Daily News

Posted on Sept. 25: McMaster launches fresh online look

McMaster's Web site has a new look and feel. Check it out. After months of talking to user groups, developing navigation structures, testing proofs and confirming design features, a revamped mcmaster.ca goes live Wednesday, Sept. 25. The redesign was implemented to enhance McMaster's Web site and give it a consistent look and feel, in an effort to improve the user's experience. The University's Web project includes the development of templates and a style guide to be used by all departments and faculties. This will ensure the University has a unified look and consistent navigation structure. The design provides a fresh new look with snapshots of current information and an improved navigation system to help users find what they're looking for easily and quickly.

Posted on Sept. 25: McMaster gives peace a chance

The tenth annual Ghandi Peace Festival and Peace Walk, hosted by McMaster's Centre for Peace Studies and the India Canada Society, takes place Saturday, Sept. 28 at Hamilton City Hall. The festival opens at 10 a.m. and activities commence at 11 a.m. The festival, which celebrates the birthday and philosophies of Mahatma Ghandi begins at 11 a.m. with an opening address by Mayor Bob Wade followed by a keynote address from Joy Warner, past national chair of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. At noon, there will be a peace walk followed by food and music. Festival participants and interested onlookers are invited to participate, march through the city and bring signs and banners to display and voice their messages of peace and non-violence. "The purpose of the Gandhi Peace Festival is to promote nonviolence, peace and justice," says Rama Singh, professor of biology at McMaster. He also hopes it provides an avenue for various peace and human rights organizations within the local community to become collectively visible, and exchange dialogues and resources, and build on local interest and dialogue in peace and human right issues that develop around the world. "We are encouraged by the growing interest in the Gandhi Peace Festival," he says. In an effort to involve more people in the festival, they created the McMasterPeaceFest, an annual event that consists of a number of peace related events on campus. They have also initiated a high school peace essay competition. The winners of this competition will be recognized at the Sept. 28 festival. They also have increased the content of the peace booklet and made it a more relevant and resourceful book for high school students, says Singh. "I know of no city of the size of Hamilton which has more peace and human rights organizations than we have," says Singh. "I am excited about the involvement of high school students as well as those from McMaster to make it a great peace walk." The Gandhi Peace Festival is twinned with the Annual Gandhi Lectures on Nonviolence, sponsored by McMaster's Centre for Peace Studies. This year's speaker will be the imminent Elder of Australian Aboriginal People, professor Lowitja O'Donoghue, Flinders University, South Australia. She will speak on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. at the McMaster University Medical Centre, Room HSC 1A1. Pictures and posters from the Vaishali Sabha Conference on Peace, Nonviolence and Democracy that took place last February in India will be on display at the University Centre Marketplace Thursday, Sept. 26 until 8 p.m. The Vaishali Sabha was co-sponsored by the Centre for Peace Studies.

Posted on Sept. 24: McMaster at your service

As another summer came to an end, so did another busy season for Conference Services. Wendy Read, conference co-ordinator, Housing and Conference Services, cites events held by the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC), the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE), and the Olympic Academy of Canada (OAC) as the highlights of a very positive summer for McMaster University. The SSC annual meeting and the STLHE conference, each of which hosted approximately 400 delegates, were very large events. States Read, "This year was bigger than last year. There were a large number of departmental events."

Posted on Sept. 24: McMaster to help craft strategy on innovation in business

McMaster University is taking a lead position on an innovation policy on behalf of 50 business schools in Canada. McMaster is one of only two schools chosen -- University of Ottawa is the other -- to provide business-school input to the federal government. The university hosted a federal summit on innovation last Tuesday. McMaster hopes to submit its paper to other business schools, with the final version to go to Ottawa before a national conference on innovation, likely in November in Toronto. Ottawa is pushing cutting-edge innovation and knowledge-enterprise in research schools and Canadian companies. Without new products and services, Ottawa is saying, Canada will slip in its standard of living among the great economies of the world. What McMaster is telling Ottawa is that it must give equal weight to how companies take innovations to market. In general, innovation relates to new products, new services or new technologies that have gone to market and been adopted into commercial use. "Eighty per cent of good inventions fail because somebody has not bothered to look at this from the invention-to-market stage," says business dean Vishwanath Baba. He is chair of the Ontario Council of Business School Deans, representing 17 schools in the province. (The Hamilton Spectator, Sept. 24, 2002)

Posted on Sept. 24: Open house launches Health Sciences expansion

McMaster faculty, staff, students and community members are invited to attend an open house for information on the building expansion to the Faculty of Health Sciences. After considerable planning, construction of the multi-use facility is about to begin. The expansion is the largest building project on campus in the past 30 years and will provide significant new classroom, research and hospital space. However, the construction itself will create some challenges. "We have tried to anticipate and mitigate the impact the construction will have on campus and the community," says Karen Belaire, vice-president (administration). "Input received at the open house will help to ensure that we have considered all the issues that may arise during this phase of the project." Details of the project, including the construction timelines and the approved design, will be displayed. As well, the architect, project manager and University officials will be available to answer questions. The open house will take place Thursday, Sept. 26 in Divinity College, Room 136 from 4 to 7 p.m.