Daily News

McMaster reversing a ’90s trend

A decline in full-time faculty during the nineties prompted an increase in part-time faculty teaching at McMaster, but University provost and vice-president academic Harvey Weingarten says that trend is now being reversed. "The goal now is to teach students with full-time faculty members. It's turning around," Weingarten is quoted in today's Hamilton Spectator. The story, by Jon Wells, focuses on a Statistics Canada report released on Aug. 6 which highlights a 9.7 per cent national drop in full-time university professors from the 1992-93 to 1998-99 academic years. In Ontario, the drop was 11.7 per cent. Weingarten says Ontario's declining numbers reflect cuts to universities. "After 1995, following government cuts, our full-time faculty declined 10 per cent in two years." The student-to-teacher ratio in Ontario is 21.1, the highest in the country.

New bursary enables McMaster students to study in Jerusalem

Two McMaster students will be studying for a year in Jerusalem, thanks to a new travel bursary established under the McMaster Student Opportunity Fund. Rachel Gold, a third year student in psychology, plans to take the Ulpan (intensive course in Hebrew), followed by Israel studies and general studies at the Rothberg International School. Graduate student David Miller, Department of Religious Studies, is going to take Hebrew for the entire year along with courses and seminars in advanced Biblical Hebrew, Second Temple literature, types of Jewish leadership in late antiquity, and Jews in Greek and Roman literature.