In Brief

While the St. John’s campus will remain open during the Christmas season, units where all employees are taking annual leave will close their doors. A complete list of units that are open and those that are closed will be available on Memorial’s Web site. Check www.mun.ca

TSC offices moving

The new University Centre will be opening in the new year and the next few weeks will see offices in the Thomson Student Centre moved to the new building. Included in the move will be all the students’ union, the Breezeway, CameraMUN, plus all the food court outlets. University departments moving include Student Services, the Counselling Centre and Student Development. If you need to know precisely when individual units are moving, contact those departments.

Aiding community archaeology research

Dr. Peter Pope, Anthropology, has been awarded one of 22 new grants from the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada. The award amounts to over $500,000 over three years. The new research grant comes under the SSHRC’s Community-University Research Alliances program.

The title of Dr. Pope’s project is the Newfoundland Archaeological Heritage Outreach Program. Community partners include the Culture and Heritage Division of the Newfoundland Department of Tourism, Recreation and Culture, the Newfoundland Museum and the Newfoundland Historical Society, in cooperation with local heritage associations.

Part of the program’s mandate is to offer practical and technological archaeological expertise to community groups. It will also assist university students in developing better archaeological skills by putting more of them in the field. Program researchers will study the way communities delve into their past, look at the factors which influence the success or failure of local archaeological projects, and assess how projects receive funding.

The three-year funding is for joint research ventures between universities and community partners for the social, cultural, or economic development of communities.

Hundreds receive millennium scholarships

Nearly 2,250 postsecondary students from Newfoundland and Labrador will receive scholarships from the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation for the 1999-2000 academic year. Half the amount of those scholarships will be used to reduce the students’ debt, announced Jean C. Monty, chairman of the board, and Norman Riddell, executive director of the foundation, in Ottawa Dec. 9.

The 2,243 millennium scholarships dedicated to Newfoundland’s neediest students represent for the foundation an annual investment of $5,443,500 in the future of the province’s young people. Recipients will be notified by mail in the coming weeks of the scholarships, valued at between $2,000 and $3,500. Awards will be distributed in two installments. Next January, a cheque in addition to existing resources will be paid to all recipients; in March 2000, the foundation will confirm in writing that a part of the scholarship has been deposited directly at the recipients’ financial institution in order to reduce their student loans.

The Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation was set up by Parliament in 1998 to manage a $2.5 billion fund and grant scholarships until 2010.

Knowledge economy dropout

The Association of Atlantic Universities is pressing the federal government for more funds to ensure Atlantic Canadians and their universities can compete in the knowledge economy for the next century. The AAU university presidents met with members of the Federal Atlantic Liberal Caucus Nov. 30 to offer their support for a recent caucus report, Atlantic Canada: Catching Tomorrow’s Wave.

“The advent of the knowledge economy holds great promise for our region,” said Jean-Bernard Robichaud, chair of the association and Recteur of l’Université de Moncton. “But we won’t be able to catch up to the leaders in the knowledge economy simply by working harder, longer and faster. We must work smarter and smart costs money.”

English history and heritage at Harlow

Subject to academic and budgetary approval, the Arts faculty will offer a 15-credit hour program at the Harlow campus during Fall Semester 2000. The instructors will be Dr. Gerald Pocius, Folklore, and Dr. James Hiller, History.

The field-oriented program will include surveys of English social and architectural history, and material culture. In addition, students will study how the past is presented and interpreted at museums and historic sites. There will be weekly field trips to enable first-hand study of the material legacy of England’s past, and a significant proportion of the term assignments will be field-based.

Subject to approval, credits will be available in folklore, history and medieval studies. All credits will be at the 3000 level. There are no specific prerequisites, but students should have completed three university semesters.

The cost to each student will be in the region of $3,700 plus tuition. This includes airfare, accommodation, some meals and field trips. For more information, contact Dr. Pocius at 737-8366, or Dr. Hiller at 737-8435.