February 2, 2001

Pediatrics professor Ronald Barr and his colleagues in the hematology- oncology service at the Children's Hospital at Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation(HHSC) have written a book . . .

January 31, 2001

The federal government promised yesterday to "at least" double current research and development dollars by 2010 in a move to make Canada one of the top five countries in research performance. Ottawa will strengthen research capacity at universities and will give the Canadian Institutes of Health Research more money, Gov. Gen Adrienne Clarkson said, reading the throne speech on behalf of Prime Minister Jean Chretien. The throne speech is a blueprint for the direction the federal government will take during the next session of Parliament. Clarkson said: "In making new investments, the government will: continue to pursue excellence in Canadian research by strengthening the research capacity of Canadian universities and government laboratories and institutions; accelerate Canada's ability to commercialize research discoveries, turning them into new products and services; and pursue a global strategy for Canadian science and technology, supporting more collaborative international research at the frontiers of knowledge." Gerhard Gerber, vice-president research and international affairs, said: "Yesterday's throne speech is great news for McMaster. As this federal plan is implemented, and assuming we maintain our competitive position in research, we expect our funding to double to more than $60-million a year from the three funding councils alone -- the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research." The federal government said the new money will "include strategically targeted research that is co-ordinated with partners." Areas that should benefit include health, water quality, the environment, natural resources management, and oceans research. (End of story)

January 31, 2001

The race is on! The election race for president of the McMaster Students Union officially started at 9 a.m. on Monday. Six candidates are vying . . .

January 30, 2001

You're a science major. You don't want to be a doctor and you're not sure you want to spend your days under a fume hood. Where do you go for information on jobs, employers and possibilities that are specific to science? The new Science Career Services office. In operation since May, the career services office is a joint project of the McMaster Science Society and science dean Peter Sutherland's office. Students voted in an October 1999 referendum to pay a $25 ancillary fee to set up the office and the dean's office kicks in a matching amount. The service is meant to augment, not replace, the help provided by the Career Planning and Employment Centre. "It was a conscious effort to make sure it's specific to sciences and not overlapping with CPEC," said Steve Ewoniak, science society president. "It's more targeted to jobs they would be looking for. We're not running career planning groups." Science Career co-ordinator Annette Poechman often starts a meeting with a student by asking them to describe an ideal day in the world of work. "I ask them 'What does your perfect day look like? Are you in a small city? A big city? Do you like to be with people or prefer to work on your own?'" she says. Photo: Annette Poechman and Steve Ewoniak

January 29, 2001

McMaster's new Centre for the Study of Disadvantage has joined with three other universities to set up the Canadian Child and Youth Development Research Network. The centre, along with centres at the University of British Columbia, University of Montreal and the University of New Brunswick, will receive $2 million over a five-year period from Human Resources Development Canada, minister Jane Stewart announced recently in Vancouver. Each centre will focus on one specific area of child development under the direction of a senior scholar working with two full-time child and youth development scholars. A main thrust of the research is determining how children can be better prepared for learning by overcoming the challenges and obstacles they face from a young age. The McMaster centre, led by Dan Offord, director of the Centre for Studies of Children at Risk, will focus on the study of child outcomes and how they are affected by the factors of disadvantage such as socioeconomic, individual, family and the neighbourhood setting.

January 26, 2001

Thanks for helping us celebrate the Daily New's first birthday. Here's a sampling of comments and best wishes received: “The Daily News has been a . . .

January 26, 2001

Provost Harvey Weingarten will meet the McMaster community next Friday, Feb. 2 to discuss and answer questions about issues raised in his State of the Academy address presented on Wednesday. "I have been approached by more than a handful of people who attended the State of the Academy talk expressing disappointment that there was no opportunity to ask questions, or to discuss some of the issues raised during the presentation," said Weingarten. "This is very encouraging as it suggests that the presentation was sufficiently informative or entertaining to retain people's interest and attention." The question and answer session pertaining to the State of the Academy address will be in HSC-1A1 from 2:45 p.m. to 4 p.m. Weingarten will have his slides from the presentation available. "I look forward to seeing you there," said Weingarten, provost and vice-president academic. A story summarizing Weingarten's presentation from Wednesday, Jan. 24 is posted on the Daily News. The headline is "Campus must embrace change to manage growth, meet challenges". (End of story)

January 25, 2001

McMaster must embrace change, while recognizing the challenges now are to manage growth, not cope with downsizing, provost Harvey Weingarten says. In his fifth annual State of the Academy address given yesterday (Jan. 24), Weingarten said success in an era of growth requires different strategies and actions than in periods of downsizing like the mid-1990s when the provincial government made dramatic funding cuts to universities. Weingarten said the University needs to change for several reasons: * increased student enrolment due to the "double cohort" Class of 2003; * increased faculty retirements; * different student expectations; * competition from non-traditional education providers; and * the increased complexity of the university environment. Full-time undergraduate enrolment in 1980 was about 10,000, he said, but by 2003 it is projected to be almost 15,500. This increase in the student population will be coupled with an increase in faculty retirements: by 2011, about 250 of the 1,000 full-time faculty will reach retirement age. Weingarten said the University has been in the hire a "prof-a-week" mode for the last two years and must continue to do so to replenish the faculty complement. In 1999, 76 faculty were hired and 57 were hired last year. McMaster is conducting 107 active faculty searches now.

January 25, 2001

The President's Awards demonstrate the value McMaster attaches to its educational function and recognize those who, through innovation and commitment, have significantly enhanced the quality . . .

January 24, 2001

The Daily News celebrates its first year of operation today! Want to celebrate with us? Send a birthday greeting.

January 24, 2001

In the Jan. 20 issue of the Hamilton Spectator, education reporter Christine Cox outlines McMaster's plans to establish a guaranteed salary for PhD students. To . . .

January 23, 2001

Researchers at McMaster will receive more than $1.5-million for seven research projects funded under the Canada Foundation for Innovation's New Opportunities Program. The new funding was announced yesterday by CFI president David Strangway. For details about McMaster's awards,

January 23, 2001

"Self-Service Technology (SST) Use by Business-to-Business: Drivers of Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction." By Erica Ainsworth, Business. Supervisor: Ashish Pujari. "Paleo-histomorphometry: Methodology and Application to Age-at-Death Estimation in Archaeological Bone Samples." By Patrick Beauchesne, Social Sciences. Supervisor: Shelley Saunders. "Feminists Reading Sade: Beauvoir, Carter, Benjamin, and the Intersubjective Meaning of His Work." Robin Chamberlain, Humanities. Supervisor: Joseph Adamson. "Directing Actions at Visual Illusions: Planning, Control, and Memory." By Cheryl Glazebrook, Social Sciences. Supervisor: Digby Elliott. "Duopolies with Advance Production and Posted Prices or Market Clearing Prices." By David Goodwin, Social Sciences. Supervisor: Stuart Mestelman. "Use of Free Samples in Interactive Advertising." By Alexander Grey, Business. Supervisor: Maureen Hupfer. "Community Morality and the Charter: A Defense of Judicial Review." By Sarah Halsted, Humanities. Supervisor: William Waluchow. "Identifying and Interpreting Glass Artifacts in Archaeology: Expedient Tool Technology at a NorthWest Coast Tsimshian Site." By Irena Jurakic, Social Sciences. Supervisor: Andrew Martindale. "Social Capital, Social Cohesion, Gender, Health and Lower Income Neighbourhoods in Hamilton." By Shoshannah Levitt, Social Sciences. Supervisor: Tina Moffatt. "Annotating Bertrand Russell's Papers on China." By Andrea Pasztor, Humanities. Supervisor: Nicholas Griffin.

January 22, 2001

The Michael G. DeGroote School of Business is one of the top 100 business schools in the world, according to the Financial Times MBA 2001 survey published today. The school ranked 80th overall and placed sixth out of nine among Canadian schools ranked. This is the first year McMaster participated in the survey. The School of Business exhibited a strong showing when the data is broken down: * McMaster placed first among the Canadian entries in the "placement success" category with a score of 93 per cent. The "placement success" category is defined as the percentage of 1997 alumni that gained employment with the help of career advice; * As well, 43 per cent of the school's students were female when the study was conducted, another first-place ranking. * The school placed second among the Canadian universities in the international mobility category. It is defined as a rating system that measures the school with the most internationally mobile alumni based on the movements of 1997 graduates.

January 22, 2001

The 2001 Friends of Distinction awards were presented at halftime of the men's basketball game during Marauder Weekend Jan. 19-21. Presented annually, these awards honour . . .

January 22, 2001

The McMaster Museum of Art begins the new year with “Sanctified/Soul Art,” an exhibition of paintings, sculpture, photographs and altarpieces by Vancouver-based, Hamilton-born artist Jan . . .

January 21, 2001

The move by the McMaster Centre for Dance to offer dance classes that focus on popular culture is proving to be a very successful one, given the attendance at several recent performances. Shows presented by a variety of McMaster dancers, at Robinson Memorial Theatre and at Hamilton Place, were staged in front of full houses, a sign that dance is alive and well in Hamilton. Over 275 people attended the end-of-term Amalgam dance production shown in Robinson Memorial Theatre on Dec. 2 and 3. They enjoyed a diverse program featuring the McMaster Dancers, the McMaster Hip Hop Dance Company, the Jedi Ninja Crew & Affiliates (break dancing) and the Inner City Ballet. And last week the dance club's Centre Stage show, featuring belly to ballet and beginners and experts, resulted in two sold-out shows at Hamilton Place. "There are about a dozen 12-year-olds from the Westdale area taking hip hop, and we had one 11-year-old taking break classes."

January 19, 2001

Oceans cover 80 per cent of the Earth's surface, but we know surprisingly little about how oceans influence world weather patterns. McMaster geologist Mike Risk expects to fathom some answers through a new research project that will study deep-sea corals. "The corals are like the Rosetta stones of the sea," says Risk. "They are an untapped record of weather patterns that stretch back hundreds of years. Revealing the climatic records will bring new accuracy to the science of weather forecasting and will also create a new bank of information about how the oceans process carbon dioxide, which is a key factor in global warming." "The reason the present climate models don't work as well as they should is that most of the observations are on land, and most of the action, the driving force of climate change, is in the ocean. We need to know more about what happens in the deep sea, and the corals provide a clear record of what has happened over the centuries. Comparing the coral data to recorded weather patterns will provide new insight into past weather patterns and future climate modelling."

January 19, 2001

University provost and vice-president academic Harvey Weingarten presents his 2001 State of the Academy address " Whither McMaster? Managing Our Growth for 2003 -- The Double Cohort Year" today (Jan. 24) from 12:30 p.m. to 1:20 p.m.in HSC-1A1. McMaster is planning to receive a double cohort of students who will graduate from Ontario high schools in the year 2003. This double cohort is part of a larger demographic increase in the number of 18-24 year-old students seeking admission to university. The provost will talk about why the way we do things at McMaster must change, the direction of these changes, and the capacity of McMaster to change sufficiently, to meet the challenges of the double cohort. Success stories that should make one optimistic about McMaster's future will be provided. All members of the University and Hamilton communities are welcome. In previous talks, the provost has discussed the academic duties of the professoriate and issues relating to institutional renewal. His 1999 talk on the professoriate is located at www.mcmaster.ca/newsevents/state99.htm and his 2000 talk on institutional renewal was distributed to faculty and staff in the summer. (END OF STORY)

January 18, 2001

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/MarvinRyder.jpg” caption=”Marvin Ryder”]Marvin Ryder, assistant vice-president, information services & technology, will chair the new board of directors for the Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation . . .