Undergrad

U of T students work with Māori, Maya and other Indigenous communities and share what they learned in new forum

hjames — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 04:00:00 +0000

U of T students work with Māori, Maya and other Indigenous communities and share what they learned in new forum

hjames Mon, 10/16/2017 - 00:00

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U of T student Jaime Kearns travelled to New Zealand and learned about Māori policies around repatriation of Indigenous artifacts (photo by Hannah James)

Hannah James

Topic

Global Lens

Faculty of Art & Science

Global

Humanities

Indigenous

International

Trinity College

Truth and Reconciliation

Undergrad

University of Toronto student Jaime Kearns says she just had the best summer of her life, living and working with the Māori peoples of New Zealand as part of a U of T internship program.

“It was eye-opening,” says Kearns, a fourth-year Indigenous studies student and member of the Anishinaabek Chippewas of the Thames community.

She has a keen interest in Indigenous archeology and was eager to learn about New Zealand's policies for repatriation of Māori archeological artifacts from museums and collectors around the world. She also took classes about Māori culture and worked as an editorial assistant for a Māori journal.

Interning at the Māori Centre of Research Excellence, Kearns says she was struck by the fact that the Māori language is recognized alongside English as an official language. “They’re about 100 years ahead of us,” says Kearns, who also noted that the Māori people got the right to vote about a century before Indigenous men did in Canada.

Kearns' internship abroad was part of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship program at Trinity College, which includes internships in Guyana, Belize, New Zealand and Australia. She is now involved in the Indigenous-Settler Relations Forum and Course – a weekly program organized by Trinity College's director of ethics, society and law, Professor John Duncan. The program is split into a for-credit course for returning interns to continue their research, and a forum for Indigenous experts, academics and interested members of the community to engage with students who have returned from their travels abroad.

The timing of the forum, says Duncan, coincides with increased efforts at U of T to work towards reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Earlier this year, a U of T steering committee released a Truth and Reconciliation report with 34 specific calls to action for the university. “I think we’re at this amazing moment where everyone’s talking about reconciliation,” says Duncan. “There’s a cultural sense that there is something that could come out of it, so our efforts here at Trinity [College] are in that vein."

Professor John Duncan earlier this year at a conference exploring how universities can respond to Truth and Reconciliation calls to action (photo by Hannah James)

Hannah Lazare, a fourth-year Trinity College student majoring in ethics, society and law travelled to Guyana and says she found the experience “humbling."

"It was my first experience being directly involved in an Indigenous community,” she says.

Interning at the Institute of Applied Science and Technology in Guyana, Lazare says she participated in research involving how science or technologies can enhance production for Indigenous businesses. She says she flew on tiny planes to Bina Hill – a community near the Brazilian border – to work with an Indigenous community that runs a soap-manufacturing operation.

U of T students (left to right) Alessia Avola, Hannah Lazare and Andrea Dimiskovska travelled to Guyana to intern on projects related to Indigenous businesses (photo courtesy of Hannah Lazare)

Lazare says she had to learn and follow proper ethics protocols for working with Indigenous communities – beginning with asking for permission to enter the land and requesting to work with the people making the soap.

Zara Narain, a third-year Victoria College student at U of T also majoring in ethics, society and law travelled to Belize and interned with the Maya Leaders Alliance. The alliance represents the interests of 39 Indigenous villages in southern Belize that won a 2015 case in the Caribbean Court of Justice giving them rights to the lands they have historically used and occupied.

Zara Narain (centre left) at a presentation in Laguna Village about some village bylaws that she helped document with her fellow intern, Madison Lauren, a fourth-year anthopology student (pictured third from left) (photo courtesy of Zara Narain)

“The big question was, after this legal victory, what happens next?” says Narain, who travelled to Laguna and Santa Cruz villages to help document customary laws the communities were developing. They included a range of issues, from protocols for meetings to laws for cleaning and sanitation in communities.

Her role was to work with community leaders and Elders, helping to relay their ideas and responses to the Maya Leaders Alliance.

Narain says she wants to pursue international law and her experience in Belize gave her a new perspective on working with Indigenous groups on a global scale.

For Kearns, a summer in New Zealand helped her understand her own life as an Indigenous person living in Canada.

“I think in Canada we have been oppressed for a long time, and it just becomes part of our daily lives," says Kearns. "Seeing some of the things the Māori are doing in New Zealand gave me ideas about different things that we can start doing and implementing here.”

Kearns says New Zealand's policies about the repatriation of Māori artifacts are particularly interesting to her, and she hopes to start working on similar initiatives around Indigenous artifacts in Canada.

Making an impact: U of T undergrad co-authors important machine learning study at Google

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 21 Jun 2017 16:38:23 +0000

Making an impact: U of T undergrad co-authors important machine learning study at Google

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 06/21/2017 - 12:38

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U of T's Aidan Gomez co-authored research at Google that turned a single neural network loose on eight problems simultaneously (photo by Nina Haikara)

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Nina Haikara

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Our Community

Faculty of Arts & Science

Computer Science

Undergrad

Math

Aidan Gomez has yet to finish his undergraduate degree, but he’s already doing research at Google that could lead to dramatic improvements in machine learning – a thriving subfield of artificial intelligence.

Gomez, who took a semester off from his University of Toronto studies in computer science and math to work at Google Brain in Silicon Valley, recently released a paper on multitask learning by a single neural network with lead author and senior Google researcher Lukasz Kaiser.

While most existing machine learning techniques focus on a single task – identifying objects in images, interpreting natural language or recognizing audio – Kaiser and Gomez showed that a single neural network could successfully be turned loose on multiple tasks simultaneously.

The paper, titled "One Model to Learn them All," even showed evidence of overall improved performance.

“Lukasz and I basically stepped back and asked: Why shouldn’t one particular class of models be able to solve all these problems at the same time?” Gomez says. He compared the approach to the way humans carry cognitive tools acquired through previous experience.

“We've shown that this network does precisely that – not only does it apply these tools, it makes performance on new tasks significantly better.”

Kaiser and Gomez trained their model to solve eight problems at the same time. That included the ImageNet classification contest that Geoffrey Hinton, a Google engineering fellow and U of T University Professor Emeritus, and his graduate students, Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever, won in 2012 with deep learning neural networks.

Sutskever is now leading artificial intelligence research at a $1 billion non-profit, OpenAI, backed by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Gomez calls the ImageNet task “very difficult” because it involves 1,000 categories and more than one million images.

“We were frightened, initially, that the model simply wouldn't have the capacity to learn ImageNet along with anything else – that it would dedicate all its resources to ImageNet, but it turns out not to be the case,” he says. “There appears to be symbiosis within the tasks, each feeding to the other and improving the overall performance considerably.

“These neural networks are in fact capable of learning an array of different tasks, at the same time, on the same parameters, similar to how you or I approach a new task.”

U of T's Kylie Masse now ranks number one in world for two swimming events

lanthierj — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 15:20:39 +0000

U of T's Kylie Masse now ranks number one in world for two swimming events

lanthierj Mon, 04/10/2017 - 11:20

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(all photos by Martin Bazyl)

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University of Toronto Varsity Blues women's swimming star Kylie Masse crushed it at the Team Canada Trials, sweeping the competition in the 50-metre, 100-metre and 200-metre backstroke in Victoria, B.C.

Masse overtook the 200-metre Olympic bronze medalist Hilary Caldwell in the final few metres to win in 2:07.23 on April 8. Caldwell was just .06 behind.

They were the two fastest times at that distance this season – and well under the FINA time to qualify for this summer's world championships in Budapest.

See the CBC story

“It's incredible,” said Masse, who is in her third year of undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education. “She's someone I've looked up to in the backstroke for a long time now. It's really cool to be racing side-by-side with her.”

Tahmid Khan, University of Toronto student, is still detained in Bangladesh

lanthierj — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:05:21 +0000

Tahmid Khan, University of Toronto student, is still detained in Bangladesh lanthierj Wed, 08/10/2016 - 10:05

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(Khan, in an undated Facebook photo from 2015)

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The University of Toronto is continuing to monitor the case of student Tahmid Khan, one of two men held by authorities in Bangladesh following last month’s hostage taking at a restaurant in Dhaka.

The life sciences student, who is set to enter his fourth year of studies at U of T, was in Dhaka visiting family and was in the restaurant on July 1 during the terrorist attack that left 20 dead. In the days following the incident, he and one other hostage were detained by police and his family and friends have appealed for help amid conflicting reports about his whereabouts. Human Rights Watch also has appealed for news on the condition and treatment of the two men.

After weeks of Khan’s family pressing for information, reports surfaced last week that a court had granted police eight days to question Khan and the other man who was detained, British national Hasnat Karim.

University of Toronto President Meric Gertler last month wrote a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion expressing concern for the student’s welfare and confirming that he is a student in good standing who is an active member of the university community.

The university is continuing to watch the case.

“We’re concerned about the well-being of Tahmid,” U of T spokesperson Althea Blackburn-Evans said. “We have students coming to us from all over the world so when something like this happens our first thought is for the well-being of the student and wanting to ensure the student is treated fairly.”

Khan is a permanent resident in Canada and not a Canadian citizen and officials have said that this limits the role Global Affairs Canada can play.

Almost 500 sworn in as citizens at U of T's Convocation Hall – including undergrad and professor

sgupta — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 10:43:55 +0000

Almost 500 sworn in as citizens at U of T's Convocation Hall – including undergrad and professor sgupta Mon, 02/08/2016 - 05:43

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Yaser Nabib (pictured here with Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr) is in his first year of civil engineering at U of T (all photos by Johnny Guatto)

Alan Christie

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Alan Christie

See a photo gallery of the ceremony

Upfold came to Canada in May, 2011 from Britain. Her husband Chris, seven-year-old son Stanley and Elsie are all Canadian. She said “it is so lovely that all of our family now is Canadian. It is a privilege to become one.” Elsie, when not exploring through people’s bags, took a Canadian flag from Chancellor Michael Wilson.

Yaser Nabib, 18, was there with his mom Iftasum, both becoming citizens after arriving here from Bangladesh five years ago. Nabib is in first year of civil engineering at U of T.

“I’m so proud of him,” Iftasum said. “He is a really good student.”

Suzanne Stevenson, born in Virginia, has been in Canada for 16 years. It was her son Kiva who said she should become a citizen.

A professor of computer science at U of T, Stevenson (pictured below) said she became quite emotional while being sworn in as a Canadian. “My son said it would mean a lot to him for me to do this. I love the country of my birth but I love Canada. It has the social values that I admire.

“I became quite emotional taking the oath, and I am quite emotional just talking about it now.”

In an email to U of T News on Feb 8, Stevenson said that when she returned to Santa Barbara where she is on sabbatical, her husband, U of T Professor Sven Dickinson, was holding a Canadian flag.

“Probably the first time that has ever happened in little Santa Barbara,” she said.

Twenty-four-year-old Jeanette Salvador and her sister Alexis, 14, from The Philippines, were both sworn-in. “It’s a great feeling,” she said. “My mother worked very hard for this.”

It was also an emotional day for Shirley Hoy, vice-chair of the Governing Council and chair elect. Born in China, she said the ceremony brought back memories of when she became a citizen. Hoy (pictured below) said she experienced “the undeniable challenges you have overcome to be here today.”

John McCallum, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, administered the oath the new citizens repeated, first in French, then English.

Speaking before giving the oath, McCallum (pictured at right with Gertler) said there are “certain parallels” between the people who are now Canadians and the 25,000 Syrian refugees Canada is accepting.

“It tells you something about the nature of the country you are about to join,” he said. The government’s plan to find homes for the refugees is a “national non-partisan project. It speaks to why Canada seeks out newcomers to build our country.”

The civil war in Syria has created “the worst refugee crisis for decades, and during a time when other countries are reticent to receive refugees, we are standing out as a welcoming beacon,” McCallum said.

He said “once you become a citizen, no one can take that away from you.” All Canadians, he said, no matter how long they have been in the country, “have equal rights and equal responsibilities.”

McCallum said it is a huge pleasure for him to take part in a citizenship ceremony, “especially in one of Canada’s top universities.”

Chancellor Wilson urged the new citizens to “learn more about your country, read our history, vote in elections and become engaged in your community.” Such things, he said, will help them get “the full measure of being a Canadian.”

Gertler said “throughout our history, Canada’s greatest strength has been its people. We are blessed with abundant natural resources and a favourable location on the globe, but Canadians built and continue to build this great country, its institutions and its values.”

Canada, he said, “embraces the broadest range of people, encourages the free expression of perspectives and ideals,” and the U of T community is like Canada in that “we prize inclusion, respect and civility in our shared pursuit of the common goals.”

Gertler said as he looked out upon the new Canadians and their families, “I am immensely optimistic about our future. Your ideas, your traditions, your perspectives will make our great nation more vibrant, more dynamic, more successful and a better place for us all.”

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Does this face look familiar? Meet the undergrad who stars on Degrassi

sgupta — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 07:51:45 +0000

Does this face look familiar? Meet the undergrad who stars on Degrassi sgupta Tue, 11/24/2015 - 02:51

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André Kim says Winston Chu, his character on Degrassi is “nerdy and smart, but doesn’t take crap.” (photo by Epitome pictures)

Blake Eligh

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Blake Eligh

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Undergrad

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André Kim will continue to play Winston Chu when series moves to Netflix and Family Channel in 2016

Plenty of students have part-time jobs, but not everyone spends their off-hours as a high schooler on a beloved Canadian drama series.

U of T Mississauga theatre and drama studies student André Kim has juggled acting and academic study since Grade 11, when he landed a part on Degrassi: Next Generation. The program is the fourth instalment in the Toronto-based Degrassi series, which has been broadcast around the world since Kids of Degrassi aired in the early 1980s.

The Edmonton-born actor grew up in Mississauga, where he began acting with children’s theatre groups before joining the drama program at Cawthra Park Secondary School, a performing arts high school in Mississauga.

In Grade 10, he sent an audition recording to Degrassi producers and landed the part of Winston Chu, nerdy sidekick to Degrassi’s popular Miles Hollingsworth character. He has played the part for the past three years.

“It doesn’t feel like a job,” Kim says, adding that his Degrassi experience initially felt like summer camp. But the show quickly taught him that acting could be his career. “I love acting and reading the scripts and being there for rehearsals,” he says. “I love working on set and talking with the director. It’s a lot of fun.”

Kim notes he’s very different from his Degrassi character. “Winston is nerdy and smart, but doesn’t take crap. He’s new to the idea of serious committed relationships. It’s fun to play, because there’s an element of innocence and naivety to him. It’s perfect for the age of his character.“

While some of his acting colleagues headed to Los Angeles in search of stardom, Kim applied to UTM where he spent a year enrolled in humanities courses. He is now in his second year.

“I wanted to test the waters and see what I was most interested in,” Kim says. “I took anthropology, psychology and philosophy to figure out what I wanted to do.”

But he couldn’t shake the acting bug, and applied to the joint theatre and drama studies program at UTM and Sheridan.

“I decided that if I was going to be at university, I should do something I really liked,” he says.

“I did a lot of research into theatre programs before choosing to audition here, I like the combination of academic studies with practical teaching. It’s a tough process to get in, but we know that we were chosen. It’s a nurturing environment and they work you until you’re the best that you can be. It makes me more committed.”

Auditions may give some actors butterflies, but Kim likes the competition. “I love auditioning. It’s a thrill,” he says. “It’s cool knowing that I’ve got to beat all those guys to win a role.”

“Theatre is so different from film acting. I have to use my whole body, not just my face. And there’s no stopping for another take – it’s one performance all the way through.“

While Kim’s first love is performance, he also hopes to write scripts and comics, or become an e-sport announcer for video game competitions.

“That requires a lot of stage presence and comfort on camera,” he says. “I love gaming, but for now my mind is truly set on acting.”

The actor recently wrapped up work on two short films, Quarter Life Crisis and Dumb Luck. Degrassi: Next Generation ended in 2015, however the franchise will continue with the fifth instalment in the series, Degrassi: Next Class. Kim will reprise his role as Winston Chu in the program, which airs on Netflix and Family Channel in 2016.

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Meet undergrad Frank Gu, one of the U of T interns lighting up Nanoleaf

sgupta — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 06:01:59 +0000

Meet undergrad Frank Gu, one of the U of T interns lighting up Nanoleaf sgupta Wed, 11/04/2015 - 01:01

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Frank Gu says the energy at Nanoleaf shouts “We are going to do great things, so if you are ready, hop aboard!” (photo courtesy Blue Sky solar racing)

Brianna Goldberg

Author legacy

Brianna Goldberg

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

Travelling to Shenzhen, China, the second-year Engineering student discovers he has no limits

How does a second-year undergraduate student nab a coveted internship with a global lighting startup like Nanoleaf?

It helps to offer critical thinking, creativity and boundless energy – but having the boss share your intellectually impressive hobby doesn't hurt.

When Nanoleaf CEO Gimmy Chu met electrical and computer engineering student Frank Gu, he discovered that the young applicant was a member of U of T's Blue Sky Solar Racing Club. Chu had worked on the acclaimed Blue Sky car almost a decade earlier.

“Gimmy gave me an assignment to prove my capability for the intern position,” Gu says. “Then, Gimmy and I proceeded to talk about Blue Sky Solar Racing at U of T.”

U of T News is profiling some of the interns helping to power Nanoleaf, an LED startup from U of T Engineering alumni that recently announced a new product launch in partnership with Apple. (Read about the fourth-year math and statistics undergrad and the science undergrad working for Nanoleaf.)

“The U of T presence is still very strong at Nanoleaf, and I believe it always will be,” says Nanoleaf spokesperson Leslie Chen. “When we were looking for interns to join our team, the first place we looked was at U of T.”

(Read the latest news about Nanoleaf and Apple)

U of T News writer Brianna Goldberg spoke with Gu about his experiences at Nanoleaf, which he joined in early 2015.

How did Nanoleaf recruit you?

I met the Nanoleaf team during the You’re Next startup career fair 2015. They had a booth in the lower level of the MaRS building, and a very bright light bulb for demonstration. I remember the first thought that flashed past my mind when I saw what they were doing: “MY EYES!” So that blinding experience was how the Nanoleaf people made their impression on me. (Read more about the You're Next career fair)

I did the standard routine of shaking some hands, taking a card, and dropping off a resume. After one day, no reply, not even a confirmation. One week, still nothing. Finally, I emailed Gimmy Chu, Nanoleaf's CEO, and he got back to me pretty quickly wanting to schedule a meeting to chat. We spoke briefly about some current technological trends. Gimmy gave me an assignment to prove my capability for the intern position. Then, Gimmy and I proceeded to talk about Blue Sky Solar Racing at U of T. Gimmy also worked on the Blue Sky car almost a decade ago, and I am an active team member of the Blue Sky team. I guess that’s how Nanoleaf recruited me! (Read more about Blue Sky Solar Racing at U of T)

Why did you want to work with them?

At first I just wanted a job for some additional learning experience and a challenge. But after meeting with Gimmy, I was immediately attracted to Nanoleaf. Of all the CEOs/managers/bosses that I have dealt with in the past, I can confidently say that Gimmy is the most “chill” (excuse my slang). At the time, I was merely a frosh in school for only half a year. Gimmy did not seem to mind.

He was interested in two things: what I can offer, and what I want to obtain from working with Nanoleaf. It is almost a feeling of urgency, a liveliness that shouts, “We are going to do great things, so if you are ready, hop aboard!” I think it’s this energy that drew me to them, and it’s because of this energy that I am staying with them. The first day at work, I stayed till 8 p.m. because I felt like I was finally in a place I belonged.

Does your work at Nanoleaf connect with or supplement what you’ve learned at U of T?

The projects I work on at Nanoleaf give me an opportunity to convert theoretical knowledge obtained in the classrooms into real applications that serve real purposes. Specifically, the project management and strategies I learned in my Engineering Strategies and Practice course were used heavily during the discussion and design of a solution at Nanoleaf. Computer Fundamentals taught the basics of the C/C++ programming language, and writing kernel drivers at Nanoleaf allowed me to apply this abstract knowledge. These are some aspects that connect directly with my courses.

I believe university is also a place to learn how to socialize and form new connections and friendships. Beyond the scope of courses at U of T, working at Nanoleaf has exposed me to an exciting cross section of different social groups in our society: programmers, PhDs, electrical engineers, artists, writers, marketing and strategists. As a surprise, during my stay in the Shenzhen office, I was also offered the opportunity to visit Nanoleaf’s production facility, providing me with a rich first-hand experience of the modern electronics manufacturing industry.

So yes, I would say working at Nanoleaf complements my academic and social pursuit at U of T greatly!

What have you learned in working with Nanoleaf that surprised you?

Your “limit” is where you define it to be. When I first started working at Nanoleaf, I had only a preliminary knowledge of the programming languages used: C, Javascript and Swift. However, Gimmy let me begin with a highly experimental project that involved networking, servers, databases, cloud architectures, and whatever other jargon that’s out there in the industry. I took it up as a challenge. A month into the project, and I was already comfortable with the technologies involved. Two months in, I began cooperating with the rest of the team in the main program development. By May, I was patching up kernel drivers (advanced development) with guidance from Tom.

At Nanoleaf, I was surprised by my “limit.” I have no limit. We all have no limits. If I take something as a challenge, I can always push myself ever harder and further to accomplish it no matter how daunting the task. The key is to always believe in yourself and acknowledge that you can be your own greatest enemy.

Interested in entrepreneurship and startups at U of T? Visit the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

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These undergrad interns are helping to power Nanoleaf: Jeanny Yao and Josh Hwang

sgupta — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 10:59:15 +0000

These undergrad interns are helping to power Nanoleaf: Jeanny Yao and Josh Hwang sgupta Mon, 11/02/2015 - 05:59

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(image courtesy Nanoleaf)

Brianna Goldberg

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Nanoleaf

Undergraduate Education

Undergraduate Students

Why would a fast-growing LED lighting startup hire a statistician and a scientist as business development interns?

Nanoleaf – a global startup from U of T Engineering alumni – says it was for their different perspective and critical mindset. (Read more about Nanoleaf)

“The U of T presence is still very strong at Nanoleaf, and I believe it always will be,” said spokesperson Leslie Chen. “When we were looking for interns to join our team, the first place we looked was at U of T.”

The interns, who hooked into Nanoleaf's team through a specialized new venture internship course called IMC390, get to earn course credits while exploding all conventions of what they can do with their degree.

Interested in learning more about startups and entrepreneurship at U of T? Visit the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship

(Video courtesy Nanoleaf's Smarter Kit Indiegogo)

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Early Career Teaching Award spotlight: Q & A with historian Kyle Smith

sgupta — Wed, 28 Oct 2015 11:56:56 +0000

Early Career Teaching Award spotlight: Q & A with historian Kyle Smith sgupta Wed, 10/28/2015 - 07:56

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“There is little use in knowing every plot twist of a given text if one has no knowledge of the interpretive strategies at work, no idea of how to read the text within a larger rhetorical agenda, and no way of situating the text within a broader historica

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Facilitating self-directed learning and analysis, helping students see material from a different angle

Teaching analysis of reality TV alongside early Christian religion is one of the many ways assistant professor Kyle Smith of historical studies engages his students at U of T’s Mississauga campus.

“His uniqueness in teaching is his ability to expand the material beyond the books,” said Hammad Khan, a sociology PhD and one of Smith’s former Christian history undergraduate students. “His use of pop-culture, art, literature and material from other academic disciplines in topics of religion make his lessons insightful and fun.”

Khan said Smith “teaches with clarity and challenges his students to think critically” and inspired him to pursue a career in teaching. “His influence gave me the direction and motivation I needed in my own life.”

Smith is one of four teaching leaders receiving the first-ever University of Toronto Early Career Teaching Awards this year. They are:

Aarthi Ashok, associate professor, teaching stream, department of biological sciences, UTSC

Fiona Rawle, associate professor, teaching stream, department of biology, UTM

Michael Reid, lecturer, department of astronomy and astrophysics, Faculty of Arts & Science

Kyle Smith, assistant professor, department of historical studies, UTM

This is the third instalment of the U of T News series of profiles on each of the winners (read about biologist Fiona Rawle; read about astronomer Mike Reid.) They are set to receive their certificates at the University of Toronto Excellence in Teaching Reception on Nov. 3 from 5:00pm-7:00pm in the Common Room at Massey College.

What drew you to teaching?

I didn't know too many academics when I was growing up but there was one father of a neighborhood friend who was influential. He was a law professor at the University of Kentucky. He had this very quiet and pensive demeanour. Unlike a lot of parents, he never told us anything. He'd just question us all the time and lead us to think about our own thinking.

For some reason, the trappings of an antiquarian academic life were also exotically appealing to me as an eleven-year old. My friend's father embodied all the old-fashioned, Oxbridge stereotypes of the university professor: he wore jackets with elbow patches; he rode a creaky bicycle to campus (years before bike-commuting was “green” or fashionable); his book- lined study smelled of old wood, pipe tobacco, and bourbon; and he rarely had any idea where he had left his keys. That seemed like an intriguing life to me, although it's far from the one I lead now!

Later on, when I was in high school, I spent a lot of time at Korean Zen Buddhist monastery in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky. I'd drive there and camp out on their land for the weekend and spend most of the time reading rather than meditating in the zendo at 4 AM. That was very influential, too. I already knew that I wanted to study philosophy in university and, hopefully, become a professor someday, but those trips to the monastery confirmed it.

Why is integrating research and teaching important?

Although my research is focused mainly on Christian martyrdom literature from late antiquity, my teaching is not located solely in antiquity.

No matter what course I am teaching, I make a point of explaining how religious studies can be broadly important and applicable beyond seemingly discrete corners of abstruse research. For this reason, I am committed to integrating instruction in methodological approaches to religious studies alongside the primary material on which a course is based. My hope is that students do not passively receive the history of Christianity as an amusing catalog of dead antiquities, but actively engage it as a living object of inquiry with contemporary relevance.

My principal goal is to lay a foundation of primary material that orients students to a field of study. Upon that foundation, I seek to build a framework of analysis upon which students can rely to evaluate and synthesize the material they have learned. There is little use in knowing every plot twist of a given text if one has no knowledge of the interpretive strategies at work, no idea of how to read the text within a larger rhetorical agenda, and no way of situating the text within a broader historical context.

Uniting methodological instruction with primary material helps build direct and indirect links to a larger curriculum of study and the interstices between courses where the truest learning often occurs.

I can recall my own experience as an undergraduate in this regard: a course I took on The Brothers Karamazov came alive through a course on early modern philosophy that I was taking simultaneously. I intentionally design my syllabi along thematic and comparative lines to help facilitate this same sort of self-directed learning and analysis among my students. I often pair ancient texts with secondary sources that examine the thought-world of the primary texts, but then I integrate tertiary sources that may be temporally, culturally, or religiously distinct from the world of the primary sources. Introducing this third component is not intended as a way of making a blithe comparison, but rather of seeing the primary material anew and from a very different angle.

For example, in my seminar on early Christian asceticism we spend one session discussing the literary re-fashioning of female bodies that occurs in late ancient accounts of “harlots” who become holy women. Our primary sources are Greek and Latin hagiographical texts; our secondary sources are gender theory readings of these ancient texts; and our tertiary source is a chapter about the construction of female gender normativity from a recent study of “makeover” reality TV.

This approach allows students to use the primary sources to become familiar with the ancient texts themselves, the secondary sources to understand the primary texts more fully, and the tertiary sources to go beyond (and yet return to) both the primary and secondary sources to ask, in this case, fresh questions about gendered discourses in the late ancient Mediterranean world as well as twenty-first-century America and Canada.

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Why Toronto gave this undergrad an International Student Award of Excellence for community service

sgupta — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 12:55:32 +0000

Why Toronto gave this undergrad an International Student Award of Excellence for community service sgupta Mon, 10/26/2015 - 08:55

Cutline

“I would like to make a difference in my home country, wherever I end up, whether it’s home in Ethiopia or Zimbabwe or here in Canada,” says global citizen Metasebia Assefa (photo by Ken Jones)

Don Campbell

Author legacy

Don Campbell

Topic

Global Lens

International

Undergraduate Students

Subheadline

“My philosophy is pretty simple; if you see a problem go to the root of that problem.”

Where many only see Africa through the lens of poverty, corruption and despair, the University of Toronto's Metasebia Assefa sees nothing but opportunity for growth and development.

“Of course corruption and poverty leads to incredibly negative situations,” she says. “Rather than dwell on that despair, I’m motivated to do something about it.”

The fourth-year human biology and health studies student at UTSC is this year’s recipient of a City of Toronto International Student Award of Excellence for community service.

Assefa is truly a citizen of the world. Born in England before moving to Ethiopia, then Ghana and Kenya, and later the place dearest to her heart, Zimbabwe. It’s where she spent her teenage years and started on a course of helping others that continues today in her adopted city of Toronto.

In high school she started a club dedicated to digging a well and building a library in Kaymmadare, a small rural community outside of Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. The project spoke to Assefa’s desire for sustainable development.

“There’s always a push for aid in Africa and often it’s helpful and necessary, but simply throwing money at a problem in the hopes it will go away can fuel corruption,” she says. “We wanted to equip this community with the tools, including education, so it can become self-sustaining.”

She also became involved with Mabvuku Math, a tutoring program started by her high school math teacher for children affected by HIV and AIDS.

“The communities we volunteered in are very vulnerable, filled with either the very young or the very old,” she says. “It’s usually left up to grandparents to raise children because their parents have either died or left because the medical costs of raising their children are too great.”

The most gratifying part of volunteering with the program, says Assefa, is that many of the children she helped tutor went on to be successful in math programs at university.

In Toronto she has volunteered as a program coordinator for sexual health and nutritional health with the Health and Wellness Centre while also organizing events for Free the Children and the Daily Bread Food Bank.

“My philosophy is pretty simple; if you see a problem go to the root of that problem,” she says. “Many of the issues in Africa are rooted in public health, so getting behind a program like a public education campaign on proper condom use could go a long way in reducing the rate of HIV/AIDS.”

Assefa’s immediate goal is to receive a master’s in public health before going to medical school. Wherever it takes her, her plan is to make a positive impact in the world.

“I would like to make a difference in my home country, wherever I end up, whether it’s home in Ethiopia or Zimbabwe or here in Canada,” she says. “I just want to make a difference.”

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