Category: Universities

Steeples of Excellence and How to Achieve Them

Every so often, terms crop up and it seems like no one knows where they came from.  One of my favourites is “Steeples of Excellence”.  Except that this one actually has a known origin: the Stanford of the 1950s and its provost, Frederick Terman. The term “steeples of excellence” tends to imply some focus on certain fields of study.  It’s a handy complement to the oft heard “we can’t be everything to everybody” (possibly the most overused phrase in higher

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Oct. 20th, 2023)

Spotlight Good afternoon, Next Tuesday, we’ll have the pleasure of discussing with five students from across the country to hear their perspectives on GenAI in higher education: Beatriz Moya, PhD candidate, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary Justin Saint, Chair of Computing and Academic, BCIT Student Association Ken Hilton, Vice-President Academic, University of Toronto Engineering Society Laurence Mallette-Léonard, President, Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec Tala Abu Hayyaneh, Vice-President Academic, Students’ Association of Mount Royal University Join us on October

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Accepting Failure and Trying Something New

If there is one thing that drives me to despair about Canadian universities these days, it is how poor many federal government relations (GR) strategies are.   I can boil the issues down to three specific aspects. Too many cooks.  30 years ago, I am fairly sure no university in Canada had a permanent independent GR presence in Ottawa (apart from the two schools located there).  Now there are a couple of dozen who do.  Much of what they are trying

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Oct. 13th, 2023)

Spotlight Good afternoon, It has now been 2 months since we launched our AI Observatory and started sending these AI-focused emails. Thanks for tagging along! We’d appreciate if you could take a couple of minutes to fill this short anonymous survey. We’d love to hear from you to gauge if it’s been helpful, and how we could better support your institution moving forward. Thank you! Fill the short survey Next Roundtable Meeting Date: Tuesday, October 24th, 2023 Time: 12h00-1h00 PM

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HESA’s AI Observatory: What’s new in higher education (Oct. 6th, 2023)

Spotlight Good afternoon all, It’s great to see the 1,4k of you that opted-in to receive these AI-focused emails. If you know someone who’d like to receive them, please send them this link. We love to see the numbers growing. Quick update – We recently added a sub-section ‘Recommendations’ under ‘News & Research’ on our AI Observatory, where we gather recommendations on how to respond to GenAI from various types of organizations, including governments, coalitions of higher education institutions, interest-based

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