Daily News

Posted on Aug. 22: Winning essay adds up for commerce student

When the news came that she had won a prestigious undergraduate Jane Austen essay competition, Jan Mullally was shocked. "I forgot that I had even entered," she said. Competing against more than 300 English students from around the world, the third-year commerce student entered the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) competition at the advice of her teaching assistant. The bigger surprise came a few weeks later. "When I found out that I won, I was absolutely shocked. Really, the whole thing blew my mind, and then I heard it might be taken away from me." Another entrant read Mullally's essay and counted the number of words, noticing it was five words over the 2,000-word limit. JASNA asked Mullally to rewrite the essay, which she did, bringing down the number of words to 1,905. Mullally was allowed to keep the certificate and $500 US prize. While English was her minor, it played a major role in her quest toward a B.Com. degree, which she graduated with last spring. Of the 30 credits she obtained, 21 were in English. Some of her fellow business students questioned her decision to take English as a minor. But she feels there is no better fit. "I find that my analytical and communication skills are a lot better because of the English courses I have taken," she says. Improving her writing skills also helped her in her commerce classes. "You learn the things that you use in commerce that you're not taught in commerce," she says. "When you write business papers, you're really writing about the research and you're being more analytical. When you're writing a humanities paper you write with more flair and creativity."

Posted on Aug. 21: McMaster biographer on top 10 list

McMaster English professor and biographer James King's latest biography His Farley: The Life Of Farley Mowat has been placed on the top 10 hardcover fiction and non-fiction books by Maclean's magazine. Published by HarperCollins Canada, the biography is the conclusion of a trilogy with the publisher Jack McClelland at its centre. King's biography of novelist Margaret Laurence appeared in 1997 and his McClelland biography in 1999. The papers of all three of his subjects are archived at the university's library. King's biography was listed in sixth place in the ranking. Recently, Maclean's ran an excerpt from the new book. Click here to view the excerpt.

Posted on Aug. 19: Physical Plant reorganization provides one-stop shopping

Physical Plant has recently undergone a reorganization in an effort to be more efficient and improve customer service. With input from customer feedback sessions, focus groups and department staff, the reorganization allows the department to focus on priority service areas and improve overall service levels. One fundamental change is that custodial services are now separate from maintenance services. The campus is divided into five custodial areas: Arts, East, Residence, South, and West. Service teams assigned to each area will exclusively address custodial needs, which include: the cleaning of classrooms, offices, hallways, washrooms, and labs; moving furniture and equipment within buildings; and set-ups for special occasions. A night shift has been formally introduced and will play a pivotal role in addressing customer service requests and needs. Facilities maintenance issues are now overseen by a newly created maintenance team which administers a wide variety of specialized functions such as locksmithing, electrical, carpentry, painting and maintaining service contracts for elevators and fire alarms.

Posted on Aug. 16: Summer research projects open doors

Tim van Boxtel has learned a lot this summer. The third-year engineering physics student was one of more than 80 students presenting summer research posters in the lobby of the Information Technology Institute Thursday. "Never have I learned so much in one summer," he says. His confidence level has increased as a result of the program that provides research-oriented summer jobs for first- and second-year students. "You gain so much confidence and it's great to be among people who do the research every day," says the summer student in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Van Boxtel worked on chemical vapor deposition with Peter Mascher, professor and William Sinclair chair in optoelectronics, engineering physics. Students in the UROP, Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research (BIMR) and students in science and engineering, presented their summer-long research projects in poster format at the symposium.