Looking for a name
The academic governing council of Grant MacEwan College has voted to propose a name change to MacEwan University. The Edmonton Journal reports English instructor Amin Malak has proposed the school instead be renamed the University of Edmonton. The Alberta capital is one of the few large Canadian cities without a university or college named after it.
Fast growth for Fanshawe
Fanshawe College in London projects a five-per-cent enrolment increase on domestic enrolment, double the current year’s growth. The Board of Governors has passed a new budget of about $161 million providing continued focus on international learning in the form of new articulation agreements, student exchanges and placement opportunities, as well as a focus on community retraining and Second Career needs with compressed delivery and continuous intake programs. The college will undertake $43.5 million in capital projects over the next five years, including completion of a new student residence in London (January 2010 opening); classroom, lab and office renovations; building infrastructure and site services renewal; and energy conservation initiatives. – Fanshawe College
Cheaters beware
Is there a grade worse than F? There is at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia where students who fail for reasons of dishonesty can earn an FD. The new grade is part of toughened policies on academic dishonesty and student misconduct. The reforms follow a three-year project stemming from a series of incidents in different faculties involving academic dishonesty. The university now has a single student code of conduct covering both academic integrity and good-conduct issues. – Simon Fraser News
Donors rebel
Some financially strapped U.S. universities have upset benefactors by selling school radio stations, auctioning paintings and dipping into endowments for purposes donors may not have intended. As schools struggle to provide core operations, some are looking to so-called restricted gifts — held in endowments whose donors often provide instructions on how money should be spent. Students came out in force after Brandeis University said it would sell its 7,000-piece Rose Art Museum collection. The Rose family called it ‘plundering’ a family gift. In New Orleans, a court battle pits Tulane University, which dissolved its all-female Newcomb College in 2006, against a descendent of Newcomb’s founder. And St. Olaf College in Minnesota is fighting a legal challenge by donors to WCAL, a college radio station the school sold. U.S. schools posted average investment losses of 23 per cent from July 1 to Nov. 30, 2008 and administrators are bracing for the sharpest drop in almost 25 years.
– Wall Street Journal
Health grads find health jobs
Almost all health graduates from the Class of 2000 were employed within five years of finishing school, and of that group 79 per cent were working in health occupations. According to Statistics Canada, about half were working as registered nurses, 11 per cent as physicians, and nine per cent as pharmacists. The report also looks at where graduates work after leaving school. https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/81-004-x/81-004-x2009001-eng.htm