Faculty Make Headlines
February 28, 2014 - In the News
Prof. Sylvain Charlebois, College of Business and Economics, was interviewed by CBC News and Global News for stories examining the impact of the current California drought on Canadian consumers and farmers. Charlebois noted that the drought could lead to higher food prices for certain produce, but it could also mean retailers look to other areas and countries such as China for this produce, to keep prices low. He also said that Canadian farmers could benefit by exporting to the U.S., with the lower Canadian dollar providing an additional economic benefit to farmers.
Julia Christensen Hughes, dean of the College of Business and Economics, was interviewed by CBC News and Metro Morning about student academic dishonesty at universities. In a 2006 study, Christensen Hughes found that more than half of undergraduate students admitted to cheating on written work but only one per cent of students were actually caught. She said universities need to examine large class sizes and consider more severe penalties.
Prof. Jonathan LaMarre, Biomedical Sciences, was interviewed by CTV Kitchener for the ProvinceWide show on Sunday. The interview focused on research by LaMarre's team at the Ontario Veterinary College into potential non-surgical ways of sterilizing pets. Many owners fail to spay or neuter their pets, and thousands of pets are put down each year.
Prof. Jacqueline Murray, History, wrote an op-ed for the Globe and Mail about theft of ancient religious relics, a long-standing issue. Earlier thefts mostly involved Christian relics, but more recent cases involve items from all religions. Murray studies medieval Europe and medieval social and ecclesiastical history.
Prof. Stephen Henighan, School of Languages and Literatures, published a column in the Globe and Mail reflecting on the life of author Mavis Gallant, who died Feb. 18 at age 91. Henighan said “her emotional range is greater than that of her peers because she allows her protagonists to be naive and manipulated; to fail and survive.” He studies 20th-century Spanish-American fiction and Canadian literature and literary institutions.
Thomas King, professor emeritus in English at the University of Guelph, was the subject of a Globe and Mail article about winning the $40,000 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. King’s book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America was selected from 140 submissions. The article said the jury citation called it a “wry, iconoclastic and important book that challenges us to think differently about both the past and the future.” Earlier, Maclean’s magazine published an excerpt from King’s nominated book and described the book's focus “on non-Natives’ continuing incomprehension of First Nations reality, as opposed to their mythical presence in our imagination.”
