Anyone who has ever experienced a performance by Noiseborder Ensemble knows what a rich and complex blending of aural and visual information the group’s largely improvisational shows always include.
Trying to tell the ensemble’s story in a three-minute video would be a daunting challenge for any aspiring filmmaker, but it’s one that turned out to be rewarding for Owen Eric Wood.
A group of graduate students in kinesiology recently got an inside look at the highly secretive facilities used to train top U.S. Olympic athletes.
“They’re fairly guarded about who they allow at their training centres,” said Michael Ayotte, a master’s student in sport management who recently travelled to the Olympic Training Centre in Lake Placid, New York.
There’s often an expectation that when people move here from another nation they should immerse themselves in Canadian culture, but maintaining a close connection to their home country makes them better immigrants, according to a recent PhD graduate.
And modern communications technology is enabling that connection, says Frances Cachon who recently defended her thesis in Sociology, Anthropology, & Criminology and is working as a sessional instructor there.
Nesreen Elkord wants to make life a little simpler for young Arabs who are new to Canada.
“It’s really my passion to try to make the experiences of these kids easier than it was for me,” says Elkord, a PhD student in the Faculty of Education who studies under the tutelage of professor Shi Jing Xu. “I know I can’t do that all by myself, but I do feel that I have a duty to do this work.”
Katrina Krawec knows what it means to go the extra yard for the sake of her research.
A graduate student in the university’s kinesiology department, she’s studying the differences between two Canadian women’s tackle football leagues – one which requires its players to wear full uniforms, the other in which they play in bikinis.
Last year, she actually tried out for the Toronto Triumph, one of four Canadian teams in what until recently was known as the Lingerie Football League.
Certain members of Chris Allan’s immediate family may be a little confused about what he does in the university’s chemistry department, but he hopes a contest which forced him to explain it succinctly in three minutes or less might clear up a few misconceptions.
Andrea Landry’s tiny, remote aboriginal community in Northern Ontario isn’t immune to the challenges that plague so many similar places, but regardless of the problems and the external perceptions of her people, she’s still filled with a great sense of optimism for their future.
Meet Mehrdad Shademan for the first time and it’s easy to get the impression he’s a fairly quiet, low-key type of guy. He wasn’t so mild-mannered, however, the day he found out he was the recipient of a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.
“I was screaming and yelling,” he says in the graduate student office he shares with colleagues in the Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation. “Everybody was pretty shocked.”
Minimizing the impact of tsunamis on coastal regions and building sturdier bridges are just two of the outcomes a group of graduate student researchers are aiming for now that they have some top-notch new equipment up and running in the Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation.
“It’s really cutting edge,” PhD student Vimaldoss Jesudhas says of the giant flume he works with, one of two of its kind in the new engineering building.
Ashley Paterson clearly remembers the first day of one of her classes when all of the students had to say a little about themselves. A boy in the class introduced himself, noted that he was from the Middle East, and added the caveat “And I’m not a terrorist.”
“That’s an example that really highlights the importance of identity,” said Paterson, a PhD student in psychology. “You could see how he was struggling with his cultural identity in a society that so often discriminates against people.”
