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Tag: McMaster University

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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November 1, 2023 1 Comment

Vision and Mission

To Hamilton, where McMaster University has released a new vision statement.  To be honest, I am not sure I have ever seen a vision statement quite like it: not only is it detached from any kind of strategic planning exercise I am aware of (from whence vision statements usually spring), but it is also more or less unparalleled as an assault on the English language.  Here it is: “Impact, Ambition and Transformation through Excellence, Inclusion and Community: Advancing Human and

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March 2, 2021 4 Comments

McMaster > McGill?

The Shanghai Rankings (technically, the Academic Ranking of World Universities) came out a couple of weeks ago.  This is the granddaddy of all international rankings; the one that started it all, and still perceived as the most stable and reliable measure of scientific hubs; essentially it measures large concentrations of scientific talent.  And there were some very interesting results for Canada, the most intriguing of which is the fact that McGill has fallen out of Canada’s “top 3”, replaced by

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September 1, 2017 5 Comments

Pedagogical Change: Why Waterloo and not McMaster?

In the field of higher education, Canada has two genuine claims to having been (at least at one-time) at the forefront of innovation: co-op education, which primarily stems from Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering, and Problem-based Learning as practiced at McMaster’s School of Medicine.   This is a big deal: most universities never pioneer innovative pedagogical techniques, and here Canada has two of them.  Yet only one of these universities really gets credit for it.  Waterloo is known nationally (and to some degree

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October 13, 2016 2 Comments

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