Mary Gooderham

Why do we remain in romantic relationships that leave us unhappy and unfulfilled? The answer in two new studies co-authored by a University of Toronto researcher might surprise you.

Research published in the November issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people are less likely to initiate a breakup when they believe that their romantic partners are dependent on the relationship. Participants in the studies, even people who had been close to breaking up, were motivated to remain in unsatisfying situations because they considered not only their own desires but also how much their partners wanted and needed the relationship to continue.

“People stay in relationships for the sake of their partners, even if they feel unappreciated by them,” says Emily Impett, an associate professor of psychology and director of the Relationship and Well-Being (RAW) Laboratory at ��ֱ�� Mississauga. She says that there are “self-focused” reasons why people choose to remain in a relationship – because of the time, resources and emotions they’ve invested in it, or because they don’t have good alternatives – but the research shows they also make “pro-social” altruistic decisions to stay because they feel their mates are committed.

The studies, headed by Samantha Joel, a former graduate student of Impett’s who is now at Western University, with additional co-authors Geoff MacDonald, a professor of psychology at ��ֱ��, and Stephanie S. Spielmann, a ��ֱ�� alumna now at Wayne State University, used online questionnaires and followup interviews to track thousands of participants.

In the first study, which looked at people in romantic relationships in general, 18 per cent of participants broke up after 10 weeks, while in the second study, 29 per cent of people who’d been contemplating breakups called it quits after two months, Impett says. Across the two studies, she says that many of those who stayed did so because “they felt that a breakup would be distressing to their partners.”

Impett (pictured left) is a social personality psychologist who specializes in “giving” in close relationships – the “enormous daily sacrifices we make” – such as romantic partners who aren’t in the mood “in the bedroom” to parents who unfailingly care for their children.

For example, she says the RAW Lab is looking for 200 couples who know that they will soon be moving to a new city to accommodate one partner’s career ambitions, in order to investigate how they cope with the situation and challenges over time.

There’s a wide range of research continuing in the field, she says, such as a large breakup study looking at why people bail in relationships and a “sex-with-an-ex" study that has so far found that sleeping with a former partner isn’t harmful to people and increases positive emotions.

Impett says the next step for the research on partners’ “pro-social” motivations is to get “dyadic data” that includes the second partner, for example, to see whether the perception that a breakup might be traumatic to the partner is correct.

“Also, if you’re staying in a relationship and you’re unhappy and your partner is able to pick up on that, that’s got to have an effect on the partner,” Impett says.

The goal of such studies is to eventually partner with clinical psychologists to reach couples dealing with these challenging issues, says Impett, who notes that “everyone can relate…this is people’s lives,” but her research is statistics-based. For example, she teaches a large undergraduate course at ��ֱ�� Mississauga on interpersonal relationships where students “come in with their own lay beliefs about relationships and how they work,” she says. “I ask them, ‘What is the science?’”

Impett herself can appreciate the “giving” issues that she researches—she’s the mother of three children and her husband moved from San Francisco to Mississauga when she got her job in 2010.

"Life is full, and you get what you give,” she says.

��ֱ�� researcher looks at 'hesitancy' to get vaccinated in Barbados

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 19:54:21 +0000

��ֱ�� researcher looks at 'hesitancy' to get vaccinated in Barbados

noreen.rasbach Tue, 11/27/2018 - 14:54

Cutline

“I am not documenting why people are hesitant to the vaccine but that they’re hesitant, how they express it and what that means,” says ��ֱ��'s Nicole Charles about the HPV vaccine (photo by Matthew Busch for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Topic

Research & Innovation

��ֱ�� Mississauga

Vaccines

Nicole Charles remembers the qualms that arose when the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination first began to be administered to girls in Canada to protect against strains of a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer.

Charles, then an undergraduate student, studied the immunization program and the reactions that parents had to it for a research paper that she wrote as she was completing her bachelor’s degree. The HPV vaccine would also become the focus of her master’s work, and it similarly was the topic of her PhD dissertation.

“It was a research question that emerged from a personal experience,” says Charles (pictured left), an assistant professor in the department of historical studies at ��ֱ�� Mississauga. She has continued to study the HPV vaccine and the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy by carrying out ethnographic research on ambivalence toward the HPV vaccine among parents in Barbados. The country has rolled out its own vaccination program over the last four years.

The findings are the topic of a book she is writing, Suspicion: Vaccines, Hesitancy and the Affective Politics of Protection in Barbados, which explores the complex issues surrounding resistance to the HPV vaccine in the Caribbean country.

“For me, it’s all about language,” says Charles, who came to ��ֱ�� Mississauga last year. “I am not documenting why people are hesitant to the vaccine but that they’re hesitant, how they express it and what that means.”

Charles was born in Canada, grew up in Trinidad & Tobago and returned here for university. She says the “seedlings for this research topic were planted” when she saw that her own mother was “unable to articulate what was unnerving for her” about the HPV vaccination program back in 2006, when the vaccine was introduced. “She encouraged me to look closer into the vaccine and its merits and write one of my course research papers on the topic,” says Charles.

The subject would occupy Charles for the next dozen years. She chose Barbados as a field site for her current study because, in 2014, it was the most recent Caribbean country to introduce the HPV vaccine through a national program. “The topic was very much at the forefront of the citizenry’s consciousness.”

She says her research showed that Barbadian parents’ suspicions about the vaccine went beyond scientific ignorance or cultural taboos around sex. “Suspicion instead, I argue, is something more ambiguous and affective,” she says, based on feelings and emotions.

She notes that the issue has “multiple layers.” For example, the Anglophone Caribbean is shaped by the legacies of slavery and colonialism. At the same time, Barbados and much of the region has a disproportionately high burden of HPV, and some of the highest incidences of cervical cancer in the Americas. She says public health practitioners looking to tailor their messages and improve the vaccination rate “might more carefully rethink the ways in which technologies like the HPV vaccine are promoted, in light of the specificities and histories of the region.”

Charles says the goal of her research is to “bring issues of suspicion and refusal to light,” and it does not extend to vaccination hesitancy in general. “This conversation has to be had in specific locales in relation to specific vaccines.”

She’s currently in conversation with book publishers. Meanwhile, she’s working on a new project that looks at the cultural politics of race, sugar, food, diabetes and hypertension in post-colonial Barbados.

Former New York Times books editor on what makes a great review and why U.S. political coverage needs to change

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 15:02:49 +0000

Former New York Times books editor on what makes a great review and why U.S. political coverage needs to change

noreen.rasbach Tue, 11/27/2018 - 10:02

Cutline

"I’ve done a fair amount of teaching at one place or another in the U.S., but this is great," says Sam Tanenhaus, a visiting professor at ��ֱ��. "The students are just the best" (photo by Aloysius Wong)

Topic

University of St. Michael's College

Sam Tanenhaus, a prolific and influential journalist, author, historian and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, is teaching two courses at the University of Toronto this term as a visiting professor for book and media studies at the University of St. Michael’s College.

His articles and essays appear in Vanity Fair, Time, Esquire, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and many other publications. His books include Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1997) and The Death of Conservatism (2009). He is working on a biography of William F. Buckley Jr.

Tanenhaus will moderate a discussion on Friday on The Art of the Book Review, with Jennifer Szalai, a ��ֱ�� alumna who is a nonfiction book critic at the Times, and Randy Boyagoda, an English professor who is the principal of St. Michael's and long-time contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

Tanenhaus speaks to Mary Gooderham about his teaching at ��ֱ��, his writing and what makes a good book review.

Your talk this week is on “The art of the book review.” What do you look for in a good review?

It’s not simply a matter of thumbs up or thumbs down, of stating your opinion and letting people know whether you like a book. If it’s done well, it can be a really superb form of journalism. Oscar Wilde once said criticism is the highest form of autobiography, and I think really good reviewers are actually writing miniature memoirs that invite readers in to share the experience of reading a particular book or books.

How are reviews received by authors? How do they feel about the negative ones?

Miserable. Do not believe any author who tells you that he or she doesn’t read reviews. It’s just not true. When I was editing the Book Review, I would hear from some of the most famous authors alive who might not be happy with a line or two in a review that was otherwise laudatory. Authors have a proprietary view – and I’m no different – of their work. They tend to think reviewers are dismissive, skeptical or they haven’t really read the book.

Is that true?

Sometimes I’m afraid it probably is. Reviewers are not paid very well, and it’s a lot of work. When I do a long review for a publication, like the New York Review of Books, I’ll re-read a book a second and third time, to make sure I’ve really got command of it.

There’s fewer places in print these days for book reviews, do we really need them?

If there’s a good local reviewer who readers trust, in a big city like Toronto or a smaller town somewhere, that can do more for a book than the splashier forms of promotion and publicity. Now, that said, many readers now turn to Amazon reviews, and there's a lot of book discussion today online. I don’t follow more than a fraction of it. I’m kind of an older legacy media guy who’s just watching the world change.

Why did you come to teach at the University of Toronto?

I’m near to completing the first draft of my book, and teaching for somebody like me gives a little structure to the week. My wife Kathy Bonomi is a film curator, and she was able to get an industry pass for TIFF. So here we are.

How are you liking Toronto?

We love it. In Connecticut we live out in the country and it’s beautiful, it’s quiet, it’s a great place to work, but to be back in a vibrant, really livable city like Toronto has been very gratifying for us.

Have you enjoyed the teaching?

It’s fantastic. I’ve done a fair amount of teaching at one place or another in the U.S., but this is great. The students are just the best, I really like them. I do two courses, including a large lecture course, which is really just a big conversation among 180 of us. It’s called Trump in the Media; we sometimes call it “Trump in Real Time."

How does that go?

We have readings but we spend a lot of time viewing video, sometimes it’s live. We watched Brett Kavanaugh’s prepared remarks to the Senate Judiciary Committee live, then after that we screened Christine Blasey Ford’s statement. That’s the kind of thing we do; it’s very stimulating.

What’s it like teaching this in Canada?

It’s very instructive for me. I do not exaggerate – and the kids will confirm this – they do most of the talking. I’m kind of a ringmaster, and I bring in a little history and background. It’s hard to make coherent sense of politics in this moment, so if you step away from it, as I’ve been lucky enough to do, and talk with really smart, young people, it gives a perspective and a balance which I would never get in the U.S. I’m very grateful for that.

What’s the other course you're teaching?

It’s a seminar on long-form journalism, I call it “The Art of Non-Fiction Narrative.” There are 30 students. We do an old-style close reading, and then the students write their own journalism, and you would not believe some of the stuff I’ve seen. Stories come through that I think belong in major feature magazines. They’ve all got the bug now, they all want to be New Yorker writers.

Speaking of long-form writing, tell us about the process of putting together your book on William F. Buckley Jr.?

Let’s just say it’s been a really long time. He was alive when I started writing, because he wanted me to do it. I’m closing in on the finish. There are two kinds of writers, putter-inners and taker-outers, and I’m both. My work habits I would say are of zero interest to anyone, but I just pile up a lot of pages and I try to turn those pages into a manuscript. I’m guessing the book will be maybe 600 pages, and that will be about a third of what I will have when I complete this first draft.

You wrote The Death of Conservativism and you’ve been doing interesting political features for publications like Vanity Fair and Esquire. Any possibility you’ll write a quick political book?

Well, I’m doing a long political book. Buckley is political, he’s the greatest intellectual in the history of modern conservatism. This may do it for me on big books on politics, though I may do a little book on the U.S. Constitution – which I think needs to be either rewritten or abandoned – after I finish this.

Your students must have been fascinated with reporting of the U.S. midterms, any lessons there?

My class and I looked at some the media coverage: We looked at CNN for instance, and the horse-race coverage – I just wish it would stop. I understand why they do it, but I think we’ve entered a media culture of artificial or invented narratives that actually feed some of the baser impulses in our aggressive politics. So that’s one of the takeaways I have – it was really striking. And by the way, the students get this instantly. They are great parsers of media.

What's the alternative to the horse race?

In my class we watch 20 minutes of coverage and I’ll say, ‘What did we not see here? We didn’t see a single non-media person or spinmeister or operative for one of the two parties giving a little speech or having a brawl.’ In the U.S., there's endless commentary by the media about the media and very little about what's on the minds of voters and what their lives are like. That is certainly one alternative. I look at the home page of the New York Times and it’s one polemical assertion after another, and I think it’s not doing anyone any good.

What can be done about it?

I’ve stopped doing that kind of writing. I report now. If you look at my last stories, they were reported. I did one in The New Republic that’s a historical kind of political science piece – it draws on documents in archives. I did a story for Time magazine, my first story ever for them, it was on the cover, it was about young policy analysts who actually think Trump gives the Republican party new opportunities to shed the libertarian economic policy of the Reagan and Bush years, and it’s reporting. I just talked to them. I did the story from here, I did it on the telephone. The lesson I’ve learned –you interview people, talk to them, not just say what you think. Nothing’s easier than to give your opinion, but to find out what somebody else thinks, to hear how they speak, what issues come up, I’d like to see more of that.

The Art of the Book Review will take place at the Isabel Bader Theatre on Friday, Nov. 30. Students receive $10 off the ticket prices using the code STUDENT.

Meet two ��ֱ�� faculty members honoured by OCUFA for outstanding teaching

noreen.rasbach — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Meet two ��ֱ�� faculty members honoured by OCUFA for outstanding teaching

noreen.rasbach Thu, 10/25/2018 - 00:00

Cutline

“Our students deserve to be taught in ways that are shown to be effective, that are engaging and exciting and linked to the real world,” says ��ֱ�� Mississauga's Fiona Rawle (photo by Blake Eligh)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Teaching

��ֱ�� Mississauga

One faculty member has a policy never to lecture for more than 20 minutes at a time; the other has students understand DNA in a very physical way.

Two University of Toronto associate professors have been named among Ontario’s outstanding university teachers by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA).

Michelle Craig, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of computer science, and Fiona Rawle, an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of biology at ��ֱ�� Mississauga, received the 2017-2018 OCUFA Teaching Award at a ceremony on Saturday in Toronto. The two were recognized for their passion and dedication as teachers as well as their commitment to active learning in their respective disciplines.

Founded in 1964, OCUFA represents 17,000 faculty members and academic librarians in 29 faculty associations across the province. The annual awards recognize exemplary contributions made to the quality of higher education in Ontario.

"Michelle Craig has a long and distinguished teaching record and demonstrates contagious enthusiasm for her work," says Judy Bornais, chair of OCUFA’s award committee. "Her impact extends well beyond her classes, with both students and fellow faculty members viewing her as a mentor.

“Fiona Rawle is a passionate teacher whose enthusiasm for the field of biology excites her students and encourages them to dive deeper,” Bornais adds. “She believes in fostering critical thinking and using active engagement to help students improve their understanding of the subject matter.”

Rawle, who is also associate dean of undergraduate education at ��ֱ�� Mississauga, says that winning the OCUFA award “really enforces for me how lucky I am to have the colleagues and students that I have. Everything we do in the context of teaching and learning is collaborative; it’s a partnership.”

Craig (pictured left) is equally honoured to receive the award. “It’s satisfying to have my work recognized,” she says.

A native of Puslinch, Ont., outside of Guelph, Craig has an undergraduate degree in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo and a master’s in computer science from ��ֱ��, where she focused on artificial intelligence. She is an avid runner who has run the Boston Marathon and swims regularly in Lake Ontario with a local open-water swimming group.

She joined the computer science faculty in 1990 and teaches undergraduate courses. She’s also deeply involved in the relatively new field of computer science education research, looking at how people learn computing and the best way to teach it so that it is understood. She sits on the board of directors of the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education.

Craig’s work in the field includes a project that analyzed the repetitive patterns that knitters use, applying some of their principles to the instructions given to beginner computer programming students. In another, she added “wrappers” to marked exams handed back to students, asking questions about things such as the effectiveness of their preparation strategies, particularly given their results.

She says that doing such research gives her an opportunity to mentor individual students involved in the projects and it is “very relevant to my job. I think it makes me a better teacher.” She feels strongly about active learning in the classroom as opposed to the old-model “sage on the stage” – standing at the chalkboard or computer. It is why she never lectures for more than 20 minutes at a time.

“When you teach someone something, you have to ask them to do something with the information you just told them,” explains Craig, who has applied that principle by “flipping” or “inverting” some of her courses such as second-year Software Tools and Systems Programming, with two sections of 120 students. Before each class, they watch a series of videos that she prepared, then in the classroom they complete exercises together and “you see the lightbulbs going on,” she says. “It’s wonderfully fun to see people suddenly understanding something they came in not understanding.”

Rawle embraces active learning in the biology classes she teaches, even her massive first-year Introduction to Evolution and Evolutionary Genetics course, with 1,100 students. In one class, she gets everyone to stand up and adopt the orientation of a nucleotide – “the left hand becomes a phosphate group, the back becomes a sugar and right elbow becomes a base" – so that everyone can “bind together” to form one long DNA molecule.

The exercise helps them understand the principles of DNA, she says. “In the final exam, I'll even see students extending their hand and elbow in that same configuration to check they have the structure right.”

Rawle grew up on Vancouver Island, where a life in the outdoors got her interested in science, nature and animals. She earned an undergraduate degree in genetics at the University of Victoria and McMaster University, received a PhD in pathology and molecular medicine at Queen’s University and then came to ��ֱ�� Mississauga in 2010. She’s an avid hiker and traveller and plays volleyball.

A “full-fledged science geek,” she was especially drawn to the classroom by a desire to “spark kids’ curiosity” to solve global problems such as climate change and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. She was also determined to address misconceptions surrounding those issues, and is currently researching how to educate the wider population about science.

She’s working on a project on “productive failure” and tells her students that “it’s okay – even great – to fail,” with examples in science from the discovery of penicillin and the development of anesthesia to the invention of the pacemaker and the slinky.

She maintains that “science is creative” and is determined to take a scientific approach to teaching it.

“Our students deserve to be taught in ways that are shown to be effective, that are engaging and exciting and linked to the real world,” Rawle says. “I don't want my students to remember lists of facts. At the end of the day, I want them to be able to ask questions and find answers.”

Who's in control? ��ֱ�� researcher examines why it's so difficult to disconnect from social media

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 16:45:40 +0000

Who's in control? ��ֱ�� researcher examines why it's so difficult to disconnect from social media

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 10/18/2018 - 12:45

Cutline

A new book by ��ֱ�� Mississauga researcher Tero Karppi argues social media users' ability to control their digital lives is at risk (Photo by Future Image/C.Hardt/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Topic

University of Toronto Mississauga

Academics have spent the last decade studying connectivity and social media – a trend that has more than two billion people around the world on Facebook and counting.

For Tero Karppi, however, the focus has instead been disconnection.

“I always tended to go against the grain,” says Karppi, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology who specializes in social media and media theory.

His new book, Disconnect: Facebook’s Affective Bonds, explores the challenges users face when they try to deactivate their Facebook accounts, and how efforts by social media companies to keep users logging in may be giving us less control over our digital lives.

Karppi started researching the topic in his native Finland, where a technology-savvy population enthusiastically began to use Facebook around 2010. “It was becoming a really big thing and expanding widely,” recalls Karppi, who was among the early adopters using the platform to stay current and in touch with far-flung friends, family and colleagues.

“It was an interesting phenomenon – how quickly it spread.”

But he noticed it was also difficult to say goodbye to this increasingly compelling platform. European media artists started to do special “Quit Facebook” projects, while many people tried to give it up simply to avoid the distractions of the medium.

Karppi (left), who came to ��ֱ�� Mississauga a year ago, says Facebook deactivation became an issue more recently with users concerned about privacy and the company’s use of data.

“The #DeleteFacebook campaign become a trend after the Cambridge Analytica crisis,” he says, “and the news about 50 million hacked Facebook accounts in September will push users to re-think their connectivity.”

Social media companies, not surprisingly, see user disconnection as an existential threat and take wide-ranging efforts to fight it, Karppi says. For example, there are messages with photos saying, “This person will miss you if you leave,” he says. “When it comes right down to it, “leaving is hard or practically impossible for some.

“You lose something.”

Karpi says people who do disconnect often find themselves returning to Facebook because the company makes it easy, letting them pick up their accounts right where they left off.

A combination of factors makes the platform irresistible, he says. That includes engaging content that captures users’ attention and the fact that they are surrounded by a network of friends and followers. “It becomes a habit, a part of your daily life. It’s no longer optional or even something that you deliberately do; you check it like you would look at your watch to see the time.”

Given this passive yet penetrating nature, those who try to disconnect from social media are often lured back in, which ensures an ongoing market for Facebook or whatever future platforms the company offers, Karppi predicts. “I’m quite pessimistic in the sense that I think the social media logic is here and there’s no way to stay out.”

His research at ��ֱ�� Mississauga includes a new project looking at what happens next for user profiles at companies like Facebook.

“We have everyone liking each others’ photos and you have two billion users. What do you do with them now?” he says. “Social media is part of our lives and we need to understand how it works, who benefits from it and what kind of future we want. Hopefully, we can have an influence over the role that social media plays.”

Students are highly invested in the topic of social media because it is ubiquitous in their circles, he adds. “For teaching, the challenge is to go beyond the daily user experience and show what's behind the interface.”

Karppi himself remains on Facebook, although he’s removed the notifications on his phone so he’s less captivated by the platform’s beeps and buzzes.

“I at least have the illusory feeling of being in control.”

Is it time to change the student transcript? University leaders meet at ��ֱ�� to discuss possible enhancements

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 28 Sep 2018 14:20:34 +0000

Is it time to change the student transcript? University leaders meet at ��ֱ�� to discuss possible enhancements

noreen.rasbach Fri, 09/28/2018 - 10:20

Cutline

(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Undergraduate Students

Consider the student transcript: For more than a century it has been a paper record of a student's academic achievements – documenting courses completed, grades attained and degrees awarded.

But the transcript of the future could be different. University leaders from around North America will gather at the University of Toronto next week to discuss changing academic transcripts, in light of improvements in technology as well as curriculum innovations that include unique study and learning opportunities.

Registrars and academics from top institutions attending the meeting will focus on whether to expand the traditional transcript – and how. For example, transcipts could include a description and syllabus of courses, as well as recording the skills, competencies and knowledge attained and any special features like the student’s work experience or international opportunities.

“We’re looking at how curriculum is evolving and what part of that needs to be represented in the credential that the student receives,” explains Richard Levin, ��ֱ��’s executive director of enrolment services and registrar.

This is the third meeting of the transcript group, which is made up of members of the Association of American Universities and is focused on developing new protocols and standards for educational records, he notes. “Interest in this is growing, as is the technology that’s going to allow us to improve the way we represent courses and other components of the learning experience.”

��ֱ�� plans to make the switch in 2019 from paper to digital transcripts, Levin says, using a secure PDF format in which “you can start to embed lots of information.” Administrators want to hear from their academic colleagues about what to emphasize from a curriculum perspective in order to create a record “that people can make sense of and understand and that has value,” he says.

For example, for a course like Contemporary Communication Technologies, “all we have now is the title,” Levin says, while someone reading the transcript might benefit from knowing “what is that and how are people learning and what are they coming out with?” Another factor might be whether the course was a large lecture or small interactive group.

Meeting attendee Mark McConahay, associate vice-provost and registrar of Indiana University Bloomington, says the goal is to come up with a “common language” to communicate and validate what universities and colleges impart to their students. This would elevate the traditional “ledger” that he says “serves the academy really well but does not serve other constituencies nearly as well.”

McConahay, who also serves as vice-president for information technology of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), notes that there is very little in transcripts to differentiate students who receive similar grades. “We don’t intend to replace the transcript, we want to add to it,” he says.

A digital transcript, attested to by the institution, could systematically capture and report learning outcomes and what an individual student has gained in terms of skills like critical thinking or data analytics. “More than just the course, what was the skill and the competency that was the result of the course?” McConahay asks.

AACRAO over the last four years has done a number of studies to add or augment elements in traditional transcripts, says McConahay. His own university, which has about 43,000 students, is looking at developing a transcript “cover page” that would enable students to focus the reader on specific aspects of their record germane to the purpose for sharing it. This could allow students to differentiate themselves when applying for a job, for example.

It’s not only possible to enhance transcripts, but it should be relatively inexpensive to do so, McConahay points out, especially if information is already available digitally. It’s even possible to add “learning artifacts” like individual papers that students have produced in a class. “Technology enables us to archive these pieces of information and put them together on a record that the institution can attest to on the student’s behalf.”

One question is who the audience for an enhanced transcript would be. McConahay says that graduate schools and future employers would benefit from being able to look at a more comprehensive and “meaningful” record. “There’s a whole ecosystem beginning to develop around the exchange of credentials electronically, as opposed to our traditional model (paper).”

Levin says students at ��ֱ�� are already enthusiastic about having the current transcript supplemented by a co-curricular record that documents their involvement in activities like clubs and volunteer work.

“They would like to see a broader representation of their academic accomplishments as well,” he says. “They’ll be able to reflect on what they’ve learned, because they’ll see it documented and they can explain that experience for a prospective employer or a graduate school.”

Levin expects that the shift to an enhanced transcript will begin at ��ֱ�� within a couple of years. “I’m very optimistic that we’ll have a much more comprehensive record that will be able to reflect a much broader overview of the student’s learning experience at the university.”

Eleven ��ֱ�� scholars named fellows of prestigious national academy

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 17:59:37 +0000

Eleven ��ֱ�� scholars named fellows of prestigious national academy

noreen.rasbach Tue, 09/11/2018 - 13:59

Cutline

Mark Kingwell’s newest research investigates the “politics of boredom,” how people get trapped into cycles of addictive engagement through technology-enabled platforms like Twitter and Facebook (photo by Colin McConnell/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Mary Gooderham

Topic

City & Culture

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research & Innovation

Royal Society of Canada

Two scholars whose groundbreaking research is shaping public discourse on issues from the decline of democracy in the technological age to the dynamics of mass violence are among 11 University of Toronto researchers who have been named as fellows of the Royal Society of Canada.

They join more than 370 fellows at ��ֱ�� recognized by the prestigious Royal Society for their outstanding scholarly, scientific and artistic achievement. The honour is considered one of Canada’s major accomplishments for scholars.

Mark Kingwell, a professor in the department of philosophy as well as a critic and public intellectual who has written and spoken widely on political theory, contemporary politics, public art and architecture, says that he feels “privileged and grateful for this recognition” from the society.

“This is an engaged body of dedicated scientists, artists, writers and scholars, and I’m happy to be among them,” he says. “We live in an age where intellectual work is disparaged and science is questioned. Every one of us who works in this scholarly life wants to think we’re making some small contribution.”

Doris Bergen, a professor in the department of history and Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies who is an internationally recognized historian of the Holocaust, is equally grateful to be joining the society.

“I’m really moved by this honour,” says Bergen, the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies. “It feels exciting to receive this recognition. I’m proud of what we've accomplished as scholars working on the Holocaust.”

The Royal Society was founded in the 1880s to promote learning and research in the arts, humanities and the natural and social sciences. The 11 ��ֱ�� scholars join more than 2,000 active fellows, distinguished scholars, artists and scientists in Canada.

“The University of Toronto is proud of these 11 scholars named as fellows by the Royal Society of Canada," says Vivek Goel, vice-president of research and innovation. “Our top scholars are helping us to create new knowledge with their exemplary work and far-reaching impact, and are behind this university's place as one of the top research universities in the world.”

Kingwell’s newest research investigates the “politics of boredom,” how people get trapped into cycles of what he calls addictive engagement through “hollowed out” technology-enabled platforms like Twitter, Facebook and blog postings. The work, which is to be published next year in a book titled Wish I Were Here, notes “there is a risk of detachment and isolation under current conditions,” Kingwell says. “People have lost faith in democratic institutions – and elected officials might be hastening that darkness.”

He says that he feels lucky to be able to do a wide range of writing in his field, alternating scholarly work with an array of columns and essays in more popular media. He is a contributing editor of Harper’s magazine in New York and a regular op-ed writer for the Globe and Mail. He has authored or co-authored 18 books of political, cultural and aesthetic theory, among them the national bestsellers Better Living, The World We Want, Concrete Reveries and Glenn Gould. His work has been translated into 10 languages.

Bergen’s research focuses on issues of religion, gender and ethnicity in the Holocaust and other cases of extreme violence. Her key work includes the role of Christian churches in Nazi Germany, with a recent project focused on German military chaplains in the Second World War.

Her book Twisted Cross showed how the Protestant church embodied a significant feature of Nazi society, while her book War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, was based on extensive original research, including accounts by victims, survivors, witnesses and perpetrators, as well as photographs and a wide range of Jewish sources from the time. It addressed persistent questions about the Holocaust, such as who knew what, how and when did they know it, as well as how the targets and victims of assault tried to find meaning and maintain some form of community.

As the only endowed chair in Holocaust studies in Canada, with funding donated by the late Rose Wolfe, former chancellor of ��ֱ��, “it’s a really important public role that I play,” Bergen says, both in Canada and internationally.

For example, she was a member of the core design team for the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa, which opened in September 2017. She was a content adviser for the monument, which was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind and features tall concrete walls laid out like a distorted Star of David. It honours the millions of Jews and others murdered under the Nazi regime, acknowledges the survivors who fled to Canada and settled here, and has become an important “site of thinking about genocide,” she says.

Bergen has helped shape the field of Holocaust studies and hopes to continue to raise the profile of “talking openly and honestly about cases of extreme violence,” noting that “every society and every time period has its own demons and challenges.”

She’s especially pleased at being named to the Royal Society of Canada having worked for many years in the United States and then returning to this country in 2007.

“We’ve built a strong field of Holocaust studies here, and I think I’ve played an important role in that,” she says. “I’m deeply proud to be part of the University of Toronto and my colleagues in the history department and Jewish studies.”

University of Toronto scholars elected as fellows this year to the Royal Society of Canada are:

Raisa Deber, professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Stuart Foster, professor in the department of medical biophysics at the Faculty of Medicine and senior scientist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
Paul Frankland, associate professor in the department of physiology at the Faculty of Medicine and senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children
Prabhat Jha, professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and director of the Centre for Global Health Research at St. Michael's Hospital
Sheena Josselyn, associate professor in the department of physiology at the Faculty of Medicine and senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children
Patricia O'Campo, professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and interim executive director of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at St. Michael's Hospital
Beverley Orser, professor in the department of anesthesia in the Faculty of Medicine
Jay Pratt, professor in the department of psychology in the Faculty of Arts & Science
Christopher Thompson, professor at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in the Faculty of Arts & Science

Expert in election law is one of six from ��ֱ�� named to Royal Society of Canada's college for emerging scholars

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 17:40:28 +0000

Expert in election law is one of six from ��ֱ�� named to Royal Society of Canada's college for emerging scholars

noreen.rasbach Tue, 09/11/2018 - 13:40

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Yasmin Dawood says the position in the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists “is a tremendous honour” that will give her the opportunity to collaborate with a cross-section of scholars in the field

Mary Gooderham

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Law

Global

Humanities

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Research & Innovation

Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars

��ֱ�� Scarborough

Democracy is under threat in many places globally, from the suppression of voting rights and influence of money in political campaigns to the collapse of longstanding democratic institutions.

For Yasmin Dawood, a leading scholar of election law from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, this puts Canada’s own challenges and successes in electoral fairness and democratic governance in sharp focus.

“There is considerable concern about the fate and future of democracy around the world, and we have a role to play in questioning what's happening and looking for solutions,” says Dawood, the Canada Research Chair in Democracy, Constitutionalism and Electoral Law.

She is one of six emerging scholars at ��ֱ�� named this year as members of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists. (See a list of recipients below.)

The college, which was established in 2014, recognizes and fosters leadership and interdisciplinary collaboration among Canada’s new generation of scholars, artists and scientists who received their PhD within the last 15 years. To date, 26 ��ֱ�� scholars have been named to the college. Membership extends for seven years.

“The University of Toronto is proud of our six new members joining the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists,” says Vivek Goel, ��ֱ��'s vice-president of research and innovation. “We are grateful that the Royal Society is recognizing their work in a broad range of fields and the impact of their research in society. We look forward to seeing their new collaborations and exciting research."

Dawood, whose pioneering research and public engagement have influenced policy formation and public debate in the areas of election law, electoral integrity and the protection of democracy, says the position in the college “is a tremendous honour” that will give her the opportunity to collaborate with a cross-section of scholars in the field.

“It allows us to think together about problems that are facing the country and the world,” she says. “Belonging to this college will provide a fundamental opportunity to participate in broader conversations about these questions.”

Dawood would also like to contribute to the college, mentoring young scholars and participating in networks that address themes such as diversity, inclusion and belonging. “As a woman, visible minority and religious minority, I know first-hand how important it is to have mentors in order to do one’s best work.”

She became interested in election law as a political science undergraduate at ��ֱ��, studying constitutional law, political theory and elections. She continued to look at the issues while doing a law degree at Columbia University in New York and a PhD at the University of Chicago’s department of political science. Her dissertation was on the U.S. Supreme Court’s election law decisions. She spent two years in the ��ֱ��’s Centre for Ethics as a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral researcher, and in 2009 joined the Faculty of Law. She is now an associate professor who is cross-appointed to the department of political science.

Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of establishing a healthy democracy, she says, noting that nations around the world “have succumbed to democratic erosion.” Dawood focuses on innovative legal solutions for safeguarding electoral fairness, strengthening democratic governance and counteracting systemic obstacles like partisan bias.

Her current research is a project that looks to see how courts adjudicate in conflicts that arise in election laws, comparing different countries to see how they have dealt with the issue.
Dawood says revised voter identification laws that make it more difficult to cast ballots “interest me as a scholar and also as a citizen,” and she is eager to explore them further through the college.

“I think this appointment will provide an enriched and diverse venue and set of interlocutors on this question that I’m really looking forward to engaging,” she says. “I see it as a wonderful opportunity to deal with questions that face Canada and the world.”

Dawood has published and spoken nationally and internationally on electoral fairness and has organized events on the topic. For example, in response to the previous Conservative federal government’s Fair Elections Act, she co-drafted open letters, organized a public forum in the Faculty of Law and testified before the House of Commons committee.

She argued that the Act amounted to partisan entrenchment and would impair voting rights and political participation. She commented that the government had fast-tracked the bill and used its majority power to cut off debate and discussion, a departure from a long-standing political practice in which electoral reforms were undertaken through widespread consultation with opposing political parties, Elections Canada, citizens and experts.

“It’s crucially important that these questions are accessible and transparent; that’s what democracy is about,” she says, noting that social media provides a platform for engagement on political issues but can also be abused to manipulate people. “There’s both promise and peril.”

She says that Canada is in a good place today compared with the rest of the world in terms of electoral fairness, “but I don’t think that we can be complacent. We have to constantly be vigilant to make sure that rules don’t lead to inaccessibility, because then inequality creeps in.” Campaign finance reform is especially critical so that people with means do not have undue influence over elections and the electoral process, which is not good for democratic functioning, she says. “It’s important to establish a level playing field.”

Other jurisdictions are interested in our success, says Dawood. “There are valuable lessons in terms of how Canada has remained stable and the electoral system has remained fair,” she says, adding that the country can act as a model for how the courts and other institutions deal with conflicts surrounding elections and electoral law.

The ��ֱ�� scholars joining Dawood as new members of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists are:

Katherine Larson, associate professor and chair of the department of English at ��ֱ�� Scarborough
Sally Lindsay, associate professor in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy in the Faculty of Medicine, and senior scientist with the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital
Alison McGuigan, associate professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering
Sean Mills, associate professor in the department of history in the Faculty of Arts & Science
Jennifer Stinson, associate professor in the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing and a nurse clinician scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children.

Read about the ��ֱ�� scholars named to the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2017

Read about the ��ֱ�� scholars named to the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2016

Robert Harold (Bob) McNutt, a respected geochemist who 'showed a lot of leadership' as principal of ��ֱ�� Mississauga

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 27 Aug 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Robert Harold (Bob) McNutt, a respected geochemist who 'showed a lot of leadership' as principal of ��ֱ�� Mississauga

noreen.rasbach Mon, 08/27/2018 - 00:00

Cutline

Professor Emeritus Robert McNutt was principal of University of Toronto Mississauga from 1995 to 2002

Topic

University of Toronto Mississauga

Robert Harold (Bob) McNutt was a geochemist who, as the principal of University of Toronto Mississauga from 1995 to 2002, laid the groundwork for campus’s vast expansion.

Under his leadership, the name of the campus was changed from Erindale College to ��ֱ�� Mississauga. McNutt, who died in June at the age of 80, played a critical role in strengthening ��ֱ�� Mississauga's relationship with the city and community, and led the development of new buildings and programs as enrolment surged, particularly ahead of the arrival of the so-called double cohort.

“Bob was dedicated to the academic venture,” says Ian Orchard, who was vice-provost of students at ��ֱ�� at that time and recalls McNutt leading the charge to create a new recreation, athletics and wellness centre, financed by a levee that students approved in a referendum.

“He showed a lot of leadership there,” says Orchard, a professor emeritus of biology who succeeded McNutt as principal from 2002 to 2010 and oversaw the completion of many of his projects, including a new residence and the Communication, Culture, and Technology Building.

McNutt was born on July 4, 1937, in Gunningsville, N.B., a town across the river from Moncton. His mother Edith was a school teacher and his father Harold worked at Eaton’s.

Under Robert McNutt, Erindale College became University of Toronto Mississauga and saw a great expansion

McNutt was curious as a child and academically inclined, says his daughter Szanne McNutt. He entered the University of New Brunswick as an engineering student but soon found his real passion to pursue pure science, not applied science. He switched his major to science midway through his first year, and ultimately decided to become a geology major. In 1959, he applied on a whim to do a PhD in geochemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was accepted and graduated in 1965.

He married Paula Maslack in 1964 and they moved the next year to Hamilton, Ont., where McNutt spent most of his academic career at McMaster University, as a faculty member and dean of science. His early work focused on geochronology, establishing the age of rocks using radioactive isotopes.

The family’s summers were spent going to “field camps” to collect rock samples. During the school year on Wednesday nights, students were invited for rock slideshows. Later, McNutt's research focused on nuclear waste disposal in the Canadian Shield. He published more than 80 scientific articles.

McNutt’s son Chris says his father “simply showed us by example how to be respectful, honourable, to treat everyone with kindness and dignity,” and displayed enormous patience, influenced by his background as a geologist.

“In geology, things take time – great forces moving over eons. He would say to us around the dinner table, ‘None of it really matters because in 20,000 years its all going to be covered in ice.’

“Our dinner table was filled with lively conversation and debate, and often included his grad students or colleagues who joined us at Christmas and Thanksgiving if they weren’t able to make it home themselves,” Chris recalls.

“Bob’s research was respected and he was respected as a teacher,” says Barbara Murck, a geologist and an associate professor, teaching stream, in the department of geography and director of environment programs at ��ֱ�� Mississauga.

In 1995, McNutt was appointed principal of Erindale College, and began to formulate plans for its transformation, beginning with the name change. Murck’s favourite memory of McNutt is being among a group of academics at a meeting of Mississauga City Council to introduce the campus's plans for the future. There he was grilled by Mayor Hazel McCallion, “and the lightbulb went on for him,” Murck says.

“Hazel said, ‘What do you people do over there?’ and we were all a little shocked,” Murck remembers. “To his credit, after the meeting Bob said, ‘We all have some work to do here building a better relationship and better communications with the city.’”

Close relationships between city council and the newly minted ��ֱ�� Mississauga “were really crucial,” notes Murck, who says that McNutt, as principal of ��ֱ�� Mississauga, “entered a place that was on the threshold of change, and not only embraced but proactively managed a lot of that change in a positive direction for us.”

Erindale was considered a suburban “feeder” college of the downtown Toronto campus's Faculty of Arts & Science, Orchard notes. Its renaming reflected the fact that “it was becoming a true campus of the ��ֱ�� as a whole,” which brought a critical mass of students and staff, as well as important research there. “It became the campus of choice, rather than a second choice.”

Adam Giles, who attended ��ֱ�� Mississauga from 1997 to 2002 and held senior editorial positions on The Medium, the student newspaper, says that McNutt had “astronomical commitments but was generous with his time.” He sat for long interviews for an ambitious, seven-part series that Giles wrote about the campus’s master plan to accommodate the “double cohort” of 2003-04.

“He was easily the busiest person on campus, but he never said that he didn’t have time for me,” says Giles, who now works at ��ֱ�� Mississauga's Office of the Registrar.

Back then, the student newspaper often took positions critical of the fee increases and extra parking charges needed to pay for future campus expansion, he remembers. “Principal McNutt was always reasonable. He understood where we were coming from, but he always wanted to demonstrate the benefits of the changes and the greater good for the campus as a whole.”

As editor-in-chief of the paper and about to graduate, Giles wrote a profile of McNutt, who was also leaving his position as principal. When Giles’s parents, neither of whom had attended university, came to a graduation party at the principal’s home on campus, McNutt sat down with the three of them for a long, congratulatory conversation.

“I can still remember the smile on my dad’s face,” Giles says.

Robert McNutt (right) with Ulrich Krull (centre), vice-president and principal of ��ֱ�� Mississauga, at Krull's installation. Ian Orchard, the former principal, is at left.

After his retirement from ��ֱ��, McNutt returned to McMaster to serve as acting chair of modern languages and linguistics, acting dean of the DeGroote School of Business, acting dean of the Faculty of Humanities and acting provost. He was also an adviser to McMaster’s provost, helping to establish the university’s Burlington campus.

Orchard says that McNutt maintained a fondness for ��ֱ�� Mississauga and enjoyed watching the expansion of the campus, which today has a population of more than 14,000 students, compared with just 6,200 when he took over as principal. He returned frequently, and took part in the gala celebrating the campus's 50^th anniversary on Oct. 20, as well as attending the ceremony at which Ulrich Krull was installed as ��ֱ��'s Mississauga's new principal one month later.

Szanne McNutt says that throughout it all, her father continued his academic work. In his spare time, he loved to curl and was an avid golfer, starting from his early days as a caddy in New Brunswick. Indeed, McNutt once had an opportunity to become a pro golfer but instead devoted himself to graduate work. He continued to golf right through this past spring, just before he died on June 23.

McNutt leaves his wife Paula, daughters Szanne and Amy, son Chris, and four grandchildren.

Donald (Don) Ivey, engaging teacher of physics at ��ֱ�� and on television, was first vice-president of institutional relations

noreen.rasbach — Tue, 07 Aug 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Donald (Don) Ivey, engaging teacher of physics at ��ֱ�� and on television, was first vice-president of institutional relations

noreen.rasbach Tue, 08/07/2018 - 00:00

Cutline

New College's library is named after Donald Ivey, who served as principal of the college for 11 years

Topic

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Physics

Psychology

��ֱ�� Scarborough

Donald (Don) Glenn Ivey, principal of the University of Toronto's New College from 1963 to 1974 and the university's first vice-president of institutional relations, was known for his witty teaching of physics, both in the classroom and on popular television series such as CBC’s The Nature of Things, which he hosted for one year.

A skilled tennis player, creative educator and enthusiastic communicator, Ivey, who died in June at the age of 96, won a raft of international teaching awards. The New College library is named after him, as is an asteroid.

Ivey is remembered for being down to earth and having an ironic sense of humour. “He had absolutely no pretense and no pomposity at all – and he had no time for anyone who did,” says Kenneth Bartlett, a ��ֱ�� professor of history and renaissance studies.

Bartlett first met Ivey in 1980 when he served as Ivey's executive assistant after he became the ��ֱ��'s vice-president of institutional relations, responsible for fundraising, alumni affairs and communications.

“I of course learned that he was a distinguished physicist and taught the large, first-year introductory course," says Bartlett. "Even in the deepest instances of administrative time compression, he not only continued to teach, but did his own exam marking for that large class.”

Ivey was born in Clanwilliam, Man., northwest of Winnipeg, on Feb. 6, 1922. In 1929, the family moved to Vancouver, where his father Carl worked as an office manager in a car dealership and then started a small taxi company, while his mother Bessie Louella owned a small dress shop called Little Ladies Lovely Lines.

Ivey's son Dave said times were tight during the Depression, and for two years young Donald was sent back to Manitoba to live on his uncle’s farm “because his parents couldn’t afford to feed him.”

Ivey worked in a series of jobs during high school, including a position as assistant chemist in the local Coca Cola plant. It was then that he started going steady with Marjorie Frisby. He attended University of British Columbia from 1940-44, earning a combined honours in math and physics. He said later that he tended to cram for exams, what he called “swatting up,” but in fourth year he had the second-highest standing in the university as a whole.

With the war on, students did drills on Saturday afternoons and Ivey attended two, one-week army camps. Upon graduating, he volunteered for army service but was asked to assist in the university’s veterans’ programs, teaching math and physics to returning soldiers while he did his master's degree in physics there.

Ivey and Marjorie married on June 28, 1944, and in 1946, they moved to South Bend, Ind., where he attended Notre Dame University on a research associateship. When Ivey received his PhD there in 1949, he considered a research job at an oil company in California, “but he wanted to leave the U.S. and McCarthyism,” says Dave. Ivey opted instead for a position teaching physics at the University of Toronto.

In 1955, the growing Ivey family built a home in the new community of Don Mills, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Ivey remained a physics professor at ��ֱ�� until 1992. “He loved to teach and help people understand the world,” says his daughter Sharon Chin-Yee, who became a math teacher herself and whose two daughters are also teachers.

J.N. Patterson (Pat) Hume (left) and Donald Ivey on The Nature of Things (photo by CBC Still Photo Collection/Robert Ragsdale via ��ֱ�� Magazine)

Ivey served as New College’s second principal for 11 years, stepping in after founding principal Frank Wetmore’s death just four months after its creation. Under Ivey’s leadership, the college moved from temporary quarters at 65 St. George Street to two permanent buildings, Wetmore and Wilson Halls, and increased its enrolment almost tenfold.

The position was very much a partnership with his wife Marjorie, says Sharon. Her mother began the ��ֱ�� Women’s Association and founded the campus gift shop, as well as starting diploma framing and rose sales at ��ֱ�� convocations to raise funds for student scholarships.

“Dad was very proud of all she did, putting in 80 hours a week completely as a volunteer,” recalls Sharon. The roses were sold in a cart that Ivey made in his home woodworking shop, where he also created props for his TV shows and went on to make furniture for his children’s homes and offices.

Students were invited to the Don Mills house for dinner and ping-pong tournaments, and parties with colleagues there always featured ham on a bun. “There was no fancy catering," remembers Bartlett. "Don saw every social function as an opportunity to connect."

In the classroom and beyond, Ivey and J.N. Patterson (Pat) Hume, a computer science professor at ��ֱ��, began developing new teaching methods, such as educational videos. Their first television series, Focus on Physics in 1958, was a joint venture between the local CBC and ��ֱ��, followed the next year by Two for Physics. Their educational film Frames of Reference, shown in classrooms, won the prestigious Edison Award in 1962 and was dubbed into several languages.

In 1960, Ivey became host of The Nature of Things, a position he held for one year, with Hume co-hosting on four episodes. David Suzuki now hosts the show.

Ivey took an interest in the teaching of physics in high schools, co-authoring a textbook for that level, and later wrote a textbook for university students. “But the publisher was in financial trouble and it didn’t take off, so my dad paid to have it printed for students in his own classes and sold it to them at cost,” says Dave.

“Making the complexity of the world accessible was one of Don’s great gifts,” says Bartlett, noting that Ivey felt that “physicists can't only talk to physicists.” His popular television programs and films promoted the wider role of ��ֱ��, he says. “Universities are public institutions that have a responsibility not only to extend knowledge but to transmit it to the broader public that pays its way. They should feel some measure of ownership.”

In the position of vice-president from 1980-84, Ivey was a model for other administrators, especially as he continued to teach his first-year physics course. “Don made sure that no one thought too highly of themselves,” says Bartlett, added that he tried to emulate Don’s dedication and commitment in his own career. He has always taught a first-year European history course, with as many as 500 students enrolled.

“Don, I learned, always kept in clear sight what the university was about. It wasn’t administration for its own sake: it was administration to ensure the highest quality teaching and research and the best experience for our students,” Bartlett says. “He felt that if you were going to run a university, you should be deeply engaged in its fundamental functions: teaching and research.”

Ivey (pictured left) was a passionate tennis player, which “was an extension of his being, who he was, and clear proof of the beauty and order of the world,” says Bartlett.

Dan Lang, professor emeritus in the department of theory and policy studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, played regularly with Ivey at the Queen City Indoor Tennis Club, known as the Queen’s Club, along with a group of ��ֱ�� colleagues.

“Don not only loved to play tennis, he loved to win at tennis,” says Lang, a former ��ֱ�� vice-provost and vice-president who helped Ivey set up the vice-president’s office. “For every point he had a plan,” he recalls, noting that Ivey employed strategies “much like a boxer practising multi-punch combinations.

“To someone on the other side of the net it seemed as if his joints were made of some kind of human elastic. Everything was fluid and apparently effortless.”

Ivey remained devoted to the sport and won a number of international tennis titles in his senior years. When he turned 90, friends and family gathered for a celebration on the tennis court, following his daily game.

“Even at 90, Don was very difficult to play against,” says Joan Foley, professor emeritus of psychology at ��ֱ�� who also regularly played with Ivey. Foley, who was ��ֱ��’s first female provost and first female principal at ��ֱ�� Scarborough, says that under Ivey’s leadership, New College brought a new program of women’s studies into its curriculum.

She says that one of Ivey’s important legacies as vice-president was fundraising, which was helped by his recognition from his days on television. “It was something of an innovation for the university to take an active interest in donors,” says Foley. “Of course, it’s become quite a big activity at all universities now to be seeking out people and organizations that support the work of the institution.”

The contributions of Ivey and Hume to science were recognized by the naming of the asteroid HumeIvey. The asteroid was discovered in 1995 and named for the two professors by Robert Jedicke, a ��ֱ�� science alumnus who is now a professor with the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, and his brother Peter Jedicke, a Western University alumnus and former president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Ivey died on June 25. He was predeceased by his wife Marjorie. As well as Dave and Sharon, he leaves his daughter Donna Ouellette, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Mary Gooderham

Why do we stay in unhappy relationships? ����ֱ�� research has some answers

����ֱ�� researcher looks at 'hesitancy' to get vaccinated in Barbados

Former New York Times books editor on what makes a great review and why U.S. political coverage needs to change

Meet two ����ֱ�� faculty members honoured by OCUFA for outstanding teaching

Who's in control? ����ֱ�� researcher examines why it's so difficult to disconnect from social media

Is it time to change the student transcript? University leaders meet at ����ֱ�� to discuss possible enhancements

Eleven ����ֱ�� scholars named fellows of prestigious national academy

Expert in election law is one of six from ����ֱ�� named to Royal Society of Canada's college for emerging scholars

Robert Harold (Bob) McNutt, a respected geochemist who 'showed a lot of leadership' as principal of ����ֱ�� Mississauga

Donald (Don) Ivey, engaging teacher of physics at ����ֱ�� and on television, was first vice-president of institutional relations

Why do we stay in unhappy relationships? ��ֱ�� research has some answers

��ֱ�� researcher looks at 'hesitancy' to get vaccinated in Barbados

Meet two ��ֱ�� faculty members honoured by OCUFA for outstanding teaching

Who's in control? ��ֱ�� researcher examines why it's so difficult to disconnect from social media

Is it time to change the student transcript? University leaders meet at ��ֱ�� to discuss possible enhancements

Eleven ��ֱ�� scholars named fellows of prestigious national academy

Expert in election law is one of six from ��ֱ�� named to Royal Society of Canada's college for emerging scholars

Robert Harold (Bob) McNutt, a respected geochemist who 'showed a lot of leadership' as principal of ��ֱ�� Mississauga

Donald (Don) Ivey, engaging teacher of physics at ��ֱ�� and on television, was first vice-president of institutional relations