��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough

Professor Linda Johnston, a renowned nursing researcher and institutional leader, has been appointed vice-president, ��߲ݴ�ý, and principal, U of T Scarborough for a five-year term.

The Governing Council approved the appointment at a meeting on June 27. Effective July 1, 2024, Johnston’s appointment will run until December 31, 2029, and includes a six-month administrative leave.

A professor in the Lawrence Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing, Johnston has been serving as acting U of T vice-president and principal of U of T Scarborough since January 1, 2024, during which time she has won the respect and support of the campus’s leadership team and broader community.

“Professor Johnston has demonstrated a genuine passion for and dedication to U of T Scarborough,” President Meric Gertler said. “She brings a depth of experience to this important role and is committed to implementing and building on the clear vision established by the U of T Scarborough community under the leadership of outgoing Vice-President and Principal Wisdom Tettey.

“I’m delighted to welcome her to the vice-presidential team.”

Johnston said she has a deep appreciation for the comprehensive nature of U of T Scarborough and is looking forward to continuing to work closely with the UTSC community.

“I have been tremendously impressed by the scale and rigour of U of T Scarborough’s academic mission and the commitment to student success,” Johnston said.

“U of T Scarborough continues to advocate for, and achieve, the goals of promoting health and wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and inclusive excellence in teaching and learning; research prominence; and community engagement.”

Johnston has also been highly engaged in the Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health, which is slated to launch in 2026 and will play an important role in helping to build better and more inclusive health care in Scarborough and eastern Toronto, said Vice-President and Provost Trevor Young.

Young pointed out that, during her tenure as dean of the Faculty of Nursing from August 2014 to December 2023, Johnston fostered and promoted excellence at all levels of the faculty, which currently ranks first in Canada and fifth in the world in the QS University Rankings by Subject.

“Professor Johnston also positioned the Faculty of Nursing as a central player in Toronto’s Academic Health Science Network, created new collaborations with our partner hospitals and cultivated international partnerships with peer institutions,” Young said.

Johnston previously led the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Queen’s University Belfast, where she significantly enhanced teaching quality, research output and international partnerships. She is globally recognized for her contributions to nursing and patient care and holds honorary and visiting professorships at top institutions in Australia, China and Hong Kong.

She earned her PhD and bachelor of science from the University of Sydney. She completed her undergraduate nursing education in the United States and has extensive experience working in neonatal intensive care in the U.S., Australia and the Middle East.

Johnston will be taking a planned leave from July 1, 2024 to Sept. 30, 2024, during which time Professor Bill Gough will serve as acting vice-president, U of T, and principal, U of T Scarborough. He currently serves as acting vice-principal, academic and dean, at U of T Scarborough.

New online resource puts a literary spin on studying video games

siddiq22 — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 15:21:32 +0000

New online resource puts a literary spin on studying video games

siddiq22 Thu, 07/27/2023 - 11:21

Cutline

(photo by Envato)

Topic

Subheadline

A new e-book written as part of U of T's Scholars in Residence program shows how video games can be studied and critiqued the same way as classic literature

As digital gaming has become an integral part of today's pop culture, the study of video games has become more commonplace at universities around the world through courses and a growing number of specialized degrees (such as a new minor program at U of T Mississauga) But amid the increased interest in learning about the various aspects of video games, resources to help professors teach the subject are lagging behind.

“Video games studies is a very multidisciplinary field. It doesn’t have the same depth of focus or publication history as a single scholarly trajectory,” says Sonja Nikkila, assistant professor, teaching stream, in the department of English at the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough.

“For someone already working in a different discipline and wanting to [add] video games to their own teaching, there aren't a lot of textbooks and syllabi out there.”

Sonja Nikkila (supplied photo)

Nikkila, who teaches the course “Video Games: Exploring the Virtual Narrative,” says it makes sense to study video games like pieces of literature – many games also have rich characters, settings, plots and messages. Unlike static texts, however, there are different endings, side quests and optional plot points that make students’ play-throughs a completely different experience.

Some landmark games can’t be assigned as homework, either – they may take dozens of hours to finish or need to be played on expensive systems.

Yet Nikkila isn’t deterred. “I wanted to create a resource to show lots of ways you can approach games critically – and how even if you haven’t finished a game or got a different ending than somebody else, that experience is still critically valuable,” she says.

Nikkila recently teamed up with a group of students for one of six U of T Scarborough projects funded by the Jackman Scholars-in-Residence program, which gives students across U of T paid four-week research opportunities. Her team's quest was to create something to help students and teachers apply narrative theory – a classic approach to studying literature – to video games.

They came up with an e-book titled Critical Inventory of Video Game Analysis, which offers a series of frameworks that each make sense on their own but also link to one another, allowing readers to choose their own adventure.

Some cover core game elements such as plot and setting, while others delve into Marxism, disability studies and other areas of literary analysis. The frameworks include an overview of each topic’s relationship to video games, a case for the unique insights games can offer, essay prompts and lists of related topics and links.

They also include a section called "demonstrations of literary criticism," or DLC – a play on the ubiquitous acronym in the gaming world for downloadable content. In the e-book, DLCs are a series of sample essays looking critically at games, such as one by student Brennen Penney on the eco-feminist messaging in the Star Wars game The Force Unleashed, alongside other pieces by students Luna Chen, Jesse June-Jack, Lucas McGee and Toey Saralamba.

The DLCs are one of several clever nods to video-game lingo throughout, including the title ("inventory" is a standard video-game term). Another section titled "Lore" covers the context behind games that can help inform an analysis, from their creators to cultural impact. The introduction is followed by a section called “Introduction Redux” – redux is a term for a remastered game, but in the book it signifies space saved for the new introduction the nascent resource will eventually have.

Nikkila plans to use the e-book in her video games course and to regularly update the DLC section with additions from students. She’s hoping to publish the resource within the next year and make it publicly accessible for students to read and also contribute.

In August, the students who participated in creating the resource will present at a conference held in collaboration with the University of Waterloo’s Digital Pedagogy Institute, discussing how they produced the e-book and how it can be used to analyze video games.

“We want to think of this as a library of resources and perspectives that will constantly grow and evolve,” Nikkila says. “It might even be a document that preserves a little bit of how scholarship moves across [several] years.”

Add new story tags

Jackman Scholars-in-Residence

Infants prefer live music over recorded version, study finds

lanthierj — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 19:22:00 +0000

Infants prefer live music over recorded version, study finds

lanthierj Mon, 07/17/2023 - 15:22

Cutline

Research found that babies' heart rates synchronized and they were more engaged when watching live music, compared to a recording of the same performance (photo by Envato Elements)

Topic

Research & Innovation

��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough

Subheadline

New research from U of T's TEMPO Lab suggests that even babies feel the impact of being at a live show, through both musicians’ interactions with an audience and the social experience of being in a crowd

You don't have to be an adult to feel the power of live opera – even babies prefer to attend in person, a new study suggests.

When infants watched a live performance of a baby opera, their heart rates synchronized and they were significantly more engaged than babies who watched an identical recording of the show, researchers say.

Laura Cirelli (supplied image)

“Their heart rates were speeding up and slowing down in a similar fashion to other babies watching the show,” says Laura Cirelli, assistant professor in the department of psychology at the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough and co-author of a new study published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts.

“Those babies were dealing with all these distractions in the concert hall, but still had these uninterrupted bursts of attention.”

The findings suggest that even babies feel the impact of being at a live show, through both musicians’ interactions with an audience and the social experience of being in a crowd. Cirelli recalls moments during the performance when a calm would sweep over the babies, and other times when a change in pitch or vocal riff would excite them all.

She says this may offer insights into why humans are hardwired to consume music and attend live shows.

“If there’s something happening that we collectively are engaging with, we’re also connecting with each other. It speaks to the shared experience,” says Cirelli, director of the TEMPO Lab, which studies how infants and children respond to music.

“The implication is that this is not necessarily specific to this one performance. If there’s these moments that capture us, then we are being captured together.”

It’s well established that socialization is crucial during early childhood development – an infant’s brain is laying the groundwork for future life skills and abilities as it grows. Cirelli says music can play a powerful part in making those important bonds. She points to research finding infants are more likely to socialize with someone after hearing them sing a familiar song or dancing to music with them, and that infants have strong emotional reactions to music and song even before their first birthday.

“We consistently find that music can be a highly social and emotional context within which infants can foster connections to their caregivers, other family members and even new acquaintances,” she says. “This audience study shows that even in a community context, infants are engaging with the music and connecting to their fellow audience members.”

Babies watched a selection of songs from The Music Box, an operatic performance designed for infants
(submitted photo)

For the study, researchers examined 120 babies ages six to 14 months as they watched a children’s opera performed at a concert hall that doubles as a research facility at McMaster University (61 babies watched in person, while the other 59 watched a recorded version).

Researchers meticulously broadcast the recording so that the performers were at the same size, distance and volume as the live version. The babies’ responses were tracked through heart monitors and tablets mounted on the backs of concert seats. Later, student research assistants combed through the footage to note when babies looked at the stage and when they looked away.

The live performance captured the babies' attention for 72 per cent of the 12-minute show while the recording held their attention for 54 per cent of the time. The live show also had infants continuously watching for longer bouts of time.

“Even little babies who may or may not have experienced music in a community context before are already engaging more when it’s delivered this way,” Cirelli says.

“That’s one question we have as music cognition researchers: What is it about the live experience that's worth it? Why would people go if there’s not something fundamental about that live music experience that's above and beyond listening to music by yourself?”

That’s not to say babies find virtual performances boring. After the onset of the pandemic, the researchers virtually studied one group of babies as they watched the same recording in their homes over Zoom. Those babies paid about as much attention as the ones who attended the live show – watching about 64 per cent on average – but they were more likely to become distracted and have shorter bursts of attention.

“The babies watching at home didn’t have the distraction of being in a new place – they were in their comfort zone,” Cirelli says. "But even without distractions, the quality of their attention was still not nearly as strong as the audience in the live condition.”

The study – which was co-authored by former TEMPO Lab postdoctoral researcher Haley Kragness, now an assistant professor at Bucknell University – will also feed into some of Cirelli’s other work.

In a different study, she and a team of researchers are exploring whether a live performance over Zoom has the same impact on engagement as a live performance in person, and whether musicians’ interactions with an audience can play a similarly powerful role in capturing attention.

Yet another study will investigate whether live performances affect their memory of the event and how watching a live performance versus a recorded version affects how they feel about the performer.

“If a baby is frequently brought to these kinds of events, will that shape their foundation for engaging in music and the community later in childhood?” Cirelli asks.

“It speaks to why we even engage with music at all.”

The study was funded by the U of T Connaught New Researcher Award and by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

UPPERCASE or lowercase? The way brands write their names sends a subtle message to consumers

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 15:34:52 +0000

UPPERCASE or lowercase? The way brands write their names sends a subtle message to consumers

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 04/09/2021 - 11:34

Cutline

A study by U of T Scarborough's Sam Maglio explores the effect of using upper- or lower-case letters on the way consumers view brands and their products (illustration by Anatoliy Babiy via iStockPhoto)

Topic

Research & Innovation

��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough

Brand names are often written using a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. Others defy convention by using all lowercase, such as amazon or ebay, or all uppercase, such as IKEA.

It turns out this unconventional use of text does more than simply draw our attention – it could influence how we think or feel about a brand or product if there’s a strong gender connection.

“Our first encounter with a brand quite often is seeing its name splashed in text. But how that text is used can go a long way in influencing our initial attitudes about that product,” says Sam Maglio, an associate professor in the department of management at the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough.

In a study published in the journal Marketing Letters, Maglio and co-author Aekyoung Kim from the University of Sydney looked at how the use of text influenced people’s attitudes towards certain products. Across four experiments they found a link between using lowercase letters and femininity, and uppercase letters and masculinity – and these gender perceptions influenced how favourably certain products were viewed.

“We found that female-specific products are viewed more favourably when presented in lowercase, and male products were viewed more favourably when presented in uppercase,” says Maglio, an expert on consumer behaviour.

They also found that the effect seems to hold regardless of font size. In one experiment, brands were shown using a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters as well as different font sizes (large 100-point font, and smaller 20-point font). The result was that switching font sizes had little effect on gender perception compared to using uppercase or lowercase letters.

The study builds on past work by other researchers that looked at how use of lowercase brand names, such as adidas, was more closely associated with traditional female gender attributes such as friendliness. It found that using uppercase and lowercase letters for brand names can have an unconscious effect on consumers’ attitudes based on gender associations.

The study by Maglio and Kim focused on how specific products like scarves and fragrances can be gendered using uppercase or lowercase letters.

Maglio says the lesson for marketers is there could be a benefit to using all lowercase or all uppercase if there is a clear gender connection to a particular product. If you’re selling women’s perfume, for example, lower-case letters may resonate more with customers. If you’re selling men’s aftershave on the other hand, using uppercase letters may be more effective.

For products where there is no clear gender connection, Maglio says it’s likely most effective to use a combination of uppercase and lowercase.

“The simple message is they may want to line up their signals – in this case their use of text – with what their product delivers. So, if it’s men’s cologne, putting the name in uppercase letters could mean that consumers might like it more.”

Maglio says the study focused on scarves and fragrances specifically because those products tend to have versions for different genders. He says they also found no difference in response to vacuum cleaners, which have been traditionally marketed to women.

“If people had a strong association between femininity and use of a vacuum cleaner, we should have seen a difference in our data depending on whether its brand name was written in all lowercase, but we didn’t,” he says.

“It’s not like ‘This type of product is for this gender, but it’s not for that gender', which would veer into problematic gender stereotypes.”

As for why our attitudes towards a product can be influenced by the use of text, Maglio says it comes down to how our brain processes information in order to derive meaning about the world around us.

“When you see a new brand and you don’t know anything about it, you can’t help but draw on a lifetime of experiences in making those snap judgements. People will latch on to whatever information they can in order to help them make sense of what they see.

“This effect works best for things with a strong gender connection, like a men’s cologne, than if the connection is less obvious, like a vacuum cleaner.”

Most polar bear populations likely to collapse by end of century if global warming continues

lanthierj — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 16:39:40 +0000

Most polar bear populations likely to collapse by end of century if global warming continues

lanthierj Mon, 07/20/2020 - 12:39

Cutline

(photo by Daniel J. Cox/Arctic Documentary Project)

Don Campbell

Topic

Breaking Research

Climate Change

Research & Innovation

��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough

Most polar bear populations will collapse by the end of the century if global warming continues at the current pace, a new ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough study has found.

The study is the first to offer timelines showing how Arctic sea ice loss will affect the ability of polar bears to reproduce and survive since they will have to endure longer periods without food.

“The challenge is that Arctic sea ice will keep disappearing as the world continues to warm,” says lead author Péter Molnár, an assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at U of T Scarborough.

“This means polar bears everywhere will face longer periods without food, and this will affect their ability to reproduce, survive and persist as healthy populations.”

Most of the polar bear diet consists of seals, which they can only catch on sea ice. But as the ice continues to melt the bears have less time to hunt, which means eating less, putting on less weight, and then fasting longer as a consequence.

Until now, Molnár says, it’s been difficult to offer meaningful estimates on when polar bear numbers will begin to decline in different regions because data linking ice availability and its impact on their demographic performance haven’t been available. This study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, offers the most comprehensive look at possible timelines of how the ability of polar bears to survive and reproduce will be affected by Arctic sea ice loss.

“We addressed the basic physiology of how many days a polar bear can survive without food if it had a certain amount of energy stored in its body at the beginning of each fast,” says Molnár, an expert on how global warming affects large mammals.

The researchers estimated the consequences of more prolonged fasts in three steps. First, they estimated how long polar bears can survive based on their body condition when they are forced to leave the ice and begin fasting. Knowing the number of days polar bears can go without eating, they then used climate model projections of ice loss to figure out how long future fasting seasons will be in each polar bear population.

Putting these pieces together, Molnár and his team calculated what they call ‘fasting impact thresholds,’ or how many days the bears can go without food and still nurture their young and sustain life. Knowing when these impact thresholds are likely to be crossed reveals the limits for how long polar bears can persist across the Arctic.

The model paints a grim picture. If warming continues at its current rate through to the end of the century, we can expect Arctic sea ice loss to lead to steep declines in reproduction and survival in all but a few populations living in the high Arctic.

The researchers found that some fasting impact thresholds have already been surpassed in several populations, which may explain the low polar bear reproduction rates in the Hudson Bay and Davis Strait regions that border northern Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador as well as southern Nunavut.

“While our projections for the future of polar bears seem dire, the unfortunate thing is they might even be too optimistic. For example, we assumed that polar bears will use their available body energy in optimal ways when fasting. If that isn’t the case, the reality could be worse than our projections,” says Molnár.

Since the researchers won’t know what condition the bears’ bodies will be in for any particular future year because of natural variations in annual climate, they based their estimates on the full range of how thin or fat bears could possibly be when entering into future fasting periods.

“What we do know is that becoming fat before a fasting season will be more difficult for polar bears as on-ice hunting seasons become shorter, so it’s likely that fasting impact thresholds will be crossed during the early years of our projected range.”

The research looked at all polar bear populations within three of four Arctic eco-regions, which make up roughly 80 per cent of the current global population. The remaining 20 per cent, living in the inter-island channels of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, are likely awaiting a similar fate but Molnár says there is currently not enough data to estimate similar timelines of risk like they could for the other populations.

The research received funding from the Natural Sciences & Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ministry of Research, Innovation & Sciences.

3Qs at the U with Science Sam: (Ep. 8) Jeffrey Dvorkin on journalism in a time of global pandemic

lanthierj — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 16:26:04 +0000

3Qs at the U with Science Sam: (Ep. 8) Jeffrey Dvorkin on journalism in a time of global pandemic lanthierj Mon, 07/20/2020 - 12:26

Topic

Stay-at-home orders and physical distancing have made the practice of journalism more challenging. And yet, as one ��߲ݴ�ý expert argues, good journalism is more important than ever.

In episode eight of 3Qs at the U, Samantha Yammine – the alumna, neuroscientist and science communicator better known as Science Sam on social media – speaks with Jeffrey Dvorkin, the director of the journalism program at the ��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough, about the difficulties of gathering news during COVID-19 and the need for mainstream media to cut through misinformation.

“One of the outcomes that I worry about is, can journalism still convey a sense of who we are as a culture…if we are barely out there,” Dvorkin says. “It’s up to mainstream media…to help the public figure out what is going on, what information they need to be aware of and what information they can comfortably ignore because it’s just nonsense.”

3Qs at the U is a weekly video series in which Yammine asks a U of T researcher three questions on a timely topic. It’s produced by U of T Scarborough interactive digital producer Cory Lawrence.

See a complete list of episodes

Don't forget about community centres amid Toronto's condo boom, writes U of T's Jeff Biggar in the Globe and Mail

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:50:34 +0000

Don't forget about community centres amid Toronto's condo boom, writes U of T's Jeff Biggar in the Globe and Mail

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 11/14/2019 - 08:50

Cutline

Construction cranes dot the Toronto skyline in the summer of 2019 (photo by Rene Johnston/Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Topic

With condo construction booming in Toronto, it’s important to not forget about community centres and parks, ��߲ݴ�ý researcher Jeff Biggar writes in a Globe and Mail op-ed.

Section 37 of Ontario’s Planning Act allows the city to make deals with developers to pay for community amenities in exchange for allowing them to build higher and denser buildings. However, bureaucratic errors and insufficient enforcement have resulted in some of these deals falling through.

“Pointing the finger at a developer shirking their responsibility to pay up is easy, but when looking deeper we see a municipal system with cracks and blind spots,” writes Biggar, a lecturer at U of T Scarborough’s department of human geography.

“Toronto is tripping over itself to build higher and denser buildings, but if supporting community infrastructure doesn’t follow – reliably, consistently and in a timely manner – the promise of development will fail.”

Read the op-ed in the Globe and Mail

U of T community gathers to remember, support victims of gender-based violence

Romi Levine — Thu, 06 Dec 2018 17:03:55 +0000

U of T community gathers to remember, support victims of gender-based violence

Romi Levine Thu, 12/06/2018 - 12:03

Cutline

A woman lays a rose during a ceremony at U of T marking the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Hart House

Innis College

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Undergraduate Students

��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga

��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough

Subheadline

Dec. 6 is the Day of Remembrance & Action on Violence Against Women

Members of the ��߲ݴ�ý community will be placing roses on two benches across from Hart House this afternoon – each with a tag inscribed with the name of a victim of gender-based violence.

For participants, the gesture is moving – and often personal. A victim of violence could be someone they know and love – a friend, a colleague, a parent.

Today is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, which marks the anniversary of the murders of 14 women at the École Polytechnique de Montréal in 1989.

On that day 29 years ago, a man entered the engineering school and shot and killed 14 women, and injured 14 others, before turning the gun on himself. The shooter proclaimed his hatred for feminists, targeting female engineering students for pursuing a career he believed should be occupied exclusively by men.

Every year, U of T faculty, staff and students on all three campuses reflect on those horrific events and remember and support all women who experience gender-based violence.

U of T Scarborough and U of T Mississauga held memorials on Nov. 29 and Dec. 4, respectively. T he downtown Toronto campus will be holding an event in Hart House’s Great Hall today, followed by the rose-laying ceremony.

The Sexual Violence Prevention & Support Centre and the Equity & Diversity Office held an event at U of T Mississauga commemorating the Day of Remembrance (photo by Blake Eligh)

The Hart House event will feature speakers from across the university, including a keynote address by artist, writer, and anti-oppression and equity educator Rania El Mugammar.

El Mugammar says mass acts of gendered violence are no longer a rare occurrence, pointing to the April van attack that killed ten people in North York and the alleged driver’s links to the incel movement, a misogynist and sometimes violent online subculture.

“[These acts of violence are] terrifying – not only for people whose gender identities make them vulnerable in that particular way, but they're terrifying for all our communities who are feeling a sense of urgency around our political climate,” says El Mugammar.

Events like the Dec. 6 memorial are opportunities to remember and mourn collectively, she says.

“We can use those moments to galvanize support, thinking critically about our current ways of doing things and our current interventions and to think about how to mainstream this kind of knowledge so it doesn't seem like a niche feminist conversation, but it's a conversation we all have a role in and a stake in.”

In many ways, the #MeToo movement has pushed this conversation into the mainstream, she says, but it’s important to remember that the way women experience violence is complicated and nuanced.

“It doesn't happen to all women in the same way and it doesn't happen to all women equally and some of us pay a higher price for disclosure and some of our violence looks different,” says El Mugammar. “How do we make sure they don't leave the most vulnerable people in our community behind?”

A plaque commemorates the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on U of T 's downtown Toronto campus (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Awards will be given out at the Hart House event for scholarly achievement in the area of gender-based violence to one undergraduate and one graduate student.

“We want to show that there is reason to be hopeful, and we thought what better way to do this than to establish an award that honours our students’ research and community work that is helping us find solutions to diminish gender-based violence,” says Sandy Welsh, who is vice-provost, students and co-chair of the award committee along with Kelly Hannah-Moffat, U of T's vice-president, human resources and equity.

“In terms of U of T, we have a social responsibility to conduct research that may help us in areas where our research can provide solutions to issues like gender-based violence,” says Welsh. “It's also a way we can demonstrate and show our commitment to creating a supportive space for all while we're remembering those who lost their lives and experienced gender-based violence.“

Attendees link arms during the Dec. 6 ceremony on U of T's downtown Toronto campus (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

This year’s graduate award recipient is Jessica Elaine Wright, a social justice education PhD candidate at U of T's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education whose research centres on the revised Ontario sex-ed curriculum from 2015 and how it relates to trauma experiences. Innis College student Taylor Irvine is the undergraduate award recipient in the department for the study of religion and diaspora and transnational studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“I approach challenging gender-based violence issues by writing policy briefs that dissect laws, prejudices, and perspectives and shed light on the detrimental effects that they have on the well-being of women and girls," says Irvine of her research.

For current engineering students, the Day of Remembrance is an opportunity to address the need for improvement in gender equity, but it’s also a time to recognize the great strides taken to promote change for the better, says Shivani Nathoo, president of the U of T Engineering Society and a student in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.

For the past two years, more than 40 per cent of the incoming U of T engineering undergraduate cohort have been women – the highest of any engineering school in Canada, according to the faculty's most recent annual report.

“I definitely think that every year things are getting better, partially because of the incoming class of students, partially because the faculty of engineering is putting such a large focus on diversity, inclusion and equity,” says Nathoo, who will be speaking at today’s event.

“I think there's really a strong focus now on improving that not just for women but for all marginalized communities – which is really great.”

If you or someone you know is a victim of gender-based violence, here are resources available to you near your campus.

More resources can be found here

Agent of change: U of T moves forward with plan to be a sustainability leader

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 22:34:59 +0000

Agent of change: U of T moves forward with plan to be a sustainability leader

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 12/04/2018 - 17:34

Cutline

A U of T presidential committee's report on the environment, climate change and sustainability recommends, among other things, using the campus as a "living lab" for sustainability projects (photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Chris Sorensen

Topic

Global Lens

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Climate Change

Environment

Faculty of Arts & Science

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

President Meric Gertler

Sustainabilty

��߲ݴ�ý Mississauga

��߲ݴ�ý Scarborough

The ��߲ݴ�ý is moving forward with an ambitious plan to establish itself as an engine of sustainability in Canada and around the world.

In its most recent annual report, U of T’s President’s Advisory Committee on the Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability, or CECCS, laid out a comprehensive road map that incorporates sustainable ideas and practices – both environmental and social – into nearly every facet of campus life.

That includes building partnerships with the wider community on sustainability issues and using U of T building projects as “living labs” to try out new sustainable technologies and practices.

The committee is also working on a plan to allow every U of T student, regardless of their program, to add a sustainability component to their studies.

“Everything we do has a sustainability dimension, so let’s treat it that way and add students and faculty into the equation,” says John Robinson, the committee’s chair and the president’s adviser on environment, climate change and sustainability.

“Let’s turn the whole university campus into a sandbox for sustainability experimentation and testing.”

Created in early 2017, the presidential committee was tasked with finding ways to advance U of T’s contributions to meet the challenges of climate change and sustainability, with a particular focus on research and innovation, teaching and university operations.

The committee’s work grew out of U of T President Meric Gertler’s 2016 report “Beyond Divestment: Taking Decisive Action on Climate Change”. It comes amid a series of stark warnings from scientists about the potentially dire consequences of global warming, including a report this month by the U.S. government that found climate change is costing the United States hundreds of billions of dollars and creating health risks.

“The ��߲ݴ�ý’s most valuable and effective contribution to addressing climate change emerges from translating innovative research into concrete actions and solutions,” President Gertler says.

“The work of the CECCS is leveraging the dedication and engagement of the entire U of T community to make a lasting impact on sustainability here at the university and around the world.”

While the committee’s members spent much of the last year gathering information and hashing out ideas, Robinson says the group is now preparing to hire staff and move into the implementation phase of its work.

When it comes to using U of T as a living lab, the committee has identified six projects – one new building and one retrofit on each campus – that it believes are suitable for providing students and faculty opportunities to “engage with operational sustainability activities.” They include: a 14-storey academic tower built out of timber above U of T’s Goldring Centre for High Performance Sport, and a retrofit project at the University of Mississauga’s Recreation, Athletics and Wellness Centre.

“The next step is to develop a proposal for each of those projects, and meet with the people in charge so we can negotiate a way to engage students,” says Robinson, who is also a professor at U of T’s Munk School for Global Affairs & Public Policy.

“We also need faculty who can supervise that work.”

Key to the plan’s success is finding a way to involve students without putting project budgets or timelines at risk. Among the ideas: allowing students to observe U of T’s project study, planning and implementation processes; sharing technical documents and project information so students can participate in “shadow” design exercises; and having students participate in project monitoring and performance assessments.

Robinson has considerable experience with such partnerships on a smaller scale. His “U of T as a Living Lab of Sustainability” course connects undergraduate and graduate students with sustainability projects undertaken by university staff. Projects have ranged from a study of the impact of new signage on recycling behaviour to one on the potential for a rooftop garden at Trinity College.

As for curriculum changes, Robinson says the committee completed an audit of about 8,000 undergraduate courses and discovered a quarter currently include sustainability content. Now, the committee is in the process of developing curriculum “pathways” for sustainability-minded students to pursue at U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, U of T Mississauga and U of T Scarborough.

The committee has also conducted a similar review of U of T’s community engagement practices. Robinson says it found three main partnership models at the university – innovation-focused private sector partnerships, policy-focused partnerships with government agencies and socially oriented partnerships with civil society groups.

The plan is to build upon these existing models as U of T expands further into the sustainability space. The annual report, for example, notes U of T is regularly approached by potential corporate partners who want to test new technologies such as energy-saving software. “Such opportunities not only offer excellent opportunities for student engagement, but also represent potential sources of funding for students from the companies that will benefit from collaborating with U of T,” the report says.

Change won’t happen overnight. Robinson says simply getting a handle on current sustainability offerings has been a challenge at a large, de-centralized institution like U of T. The flipside, he says, is that once the right “champions” are identified, there’s considerable opportunity for U of T – one of the top ten public institutions in the world – to make a significant impact.

“As the biggest university in Canada, I think it’s really incumbent upon us to engage in this issue.”

Infants on the brain: U of T study explores the origins of mothers' bonds with their babies

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 19:14:34 +0000

Infants on the brain: U of T study explores the origins of mothers' bonds with their babies

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 12/04/2018 - 14:14

Cutline

The study by David Haley, an associate professor of psychology at U of T Scarborough, is among the first to look at whether functional changes in mothers’ brains during and after pregnancy are related to mother-infant bonding (photo by Don Campbell)

Don Campbell

Topic

Global Lens

early childhood development

Psychology

Research & Innovation

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A new ��߲ݴ�ý study has found mothers who show increased interest in infants while pregnant report stronger bonds with their babies after birth.

The study by David Haley, an associate professor of psychology at U of T Scarborough, is among the first to look at whether functional changes in mothers’ brains during and after pregnancy are related to mother-infant bonding, which is considered important for childhood development.

By contrast, past research – which also suggests the transition to motherhood triggers structural changes in the brain – has tended to focus on the postpartum period.

“Our findings support the idea that, over the course of pregnancy and early motherhood, the responses in the brain to infant facial cues actually change,” says Haley, who is also director of the Parent-Infant Research Lab.

“We found that some mothers showed more marked changes than others, and this variation is associated with reports of the strength of their emotional bonds with their babies.”

The study involved 39 pregnant women, ages 22 to 39, from various ethnic and educational backgrounds. Each of the women visited the lab twice – once in their third trimester and again three to five months after giving birth. During the visits, the women took part in a face-processing task where they were shown images of sad and happy infant and adult faces while their brain activity was measured using electroencephalography.

When responding to infant facial cues, the researchers observed increases in electrical activity in the part of the brain responsible for attention processes that occur within a fraction of a second.

“This goes to show that mothers are increasing their cortical receptivity, but what’s fascinating is that this increase seems to predict behavioural receptivity to their infants,” Haley says.

One surprising finding from the study is that a significant change in receptivity to infant facial cues was seen only among some mothers between pregnancy and the postnatal period.

“That was unexpected,” says Joanna Dudek, who earned her PhD in Haley’s lab and co-authored the research.

“It suggests the transition from pregnancy to motherhood is not a period of universal adaptive change in receptivity to infant facial cues.”

The mothers in the study were all shown unfamiliar infant faces, so Dudek says it’s unclear whether mothers who did not show a change in receptivity would do so if they were shown their own infants' faces after giving birth.

Haley says understanding how emotional and cognitive networks in the brain contribute to mother-infant bonding is an important area of study.

“There’s been a lot of research on the importance of forming close mother-infant bonds, but little is known about how this bond may start developing in the first place,” he says.

Why some mothers experience a change in receptivity and others don’t remains an open question. Haley says the mental and physiological health of the mother could play a role, pointing to recent research that shows stress can dampen and inhibit the neural responses to infant facial cues.

Unpacking why this happens is an important next step for the research, along with measuring whether there’s a change in mothers’ neural receptivity to infant facial cues beginning earlier in pregnancy.

There’s also good news for mothers who don’t show an increase in receptivity to infant facial cues. Past research has shown training can have an impact.

“There are studies showing that mothers can do it with infant stimuli, so it’s possible that mothers could learn to increase their attention bias towards their infant,” Haley says.

He adds that a topic for future research is whether attention increases gained through training can predict maternal bonding.

The study, which received funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, is published in the journal, Child Development.

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