Issue 3 - March 2012 - Nipissing University

Newsletter Faculty of Arts and Science Nipissing University March 2012, Issue 3

From the Dean Good to Great Come, I shall tell you, and listen and convey the story, What paths of inquiry alone there are for thinking The one that is and that cannot be Is the road of persuasion, for it accompanies truth. Parmenides, Truth fr. 2 I have been trying to encourage some dialogue on what our central mission is as a faculty, by asking whether we are still relevant and if so, why? Coming from a discipline, which has frequently been scrutinized for its relevancy and has on occasion been forced to reinvent itself to remain relevant and attractive, I have never taken for granted my entitlement to exist, even though I believe in the intrinsic value of what I do as a Classicist. On the one hand, I feel very fortunate that I have had the privilege to teach what I love to study. That to me is no burden, but a joy, and having been given such a privilege I feel obliged to articulate why I think that what is I do is so very important. On the other hand, even though I cherish the academy and what it stands for with its open learning environments that allow people like me to conduct esoteric research, that does not mean I can ever become complacent or assume I have a right to exist because I think I should. We need to argue convincingly our case. As Parmenides states persuasion “accompanies truth” (Truth fr. 2.5). So I think we need to craft arguments, not to justify our existence, but to restate our importance and what would be sadly missing if we did not have Arts and Science. But before we formulate our arguments, I want to speak to two fundamental issues. This past summer I read Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great: why some companies make the leap and others don’t (New York 2001). It may seem odd that I should reference a book about successful businesses and what it took for them to break out and become great, but this book has influenced (or perhaps reinforced) my thinking about leadership and what needs to be our focus as an institution. And so I want to speak to both of these points. Leadership, I think, is important for success in any organization as it sets the tone and direction. In the case of businesses which moved from being simply good at what they did to great, the leaders were never quite what you would expect. In all cases they displayed “extreme humility with intense professional will” (21), and were at the helm when their organizations made the transition from good to great. They are what Collins calls Level 5 leaders, who build “enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will” (20). As Darwin Smith, long-time CEO of Kimberly-Clark, was quoted saying, as he reflected back on his many years of success, “‘I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job’” (20). I often feel this way myself.

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It is not that these leaders lacked ambition, but their ambition was channeled into their institutions; they were keen to see their companies succeed into the next generation, never concerned about whether people recognized that “the roots of that success traced back to their efforts” (26). Finally, these leaders set in place standards for lasting success, took responsibility for failings and always gave credit for success to others. This is what some would call servant leadership. By contrast, in comparison companies that failed to create lasting success, often charismatic leaders would sweep in to rescue an organization; there was success for a time, but rarely did such leaders sow seeds of success that lasted beyond their term. The problem identified by Collins was that success could only be sustained as long as the leader was at the helm, since nothing had been done to cultivate success more broadly, beyond the person of the CEO. The classic example is Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler.

So what should be our focus as a faculty, and perhaps as an institution as a whole, which will make us great and distinguish us from our ‘competitors’, if I can use that term? The danger I see is that we will try to make ourselves into the image of larger institutions; the result will be only a pale, bland imitation. And I am not talking here about whether we should be a teaching intensive or research intensive institution; that to me is a red herring. What we are already good at and can become even great at, in my estimation, is undergraduate education. This is not to say that we should not offer graduate programs, but to me that is not our primary focus, and whatever graduate programs we have or introduce should be undertaken with the thought of enhancing our undergraduate education. Likewise, every decision we make should answer this question: how does it make our undergraduate programming better. That is why I strongly supported the academic writing initiative coming from Teaching and Learning.

But more importantly for me, and what struck me most, is that these Level 5 leaders allowed for vigorous debate and were not afraid to be challenged. They surrounded themselves with smart people. They led with questions; engaged in dialogue and debate; conducted autopsies without casting blame, and allowed the truth to be spoken (see chapter 4). Often they created fora or structures within the organization, sometimes outside the regular hierarchy of the organization, where vigorous debate was allowed and encouraged to flourish, as it was out of these venues that good ideas came to move the organization forward. To me that sounds so much like an academy, and I hope in some way I have modeled that kind of leadership.

I recently had an opportunity to read the strategic plan of Mount Allison University. Their goal is to be the best primarily undergraduate institution in the country and one of the best in North America. It is a simple concept and singularly focused. Mount Allison has purposely decided to forgo further graduate expansion as it does not meet their goal of being the best undergraduate institution. This is not to say that the institution does not support or encourage research. In fact, it has a strong research culture throughout many of its programs, but it also excels at teaching and student engagement. Interestingly, Mount Allison did not always have a reputation for excellence. In the early 1990s the university almost became insolvent. Excellence is something it acquired over the last 30 years or so. And this is something I believe we can also acquire, if we are singularly focused on what is we do best: that I suggest is undergraduate education. And, in fact, I think there is a real opportunity to succeed at this in the face of the challenges within the Ontario system and any possible changes recommended in the Drummond Report that will lead to greater differentiation within system. I am not afraid of Drummond’s recommendations as they might provide an opportunity to position ourselves as the best undergraduate institution in the province. And that to me can only be a good thing.

Secondly all these successful organizations were singularly focused. Each hit upon something which they could do better than any other organization. In some cases it meant that they abandoned profitable operations which no longer fit their focus. So for instance, Walgreens’ “breakthrough strategy” was to create the “most convenient drugstores with high profit per customer visit” (92). The concept was simple, and with singular focus, Walgreens set about to replace all inconvenient locations with more convenient ones, even if it meant closing down profitable stores. Warren Buffett put it best when he spoke about why he was investing in Wells-Fargo, another good-to-great company: “‘They stick with what they understand and let their abilities, not their egos determine what they attempt’” (97).

Craig Cooper Dean, Arts and Science

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A Reply to the Dean’s Colum

The cure for academic overspecialization Steve Muhlberger February 2012 Dean Cooper in the last issue of this newsletter repeated a familiar lament, and one with a fair amount of truth to it. Academic research and academic structures are over specialized. We know more and more about less and less, and we do a poor job of communicating what we do know, both to our colleagues in other disciplines and to our students. If we want to reverse this trend, there is a way to do it, simple in principle but perhaps more difficult, at least psychologically, to implement. The allocation of rewards and prestige will have to be changed or nothing else will. Currently, the most important accomplishment for an aspiring academic seeking tenure or promotion is the publication of a certain number of peer-reviewed articles in well-known journals (in some disciplines, books are an important indicator as well). This standard and the kind of research it seeks to measure certainly have their place in the Academy. The result, however, is that with many talented individuals chasing that form of recognition in a very competitive environment, things quite naturally gravitate towards the “more and more about less and less” situation. Refereed articles also gain prominence in the tenure and promotion scheme because they can be and are recognized by experts, usually outsiders, who we also rely on to be impartial. Do we give the equivalent recognition and rewards to people who can communicate what is vital about their field the students, policymakers, or the general public? I don't think so, and I've been around for a while. Universities need faculty who are capable of producing volumes of high quality, original and, yes, specialized research, but it also needs faculty who can effectively work with and orient nonexperts. People who can get a point across to first-year students, attract online researchers breezing by the institution's website, make a case on current issues to community leaders, and so forth. It is perhaps not easy to measure that kind of effectiveness. We can’t just ask a few outside experts, and multiple-choice student evaluations don’t tell us much of value about teaching effectiveness. But if we want such people, we have to figure out how to identify and reward them. Actually we know how to reward them; we just have to decide to do it. The good news is that we don't have to restructure the university to accomplish this. All we need is a combination of imagination, hard thinking, and willpower.

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Around the Water Cooler

Laura Peturson (FAPA) will be exhibiting a selection of recent relief and screenprints at the Southern Graphics Council International Printmaking Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana this month.  The exhibition is presented by the New York Academy of Art, with artwork juried by the NYAA's Chair of Printmaking, John Jacobsmeyer. 

At the 91st Annual Meeting of the Mathematical Association of America - SouthEast, to be held at Clayton State University, Atlanta, Georgia on March 9-10, 2012: Tzvetalin Vassilev (Math) presented a contributed talk titled "Visibility: Computing the Staircase Kernel in Orthogonal Polygons". This work is co-authored with Stefan Pape, 4th year undergraduate student majoring in Mathematics. As well, Laura Huntington presented a contributed talk titled “Minimizing the Atom Bond Connectivity Index of Chemical Trees,” she is a 4th year undergraduate student majoring in Mathematics; Ian Kelly presented a poster titled “Fourier Series.” Ian is a 4th year undergraduate student majoring in Mathematics. The extended version of the paper "Visibility: Computing the Staircase Kernel in Orthogonal Polygons" by Stefan Pape and Tzvetalin Vassilev has been accepted for presentation at the 8th Annual International Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems to be held in Athens, Greece on 21-24 May 2012. The paper titled “On the Minimum ABC Index of Chemical Trees” by Tzvetalin Vassilev and Laura Huntington was accepted for publication in Applied Mathematics. Amanda Burk (FAVA) was invited to participate in the Ontario Arts Council's Emerging Northern Arts Professionals meeting in Toronto. This two day meeting was designed to connect Arts Professionals working in the North and provide opportunities for them to engage in dialogue about better practices facilitating and supporting arts and culture in the North.

Work by Janet Stahle-Fraser (Fine Arts/Muskoka) appears in three recent publications. You can find her work in The Artists of Algonquin (ISBN 978-0-9877864-0-1), as well as a coffee table size book on the Hudson Bay Company (ISBN # 9782 75940 5015) published by Assouline, in which one of Janet’s images has been given a coloured two-page spread on the history of this once Canadian company.  Vanity Fair’s editor, Graydon Carter, wrote the forward.  Lastly, many of her images will be published in the journal Canadian Woman Studies in an upcoming issue on "Feminism, Activism and Spirituality" in press at the end of January.  Two images will be in full colour for the cover and the back.  The editor is Luciana Ricciutelli. To the left are two publications featuring Janet’s work.

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Guest Column: The Future of Academic Librianship Current Themes in Academic Librarianship Charlotte Innerd Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about, and events concerning, the future of academic librarianship. In struggling over the future, librarians are slowly defining what it means to be a librarian in the 21st century. I see the challenges that we are faced with as falling under the following three themes: discoverability, scalability and affordability. I will touch on each theme and mention a few issues under each; however, this is not an exhaustive list of all the issues currently facing academic libraries. By the word discoverability, I mean more than just discovery or searching. It encompasses a larger ethos of how to approach cataloguing, information literacy, providing access, services and how people find and interact with information. This is not a new question for librarians. We have long struggled with it and will continue to do so in our never ending quest to make information available. We continually assess different interfaces, conduct usability tests, interact with vendors and ask critical questions about the search process. As librarians, we also ponder our efforts at outreach and marketing to better address how people discover what libraries and library staff have to offer. Faculty and students are busy with their own demands and priorities, so finding ways to make sure at the point of need they can meet their information need. I strive for more awareness about the library because I believe that literacy in all its forms is a joyous, transforming experience and I want to increase awareness of the wide diversity of resources in the library that support literacy whether it is for research, teaching or some other interest. Outreach also falls under the theme of scalability. I believe very strongly in the personal connection created between myself and patrons, whether students, faculty or community members. There is a limitation in this as I personally and more globally we as a profession cannot connect individually with each patron. How can we scale this to reach as many people as possible and to encourage all patrons to feel connected and welcome? This is particularly challenging as demands on the library increase in the face of growing student numbers and the growth of programs. Collections, both physical and online, are also continuing to grow. Although with the new building we are not currently under pressure for print collection space, this is not an issue we can ignore. We collaborate with our consortial partners in searching for solutions that will leverage our combined resources. This is true both for print and electronic resources as e-resources are often more time consuming and complex to manage. Affordability enters the discussion as we turn to look at the growth in the amount of publishing and the annual increases for resources. Such growth places an enormous pressure on library budgets. It is hotly debated as to whether the current model of publishing is sustainable and if not, what other models can be used. There are serious implications here about what resources can be made available. This goes beyond being solely a library issue and goes to the heart of scholarly communication and publishing. Finally, I turn to copyright. How we copy has fundamentally changed because of modern technology and we have not yet developed a mechanism for dealing with this change. The challenge here is to find a balance between the rights of the creator and the rights of the user. I have placed it under the theme of affordability because of the need for creators to be compensated for their work. There is so much more that I could discuss but I hope that have conveyed how in academic librarianship we are grappling with these questions in a thoughtful approach. For me, the process of trying to answer them is equally as important as finding the answers, especially as I don’t think there will be one answer. As things continue to change and evolve many of the same questions will need to be re-asked, as we are re-asking questions now. Librarianship is characterized by a spirit of inquiry and critical thinking. We are continually evaluating and assessing whether it is resources, services, ourselves or the profession. We are open to trying new ideas and approaches to discover what works and what doesn’t and to using that evidence to inform our practice. Above all, we are patronfocused and passionate about what we do and always strive for excellence.

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Faculty News New Faculty Profiles Darren Ferry (History) Darren Ferry teaches in the History Department in the North Bay campus, and also is actively engaged with the Culture and the Arts program at the Muskoka Campus, Nipissing University. Darren’s teaching and research interests lay in studying radical transatlantic political cultures; Canadian cultural and intellectual history; “popular” liberalism in the nineteenth century and comparative studies on English/French Canada. He has published articles on the connection of liberal thought and voluntary associations in the Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, Labour/Le Travail and Ontario History. Darren’s first book, Uniting in Measures of Common Good: The Construction of Liberal Identities in Central Canada, 1830-1900 was published by McGillQueen’s University Press in 2008. He is also working on a project charting the evolution of adult education in Ontario, and a multidisciplinary research strategy on the social, cultural and the economic benefits of the recent “arts community” designation in the Muskoka region.

A Spotlight on Faculty Research

Susan Srigley’s (Religions and Cultures) Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away will be published by the University of Notre Dame Press in April 2012

Mark Wachowiak (Computer Science) will be a guest speaker at the Lakehead/Thunder Bay Regional Research Institute/SHARCNET Joint Symposium on medical imaging. He will be speaking about “New High-Performance Computational Systems: Opportunities and Challenges for Biomedical Imaging"

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Students What are they up to?

Math students Laura Huntington and Ian Kelly participated in the 91st Annual Meeting of MAA SouthEast on March 9-10 at Clayton State University in Atlanta, Georgia with a contributed talk and a poster, respectively. In addition to that, Laura and Ian represented Nipissing University in Math Jeopardy (it is exactly what it sounds like). Despite being a team of only two, competing against 4-student teams, Laura and Ian confidently went through the first round and into the second semifinal round, narrowly missing qualification for the final, coming second in their match. They received many compliments for their participation in the contest. As it turns out, it was the first ever international (i.e. non-USA) participation in the contest. The Department of English Studies hosted its annual Student Symposium on Friday, March 9th.  Five students, representing the best work in the fall fourth-year honours seminars, presented ten-minute versions of their papers: both Robin Gibson and Brianna Yard discussed the place of “outsidership” in the novels of George Eliot; Katelynne LoPresti analyzed the treatment of Venice in works by Thomas Mann, Daphne du Maurier, and Ian McEwan; Amy Pyne's paper discussed transgendered posthumanism in Marge Piercy’s He, She, It; and Maggie Moor examined the significance of the different races in The Lord of the Rings. Exhibit 25, the WKP Kennedy Gallery's exhibition in conjunction with the Capitol Centre's 25th Anniversary will feature a combination of artists who have been exhibiting for more than 25 years and artists who are 25 years of age or younger.   FAVA students Alix Voz and Daniel Pigeon were selected from a competitive volume of submissions to represent artists under 25.  Their work will be exhibited alongside the work of three established artists including FAPA Chair Dennis Geden.   Exhibit 25 will be on view in the Gallery I space from March 28 - April 4, 2011.

Alix Voz’s “l’art en moi”. Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 36”.

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The following three exhibitions will be on held at the WKP Kennedy Gallery from April 6th – 19th. There will be a joint reception on Friday April 13th, from 7-9pm. These events are free of charge and open to the public.

BFA Graduate Exhibition 2012 Department of Fine and Performing Arts

Fine Arts 2012 Annual Juried Exhibition Department of Fine and Performing Arts

B.Ed. We Practice What We Preach Schulich School of Education

This exhibition showcases work from the graduating class of Nipissing University’s Bachelor Fine Arts (Honours) program. Twelve talented students: Ben Barak, ChristineCharette, Emily Evans, Laurel Gough, Ginger Irwin, Lesley Lane, Brittany Lee, Carissa MacIntosh, Kelsey Russell, Whitney Ruttan, Nick Scarfone, and Allison Smith will exhibita selection of artworks that they have been developing this year.

This exhibition includes a diverse range of concepts and styles in a variety of media. The works have been carefully selected through a juried process. The show highlights the

"We Practice What We Preach" is the 11th anniversary exhibition of artwork by students, staff, and faculty in the Schulich School of Education. The focus of the exhibition is to show the community that teachers can be multi-talented individuals who work in a variety of media. The participants come from not only the North Bay area but also all over Ontario.

WKP Kennedy Gallery 150 Main Street E. North Bay, ON 705-474-1944 x.231 www.kennedygallery.org Tuesday - Friday, 11 - 5pm Saturday, 12 - 4pm Sunday & Monday, CLOSED Many thanks to the WKP Kennedy Gallery and to Cultural Affairs for their support

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Announcements

Performing Politics

Discussion Panel and Performance: Performing Politics: Aboriginal Performance Art in the Canadian Context 16 and 17 March 2012 Discussion Panel with Jordan Bennett, Carla Taunton, Terry Dokis, and Susan Cahill Friday, 16 March 2012, 5:30-8:30pm A224, Main Building, Nipissing University Performance "How funny was it when...” by Mi’kmaq Performance Artist Jordan Bennett Saturday, 17 March 2012, 2:00-2:30pm Treaty Learning Centre, 3rd floor library, Nipissing University Everyone is welcome!  All events are free of charge. Thanks to Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Centre of Teaching and Flexible Learning, Cultural Affairs, and Faculty of Arts of Science for their generous support of this event. For more information, contact Susan Cahill at [email protected]

Dialogue Courses

Newsletter Editor

The Dialogue Course Working Group would like to begin planning Dialogue courses for the 2013-14 academic year. If you have an idea for a team-taught dialogue course, please fill out the form attached here and submit it to the Dean of Arts & Science by April 30. The form is also available on the A&S website. For more information, contact Nathan Colborne at [email protected]

Elizabeth Moss, a 3rd year Psychology major, is now the new editor for the newsletter. She is currently involved with Nipissing’s Tutoring and Peer mentoring program, and is extremely excited to broaden her experience with this new position. She can be reached at [email protected].

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Dialogue  Course  Proposal Please  submit  to  Dean  of  Arts  and  Science  by  April  30 Name  of  Faculty  Member  _____________________________________________________________

Department    ________________________________________________________________________

Name  of  Faculty  Member  _____________________________________________________________

Department  ________________________________________________________________________

Proposed  Topic  for  Course  ______________________________________________________________

Will  this  course  be  taught  using  a  presently  exisCng  course  code?    

Yes  _________     No  __________

What  is  the  name  and  number  of  that  course  ____________________________________

Is  it  cross-­‐listed  and/or  cross-­‐coded  with  both  departments?  ______________

If  there  is  no  appropriate  presently  exisCng  course,  what  course  might  be  proposed?

_______________________________________________________________________________ What  cross-­‐lisCngs  and/or  cross-­‐codings  would  be  proposed?

________________________________________________________________________________

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Calendar Upcoming Events

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n m sio Su es ion S ir ng ss n SP Sp e S Se ssio n or f e u yS s S J te ul SU 15 Da ril – 30 J uly n J io Ap ril – 30 ct 30 Ap e – Se 30 Jun 18

16 March

Discussion Panel: Performing Politics Aboriginal Performance Art in the Canadian Context with Jordan Bennett, Carla Taunton, Terry Dokis, and Susan Cahill 5:30-8:30pm A224

17 March

Performance: "How funny was it when...” by Mi’kmaq Performance Artist Jordan Bennett 2:00-2:30pm Treaty Learning Centre, 3rd floor library,

18 March

Math Circles for info contact

23-24 March

Nipissing University's Fifth Annual Undergraduate Research Conference

22 March

Buddhism in Ruins: Images of Chinese Buddhism in the Writings of Meiji and Taisho Period Japanese Travellers Dr. Erik Schicketanz, University of Tokyo 3 p.m., H 106

25 March

Math Kangaroo Contest: contact

28 March

CFTL: Clickers in Large Classrooms 12 p.m. - 1 p.m., H109

30 March

Application deadline for 2012 Spring Convocation

5 April

Last day of FW and WI classes

11-28 April

Exam period

13-15 June

Convocation

Please send submissions to the Newsletter to [email protected]. ARCC will meet following Feb 16, March 1, 15, and 29.

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