Congress 2011

I am currently in Fredericton, New Brunswick attending Congress, the annual gathering of scholars affiliated with the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. I presented yesterday for the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education on behalf of my research team that included Dr. Dale Kirby, Dr. Dennis Sharpe, and fellow graduate research assistants, Nicholas Morine, Jonathan Ricketts and Monique Bourgeois. The title of my talk was "Matriculating Eastward: An Examination of Factors Influencing the Inter-Provincial Migration of Maritime Students to Newfoundland and Labrador." There is a good graduate student presence here and I have attended a number of interesting talks on doctoral student transitions and development.

I would also like to extend my congratulations to Dale Kirby and Morgan Gardner, who have won the Canadian Educational Researchers' Association's R. W. B. Jackson Award for their paper, entitled "The schooling they need: Voicing student perspectives on their fourth year in senior high school". I am accepting the award today on their behalf.

Graduate Awards

Today I will be attending Memorial University's School of Graduate Studies' Graduate Awards Ceremony. This annual event honours graduate student recipients of scholarships, fellowships, and other awards. I will be receiving the Dr. Austin J. Harte Memorial Graduate Scholarship.

Graduate Education Happenings at Memorial

I have decided to make this a semi-regular blog post 'column', as there are lots of great things happening at my home institution with regards to graduate education.

This week, Memorial was honoured as the recipient of the CAGS/ETS Award for Excellence and Innovation in Graduate Admissions. Offered annually by the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) and Educational Testing Services (ETS), the award was presented yesterday at the CAGS Annual Conference in Toronto.

Earlier this week, 8 doctoral, 12 masters students and 2 undergraduates received $1,037,000 from the Research & Development Corporation (RDC), as recipients of the Ocean Industries Student Research Awards, to support ocean research over a three-year period. According to today.mun.ca, the awards range in value from $7,500 per year for undergraduate research to $20,000-$30,000 per year at the graduate level. The students’ research supervisors also receive a research allowance to support their supervisory work. The investment supports research in areas relevant to Newfoundland and Labrador’s ocean industries including offshore petroleum, ocean engineering, marine safety, fisheries and aquaculture and marine science. The students are enrolled in the Faculty of Science, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science and the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at Memorial University. The awards are open to post-secondary students in Newfoundland and Labrador, across Canada and internationally, who are interested in pursuing their studies and conducting leading edge research in Newfoundland and Labrador.