Berton Woodward

'Brutalist'? Architect behind U of T Scarborough's Science and Humanities Wing didn't think so

geoff.vendeville — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 14:15:30 +0000

'Brutalist'? Architect behind U of T Scarborough's Science and Humanities Wing didn't think so

geoff.vendeville Wed, 03/30/2022 - 10:15

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Australian architect John Andrews, a former chair of U of T's department of architecture, right, designed the Science and Humanities Wing at U of T Scarborough (photo courtesy of Jack Marshall/University of Toronto Archives)

Berton Woodward

Topic

City & Culture

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

U of T Scarborough

U of T Scarborough's first building – the Science and Humanities Wing, also known informally as the Andrews Building – awed visitors to the new campus when it opened in 1966. The Ottawa Citizen likened it to “a Babylonian ziggurat, perhaps, or a pyramid from Aztec Mexico.”

Today, the building often appears on lists of Brutalist landmarks in Canada and, in 2017, was used as a moody backdrop for The Weeknd's "Secrets" music video.

Though it has become an icon of Brutalism, John Andrews, the late architect who designed the building, bristled at the term. “It isn’t brutal. Scarborough College is a very human building,” he once told UTSC Commons.

Andrews, who taught at U of T from 1963 to 1967, was tapped to design a building for what was then Scarborough College. Completed in 1966, it captured worldwide attention and was widely considered an innovative project, celebrated by architecture critics – and even making the cover of TIME magazine in January 1967.

Andrews, a former chair of U of T's department of architecture (the precursor to the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design), was later part of the design team behind the CN Tower.

Born in Sydney, Australia in 1933, Andrews completed his bachelor of architecture degree at Sydney University, and in 1957 entered the masters of architecture program at Harvard University. He went on to establish John Andrews Architects in Toronto in the 1960s while working as a part-time lecturer at U of T. He also designed buildings for the University of Guelph, Brock University and the University of Western Ontario.

In light of Andrews' death last week at the age of 88, U of T News is resharing the UTSC Commons article in which Andrews shared his perspective on the Science and Humanities Wing's design.

If you've read anything about the architecture of U of T Scarborough's first building, the Science and Humanities Wing, you’ve probably seen its style described as “Brutalist,” a movement that saw the construction of such large, all-concrete structures from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Just don’t use the term when you talk to John Andrews, the man who in 1964 designed what was then Scarborough College.

“I object quite strongly to the word ‘brutalist’,” says the 80-year-old architect from his home in Orange, Australia. “It isn’t brutal. Scarborough College is a very human building.”

Andrews was just 29 and a practising architect, as well as a part-time U of T architecture professor, when President Claude Bissell asked him to oversee the design of a new campus on 202 acres of land the university had just purchased in Scarborough’s Highland Creek Valley.

Bissell expected him to build in the valley. The first thing Andrews did was consult climatologist Fred Watts, a geographer and founding member of the college.

“His information turned out to be incredibly important, because as he pointed out, the buildings in the bottom of the valley had a very late sunrise and an early sunset,” he says.

So the university agreed to locate the campus at the top of the valley, overlooking Highland Creek. Now, what to build? Again, climate played a key role.

“When you look at the university year in Toronto, it’s bloody cold for most of it,” says Andrews. “There was no doubt in my mind that this shouldn’t be a series of isolated building blocks where you had to trudge through the snow to get from Science to Humanities. It ought to be one continuous building. Once you took your coat off, it could stay off.”

Left to right: town planner Michael Hugo-Brunt, architect John Andrews and landscape architect Michael Hough.

That led Andrews to create what he calls the pedestrian circulation streets along the ground floors of each wing, allowing students to move easily to classrooms, stairs, elevators and to the Meeting Place in the middle. And to build it all in the allotted time – little more than a year – he designed the massive structure using poured concrete. “It was the only material that was capable of forming the continuous floors and the continuous walls.”

Practicality was important, but the design also had an artistic purpose. “I was expressing the continuity of teaching – that everything was connected,” Andrews says.

The building opened in early 1966 to international acclaim. Andrews went on to design Toronto’s CN Tower and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, both in concrete, before returning to Australia in 1969.

Still consulting, he concedes that Brutalism is a word “I’ve been tagged with.”

What would he prefer? “If there was such a word, ‘appropriatism.’ What I’m always trying to do is find the logical answer to things, and at the time when I was, if you like, being brutal, it was the logical answer.”

Can a ‘problem’ be a solution? U of T’s School of Cities rethinks Toronto’s aging apartment towers

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 19:34:17 +0000

Can a ‘problem’ be a solution? U of T’s School of Cities rethinks Toronto’s aging apartment towers

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 10/05/2021 - 15:34

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U of T researchers are studying whether Toronto's aging concrete apartment towers, surrounded by green spaces, can play a role in addressing the city's future climate risks and socio-economic challenges (photo by Chris Jongkind/Getty Images)

Berton Woodward

Topic

City & Culture

Groundbreakers

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

School of Cities

Cities

Computer Science

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

U of T Scarborough

Urban Studies

In Toronto and other cities around the world, clusters of aging high-rise apartments surrounded by trees are a familiar fixture on the urban horizon.

Once touted as a haven of middle-class living, the “tower in the park” planning model was popular in the 1950s and 1960s but is increasingly viewed as anti-urban and an obstacle to further densification. At the same time, many of these concrete giants are falling into disrepair and increasingly house low-income and marginalized tenants.

Fadi Masoud

Yet, where many see a problem, the University of Toronto’s Fadi Masoud sees a potential solution.

The assistant professor of landscape architecture and urbanism at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture Landscape and Design says the buildings and, in particular, the surrounding open spaces may actually carry with them the seeds of urban resilience – a way to counter future climate risks as well as socio-economic stresses arising from income inequality and mental and physical health challenges.

“Green spaces – specifically trees and mature canopies – have the potential of alleviating an urban heat island effect, cleaning the air and reducing flooding,” says Masoud, noting that many of Toronto’s concrete apartment towers were placed amid green areas such as the Black Creek subwatershed in the city’s highly urbanized northwest region.

“But rarely do we consider these green spaces as critical infrastructure for dealing with climate change.”

The idea is being explored by Masoud and his interdisciplinary team through a project called “Towers in the Park: A Prospective for Equitable Resilience.” The project aims to evaluate the social and environmental value of public and private open-space assets – including parks surrounding Toronto’s apartment towers – as they relate to the city’s overall resilience goals. It will also explore the potential for integrating adaptation and mitigation strategies in the tower neighbourhoods.

It is just one of the innovative interdisciplinary research projects supported by U of T’s School of Cities. The school is part of the university’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives (ISI) program, designed to address complex global challenges by harnessing U of T’s top-quality academic talent across many fields of expertise. Each initiative brings together flexible, multidisciplinary teams of researchers and students from across faculties and campuses, as well as partners from industry, government and the community.

Karen Chapple

“I like to say that the School of Cities teaches the world why cities matter for prosperity, sustainability, justice and inclusion,” says Karen Chapple, the school’s new director. “Cities have the solutions to a lot of our issues, whether it's climate change or inequality or systemic racism. And cities can only be the solution, and the school can only teach the world, if we can draw from interdisciplinary research.

“That's why our status as an ISI is so important to us.”

The school, in fact, was a model for the ISI program. It was founded in 2018 as a way to bring together the university’s formidable resources to address the myriad challenges facing the world’s urban areas, where more than half the population now lives.

“Instead of the traditional approach, involving city planning and maybe some of the social sciences, the thinking was, ‘Why don’t we draw also from computer science, biology, ecology, history, English and all the wonderful things that the university has to offer?” says Chapple. “That has been our founding concept from the get-go.”

Case in point: Masoud’s team includes faculty from six other university departments on two campuses, including experts in landscape architecture and urban design, environmental science, civil engineering, geography, public health, social psychology and physics. The project was sparked by the City of Toronto’s resilience strategy in 2019 – which included renewal of the city’s aging apartment towers, as well as their surrounding greens spaces, as a key element.

“Often, it’s thought that further densification – turning these under-utilized and under-programmed green spaces into more buildings – is the best way to deal with tower communities,” Masoud says, adding that the city is also intent on seeing the towers retrofitted to improve their energy efficiency.

But he notes the nearly one million people who live in tower communities across the Greater Toronto Area risk being unable to afford the higher rental costs that would inevitably be passed on to them by landlords, leading to displacement, gentrification and less affordable housing.

“So, we started to say, ‘Well, if the retrofitting of the mechanical systems of the towers themselves might create issues, what about all the open space around them?” says Masoud. “Can we capitalize on the green and grey surfaces – the trees, the ravines, the public parks, the strip malls and plazas, which are the fabric of this city – in a way that would help alleviate some of the issues to make sure that these tower communities become more resilient?”

The team is holding conversations with community representatives to hear their views of how to improve apartment tower communities through a series of “knowledge exchange” events organized by the Centre for Connected Communities. Team members have been mapping the city to see the overlap between these vertical neighbourhoods, urban heat islands, local flooding and canopy cover. At the end of the project, the group will produce a report with recommendations to the city.

The research is conducted under a School of Cities Urban Challenge Grant, which is designed to tackle major issues in the field.

Chapple notes that, along with the Urban Challenge Grants, which have also covered such topics as supply chains, food sources and smart villages, the school holds global online seminars that have reached out to urban institutes in 162 countries. At U of T, it also brings together student researchers from across departments – both at the post-graduate level and for fourth-year projects that partner with community organizations in the Multidisciplinary Urban Capstone Project design course. The course is led by Mark Fox, a professor of industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Danielle Kwan-Lafond

Urban studies student Randa Omar, sociology student Yi Li, international development studies and human geography student Rajpreet Sidhu and business student Tianyi Wang were among those who participated in a capstone project involving Indigenous public art during the 2020-21 academic year. It was supervised by Danielle Kwan-Lafond, an assistant professor, teaching stream, of sociology at U of T Scarborough who describes herself as mixed-race and a member of Toronto’s Indigenous community who does not self-identify as Indigenous.

As the project evolved, the students focused on examining the well-being of Indigenous artists within the arts industry and developing recommendations that non-Indigenous art organizations could implement to create supportive working environments and sustainable relationships with Indigenous artists. With funding from School of Cities, the students worked with Haudenosaune/Anishinaabe artist Lindsey Lickers and held a roundtable involving several other Indigenous artists and professionals.

“We started by going back to the basics that make up good working environments and relationships for Indigenous artists,” says Omar.

Li says she learned a lot about Indigenous history and culture.

“Some artists mentioned feeling tokenized – just used and never contacted again,” Li says. “It was almost like there was little interest in building relationships, which is an important part of their culture. It does a lot of damage to Indigenous artists. There's a lot of trauma.”

Sidhu adds that in cities, it’s important for everyone to be exposed to artwork that reflects Indigenous ways of knowing and of life. “If you’re walking in a park and it’s just statues of old colonial white men who have committed genocidal acts, as an Indigenous person you’re not going to feel comfortable,” she says. “And as a settler, you should be seeing Indigenous public art on Indigenous lands and begin to have a better understanding of your role and the space you occupy.”

Kwan-Lafond says the project reflected the diversity and community orientation that the School of Cities upholds, as well as its stress on interdisciplinarity. “It shouldn't be just designers and urban planners planning a city,” she says. “Sociologists have interesting things to say and so did our business student.

“We would have had very different conversations had we all come from one field.”

Chapple agrees, noting that the school has already had an impact on the hundreds of students it has brought together, as well as its global partners. “This kind of approach acknowledges that problems are wicked and complex, in cities in particular, so you need to have multidisciplinary teams to emerge and solve them.”

The same is true when it comes to re-imagining Toronto’s aging, concrete apartment towers as a potential answer to the city’s sustainability challenges.

“Without the School of Cities, we would not have been able to do this project,” says Masoud. “I would not have been able to meet other academics from across U of T and work with them collaboratively. The research would have been much harder to do.”

This article is part of the Groundbreakers series about U of T's Institutional Strategic Initiatives program - which seeks to make life-changing advancements in everything from infectious diseases to social justice - and the research community that's driving it.

Groundbreakers: U of T’s Data Sciences Institute to help researchers find answers to their biggest questions

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 16 Sep 2021 21:38:48 +0000

Groundbreakers: U of T’s Data Sciences Institute to help researchers find answers to their biggest questions

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 09/16/2021 - 17:38

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Researchers working with the multi-university CHIME radio telescope in B.C. are collaborating with experts at U of T's Data Sciences Institute to solve computational and processing problems (photo courtesy of the Chime Collaboration)

Berton Woodward

Topic

Our Community

Coronavirus

Data Sciences Institute

Groundbreakers

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

Big Data

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics

Faculty of Arts & Science

Hospital for Sick Children

Research & Innovation

Statistical Sciences

When University of Toronto astronomer Bryan Gaensler looks up at the night sky, he doesn’t just see stars – he sees data. Big data.

Bryan Gaensler
(photo couretsy of the Dunlap Institute)

So big, in fact, that his current research tracking the baffling “fast radio bursts” (FRBs) that bombard Earth from across the universe requires the capture of more data per second than all of Canada’s internet traffic.

“This is probably the most exciting thing in astronomy right now, and it’s a complete mystery,” says Gaensler, director of U of T’s Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics and Canada Research Chair in Radio Astronomy. “Randomly, maybe once a minute, there’s this incredibly bright flash of radio waves – like a one-millisecond burst of static – from random directions all over the sky.

“We now know that they’re from very large distances, up to billions of light-years, so they must be incredibly powerful to be able to be seen this far away.”

Data Sciences Institute

Facilitates research connections across disciplines
Supports data-driven discovery through innovative research methodology development and application
Trains and mentors data scientist practitioners and scholars

Learn more about U of T’s Data Sciences Institute

U of T is a world leader in finding FRBs, using the multi-university CHIME radio telescope in British Columbia’s Okanagan region and a U of T supercomputer. Yet, despite the impressive technology, many daunting challenges remain.

“It’s a massive computational and processing problem that is holding us back,” he says. “We are recording more than the entire internet of Canada, every day, every second. And because there’s no hard drive big enough or fast enough to actually save that data, we end up throwing most of it away. We would obviously like to better handle the data, so that needs better equipment and better algorithms and just better ways of thinking about the data.”

With the creation of U of T’s Data Sciences Institute (DSI), Gaensler and his colleagues now have a new place to turn to for help. The institute, which is holding a launch event tomorrow, is designed to help the university’s wealth of academic experts in a variety of disciplines team up with statisticians, computer scientists, data engineers and other digital experts to create powerful research results that can solve a wide range of problems – from shedding light on interstellar mysteries to finding life-saving genetic therapies.

“The way forward is to bring together new teams of astronomers, computer scientists, artificial intelligence experts and statisticians who can come up with fresh approaches optimized to answer specific scientific questions that we currently don’t know how to address,” Gaensler says.

The Data Sciences Institute is just one of nearly two dozen Institutional Strategic Initiatives (ISI) launched by U of T to address complex, real-world challenges that cut across fields of expertise. Each initiative brings together a flexible, multidisciplinary team of researchers, students and partners from industry, government and the community to take on a “grand challenge.”

“We’re bringing together individuals at the intersection of traditional disciplinary fields and computational and data sciences,” says Lisa Strug, director of the Data Sciences Institute and a professor in the departments of statistical sciences and computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science, and a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children research institute.

She notes that U of T boasts world-leading experts in fields such as medicine, health, social sciences, astrophysics and the arts, and “some of the top departments in the world in the cognate areas of data science like statistics, mathematics, computer science and engineering.”

Data science techniques can be brought to bear on a near-infinite variety of academic questions – from climate change to transportation, planning to art history. In literature, Strug says, many works from previous centuries are now being digitized, allowing data-based analysis right down to, say, sentence structure.

“New fields of data science are emerging every day,” says Strug, who oversees data-intensive genomics research in complex diseases such as cystic fibrosis that has led to the promise of new drugs to treat the debilitating lung disease. “We have so much computational disciplinary strength we can leverage to define and advance these new fields.

“We want to make sure that faculty have access to the cutting-edge tools and methodology that enable them to push the frontiers of their field forward. They may be answering questions they wouldn’t have been able to ask before, without that data and without those tools.”

A key function of the DSI is the creation and funding of Collaborative Research Teams (CRTs) of professors and students from a variety of disciplines who can work together on important projects with stable support.

Gaensler, who already has statisticians on his team, says he’s looking to the CRTs to greatly expand the scope of his work.

“We have just done the low-hanging fruit,” he says. “There are many deeper problems that we haven’t even started on.”

Laura Rosella (photo by Caitlin Free)

Similarly, Laura Rosella, an associate professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, says the collaborative teams will be a major asset for the university.

“We’re going to dedicate funding to these multi-disciplinary trainees and post-docs so we can start building a critical mass of people that can actually translate between these disciplines,” she says. “To solve problems, you need this connecting expertise.”

Rosella played a key role in how Ontario dealt with COVID-19 in the early part of 2021. By analyzing anonymous cellphone data along with health information, she and her interdisciplinary team were able to see where people were moving and congregating, and then predict in advance likely clusters of the disease that would appear up to two weeks later. Her work helped support the province’s highly successful strategy of targeting so-called “hotspots.”

“We’ve been able to work with diverse data sources in order to generate insights that are used for
high-level pandemic preparedness and planning, in ways that weren’t possible before,” says Rosella, who sits on Ontario’s COVID-19 Modelling Consensus Table. “And we’ve also brought in new angles to the data around the social determinants of health that have shone a light on the policy measures that are needed to truly address disparities in COVID rates.”

Rosella’s population risk tools also include one for diabetes, which health systems can use to estimate the future burden of the disease and guide future planning. This includes inputs about the built environment. For example, if people can walk to a new transit stop, Rosella says, the increased exercise may have an impact on diabetes or other diseases. Potentially, even satellite imaging data could be brought into the prediction mix, she says.

In addition to advancing research in a given field, the Data Sciences Institute is also seeking to advance equity.

That includes tackling societal inequalities uncovered by data research – including how socio-economic factors can determine who is more likely to get COVID-19 – and the way the research itself is being conducted.

For example, Strug says most genomics studies have focused on participants of European origin, even though the genetic risk factors for various diseases can differ between different ethnicities.

“We must make sure we develop and implement the models, tools and research designs – and bring diverse sources of data together – to ensure our understanding of disease risk is applicable to all,” Strug says.

Many algorithms, or the data they use to make predictions, contain unconscious bias that may skew results – which is why Strug says transparency is vital both to support equity and to ensure studies can be reproduced properly.

Gaensler says it’s critical to ensure diversity among researchers, too.

“My department looks very different from the faces that I see on the subway,” he says. “It’s not a random sampling of Canadian society – it’s very male, white and old, and that’s a problem we need to work on.”

Strug hopes the Data Sciences Institute will ultimately become a nucleus for researchers across the university – and beyond.

“There’s never been one entrance to the university to guide people, so it’s so important for us to be that front door,” she says.

“We will make every effort to stay abreast of the different fantastic things that are happening in data sciences and be able to direct people to the right place, as well as provide an inclusive, welcoming and inspiring academic home.”

This article is part of a series about U of T’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives program – which seeks to make life-changing advancements in everything from infectious diseases to social justice – and the research community that’s driving it.

COVID-19: U of T Scarborough partners with city, aid organization to help local food banks

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 13 May 2020 19:06:17 +0000

COVID-19: U of T Scarborough partners with city, aid organization to help local food banks

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 05/13/2020 - 15:06

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Toronto Mayor John Tory visits U of T Scarborough during a launch event for the CARES project, which aims to distribute food purchased in bulk to local food banks during COVID-19 (photo by Monica Stefanick)

Topic

To Juanita Muise, volunteering for the CARES project – Collective Action and Response for Everyone in Scarborough – was a no-brainer.

The project involves repackaging food, purchased in bulk, for distribution to food banks in the Scarborough and Durham areas, as Toronto Mayor John Tory explained at a carefully distanced opening event at the University of Toronto Scarborough this past weekend.

To make it all happen, U of T Scarborough is working with the crisis-response organization GlobalMedic, local councillor Jennifer McKelvie and City of Toronto staff.

“There was a time when I needed help – I know what it’s like,” says Muise, U of T Scarborough’s Indigenous engagement co-ordinator. “This is a really great partnership – everyone working for the common good.”

The event centre in U of T Scarborough’s Highland Hall has been transformed into a packaging centre where volunteers – initially involving city staff, but now comprising U of T Scarborough staff and students and other community members – repack food delivered by GlobalMedic in containers weighing up to 45 kilograms. At packing stations, they create 500-gram bags of rice, lentils, barley, chickpeas, green peas and kidney beans that food banks can set out on their shelves.

This week the volunteers will also be packing hampers of food that, beginning the weekend, will be placed in people’s vehicles via a contactless drive-through in a campus parking lot. In the future, GlobalMedic hopes to add sanitation packages that include soap, shampoo and the like. Fresh produce may also follow.

Toronto Mayor John Tory is given a tour while wearing a mask, gloves and staying physically distanced from volunteers (Photo by Tara Welch)

“With the huge number of layoffs due to COVID-19, food utilization through food banks has skyrocketed in Scarborough,” says Andrew Arifuzzaman, U of T Scarborough’s chief administrative officer. “But the food banks have had difficulty getting supplies, with donations down, and difficulty operating due to social distancing guidelines.

“We have done a lot of work on food insecurity issues at U of T Scarborough, and we’ve got the space and the volunteers, so we have an opportunity to live our values and to support our community.”

Speaking at the ceremony in Highland Hall on Saturday, Tory said the city has worked to open food banks across Toronto. “CARES is one way in which we can serve a specific community that needs help during these challenging times,” he said. “This is an inspiring partnership.”

Local MP Gary Anandasangaree toured the facility along with McKelvie during the event.

Vice-President and Principal of U of T Scarborough Wisdom Tettey at the CARES launch event (photo by Sitara Welch)

Arifuzzaman says the project came together after he spoke about food insecurity with McKelvie and representatives from Humber College at a working committee meeting in late April. They connected him to GlobalMedic and the following Tuesday he met at U of T Scarborough with GlobalMedic founder Rahul Singh, who serves as the organization’s executive director. Two days later, the project was up and running in Highland Hall.

“It happened very quickly,” says Arifuzzaman.

GlobalMedic, which is officially the David McAntony Gibson Foundation, has provided disaster relief in 73 countries since 2002, mainly through volunteers. Singh says U of T Scarborough is now one of three major distribution centres across the GTA, along with Humber College and the City of Brampton.

He notes that a bag of lentils in a grocery store might cost $2 to $3, but, by buying in bulk, “we can produce that same bag for about 60 cents.”

GlobalMedic even puts professional-style labels on the bags – part of an effort to remind recipients that the food is of high quality and to ensure a level of dignity. “It actually says McAntony’s Menu,” Singh says.

U of T entrepreneur to make leather goods out of old airline seats

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 20:42:35 +0000

U of T entrepreneur to make leather goods out of old airline seats

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 11/26/2019 - 15:42

Cutline

Dallas-based Southwest Airlines has collaborated with groups in a number of countries to upcycle leather seats that it removed from its fleet of about 750 Boeing 737s to reduce weight (photo via Southwest Airlines)

Topic

Lynne Corvaglia, a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto, recently took home a $5,000 grand prize for her startup idea: turning old leather airline seats into handbags, notebook covers and other items – all while employing female artisans in Costa Rica.

She plans to launch her startup, called S.O.S. Leather, while doing an extended co-op placement at the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) through U of T Scarborough’s international development studies program.

Her proposed business will use 64 tons of leather donated to CATIE in the name of sustainability by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, which decided to remove the leather seats from its fleet of about 750 Boeing 737s to reduce weight.

“I’m extremely happy,” said Corvaglia after winning a recent pitch competition hosted by The Hub, a startup accelerator at U of T Scarborough. “This all came to fruition in a relatively short time.”

U of T Scarborough student Lynne Corvaglia makes her pitch for S.O.S. Leather (photo by Gray Graffam)

It was only shortly after CATIE had turned over the leather task to her sustainability group at the centre that Corvaglia learned of a pitch competition at The Hub, one of several U of T campus-linked accelerators. The Cambridge, Ont., native said her startup project is the culmination of years of international work, starting with a volunteer trip to India in Grade 8, fundraising for an all-girls school in Kenya during high school, and a full-time post with the global ME to WE charity while attending university.

Some 25 student or recent alumni teams competed for $30,000 in prize money offered by The Hub. Each team leader gave a six-minute pitch to eight judges, led by Gray Graffam, director of The Hub. The eight successful pitches involved everything from an app for buying cannabis to making organic drinking straws.

“These are people who have put some effort into what they’re doing,” said Graffam. “They've spent time looking at the competitive landscape and the market opportunity, and they've done a business plan.”

Unlike Dragons’ Den or Shark Tank, the cash awarded to the entrepreneurs through the pitch competition is not an equity investment, but is designed to be used as seed money.

Many of the judges were both entrepreneurs and regular coaches at The Hub, which in the past seven years has helped create more than 130 start-ups valued at over $27 million.

One of them was Melanie Ratnam, an alumna and previous winner who has created a smart platform for procuring scientific lab supplies.

“I was so impressed by the character of the people who were pitching,” she said. “The ideas and the passion was very inspiring.”

Fellow judge Donovan Dill, a former strategic adviser at The Hub who now teaches at Seneca College, said Corvaglia was the unanimous choice for grand prize, but that the scores were close.

“This year was probably the highest-quality year for pitches,” he said.

Corvaglia sees potential for finding more sources of material to recycle and reuse once the leather runs out.

“I want it to be my career,” she said. “I really love the space – that is, a little bit of education, a little bit of business and a little bit of social enterprise. I feel like I'm really strategically trying to fill these gaps.”

The other seven startup winners were:

NORM (Natural Organic Matters), organic skin care products, led by Chevron Riley ($5,000)
Oply, a fitness tool partnered with gyms, led by Tony Nguyen ($5,000)
Theblisscompany, an app supporting cannabis purchases, led by Larry Welikala ($5,000)
SnapIn Pro, a hiring and stock platform for photographers and videographers, led by Roberts Strenga ($4,000)
AR&3D, an app visualizing chemical reactions in 3D, led by Maryam Abdinejad ($3,000)
Oceanside, alternative straws made from agave, led by Evan Davidson ($2,000)
Ibuchi, activewear featuring African prints, led by Dian Amaechi ($1,000)

How U of T Scarborough is helping to give these construction apprentices 'hope'

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 09 Feb 2018 18:04:20 +0000

How U of T Scarborough is helping to give these construction apprentices 'hope'

noreen.rasbach Fri, 02/09/2018 - 13:04

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Three participants in the Hammer Heads program are working on Highland Hall at U of T Scarborough (Photo by Ken Jones)

Topic

“This program has really changed my life,” says Kamol Arif, on a break from working on the construction of the new Highland Hall building at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Afghan-born Arif, 21, is an apprentice sprinkler fitter who grew up in the Flemingdon Park area. He is working on Highland Hall thanks to an innovative program called Hammer Heads, designed to help young people from under-resourced Toronto neighbourhoods and Indigenous communities learn a trade in the unionized construction industry. Traditionally, construction has not been a very diverse industry, and competition to get the limited number of apprenticeship spots is very tough.

Thanks to U of T Scarborough’s support for the program, run by the Central Ontario Building Trades (COBT) and its 25 union affiliates, four other apprentices from Hammer Heads are also currently working on Highland Hall, all of them from racialized and underserved communities.

Once accepted into Hammer Heads, the pre-apprentices go through a rigorous, 12-week “boot camp” training – punctuality is emphasized, they must stay engaged and go through numerous evaluations – before being selected for a trade and placed on a work site.

Asked what they are getting out of the program, the five at Highland Hall all talk about the chance to get out of low-paying jobs and unsafe surroundings, and earn good wages with excellent benefits.

“There is something to look forward to – even retirement and a pension,” says Nehemiah Yordanos, 21, a plumbing apprentice from Thorncliffe Park. “I never looked ahead before.”

Arif and his parents are now looking at being able to buy a house. Gurmessa Abdullhi, 24, a sheet metal apprentice from the Sherbourne and Bloor area, talks about the benefit more succinctly: “Hope.”

U of T Scarborough got involved in the eight-year-old program after Chief Administrative Officer Andrew Arifuzzaman learned about it from its director, COBT Business Manager James St. John, in 2014. Some Hammer Heads worked informally on the Environmental Science and Chemistry Building, and then Arifuzzaman made a clear commitment: The U of T Scarborough procurement document for Highland Hall’s general contractor contained a requirement that the project include Hammer Heads apprentices.

Arifuzzaman notes that U of T Scarborough has long been partnering with community programs in under-resourced neighbourhoods near the campus. “We looked at our large and complex infrastructure projects and saw that there was a way to create training opportunities for young people, and to improve the quality of life for people around us,” says Arifuzzaman. “We could leverage our complexity.”

The program at U of T Scarborough is already counted as a big success, says Therese Ludlow, who works with Arifuzzaman as director of operations. “I’ve chatted with the Highland Hall subcontractors, and they’re very pleased with the quality of the people and how the apprentices have been working out,” she says.

Joe Capobianco, site supervisor for general contractor Aquicon, concurs. “I think it’s a great program,” he says. “I’m very impressed.”

The COBT’s St. John says that having U of T Scarborough involved adds a new level of visibility to Hammer Heads. “We’re thrilled to have such a prestigious organization get behind the program and support giving inner city youth a chance to change their lives,” he says. “We are looking at leveraging what U of T Scarborough has done – writing it into the contract – at other large institutions.”

Since 2010, Hammer Heads has graduated 352 candidates, including 19 women, and now takes in 90 new students per year. Highland Hall’s five, rounded out by apprentice labourer Ali Dualeh, 24, and electrical apprentice Victor Jimenez, 23, are employed by Aquicon and subcontractors Forest City Fire Protection, Urban Mechanical Contracting and Guild Electric.

The unions supporting them are the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 353, LiUNA Local 506, United Association of Sprinkler Fitters Local 853, Sheet Metal Workers & Roofers Local 30, and United Association of Plumbers & Steamfitters Local 46.

Five Ways of Being a Painting: U of T historian crafts essay on smartphone, longlisted for elite prize

ullahnor — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 18:11:04 +0000

Five Ways of Being a Painting: U of T historian crafts essay on smartphone, longlisted for elite prize

ullahnor Wed, 04/12/2017 - 14:11

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Assistant Professor William Nelson's essay is up for the $33,000 Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize (photo by Ken Jones)

Berton Woodward

Author legacy

Berton Woodward

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William Nelson, an assistant professor of history at U of T Scarborough, has been longlisted for the prestigious Notting Hill Editions Essay Prize, worth £20,000 ($33,000 CDN).

Nelson’s innovative 4,700-word essay, “Five Ways of Being a Painting,” combined text and images to examine “the ways that people have used paintings to think about the experience of estrangement.”

Historically, other U of T essayists have done well in the competition. Michael Ignatieff, then a professor at U of T's Munk School of Global Affairs, won in 2013, the first year of the biennial prize. In 2015, Philosophy Professor Mark Kingwell was longlisted and received special mention.

In Nelson's essay, he mentions anecdotes and musings about historical figures and images from the past 400 years in Europe and China, as well as memories from his own childhood.

“I wrote the essay in an experimental form that weaves together five storylines exploring the ways that people can ‘be’ paintings,” he said. “I am an academic historian of ideas. This is another type of exploration of ideas.”

He began writing the essay about three years ago, then put it aside to work on a book. Last year, seeing the deadline coming up, he completed the essay in fragments in bed at night, typing on his smartphone.

The Vues des ports de France (Scenes of the harbours of France) is a series of paintings by French painter Joseph Vernet, made between 1754 and 1765, that are featured in William Nelson's essay

Notting Hill Editions, a website and publisher aiming to “reinvigorate the art of the essay,” was founded by games inventor and entrepreneur Tom Kremer, who helped popularize Rubik’s Cube. The shortlist for the prize will be announced on May 3, and the winner and five runners-up will be selected June 28.

Nelson, whose piece is one of 76 on the longlist, said he has published a number of academic works but never a literary essay. Most of the other authors on the list, he noted, are professional writers.

“When I was doing my PhD, I realized I wanted to pay a lot more attention to writing,” he says. “So, I practiced writing in a number of different styles.”

Nelson, who grew up outside Washington, D.C., did his PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a post-doc researcher and a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge, the University of Miami and the University of Texas at Austin. A specialist in 18th-century intellectual history, he came to U of T Scarborough in 2011.

Scarborough business owner donates $2 million to U of T for Tamil studies

ullahnor — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 22:47:00 +0000

Scarborough business owner donates $2 million to U of T for Tamil studies

ullahnor Fri, 01/13/2017 - 17:47

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Sinhala and Tamil New Year in Sri Lanka (photo by Amila Tennakoon via Flickr)

Berton Woodward

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Berton Woodward

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One of U of T’s earliest Tamil alumni has given a historic donation of $2 million to support Tamil studies program.

The gift from Ravi Gukathasan, who is CEO of Digital Specialty Chemicals Ltd. in Scarborough, is the largest single cash gift from an alumnus in U of T Scarborough's history. It will fund an annual post-doctoral fellowship in Tamil studies as well as scholarships, event programming and digital archiving.

“I want UTSC to be a star when it comes to the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, its culture, its language, its perspective in the world,” says Gukathasan. “We have the biggest Tamil diaspora in the world in Scarborough. They need to be proud.”

Read CBC story on donation

UTSC alumnus Ravi Gukathasan's gift to the university will fund an annual post-doctoral fellowship in Tamil studies as well as scholarships, event programming and digital archiving (photo by Ken Jones)

He also sees his gift as a leadership example for other members of the Tamil community to follow.

“I applaud Dr. Gukathasan’s initiative and passionate support of UTSC and am confident that his generous example will stimulate other alumni, not just alumni from the Tamil community, to step forward with game-changing donations,” says U of T Scarborough Principal Bruce Kidd.

The 10-year commitment will fund the $1.25 million Ethan and Leah Schweitzer Gukathasan Fellowship, named for Gukathasan’s two teenage children as well as provide $500,000 for a programming fund, $150,000 for a digital fund and $100,000 for scholarships.

“The gift will add hugely to our ability to expose our campus to what’s going on in Tamil worlds,” says Bhavani Raman, associate professor in the department of historical and cultural studies and chair of the tri-campus Tamil Worlds Initiative programming committee. “We will be able to support young and upcoming scholars from all over the world with the postdoctoral fellowship as well as other visitors.”

She notes that a previous substantial gift from Gukathasan has already allowed U of T Scarborough to sponsor a Tamil studies conference, hold regular public programming on Tamil subjects and work with the U of T Scarborough Library to enhance its Tamil-language collection. She expects to be able to greatly expand such initiatives including the digitization of Sri Lankan Tamil works for global access.

“Beyond U of T, the gift will be a big resource for Tamil studies because there are very few post-doctoral fellowships dedicated to this field,” she says. “My guess is we’ll get many applicants from outside Canada.”

Gukathasan grew up outside Jaffna in Sri Lanka’s Tamil north, then left with the family for the U.K. in 1974. They later re-emigrated to Canada, settling in northern Scarborough, and in 1978, Gukathasan entered what was then Scarborough College, founded just 13 years earlier.

“I was one of only two Tamils in the whole school,” he says.

After gaining his PhD in chemistry at U of T, Gukathasan founded Digital Specialty Chemicals, a highly successful enterprise located on Coronation Drive in southeastern Scarborough, where he has also created a small park and decorated the lobby with Indigenous art.

He’s very proud of his two children with fellow chemist and alumna Caroline Schweitzer whose names are on the gift. Ethan, 18, recently entered chemical engineering at U of T, while Leah, 17 and in Grade 12, wants to study at U of T in evolutionary anthropology.

Gukathasan sees his gift as just the start. “I’m hoping others will follow suit with more money,” he says. “I hope we can keep building this program and make it very, very well-funded and well-rounded.”

Kiwi birds younger than originally thought, U of T research shows

lavende4 — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 16:48:40 +0000

Kiwi birds younger than originally thought, U of T research shows

lavende4 Fri, 08/26/2016 - 12:48

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Younger than it looks (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images)

Berton Woodward

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Berton Woodward

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New Zealand’s kiwi may be one of the world’s oddest birds – flightless, nocturnal, an enigmatic dirt digger with nostrils at the end of its long bill. But the national symbol also has a lot to tell the world about evolution during the most recent ice age.

According to research published in the prestigious U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team led by Jason Weir, biological sciences professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, today’s kiwi are much newer birds – genetically speaking – than previously thought. And instead of five known species, Weir says there are 11 types – either species or subspecies – alive now, with another six extinct.

Earlier research, based on simple methods of DNA testing using a single genetic marker, appeared to show that kiwi had developed into various species before the Pleistocene ice age that began some 2.6 million years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago. Many other creatures around the world had been classed the same way using similar methods.

But by deploying new and far more sophisticated DNA testing which tracks thousands of genetic markers on the kiwi genome, Weir’s research shows kiwi underwent an “explosive” period of genetic diversification – evolving into new species or subspecies – during the middle and late Pleistocene period.

As ice spread over the land, particularly on New Zealand’s South Island, kiwi retreated to isolated refuges where they gradually evolved new characteristics over the course of tens of thousands of years. This pattern was repeated continually as the ice expanded and shrank some seven times over a period of nearly 800,000 years.

Weir (above, photo by Ken Jones) found that the rate of diversification increased five-fold during the glaciation period, to a level even greater than Charles Darwin’s famous finches from the Galapagos Islands.

Weir is among the first to use the new DNA techniques to measure evolutionary changes. “These new methods are going to be used extensively in the next 10 years,” he says. He expects scientists to revisit evolutionary studies of many birds and animals in North and South America and other parts of the world that had periods of glaciation. “The old system is out the window now.”

Weir and researcher Oliver Haddrath of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) carried out the massive task of analyzing the genetic data was carried out on Canada’s SciNet supercomputer. Some 300 samples of kiwi blood were collected by two New Zealand collaborators and by Allan Baker, a New Zealander by birth who was senior curator of ornithology and head of the Department of Natural History at the ROM before he died in 2014. The team also used previously published data from fossilized kiwi material.

Funding for the study came from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Summer in the city: U of T co-op students creating app for Rouge National Urban Park

lanthierj — Fri, 17 Jun 2016 14:17:39 +0000

Summer in the city: U of T co-op students creating app for Rouge National Urban Park

lanthierj Fri, 06/17/2016 - 10:17

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(photos by Ken Jones)

Berton Woodward

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Berton Woodward

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If you’re hiking in Rouge National Urban Park and you want to know more about your surroundings, wouldn’t you like to be able to pull out your smartphone and get instant, engaging information?

Parks Canada certainly would. So, in May, four U of T Scarborough students began work on a two-year co-op project to create a content-rich app that people can use on visits to Canada’s first national urban park, which will soon officially encompass Rouge Park near UTSC.

“We are using technology as a bridge to experience nature,” says Kaitlyn Chow, a master’s student in environmental science who will be a content curator/creator on the project for the next eight months. “We’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming. The overall theme is the idea of stories – there is a long, rich history in the park and we want to make it easy for people to digest.”

Parks Canada has a formal partnership with U of T Scarborough and has hired a total of 23 co-op students over the past three summers. The app project grew out of discussions between Parks Canada officials and Gray Graffam, director of The Hub, UTSC’s centre for innovation and entrepreneurship.

“They wanted to develop mobile technology for the Rouge National Urban Park, and we saw our co-op program as a natural way to do this,” says Graffam. He will oversee the project at The Hub, and the app will be a joint intellectual property with the database housed at UTSC.

Chow is working with her fellow environmental science master’s student, Winston Lee, in content creation, and two computer science undergrads, Derek Etherton and Alexander Cavanagh, on the tech side. All four have been asked to take regular hikes in the park to get to know it.

“This is a great opportunity for our students to work on a new endeavour and gain an understanding of something happening in our own backyard,” says Dallas Boyer, manager, operations, arts and science co-op. “And it shows the interdisciplinary nature of our areas of study – computer science students working with environmental science students. They will learn from each other.”

The app will also grow with the park, as it expands to its full size of 79.1 sq km, including Rouge Park – some 50 times the size of High Park and located within easy reach of public transit. The finished park will stretch from Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine, including parts of Toronto, Markham, Pickering and Uxbridge.

“When it is complete, it will be the largest and best protected urban park in North America,” says Omar McDadi, External Relations Manager for Rouge National Urban Park. “It will have 1,700 species of plants and animals, one of the most biologically diverse places in Canada. The app will help people learn about the wildlife and plant life, but there’s so much more to the story as well. There is an agricultural community with working farms dating back to 1799, as well as 10,000 years of human history.”

Not surprisingly, Chow says the first big challenge has been how to narrow the scope of the app. Etherton adds that the team must deal with the varying levels of signal in the park and decide how much information to build into the app versus download during use.

Meanwhile, they are among the few employees happy to hear their supervisors say, “Take a hike.”