Every one of us is on a journey, a journey of life. In this journey, we grow, change, and develop along several dimensions ---intellectual, social, civic, physical, moral, spiritual, and religious. And we develop holistically and not departmentally, i.e., we simultaneously develop our mind, sense of self, and relationships with others. In this journey of life, we, and especially
during the traditional college years of ages 18-24, are actively involved in asking several questions about ourselves, including these three.
• How do I know?
• Who am I?
• How do I relate to others?
The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance is pleased to be presenting our first issue of “Habitats,” a series of case studies researched and written by Ontario university students. Municipal affairs are an important part of the student experience, affecting everything from how students live during their time at school, to how they get to class, to how they interact with their broader community environment. Such topics are always of great interest to students, and OUSA’s members have been eager to explore them in-depth. However, their very nature as local issues can make them difficult to examine in a broader context.
Higher education, like other sectors, now functions in a global environment of consumers, employees, competitors and partners. The fundamental missions of teaching, research and service remain unchanged, but the avenues for pursuing them have greatly expanded due to globalization.
In early 2014, two incidents engulfed the University of Ottawa in the debate over sexual violence
that has affected many postsecondary institutions in recent years. In February, members of the University of Ottawa men’s varsity hockey team were involved in an alleged sexual assault, resulting in the suspension of the men’s hockey program for the 2014-15 season. Following this incident, a Facebook conversation involving five male students that included sexually derogatory and violent comments about the female President of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) was made public.
The present system of academic credentials awarded by Ontario’s colleges was established nearly a half century ago. It is thus appropriate to consider how well some of those credential titles fit in the global lexicon of academic credentials as it has evolved over the last half century and whether they are still appropriate today.
Presently the term for the credential that is awarded by colleges in Ontario upon completion of a program of two years’ duration is diploma. In 1995, noted community college scholar John Dennison of the University of British Columbia observed that “there is not a clear appreciation of what a diploma means”, and this “results in an undervaluation of the diploma from a CAAT” (Dennison, 1995, p. 13).
Vision
Rooted in our communities, we will be a globally recognized college delivering innovative learning opportunities and preparing career-ready graduates to be leaders in their fields.
Mission/Mandate
• We are dedicated to student success, academic excellence, and leadership in our communities.
• We meet the learning needs of postsecondary students in Eastern Ontario and support, through
education and training, the economic, social, and cultural needs of the communities we serve. As the primary provider of quality and accessible education in our region, we are our communities’ pathway to educational opportunities. We are committed to our strategic directions:
- Student Experience – Provide outstanding campus communities, support services, and engagement opportunities that enhance the success of our students.
- Contemporary Learners – Foster digital and foundational literacies in our students through academic grounding and real world experience.
- Sustainability – Be accountable for our decisions and actions to ensure our long- term viability, reduce our environmental impact, and foster a healthy and dynamic college.
Purpose – This paper reports on a census of high-level sustainability initiatives at all accredited post-secondary institutions in Canada by documenting the institutions that have undertaken sustainability assessments, have signed one or more sustainability declarations, have sustainability offices or officers, or have sustainability policies. Our aim was to better understand the broad-scale patterns of commitments by post-secondary institutions to these sustainability initiatives by exploring the interrelationships among them, and with geographic and institutional characteristics.
This article explores the development of culturally relevant teaching practices of non-Native teachers in First Nations communities. The findings were gathered from a qualitative study that asked First Nations and non-Native educators what they believed non-Native teachers needed to know about cultivating student success for First Nations students. Based on participants’ personal stories, suggestions, and advice, this article encourages non-Native teachers to enrich their teaching practices through self-reflection, communication and community engagement, and the right kind of attitude. Participants
suggest that these activities can help non-Native teachers create a learning environment that is meaningful to the students they teach.
Keywords: culturally relevant teaching, First Nations education, teacher development
Résumé
Cet article explore les méthodes pédagogiques adaptées aux différences culturelles que développent des enseignants non autochtones au sein de communautés des Premières Nations. Les résultats présentés proviennent d’une étude qualitative dans le cadre de laquelle des enseignants autochtones et non autochtones se sont vu demander ce que, à leur avis, des enseignants non autochtones ont besoin de savoir afin de promouvoir la réussite scolaire de leurs élèves autochtones. Basé sur les témoignages, les suggestions et les conseils des participants, cet article encourage les enseignants non autochtones à
enrichir leurs méthodes pédagogiques par la réflexion personnelle, la communication et l’engagement communautaire, et l’adoption d’une bonne attitude. Les participants croient que cela peut aider les enseignants non autochtones à créer un milieu d’apprentissage qui est pertinent pour leurs élèves.
Mots-clés : enseignement adapté aux réalités culturelles, éducation des autochtones, perfectionnement
des enseignants
This paper exploits longitudinal tax-filer data to provide new empirical evidence for Ontario on i)
overall PSE participation rates on an annual basis over the last decade, ii) how access is related to a number of important individual and family characteristics, including sex, family income, area size of residence and family type, andiii) how these relationships have changed over time. This is done for Ontario as a whole, in comparison to the rest of Canada, and then broken down by region within Ontario. The findings are informative, in some cases surprising, and highly relevant to public policy regarding access to postsecondary education.
The findings are many, and there is room to mention only a few of the most important ones here. Our focus here was on access to university – although we do present results for college attendance as well. We do this for two main reasons. The first is that the PSE-related tax credit information available in the Longitudinal Administrative Databank (LAD) dataset which we employ to identify participation in PSE do not do as good a job of finding college students, simply because the credits available are not generally worth as much to college students as they are to university students. Secondly, the effects of individual and family background characteristics on PSE ttendance – a principal focus of our study – tend to come out much more strongly in
(net) effects on college attendance are more unambiguous and are almost always found to be much smaller from an empirical perspective.
The contemporary landscape of university internationalization In recent decades, globalization has become a pervasive force
shaping higher education. Today almost all institutions in Canada and around the world engage to some degree in activities aimed at forging global connections and building global competencies among their students, faculty and administrative units. Developing such activities at many levels within universities is now a central part of institutional planning, structures and programming — a phenomenon known as the internationalization of higher education.
Canadians invest considerable energy, resources, and personal and societal aspiration postsecondary education. It is good public policy to assess how we are doing and outcomes we are achieving with that investment. One of HEQCO’s core mandates evaluate the postsecondary sector and to report the results of that assessment. To this end, in this report, we have assembled data that assess the performance of Canada’s 10 provincial public postsecondary education systems.
Vision
Canadore is the college of choice for connecting people, education, and employment through leadership and innovation.
Mission
To provide outstanding applied education and training for an ever-changing world.
Creating effective solutions to global challenges will require a range of skills from leaders in the public and private spheres. The British Council, in partnership with Ipsos Public Affairs, conducted a study of current professional leaders with higher education qualifications1 from 30 countries, and across sectors, to reveal:
What are the higher education pathways of professional leaders around the world? What contribution did direct learning and other higher education experiences make to their careers?
A different kind of learning occurs when there is no exam to study for, no essay to write – just the opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills that have been learned to a real life project. From medicine to engineering and fine arts, experiential learning is where curiosity gets tested in the real world.
Applied, or work-integrated, learning is one of the fastest-growing areas for universities in Ontario, a testament to its tremendous value to students and employers. It began with practicums for students in health sciences, expanded later to those studying business and engineering, and today, spans all disciplines and faculties with hundreds of programs on university campuses. Through internships, co-op programs, community service learning and placements, students are working in businesses, sports franchises, community organizations and international development agencies. Students can also acquire experiential learning through programs on campus that encourage them to take on roles such as investment managers, campaign planners and entrepreneurs.
The role of academic deans is critical to the success of higher education academic institutions. This study
illustrates the leadership approach of Ohio’s academic deans. This quantitative study researched and analyzed
whether differences exists between the leadership styles of academic deans and the independent variables of age,
number of faculty supervised, and the number of years of experience.. Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid was utilized for this study. Blake and Mouton theory is based on five predominate leadership styles: Data for this study was gathered using a researcher designed instrument along with the Styles of Leadership Survey to gather information about the academic deans. The surveys were administered through U.S. mail to the deans’ office
address. ANOVA methodology was used to analyze the data. It appears from the results of this study that no
significant independent differences exist among the leadership styles and the independent variables.
Keywords: Leadership, Academic Deans, Managerial Grid, Chief Academic officer, University
Why does art matter? To make art is a liminal act—it creates an active threshold between risk and reward, between waste and resource, between personal trauma and social redemption. Human beings tend to do far more than is needed to main-tain a natural equilibrium between our selves, our relations, and the environments we live in. We are catalysts. For better or worse, we make change, and that change requires something extra from us. Humans generate an excess of energy that must be expended and consumed one way or the other—either for personal or private gain, or toward the profi tless exercise of helping one another become more human (Rolling, 2015). It is risky business to make something from nothing, without the overt goal of adding to personal wealth or prior-itizing one’s national interests. Each aesthetic response, either to one another or to the materials at hand, is fraught with such risk because so much is invested. Who is the artist working for? Is it solely for his or her career? Or, with each intervention undertaken toward the enhancement of our better selves, is much more at stake than the present-day culture acknowledges or values?
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (“the Agencies”) are federal granting agencies that promote and support research, research training and innovation within Canada. As publicly funded organizations, the Agencies have a fundamental interest in promoting the availability of findings that result from the research they fund, including research publications and data, to the widest possible audience, and at the earliest possible opportunity. Societal advancement is made possible through widespread and barrier-free access to cutting-edge research and knowledge, enabling researchers, scholars, clinicians, policymakers, private sector and not-for-profit organizations and
the public to use and build on this knowledge.
When viewed holistically, Canada lacks a clear and common understanding of the future directions and top priorities of its post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Perhaps as a result, Canada has not yet comprehensively addressed a fundamental question: How do we demonstrate quality in PSE? To answer this question requires clarification of many issues, including the roles that various institutions and sectors play. It also requires the development of a shared vision of PSE, of what can and should be achieved. Despite much discussion among leaders of various education sectors in Canada, an agreement on a plan of action has yet to be reached. Indeed, a national dialogue on this critical issue is needed.
• Aboriginal women living off-reserve have bucked national trends, with employment rates rising since 2007 alongside labour force participation.
• Employment growth has been particularly high in service sectors such as finance and professional services – areas typically associated with well-paying, stable jobs.
• Linked to improving labour market outcomes, Aboriginal women have seen sizeable improvements in education attainment over the past 20 years.
• Significant gaps in outcomes relative to the Non-Aboriginal population persist. Fortunately, the rela-tively young population implies that these gaps will continue to close as the Aboriginal population is likely to see further gains in educational outcomes.
In 2011 Ontario joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) feasibility study. The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) led the project on behalf of the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) and in cooperation with the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC).
Initiated in 2006, AHELO was a feasibility study to determine if standard generic and discipline-specific tests could be used in different countries to measure what university students know and are able to do. Intending to contribute to the international conversation on establishing better indications of learning quality, the study aimed to develop common learning outcomes and assess student performance at the end of a bachelor’s degree (first cycle) in a variety of educational cultures, languages and institutions through standard tests. The feasibility study developed three assessments: one for generic skills and two for discipline-specific skills in economics and civil engineering.