as a member of the
Peter F. Bronfman Business Library and to
provide reference and research assistance,
instruction, collections and liaison services
related to business teaching and research at
York University. Details: http://webapps.
yorku.ca/academichiringviewer/viewposition.jsp?positionnumber=1463. York University is an Affirmative Action Employer.
The Affirmative Action Program can be
found on York's website at www.yorku.ca/
acadjobs or a copy can be obtained by calling the affirmative action office at 416-7365713. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens
and Permanent Residents will be given
priority.[29172]
Nursing
York University - The School of Nursing,
Faculty of Health, York University is seeking
a highly qualified candidate for one (1)
three-year contractually limited appointment (CLA) at the Sessional Assistant Professor level in Nursing, commencing July 1,
2014 and ending June 30, 2017. This position is subject to budgetary approval. The
School of Nursing is a leader in the delivery
of education for Primary Health Care Nurse
Practitioners (PHC-NP) and is seeking to
develop the PHC-NP program which is an
important component of our Masters of Science in Nursing (MScN) graduate education
offerings. We are interested in an individual
who has creativity, vision and passion for
educating nurses for today and for the
future and who brings clinical expertise as
a nurse practitioner, in coordinating and
delivering primary health care nurse practitioner education and an interest in scholarship in relation to nurse practitioner
clinical and education practice. The position encompasses teaching, coordination/
administration of the PHC-NP program
and scholarly activities, that may include
clinical and/or educational research and/or
professional activities to develop the program, or if PhD-prepared, graduate/thesis
supervision. The NP Program Coordinator
coordinates and administers the Primary
Health Care Nurse Practitioner (PHC-NP)
stream of the MScN Program, in collaboration with the Graduate Program Director
(GPD) and the Manager of the COUPN
PHC-NP Consortium Provincial Program.
The NP Program Coordinator is required to
demonstrate excellent decision making
skills on behalf of the GPD in coordinating
and administering the PHC-NP stream of
the MScN program. Responsibilities
include: leadership role in clinical NP nursing education within the graduate program
and COUPN PHC-NP Consortium; teaching a diverse student population primarily
within the NP program in classroom, practicum, and clinical simulated learning environments; coordination of program activities, including assessment of the placement environment, its suitability for student
learning, support of learning activities necessary for the clinical objectives to be
achieved in the practicum setting, decisions
concerning the COUPN Consortium, enrolwww.affairesuniversitaires.ca / avril 2014 / 49
ad #
3/8
$1,3
Carrières Careers
Realize. The power of nursing.
Director, Industrial Centre (Ref: 14021403)
The Institution
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University is the largest government-funded university in Hong
Kong in terms of student number. There are over 32,500 undergraduate and postgraduate
students, and more than 3,600 regular staff. The University maintains strong partnerships
with the business and industrial sector, while expanding its role as a research institution. The
University is committed to the highest international standards of excellence in teaching and
research. The University has a comprehensive range of study programmes and research
disciplines spread across six faculties and two independent schools. For further details of the
University, please visit its website at http://www.polyu.edu.hk.
The Position
The University is looking for a dynamic, mature and highly competent professional to head its
Industrial Centre which has some 100 staff.
The Industrial Centre is a multi-disciplinary “Learning Factory” providing realistic work
environment learning experience as part of the overall education package for engineering,
construction and non-engineering students. The Centre has been offering courses and
programmes for the University, industry and community since its inception in 1976.
Capitalizing on its facilities and expertise, the Centre provides research project support,
training, product and process design, product realization, consultancy and manufacturing
services for the students, academic departments, industry, government and professional
bodies. Technology development and knowledge transfer are some of the Centre’s latest
activities reinforcing and supporting the University and industry’s strategic development.
Please visit the website at http://www.ic.polyu.edu.hk/ for more information about the Centre.
The appointee will be required to (a) formulate the vision and mission, goals and objectives
as well as development strategies for the Centre; (b) lead and manage a team of
professional/technical staff in fulfilling the vision and mission of the Centre; (c) oversee the
operation of various units of the Centre with specific responsibilities for budgeting, allocation
of resources and management of performance; and (d) interface closely with the senior
management, academic departments and administrative units of the University at different
levels and with industrial partners and clients.
Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate should have (a) a master’s or higher degree and professional
qualification in Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing or related disciplines; (b) not less than
fifteen years of relevant experience with over ten years at management level or key positions
in large organizations; (c) substantial industrial experience including experience in supporting
academic research and development as well as industrial projects; (d) deep understanding
and insight of the professional development of potential engineers / designers / technologists;
(e) strong flair for innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, and knowledge of emerging
technologies; (f) excellent communication and leadership skills; and (g) good command of
both spoken and written English and preferably fluency in Putonghua.
Remuneration and Conditions of Service
A highly competitive remuneration package will be offered. Initial appointment will be made
on a fixed-term gratuity-bearing contract. Re-engagement thereafter is subject to mutual
agreement. Applicants should state their current and expected salary in the application.
Application and Nomination
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University invites applications and nominations for appointment
as Director, Industrial Centre. Review of applications and nominations will continue until the
post is filled. Please submit applications or nominations via email to [email protected];
by fax at (852) 2764 3374; or by mail to Human Resources Office, 13/F, Li Ka Shing Tower,
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong. If you would
like to provide a separate curriculum vitae, please still complete the application form which
will help speed up the recruitment process. Application forms can be obtained via the above
channels or downloaded from http://www.polyu.edu.hk/hro/job.htm.
The information
collected will be used for consideration of the application and for purposes relating to
appointment. The University reserves the right not to fill the position or to make an
appointment by invitation. The University Personal Information Collection Statement for
recruitment can be found at http://www.polyu.edu.hk/hro/jobpics.htm.
The University of Regina invites Master's or PhD
applicants for tenure track positions within the
Faculty of Nursing in Regina and Saskatoon.
Nurse educators and researchers with a passion for the
classroom, research and advancing the mission of
Canada's newest Faculty of Nursing are encouraged to apply.
Over 1,000 students are currently enrolled in the Saskatchewan Collaborative
Bachelor of Science in Nursing program (SCBScN) at our Regina, Saskatoon and
Swift Currents sites. The SCBScN is offered in partnership with the Saskatchewan
Institute of Applied Science and Technology (SIAST). A recently established Master's
program, the Collaborative Nurse Practitioner Program, is delivered online and also
in partnership with SIAST.
Master's prepared registered nurses can apply for teaching positions (instructor,
tenure track). Those holding a PhD or near completion of their PhD studies at the
time of employment can apply for professorial tenure track positions. Candidates
must also be eligible for registration with the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses
Association.
Please submit a cover letter outlining teaching and/or research interests, a teaching
portfolio or overview of teaching experience, a current Curriculum Vitae, and the
names of three references to:
Dr. david Gregory, Dean, Faculty of Nursing
University of Regina, 3737 Wascana Parkway, Regina, SK S4S 0A2
Only applicants selected for an interview will be contacted. You can also
apply online at: www.uregina.ca/hr/careers
Bookmark your future at
www.uregina.ca/nursing
To learn and to apply, for the benefit of mankind
ment, admissions and the program budget;
assisting Course Directors/tutors with students' knowledge-based skill development
and testing; collaborates with administrative staff in the implementation of responsibilities of the PHC-NP program;
participation on committees; participation
in scholarly activities. Requirements
include: Baccalaureate in Nursing; Master's
degree (preference given to a graduate
degree in Nursing); completed PhD preferred (preference given to a PhD in Nursing); registration with the College of Nurses
of Ontario (Extended Class); three years or
more of experience in a primary health care
practice environment as a Primary Health
Care Nurse Practitioner; demonstrated
knowledge of the theoretical foundations of
nursing knowledge and principles of adult
education; demonstrated continuous learning and expertise in a relevant field of clinical and/or education; demonstrated
competence in teaching; demonstrated
alignment with the School of Nursing
human science philosophy and commitment to social justice and health promotion; demonstrated knowledge of current
College of Nurses of Ontario Entry to Practice Guidelines for PHC Nurse Practitioners; demonstrated knowledge of
simulation technology, interactive CD-Rom
and clinical skill development programs;
and, demonstrated contributions to innovative practice and/or education. Preference
will be given to candidates with experience
in: teaching in a primary health care nurse
practitioner program; implementing
administrative responsibilities related to
the PHCNP Program such as developing/
negotiating placements; participating in
decisions concerning the COUPN Consortium, enrolment admissions and program
budget; working with nursing students in
clinical practicum settings and networking
within the community; using technologyenhanced, experiential, and/or online
learning. The candidate must be registered,
or eligible for registration, with the College
of Nurses of Ontario Extended Class, and
must provide their registration number
when applying. Ongoing Extended Class
certification is required. Proof of academic
credentials is required prior to appointment. Successful candidates would be
expected to have a valid driver's license and
access to personal transportation. Travel by
car is an inherent part of this position. The
application deadline date is March 28, 2014.
Applicants should submit a letter of application with up-to-date curriculum vitae,
three letters of reference, and a separate
statement of teaching experience and interests to: Dr. Claire Mallette, Director, School
of Nursing, Room 313, HNES Building, York
University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON
M3J 1P3. Fax: 416.736.5714; Tel:
416.736.5271; E-mail: [email protected].
York University is an Affirmative Action
Carrières Careers
Employer. The Affirmative Action Program can be found on York's website at
www.yorku.ca/acadjobs, or a copy can be
obtained by calling the affirmative action
office at 416-736-5713. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however,
Canadian citizens and Permanent Residents will be given priority. Temporary
entry for citizens of the U.S.A. and Mexico may apply per the provisions of the
North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA).[29152]
Philosophy of Neuroscience
Western University - Applications or
nominations are invited for an endowed
chair in the Philosophy of Neuroscience.
We are seeking a leader in the field of
philosophy of neuroscience to contribute
to growing interdisciplinary collaborations among the Department of Philosophy, the Rotman Institute of Philosophy
and the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University. The successful candidate
will hold an academic appointment in the
Department of Philosophy, will be affiliated with the two Institutes, and will
work collaboratively with both philosophers and neuroscientists. This is a great
opportunity to develop and build an
emerging area within a flourishing
research environment and graduate program. The successful applicant must have
published in the leading (top-tier) academic and practitioner journals in the
area of philosophy of neuroscience or
related fields including neurophilosophy,
neuroethics, and consciousness studies,
must have a demonstrated track record of
interdisciplinary research and teaching,
and must have five to seven years' experience of providing academic and administrative leadership in interdisciplinary
collaborations in the field of philosophy
of neuroscience. The rank of the academic
appointment will be Associate or Full Professor with tenure depending on qualifications and experience. Salary is
negotiable and commensurate with qualifications and experience. Review of applications will begin on April 1, 2014 and
will continue until the position is filled.
Applications including a curriculum vitae,
a writing sample, a teaching dossier, a
description of a five-year research plan
and the names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of three potential referees to: Professor Henrik
Lagerlund, Chair, Department of Philosophy, Stevenson Hall, Western University,
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B8.
Please ensure that the form available at
www.uwo.ca/facultyrelations/faculty/
Application-FullTime-Faculty-PositionForm.pdf is completed and included in
your application submission. Positions
are subject to budget approval. Applicants
should have fluent oral and written communication skills in English. All qualified
candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents
will be given priority. Western University
is committed to employment equity and welcomes applications from all qualified women
and men, including visible minorities, aboriginal people and persons with disabilities.
[29207]
Physics
manent residents will be given priority.
Western University is committed to
employment equity and welcomes applications from all qualified women and men,
including visible minorities, aboriginal people and persons with disabilities. [29294]
Sciences de l'éducation
Western University - The Department of
Applied Mathematics and the Department of
Philosophy at Western University invite
applications for a Canada Research Chair
(Tier II) in the Foundations of Physics. The
Canada Research Chair program has been
established by the Government of Canada to
enable Canadian universities to foster
research excellence and enhance their role as
world-class centres of research. The holder of
this Canada Research Chair will have
enhanced opportunities to pursue research
activities. Further information on the program is available on the CRC web site at
www.chairs.gc.ca. Western University, as
home to the Rotman Institute of Philosophy
and an affiliate of the Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics, is a major Canadian centre for research both in Theoretical Physics
and in Philosophy. The successful candidate
will join a vibrant and active research community. We are looking for a future leader in
the field of Foundations of Physics. Areas of
research include, among others, cosmology,
quantum mechanics, quantum gravity, quantum information, and statistical physics.
Applicants should have strong qualifications
in both physics and philosophy, with a Ph.D.
in at least one of these fields. The assessment
of candidates will include consideration of
the number and quality of peer-reviewed
publications, success in securing research
funding, and reputation in the field, as evidenced, for example, by a record of invited
presentations, editorships and similar measures. The successful applicant will be
appointed jointly to both Applied Mathematics and Philosophy, and have research, teaching and service responsibilities in both. The
rank will be either Assistant Professor (tenure-track) or Associate Professor with tenure
depending on qualifications and experience.
Salary is negotiable and commensurate with
qualifications and experience. The review of
applications began on March 1, 2014 and will
continue until the position is filled. All Chairs
are subject to review and final approval by
the CRC Secretariat. Applications, including a
curriculum vitae, a writing sample, a teaching
dossier, a description of a 5-7 year research
plan and the names of three referees, should
be sent, preferably electronically, to [email protected]. Please ensure that the form
available at www.uwo.ca/facultyrelations/
faculty/Application-FullTime-Faculty-Position-Form.pdf is completed and included in
your application submission. Hard-copy
applications can be sent to Professor David
Jeffrey, Chair, Department of Applied Mathematics, Western University, London, Ontario,
Canada N6A 5B7. Positions are subject to
budget approval. Applicants should have fluent oral and written communication skills in
English. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and per-
Université du Québec en AbitibiTémiscamingue - L'unité d'enseigne-
ment et de recherche en sciences de
l'éducation de l'Université du Québec en
Abitibi-Témiscamingue est à la recherche
d'un professeur régulier en formation en
milieu de pratique et travail enseignant.
Fonction : La personne retenue devra dispenser des enseignements dans les programmes de baccalauréat en éducation
préscolaire et enseignement primaire, de
baccalauréat en enseignement secondaire,
de baccalauréat en enseignement de
l'anglais langue seconde et de baccalauréat
en enseignement professionnel. Elle interviendra au premier cycle et, occasionnellement, au second cycle. Elle devra effectuer
de la recherche dans son domaine de spécialisation et sera appelée à assumer certaines tâches d'ordre administratif et à
s'intégrer dans des équipes de formation en
milieu de pratique. Exigences : Détenir un
doctorat (Ph. D.) dans la discipline concernée, ou dans une discipline connexe. À
défaut de pouvoir recruter un candidat
répondant à cette exigence, les dossiers des
candidats dont la thèse de doctorat est
déposée pourraient éventuellement être
considérés. Le candidat retenu devra alors
s'engager à terminer son doctorat dans un
délai prescrit. Une excellente maîtrise de la
langue d'enseignement écrite et parlée est
exigée. Autres critères considérés comme un
atout : une expérience pratique en enseignement au primaire ou au secondaire; une
bonne maîtrise des technologies de
l'information et des communications; une
expérience d'enseignement universitaire et
de supervision de stagiaires en milieu de
pratique; une aptitude à mener de la recherche universitaire et un dossier de recherche
constitué; une aptitude et un intérêt pour le
travail d'équipe et un engagement envers le
développement de l'unité d'enseignement et
de recherche en sciences de l'éducation; une
préoccupation marquée pour la contribution au développement du milieu local et la
volonté de s'y intégrer concrètement et
activement. Lieu principal de travail :
Rouyn-Noranda. Date d'entrée en fonction :
1er juin 2014. Traitement : Le traitement est
établi en fonction des qualifications et de
l'expérience de chaque candidat selon la
convention collective en vigueur. Conformément aux exigences prescrites en matière
d'immigration au Canada, cette annonce
s'adresse en priorité aux citoyens canadiens
ainsi qu'aux résidents permanents. L'UQAT
souscrit à un programme d'égalité en
emploi (groupes visés : femmes, minorités
visibles et ethniques, autochtones, personnes ayant un handicap). Particularité :
Pour que votre candidature soit considérée,
vous devez y joindre un formulaire d'accès
à l'égalité en emploi dûment complété.
Veuillez l'imprimer à partir du site : www.
uqat.ca/emplois. Toute candidature sera
traitée confidentiellement. Les personnes
intéressées doivent faire parvenir leur curriculum vitae, en spécifiant le numéro
du concours, avant le jeudi 17 avril 2014,
16 h 30, à l'attention de : Monsieur Réal
Bergeron, directeur, Unité d'enseignement
et de recherche en sciences de l'éducation,
Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 445, boulevard de l'Université,
Rouyn-Noranda (Québec) J9X 5E4; téléphone : 1-819-762-0971, poste 2238; télécopieur : 1-819-797-4727; real.bergeron@
uqat.ca[29282]
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Des conseils de carrière
Career advice
Cet article est également
disponible en français
sur notre site web,
www.affairesuniversitaires.ca
Hidden in plain sight
How you can help a student
with a hidden disability
by
Christine Nieder and Mahadeo Sukhai
I
magine you are at the front of your classroom, waiting for this term’s newest batch
of students to settle themselves in. You scan
the faces of each one, wondering what this
cohort will be like.
Now, consider that you were one of those
students, in a lecture hall with 100 other students, knowing that you had a hidden or invisible disability. Imagine the anxiety you might
feel as one of the 80,000 or so postsecondary
students in Canada in this position.
You might wonder whether you should disclose the disability to your classmates or to your
professor. And if you did, would you be
treated differently? Imagine the questions you’d
get if you did make the decision to tell them
about it: what is a hidden disability? How
should we act with you? What should I do as
your professor?
Approximately six percent of students in colleges and universities disclose that they have a
disability, yet 16 percent of the general population is estimated to have at least one disability.
About two-thirds of people with disabilities have
hidden disabilities. Extrapolating from all this,
at least 10 students in your class of 100 are likely
to have a hidden disability, and four of them are
probably registered with your campus’s disability services office.
What is a hidden or invisible disability?
It could be a mental health condition (such as
depression or anxiety disorder), a learning disability, a chronic health issue (diabetes, chronic
fatigue syndrome), or a sensory or mobility
impairment that is not obvious.
As a faculty or staff member, you should
know if you have students with disabilities in
your class so that you can better assist them with
their learning. So why might one hesitate to disclose their disability?
First, students are under no legal obligation
to tell you they have a disability. While staff
members working in the disability services office
often encourage disclosure, students with disabilities may not feel comfortable enough to tell
you, or might perceive that they would be discriminated against if they do.
Second, there is, unfortunately, a widespread
misunderstanding and societal stigma attached
to the word “disability.” Learning and mental
health disabilities, especially, are even more
stigmatized than physical disabilities and can
carry with them unfair labels. For example, a
person with dyslexia may be labelled “slow”
in elementary school, and a student with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may be considered “disruptive.”
People often fear what they do not understand, so many students with hidden disabilities
are cautious about whom to trust. They know
they might be treated differently once their disability is out in the open.
Finally, some students may not even realize
that they have a disability as it hasn’t been diagnosed properly or at all, or they may not think
of themselves as disabled and therefore are
unaware that they can ask for assistance.
Ms. Nieder is a recent
graduate of Simon Fraser
University's MEd program in
postsecondary leadership
and works as an assistive
technology specialist.
Dr. Sukhai is a research fellow
in cancer diagnostics at the
Princess Margaret Cancer
Centre in Toronto. Both are
active volunteers with the
National Educational
Association of Disabled
Students (NEADS).
“Many students with
hidden disabilities are
cautious about whom
to trust.”
How to work with someone with a hidden disability
First, you need to be open and give opportunities
for students to approach you for a private
conversation so they can share their experiences
and concerns.
Second, you should respect that they have
chosen to disclose to you and not necessarily to
their peers, so be discreet about accommodations
and requests. If you have questions that come
up, approach them privately.
Most importantly, use the disability services
office and other relevant departments at your
institution for assistance – but remember: the
student may not have disclosed the disability to
these agencies. While you can encourage the student to do so, you cannot require it. Find out
what resources the offices have to assist you in
working with the student, such as workshops,
technology aids and publications.
The types of accommodations can vary from
student to student; don’t put all students in the
same mould. Some may need extra time on
exams, others may need a note-taker during class
or a quieter setting to write exams. Others
require an electronic format for textbooks or
assistive devices, or they may choose to record
lectures in audio format. Whenever possible,
work with the disability services office and the
student to ensure the most appropriate course
of action.
The more equipped faculty are to support
students with hidden disabilities, the more successful these individuals can ultimately become
in the postsecondary system and beyond.
Are you doing something about it? If you make outstanding contributions to the
environment, you could be recognized as Earth Day Canada’s next Hometown Hero.
Nominate yourself or someone you know at earthday.ca/hometown.
Sponsored by:
Discover Graduate Studies at Brock
A graduate education at Brock University means much more than building disciplinary knowledge.
By offering more than 60 development workshops, our graduate students are rich in academic and
professional proficiencies — with the world at their feet.
The Faculty of Graduate Studies at Brock University offers 44 programs, an array of specializations, co-op
opportunities and a world of possibilities, all just an hour away from Toronto in the beautiful Niagara region.
discover.brocku.ca
Brock University | Niagara | Canada

University Affairs - April 2014

Transcription

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