Academic Integrity

I'm running as your faculty representative for Sheridan's  Board of Governors.  My goals are to encourage

More emphasis on the people and the enormous wealth of talent teaching at the college as well as

• More meaningful consultation in management decision making
  
• More transparency in management decisions
  
• More community involvement particularly by helping the newly unemployed
  
• More emphasis on our core business: teaching and learning.
  

During my 21 years at Sheridan College, I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly here.  I've been the Director of the Sheridan Centre for Internationally Trained Individuals, and the driving force behind the development of much new programing such as the Canadian Journalism for Internationally Trained Writers program and the New Media Journalism program.

I've never been shy about speaking out for what I believe and if elected I promise to do my best to represent the  interests of faculty at the college.

I hope you will join my blog.  All comments regarding our working lives at Sheridan are welcome. If we can build a strong social network on this blog, we can influence how things are done.  We are only limited by our level of engagement and our imagination.

Indigo e-books

Indigo is launching a new e-books service.  Already controlling 65% of the book market in Canada, the new service will cater to the continental market.  Canadian books will only be a small part of the offerings.

Looking back, I can remember demonstrating in 1970 against the takeover of Ryerson Books by McGraw-Hill Inc.  We lost that fight and although there were years when it was possible to imagine a robust cultural book and magazine sector in Canada, those days seem long gone.  

I love the idea that books can be delivered to our iPods or computers with the click of a key, or that new or unpublished writers will find space on the Indigo site for about 99 cents. New writers deserve to find their own audience.  The book publishing industry has acted as literary gatekeeper for centuries.  The amazing metamorphosis of newspapers, magazines and books in just the last six months signals a huge change in reading habits. Not that people are reading less, but they are reading in new ways in different mediums.

The age of Gutenberg that drove intellectual thinking for the last five centuries is coming to a surprising end. Let me know if you think social networking is the new printing press.

Obama Visits Canada

Is it time for Canadians to press for  new, open and responsive leadership? Watching the difference in attitude and style between President Obama and Prime Minister Harper is enlightening.  One is open, at ease and eager to learn and discover.  The other is a control freak.

Isn't it time for Canadians to ask their leaders to respond in a more humane way to the looming crisis in job losses?  Isn't it time to re-examine the way our corporations, hospitals and educational institutions are run.  The old top down style doesn't work anymore so we are still pretending that it does?