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Memorial partnered in two new projects funded by the Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) program, which promotes research and social innovation by funding vital, creative partnerships between universities and communities. It helps universities and their local partners to work together for the social, cultural and economic development of communities. Memorial partnered with the Community Services Council of Newfoundland and Labrador and other government agencies on a program titled Values Added: The Voluntary Community-Based Sector in the Unique Context of the Strategic Social Plan in Newfoundland and Labrador. This project evaluated the success of the provincial government's 1998 strategic social plan in an effort to promote a better understanding of the links between social and economic development and generate public dialogue on pressing policy issues.
Dr. Bill Montevecchi, Psychology, headed to the Galapagos Islands to help clean up the damage from a recent oil spill in that ecologically-sensitive area. He joined an international team of experts to assist with the clean up effort. On Jan. 16, 2001, the tanker Jessica, carrying 240,000 gallons of fuel oil, ran aground just 800 metres from the Galapagos archipelago. The spill threatened the UN World Heritage Site, inspiration for Charles Darwin's studies of evolution.
The medical students' Monte Carlo Night 2000 raised a record-breaking $45,000, making it the most successful evening in its 24-year history. The money was distributed to eight charities serving many different areas of the province.
A research team, consisting of Drs. Don Deibel and Ray Thompson, Ocean Sciences Centre, and Drs. Len Zedel and Brad de Young, Department of Physical Oceanography, conducted research on the St. John's harbour. A major factor in assessing the human impact on the harbour is how quickly water circulates into and out of the Narrows. The researchers combined techniques from physics, oceanography, and biology to establish a multi-disciplinary perspective on a practical problem in human-environment interaction.
The Smarter Communities ... Smarter World conference was held in Clarenville in June 2001. Dr. Axel Meisen, Memorial's President, was the conference chair. The conference provided a showcase for new technologies and also focused delegates attention on the importance of the human dimension and human applications. The conference was organized by the Discovery Smart Group in Clarenville, in partnership with IT stakeholders in the region to bring together partners in technology and economic development and bring grassroots innovation to a wider audience. Discovery Smart is a community-based organization dedicated to achieving change and growth in a traditionally fishery-dependent region that has seen tremendous social upheaval in the wake of the cod moratorium.
A new era in offshore safety for petroleum and marine transportation workers in Newfoundland and Labrador was launched in June with the opening of the Marine Institute training centre at St. John's Harbour. The Southside Marine Base provides special facilities to train workers in offshore safety and survival techniques. Located at Pier 25 on the south side of the harbour, the base features a 137-metre dock and a building for classrooms, offices and equipment storage and repair.
This year, three members of the Faculty of Medicine finished the first part of a pilot project aimed at improving the outcomes of arthritis patients in Newfoundland. Rheumatologists Dr. Majed Khraishi and Dr. Proton Rahman teamed up with medical educator Dr. Vernon Curran at the Arthritis Research Centre, St. Clare's Hospital, to deliver problem-based education to rural doctors, with the emphasis on clinical skills (including laboratory utilization) and treatment decision-making. "Our primary goal is to provide rural physicians with the tools to enable them to make early and correct diagnosis, and use the available resources effectively," explained Dr. Khraishi. "When I'm travelling around the province to see patients and do clinics, it always strikes me that the real deficiency is that rural physicians don't have the chance to access continuing medical education in the same way that physicians in St. John's do." The next phase of the project is to implement the most effective intervention or interventions in other communities in the province in partnership with the Family Medicine Program at Memorial, the Professional Development Office, and the Division of Community Health. New centres will be chosen and other rheumatologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and community nurses will be involved as well as patient advocates from the Arthritis Society, locally and nationally, and the Department of Health and Community Services.
Under the direction of Dr. Ann Thareau, the Division of Community Education and College Relations at Grenfell College has developed a new four-level non-credit curriculum that will result in a consistent building of oral and some written French skills for its participants. Community Education courses allow participants to learn in a relaxed atmosphere, without the pressure and stress associated with exams. In Level 1, participants will become familiar with basic vocabulary and sounds and learn to understand simple sentences.
The F.W. Angel Lecture was held in November 2000 with Burt Rutan, aeronautical engineer and entrepreneur speaking on the topic, Breakthroughs - How, When and Why they Happen. Mr. Rutan is a gifted engineer, adventurer and entrepreneur. Perhaps best known as the designer of the record-breaking Voyager, the first airplane to circle the world non-stop and without refueling, he also designed the catamaran for Dennis Connor in the America's Cup challenge, the gondola for Richard Branson's attempted non-stop balloon flight around the world, and several more avant-garde vehicles.
Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) and Memorial's NSERC-Petro-Canada Chair for Women in Science and Engineering co-hosted a workshop entitled Working for Success. The workshop emphasized planning, assertiveness and negotiating as crucial strategies to "working smarter." Thirty-six students and professional women participated in the workshop which used small group seminars, individual exercises and sharing of personal expertise to get the message across.
The P.J. Gardiner Institute for Small Business Studies, in collaboration with other Memorial faculty and staff, Operation Online, Open Learning and Information Network, and College of the North Atlantic contributed to the development of an E-Learning Repository to assist small enterprises that are venturing into e-business. The repository consists of 17 online training modules for entrepreneurs in Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador.
In February 2001 the Youth-focused Technological Entrepreneurship Chair (YTE Chair) brought together 12 provincial organizations that deliver programs related to entrepreneurship education. The roundtable was designed to facilitate collaboration and co-ordination on future entrepreneurship education initiatives. The YTE Chair has also been involved with assisting various student companies in their commercialization initiatives, participating on various boards and committees and presenting to many organizations on entrepreneurial awareness.
The School of Nursing along with its partners in the School of Continuing Education and Telemedicine received a $98,000 grant from CANARIE (Industry Canada) to develop learning modules around psychomotor skills used by nurses in their practice settings. These modules will be delivered over a variety of bandwidths and delivery methods. The Grenfell College, Labrador, Labrador Inuit Health Boards and the Health Care Corporation of St. John's will be working with the project team to use and to evaluate the effectiveness of this system in assisting nurses to maintain their competency in these skills.
© Copyright 2002 Memorial University of Newfoundland
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Dr. Hans Rollmann was awarded a joint grant with the Departments of Archaeology and Geology to excavate the first Moravian Mission House of 1752 in Labrador. He also received a development grant to study literacy in Labrador. Dr. Rollmann was also seconded to the provincial government as part of the team organizing the exhibit, Labrador 2002: 250th Anniversary of the First Exploration of Moravians in Labrador.
Dr. Chris English, History, was the facilitator, major writer, and editor of A Flag, An Anthem, A Courthouse for the Law Society of Newfoundland to mark the centenary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Court House in October 1901.
The Newfoundland Archaeological Heritage Outreach Program is a three year community-university research alliance sponsored by Social Sciences And Humanities Research Council in co-operation with the MUN Archaeology Unit, the provincial government's Department of Tourism and Culture and the Newfoundland Museum. The goals of the program include assisting communities throughout the province in archaeological site development by providing access to a variety of relevant information dealing with their heritage resources. A large part of this program is the funding of Memorial students for job placements, graduate fellowships and internship positions that help them get practical experience in the archaeology profession.
Outport Archaeology, a 40-minute video on community-based archaeology projects in the province, won the 2001 Canadian Archaeological Association Communications Award. The video was produced by Memorial's School of Continuing Education and the Archaeology Unit of the Anthropology department. To view a portion of this video, click here.
The Volunteer Assistant Program, an integral program at the MUN-MUNSU Student Volunteer Bureau had approximately 52 committed student volunteers help maintain and refine the Volunteer Referral Service, which helped place approximately 800 students in volunteer placements around the city.
The School of Continuing Education's STEM~Net received a grant of $1.57 million from CANARIE in fall 2000 for STEM~Net's LearnCanada program. The mission of LearnCanada is to leverage the potential of CA*net 3 to develop a broadband interactive virtual learning community for Canadian K-12 educators. Peers and mentors will create new intellectual property as required, including professionally designed digital reconfigured video objects and post-production of captured work.
Duo Concertante, the violin/piano team of associate professor Nancy Dahn and assistant professor Timothy Steeves, performed more than 15 concerts across North America including such prestigious venues as the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series (Chicago) and the Society of the Americas Concert Series (New York). Their first CD, À deux, sold out and went into second pressing; their second, Of Heart and Homelands, was recorded during the summer for release in February 2002. The CD version of this report a selection from the CD À Deux. Click here for more information.
In spring 2001 faculty members and graduate students in the Faculty of Arts offered 13 mini-courses in the enrichment program sponsored by the Avalon East School Board: Anthropology, Dr. Priscilla Renouf, Crystal Lewis and Heather Reid; Classics, Jennifer Budden; Economics; Scott Lynch; English, Dr. Elizabeth Miller, Carolyn Colbert and Yvonne Hann; Geography, Laura Paone, Paul Brett and Charles Conway; German and Russian, Dr. Stuart Durrant and Marcella Rollman; History, Dr. Linda Kealey; Linguistics, Dr. Marguerite MacKenzie; and Philosophy, Dr. Peter Trnka.
In 1999, 2000 and again in 2001, the Peel School Board of Mississauga, Ontario, selected Memorial as one of three sites for its Summer Academy, an enrichment program for gifted students. The faculties of Arts and Science, along with the Marine Institute, contributed two mini-courses of two-and-a-half days.
The Public Policy internship program for recent arts graduates created six-month paid work experiences for 18 of our recent Arts graduates. Two of the interns were offered continuing employment with their host organizations. Three of the positions were created under a specific portion of the program that requires graduates to secure their own positions. Placements have been with a wide variety of non-profit organizations, trade associations, government and private organizations, including one European placement. Interns are involved in a variety of tasks, including program development and implementation, research and investigation of policy issues, and policy development and review. Additional funding was made available later in the year by the provincial Department of Human Resources and Employment to continue funding of the program. Project co-ordination is offered in partnership with the Department of Career Development and Experiential Learning.
The Newfoundland Archaeological Heritage Outreach Program hired 50 students for placement on nine community-based archaeological projects, in the field at Ferryland, Cupids, Dildo Island, Burnside, Fleur-de-Lys, Port au Choix, Bird Cove, Baie Verte and Makkovik, and in the Archaeology Labs at MUN. The program also co-sponsored two symposia on French Shores History and Archaeology in Baie Verte and Placentia; sponsored Working in Archaeology, a one-day workshop on the funding structure available to communities involved in archaeological exploration and development; produced museum exhibits for the Port aux Basque and the Bird Cove Museums; and co-produced Organizing Community Archaeological Projects in Newfoundland and Labrador: Heritage Outreach Guidelines, a manual on developing archaeological sites.
The public education program of the Ocean Sciences Centre continued to provide a summer interpretive program, welcoming 12,500 visitors from June through September. A proposal to re-establish the indoor program, in the form of an Ocean Sciences Research Aquarium, is under consideration.
The Tuckamore Festival enjoyed its first season during the summer. This two-week chamber music festival, sponsored by Memorial's School of Music, brought together 19 young musicians between the ages of 14 and 22 from across North America. Sessions of coaching, master classes, noon concerts in downtown venues and evening concerts in churches and the Cook Recital Hall, lauded as events of major importance. The festival is the brain child of faculty members Nancy Dahn, Timothy Steeves and Thomas Loewenheim and was administered by Mary O'Keeffe.
The international choral event Festival 500 - The Phenomenon of Singing was hosted in large measure by the School of Music through the use of its facilities, considerable reliance on music students to provide staff, and especially the invaluable contributions made by the four members of the artistic team - all of whom have School of Music connections. The university became a major sponsor in providing a grant to produce a compilation CD of festival highlights, currently in production. Click here to hear a sampling.
In November the Memorial University Chamber Choir participated with 11 other Canadian university choirs in Toronto's New Music Festival, performing the monumental Credo from R. Murray Schafer's Apocalypsis. This Massey Hall performance brought together almost 500 choristers in a performance described by the critic in the Globe and Mail as "enthralling and limitless."
The Marine Institute worked in partnership with the College of the North Atlantic to deliver community-based education and training throughout Newfoundland and Labrador. In the past year, the Marine Institute and the college have delivered training to over 1300 individuals. Training included a variety of programs such as fishing masters, marine emergency duties, masters limited, seafood processing courses and aquaculture activities. The Marine Institute also worked in partnership with training institutions outside Newfoundland and Labrador to deliver courses in British Columbia, the Maritimes, Nunavut and Nunavik
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