After working as the "goose wrangler" on the Hollywood film Fly Away Home, pilot Wayne Bezner Kerr became concerned about the fate of tame trumpeter swans. For the movie, swans were allowed to bond with Wayne so they would follow his ultralight plane. Although native to Ontario, these birds have lost their fear of humans and dogs and their ability to migrate, and have become a social nuisance. While enrolled in a master's program in zoology at U of G, Wayne designed an experiment under the guidance of Prof. Tom Nudds that proved swans don't have to be artificially imprinted on humans before they can learn to fly. The Guelph researchers found that young birds flew best when they were naturally imprinted on their parents, then trained to follow an airplane rather than a human.
International
acclaim for research
Prof. Anne Croy, a faculty member in the Ontario Veterinary College's Department of Biomedical Sciences, has been drawing international attention for her research because of the considerable applications for human fetal development. She has pioneered the use of mice as a research model because their reproductive system is similar to that of humans, and her research team, which includes veterinarians from Thailand and Iran, is exploring ways to eliminate pre-eclampsia, a serious illness that affects pregnant women. Prof. Croy received the J.C.B Grant Senior Scientist Award from the Canadian Association for Anatomy, Neurobiology and Cell Biology, and is one of the few Canadians to serve as a member of the National Institutes of Health in the United States.
U of G philosophy professor Michael Ruse received an exceptional grant of $100,000 US from the John Templeton Foundation to write a book about the interplay between Charles Darwin?s strong religious beliefs and his scientific theory of evolution. Prof. Ruse is one of only seven international scholars - and the only Canadian - to receive a Templeton grant. During his 34 years at Guelph, he has received several other prestigious awards, including Guggenheim and Killam fellowships, and has written numerous other books on the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology. He was named a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986. Prof. Ruse says Darwin was not an atheist, as many people believe, and he hopes to show in this new book that evolution and religion can co-exist.
The complexity of the criminal justice system has long sparked heated debate in every facet of Canadian life. In response to student interest in this area, two U of G departments are collaborating to offer a new undergraduate program in criminal justice and public policy that is unique in Canada. It builds on the strengths of the departments of Political Science and Sociology and Anthropology. Political science chair Maureen Mancuso says the program examines the justice system within a framework of political priorities and the way governments spend tax dollars.
Within the space of a year, English professor Daniel Fischlin won three teaching awards - from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, the University of Guelph Faculty Association and the College of Arts. Prof. Fischlin sees the classroom as "a performance space," but he emphasizes that "it's not a one-way performance." One way he involves his students in dialogue is by tapping into their culture. When a student introduced him to a series of "graphic novels" many might have labelled mere comic books, Prof. Fischlin discovered that the books evoked themes from the works of Shakespeare. Now he includes this work in his teaching and has found ways to build bridges between a form of modern literature and the western literary canon.
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