Mentoring

Nov 29

SSH News: Canada’s “marriage gap” and Big Thinking, Federation president’s letter to the editor, SSHRC and Mitacs partner up, and CIHR Synapse award nominations

 

In an op-ed in the Globe and Mail this week, columnist Margaret Wente describes “the inequality we don’t talk about” as that which has resulted from Canada’s “marriage gap” – with increased divorce rates and fewer people getting married in the first place, the changing dynamics of Canadian families are, according to Wente, more than coincidentally related to stagnating household incomes and greater class divides. So is less marriage creating more inequality in Canada? Wente suggests that “if we’re really interested in the roots of inequality, ignoring it is a big mistake.”

On December 10th in Ottawa, Céline Le Bourdais of McGill University will present “Cohabitation: an alternative or substitute for marriage?” in our final Big...

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Sep 28

RSC Annual General Meeting: Celebrating 130 Years Spanning Three Centuries

 
Join us as we celebrate 130 years of: promoting Canadian research and scholarly accomplishment in both of Canada’s official languages; recognizing academic and artistic excellence; and advising governments, NGOs and the Canadian public, on matters of public importance. Three days of scholarly programming have been organized to interest Fellows, as well as their families and friends.

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Sep 28

RSC Annual Symposium: The New Science of Child Development

 
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC) invites you to our Annual Symposium, The New Science of Child Development presented by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
Our Symposium on early childhood development will explore in depth the multi-faceted factors that shape the health, education, and psychological well-being of our children. Dr. W. Thomas Boyce, as well as eight multidisciplinary experts will document different facets of this new knowledge, examine how it helps us understand the role of early environment in development, and discuss the extent to which it can be harnessed to guide current and new programs and policy in Canada. Please join this very important discussion on how we can improve the development and quality of life of our future generations.
 
This event is open to the public.

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Apr 20

From traditional mentoring to mentoring networks

James Deaville, Carleton University
Guest Contributor

This is an edited version of Dr. Deaville’s recent presentation to the Federation’s General Assembly meeting on March 27, 2010. Listen to the podcast of the panel presentation, or read the liveblog of the event.

My own academic mentoring consisted of a troubling personal relationship under a senior professor, who introduced me to post-secondary academe through paranoid observations and advice...

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Apr 13

“Mentoring is Key!” Success for female graduate students

Marlene Pomrenke, University of Manitoba
Guest Contributor

The following narratives describe the ways in which female graduate students see mentoring as essential to their academic success. As one woman stated, “Having a responsive and engaged advisor has been critical to completing my degree.” Another woman stated, “My mentors know my strengths and more importantly, my weaknesses. Thus they are able to provide useful feedback on how I can improve.” And finally as one other woman succinctly stated, “Mentoring is key! It is the business of who you know and how connected you are.”

These narratives and...

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Apr 12

Much ado about mentoring

Over the past few weeks, some of our Equity Matters content has featured posts exploring the issues behind mentoring in the academy, including a podcast from Minister Faust and pieces about mentoring within one's discipline and  an unconventional mentoring relationship. Along with a post setting out the discussion, these posts culminated in 'Much Ado about Mentoring,' a plenary session at the Federation's annual meeting of the General Assembly. This plenary featured a range of academics who spoke to their own encounters with mentoring, as well as the underlying philosophies.

The...

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Mar 25

The 5 Ls of Mentoring

Minister Faust

Guest Contributor

For this post, we're offering it in audio form - simply click on the link below and listen! Or, if you'd prefer to read, a shortened transcript follows.

Click here to listen to the full podcast.

I’ve worked with children and youth for more than 20 years. In that time I’ve been a child care worker, a youth activist, a junior high and high school teacher, a youth leadership coach, and a director of youth community theatre. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in that time, but I’m also happy to have learned a few...

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Mar 24

Mentoring and equity: Women and geography

Bonnie Kaserman, University of British Columbia
Guest Contributor

Once a month I head out from my apartment in the evening, directions to someone’s home usually scrawled on a piece of scrap paper. Each month, a group of women geographers, composed of graduate students, researchers, postdoctoral fellows and faculty, gather in someone’s living room. I am one of these women. We meet in order to discuss our gendered experiences in the discipline, to learn from one another, and to enhance our understanding of academic culture so that we might make positive changes in the academy.  We also laugh.  A lot.

Almost a decade ago, women from the...

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Mar 23

Much ado about mentoring

Malinda Smith, VP Equity

Let’s be audacious and say it: Some of the most innovative – socially innovative – developments in human history have occurred in the social sciences and humanities. I think mentoring is one of them: Mentoring is a social innovation, whose improbable beginnings can be traced to, of all things, a poem. The modern idea of mentoring often is traced back to the figure Mentor who appeared in Homer’s epic poem, Odyssey, over 3,000 years ago.

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