Faculty

This is how members of the University of Toronto community describe Cheryl Regehr as she prepares to step down as vice-president and provost at the end of the year – leaving a legacy that will shape U of T for generations to come.

At a recent reception, U of T President Meric Gertler said Regehr has “always put the University of Toronto first” regardless of whether she was supporting students, strengthening diversity or guiding the university community through the COVID-19 pandemic – “the worst public health crisis in a century.”

He added that Regehr’s commitment to student success and well-being was the “North Star” that guided her efforts, citing her stewardship of the transformation of mental health service delivery at the university.

“This is typical of [Provost Regehr’s] work over the past decade – acknowledging a pressing challenge, developing an action plan driven by collegial consultation and expert leadership, embracing recommendations, outlining an ambitious agenda for change, and then rolling up her sleeves to get it done with equal measures of creativity, determination and charm.”

After spending a decade leading the university’s academic mission, Regehr will return to a full-time research and teaching role as a professor in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work on Jan. 1. She will be succeeded as U of T’s provost by Professor Trevor Young of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Regehr was first appointed vice-president and provost in September 2013, before being reappointed in January 2015 and one more time in January 2020 – racking up awards and honours along the way. She previously served as vice-provost, academic programs and as dean of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, where she has been a faculty member since 1999.

Regehr’s work on championing teaching excellence, experiential learning, and building a caring and supportive environment for students stand out among her many signature achievements.

Her office created the “teaching stream” professorial ranks to emphasize the importance of teaching to U of T’s academic mission, devised funding streams to support teaching innovation and launched an array of teaching fellowships and awards. It also opened the doors to many opportunities for students to gain first-hand experience in subjects through summer abroad, co-op and work-study programs.

An expert in mental health, trauma and social work practice, Regehr also recognized the unique pressures faced by university-aged youth and advanced efforts to harmonize student mental health services across the three campuses. That included more funding for mental wellness and establishing a partnership with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) to create pathways for students requiring treatment for complex mental health problems.

As a result, U of T students can now more easily access same- or next-day counselling in-person as well as 24-7 virtual support – part of a broader push to create a “stepped model of care” that prioritizes individually tailored treatment over lengthy assessments.

“I’m extremely proud of the work we have done on student mental health,” Regehr said in a recent interview for U of T’s Defy Gravity campaign. “Youth today are under immense pressure, and the pandemic exacerbated some of those stresses … in response to this, we’ve completely redesigned our mental health services to try to make sure that students who are struggling can get the assistance they need more quickly and responsively.”

Sandy Welsh, U of T’s vice-provost, students, said Regehr’s student focus stemmed just as much from her academic expertise as it did from a “deep sense that we need to listen to our students and can always do better for them” – including thinking constantly about improving every aspect of the student experience.

“There’s this creativity and thoughtfulness that she has. For example, she thinks about how our students move through and inhabit our three campuses,” said Welsh, adding that Regehr’s interest went far beyond ensuring there were ample spots to study. “There was a focus and encouragement to all three campuses and all the academic divisions to think about creating spaces where a commuting student who’s on campus all day can just sit in a comfortable place and relax.

“For Provost Regehr, the centre of her work is always, ‘How is this helping students?’”

In that vein, Regehr also accelerated U of T’s efforts to welcome more students from underrepresented backgrounds – with the number of access and outreach programs at U of T growing from 30 to more than 135 since 2018. “We can only be great if we ensure that every single excellent student here in the city of Toronto believes the University of Toronto is a place for them, a place where they belong,” Regehr said during the launch of one of those programs, SEE U of T, in 2019.

Similar strides were made when it comes to making sure U of T’s faculty members better reflect the community in which U of T resides, with Regehr overseeing the creation of the Diversity in Academic Hiring Fund that has resulted in the addition of 190 faculty from underrepresented groups – mostly Black and Indigenous – and post-doctoral fellowship programs for Black and Indigenous scholars.

Regehr also played a key role in advancing the university’s reckoning with various forms of racism, including collaborating with Indigenous community members to build a new Office of Indigenous Initiatives to strengthen reconciliation efforts. During her tenure, U of T set up working groups to examine anti-Black racism, anti-Asian racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus and provide recommendations to support the university’s response.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, Regehr oversaw U of T’s efforts to provide academic continuity and supports as the university pivoted to a virtual learning environment.

“As we moved to remote, it meant figuring out new ways of managing things and continuing to support everyone as they tried to continue with their activities – and [Provost Regehr] provided incredible leadership through that,” said Vivek Goel, who served as special adviser to U of T’s president and provost on the pandemic and is now president of the University of Waterloo.

Regehr’s responsibilities as provost were carried out alongside distinguished scholarly work. During her 10 years in the role, she authored or co-authored more than 50 papers (including a paper describing U of T’s response to the pandemic, co-authored with Goel), and editions of four books.

“While I have continued to do research while I’ve been provost, I’m looking forward to focusing even more on this,” Regehr told the Defy Gravity campaign. She noted her work will explore topics like the impact of workplace stress and trauma on decision-making and cyber-violence against public service professionals.

Welsh said Regehr’s compassion and thoughtfulness were evident in the work environment she cultivated at U of T.

“She is just a beautiful combination of being direct around the priorities you need to focus on, but also encouraging your ideas and having compassion and understanding for the people that work with her and the challenges they may face,” Welsh said.

“I’ve learned a lot from her about what it means to be an academic administrator and a senior leader at the university. I’m going to miss her.”

Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science, said academic leaders across U of T’s three campuses regarded Regehr with “widespread admiration.”

“Whenever we’re together, we inevitably end up in a conversation about the amazing qualities of our provost, Cheryl Regehr,” Woodin said during a recent event to honour the provost.

Regehr, for her part, told attendees at the same event she relished working with the expansive U of T community during her many years in Simcoe Hall.

“I have loved being part of this incredible group of brilliant people,” she said. “Academic leaders, staff, faculty… and our students – our wonderful students – all of us working together as a team to ensure we achieve our mission of being a world-class institution with a local heart.”

After a harrowing escape from Sudan, U of T scholar Nisrin Elamin calls on the world to pay attention

siddiq22 — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 18:07:17 +0000

After a harrowing escape from Sudan, U of T scholar Nisrin Elamin calls on the world to pay attention

siddiq22 Wed, 06/14/2023 - 14:07

Cutline

Nisrin Elamin, an assistant professor of archeology and African Studies in U of T's Faculty of Arts & Science, recently fled Sudan, which is in the midst of an armed conflict between rival factions of the military government (photo courtesy of Nisrin Elamin)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

International

New College

Subheadline

Elamin, an assistant professor of archeology and African Studies, says more needs to be done to support the country's pro-democracy movement

Why aren’t there more eyes on Sudan – the site of a humanitarian crisis which has seen more than one million people driven from their homes in the space of two months, with many others killed or injured?

Nisrin Elamin asks herself that question every day. The assistant professor in the department of anthropology and the African Studies program in the Faculty of Arts & Science recently escaped from Sudan, where she had been visiting family.

After a dangerous, difficult journey from the capital city of Khartoum to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, Elamin was evacuated at the end of April, along with her parents and three-year-old daughter.

Now, she thinks about her many close relatives who remain sheltering in place in and around Khartoum – and about the millions of other Sudanese people still living there and in other parts of the country in desperate conditions.

Entire villages have been burned to the ground, with many citizens deprived of access to food, water, medicine and fuel during the ongoing conflict between rival factions of the military government.

“It’s a terrible situation,” Elamin says. “And the international humanitarian response has been ‘too little, too late’ in the sense that when we evacuated, the aid community evacuated with us.”

During a temporary ceasefire, several international aid organizations have been able to resume assistance to Sudan. But aid agency operations often report obstructions, and Elamin says the Sudanese people themselves have sometimes proven most effective at helping their fellow citizens.

“People have been relying on resistance committees and civilian volunteer networks,” she says.

“These are grassroots democratic forces that have been the backbone of Sudan’s popular uprising against the current regime since 2018. They’ve been the ones distributing food and water – and they have actually been arrested for doing this work.”

Women carrying belongings walk down a street in Omdurman, Sudan, the twin city of the country's capital, Khartoum (photo by AFP via Getty Images)

Since Sudan gained independence from colonial rule in 1956, the country has spent the majority of those years riven by internal conflict. In 2021, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan’s army, and Lt. General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), paramilitary chief of the Rapid Support Forces, collaborated to topple the regime of Omar al-Bashir – a leader who had been indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2009 for directing a campaign of mass killing in the Darfur region and was subsequently imprisoned on corruption charges.

Yet the generals are themselves steadfast enemies of democracy – together, they have been responsible for human rights violations, including al-Burhan’s direction of the Khartoum Massacre of 2019 and Hemedti’s brutal leadership of the Janjaweed militia in Darfur beginning in 2003. And now they are at war with each other.

“The Rapid Support Forces were supposed to be integrated into the armed forces based on a political agreement that would eventually lead to democratic elections,” Elamin says.

“But these two generals, who are known war criminals, are now struggling for political and economic control. And everybody else is in the middle of this.”

Even prior to the fighting that gave rise to this catastrophe, Sudan – Africa's third-largest country – was dealing with a refugee crisis and severe food insecurity. The United Nations estimates that 25 million people in the country currently need aid and protection.

Elamin is an American citizen who recently completed her first year as a scholar at U of T. She is currently writing a book based on 15 months of fieldwork in Sudan, and her recent trip there was taken with the intention of conducting follow-up research while also introducing her young daughter to her Sudanese family.

“My work focuses on large-scale land investments – what many call ‘land grabs’ in central Sudan, where I’m originally from,” she says.

“I’ve been tracing the impacts of Gulf Arab corporate and domestic investments on local communities and researching the various forms of resistance to these investments. Just to give you an idea, the Saudis and Emiratis have invested about $27 billion in real estate infrastructure over the last two decades – all while the country was governed by a brutal military regime.

“Such investments have also impacted local food sovereignty – these shifts in land ownership undermine people’s access to subsistence food, and they’re relying on imports now more than ever.”

Elamin notes that despite the various crises affecting them, the people of Sudan remain unbowed. Soon after the shelling and explosions began, “only 16 per cent of hospitals in Khartoum were operating at capacity. The Sudanese Doctors’ Union has set up field hospitals on the outskirts of the city to treat the injured, deliver babies and do whatever is needed, though even getting there is dangerous.”

Since her return from Sudan, Elamin has been tireless in her efforts to inform the public about what is happening in her family’s homeland, appearing on international radio and television programs. She points out that while the news cycle invariably moves on, Sudan’s problems do not.

Still, Elamin affirms that much is being done.

“For example, the Sudanese Students Union at U of T recently held an event to inform the community about what’s happening. It was also a fundraiser for the Sudanese Doctors’ Union – that’s an important initiative to support, because money goes directly to the support the lifesaving work doctors are doing there.”

Elamin also calls on governments around the world to lend help where they can. Much more assistance is needed at the borders of the seven countries bordering Sudan, which are all processing refugees at a painfully slow rate in the punishing desert climate.

She notes Canada could provide expedited travel visas, such as those offered to refugees from Ukraine.

“But probably the most important thing is for Canadians to assist the international community – specifically efforts on the African continent led by regional actors such as the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority for Development – with their effort to broker a sustainable peace," Elamin says.

"This requires, in my view, putting these two generals on trial instead of putting them at the negotiating table – and really starting a transitional kind of process: one that centres the pro-democracy forces that have been sidelined.”

Highway death toll signs associated with more crashes, researchers find

geoff.vendeville — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 16:49:53 +0000

Highway death toll signs associated with more crashes, researchers find

geoff.vendeville Fri, 04/22/2022 - 12:49

Cutline

A recent study co-written by U of T's Jonathan Hall suggests that death toll messages on highways can have the opposite of their desired effect (photo courtesy of Jonathan Hall)

Munk School Staff

Topic

Breaking Research

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Economics

Faculty

Global

International Collaboration

Research

Electronic billboards displaying traffic fatalities to encourage safer driving may actually contribute to an increase in crashes, a recent study co-authored by the University of Toronto's Jonathan Hall suggests.

Jonathan Hall

Using years of highway data from Texas, Hall – an assistant professor in the department of economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy – teamed up with Joshua Madsen, of the University of Minnesota, to test the effectiveness of this strategy to reduce accidents.

They found that a message advertising the number of traffic deaths was linked with a 4.5 per cent uptick in crashes over the next 10 kilometres. That’s an increase comparable to raising the speed limit by between roughly 5 and 8 kilometres per hour or reducing the number of highway troopers by 6 to 14 per cent.

“Our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that fatality messages cause an additional 2,600 crashes and 16 fatalities per year in Texas alone, with a toal social cost of (US) $377 million per year,” the researchers said.

Extrapolating to a nationwide figure, the researchers say safety messaging causes an extra 17,000 crashes across the U.S. and 104 deaths per year, with a social cost of US$2.5 billion.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hall said he and Madsen were surprised by their findings. "We did not start this project thinking these signs hurt, we thought they helped," he told the paper. "I think a reasonable takeaway would be that state departments of transportation should test their messages and track which of these messages are too distracting and which are helpful."

The researchers suggest that efforts to reduce traffic fatalities by way of electronic messaging may be backfiring because they are temporarily distracting and lead drivers to make mistakes.

Hall and Madsen took their data from Texas because messages there were consistently displayed one week a month. They compared highway data from the time of the campaign, from 2012 to 2017, to the two years prior, comparing weekly differences within each month.

“The messages increased the number of multi-vehicle crashes, but not single-vehicle crashes,” Hall said. “This is in line with drivers with increased cognitive loads making smaller errors due to distraction, like drifting out of a lane, rather than driving off the road.”

Moreover, the researchers found that the effect is worse as the year progresses and the traffic fatality count displayed on message boards increases. The largest number of additional crashes was recorded in January, when the fatality number was the highest. Hall and Madsen suggest that more sobering, in-your-face messaging could be even more distracting and harmful.

“Driving on a busy highway [and] having to navigate lane changes is more cognitively demanding than driving down a straight stretch of empty highway,” said Madsen, who teaches at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. “People have limited attention. When a driver’s cognitive load is already maxed out, adding on an attention-grabbing, sobering reminder of highway deaths [can] become a dangerous distraction.”

But the researchers did find that the safety messages fulfilled their intended purpose when the number of displayed deaths was low and when the interventions occurred on less busy highways. Madsen says this may be because these messages were not as taxing on drivers' attention.

While safety campaigns vary from place to place, the researchers say authorities should consider other ways to promote road safety.

“One of the key takeaways from this research was that fatality message campaigns increase the number of crashes, so stopping these campaigns is a low-cost way to improve traffic safety,” Hall says.

“This study illustrates why it is so important to study the effects of ‘nudges’ and other behavioural interventions. Just because a policy is well-intentioned doesn’t mean that it will result in a good outcome.”

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

U of T to implement salary increase for more than 800 women faculty members

noreen.rasbach — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 04:00:00 +0000

U of T to implement salary increase for more than 800 women faculty members

noreen.rasbach Fri, 04/26/2019 - 00:00

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Meric Gertler

Rotman School of Management

Statistical Sciences

The University of Toronto will implement a 1.3 per cent salary increase for all women faculty members who are tenured or in the tenure stream following an advisory group’s findings on gender-based pay equity. More than 800 women will receive an increase to their base salaries.

The planned increase, to be implemented on July 1, 2019, will be applied to base salaries as of June 30. The move is designed to address a gender-based pay gap identified by the Provostial Advisory Group on Faculty Gender Pay Equity through an analysis conducted by faculty with expertise from the departments of economics and statistical sciences, as well as the Rotman School of Management.

The university’s decision arises in part from a pre-grievance mediation between the university administration and the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA), during which the administration and the association shared the results of detailed studies of the relationship between gender and salary at the university. While the mediation process did not result in agreement on the extent and underlying causes of gender-based salary gaps at U of T, both parties agreed there was a gap in the tenure stream of at least 1.3 per cent.

The Provostial Advisory Group’s analysis determined there was no statistically significant difference between the salaries of men and women who are faculty members with continuing appointments in U of T’s teaching stream, and did not address librarians, contractually limited term appointments (CLTAs), part-time faculty or pay differentials attributable to other social identities. UTFA’s analysis did identify gender-based differences for teaching stream faculty, librarians, CLTAs and part-time faculty. However, the parties have not come to any agreement on these issues.

UTFA and the university administration have agreed to examine these and related issues in facilitated working groups and in ongoing mediation.

“We’re taking immediate action to close the pay gap between men and women professors who are tenured or in the tenure stream based on the comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the issue undertaken by the advisory group,” said U of T President Meric Gertler.

“Ensuring fair and equitable compensation is critical to attracting the best and brightest talent from around the world. It’s also the right thing to do.”

UTFA noted that the gender pay gap has been a long-standing concern. “A number of efforts have been made over the years to address gender discrimination at the university, but these have not gotten to the root of the problem,” said Professor Terezia Zoric, who has taken the lead on behalf of UTFA. “UTFA struck an advisory committee in 2016 to bring more attention to this issue. We are glad to see some movement, but more work will need to be done – including for our members who experience discrimination on other grounds.”

While it’s not the first time U of T has studied faculty salaries based on gender – and made adjustments when anomalies were found – this latest review is the most comprehensive to date. The detailed statistical analysis was conducted by a five-person team that included three faculty members with expertise in performing such analyses, as well as a staff member and a graduate student.

The advisory group’s report found that, on average, women faculty members who are tenured or in the tenure stream earn 1.3 per cent less than “comparably situated” faculty members who are men, once experience, field of study and other relevant factors are taken into account. The latter includes experience prior to hire, administrative positions, and whether the individual has ever held a Canada Research Chair and/or University Professorship.

Similar studies have been undertaken by other universities in Canada and abroad – all of which found unexplained gaps in pay between men and women faculty members.

While other universities have addressed gender pay gaps by making across-the-board base salary increases of a couple of thousand dollars, Cheryl Regehr, U of T’s vice-president and provost, said U of T opted to focus on percentage difference to better reflect the differences in pay attributable to gender.

“We conducted rigorous research to ensure our action to address the gender-based gap in pay among tenured and tenure stream faculty members is fair and based on the specific U of T context,” Regehr said.

The advisory group’s work is part of a broad and long-standing strategy at U of T to support gender equity, diversity and inclusion. Other initiatives at U of T include: increasing the number of women hired into the tenure stream; supporting equity in starting salaries; providing unconscious bias training for committees on faculty appointments and tenure; and appointing an adviser to the provost on women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields.

Regehr said U of T is committed to conducting a similar analysis for librarians in continuing appointments and has recommended that the university undertake a periodic review of all continuing faculty salaries to ensure that a gender-based pay gap does not reappear over time.

See the joint statement issued by the university and UTFA

U of T mentorship program helps Black youth pursue post-secondary education

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 02 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

U of T mentorship program helps Black youth pursue post-secondary education

noreen.rasbach Wed, 05/02/2018 - 00:00

Cutline

Students in the Imani academic mentorship program work on homework (photo by Joseph Burrell)

Raquel A. Russell

Topic

City & Culture

Diversity

International Students

Student Life

U of T Scarborough

Undergraduate Students

Since starting at Cedarbrae Collegiate Institute in fall 2017, Grade 9 student Leandra Allen has been researching which university she wants to attend in 2022.

“Even if I have a lot of time before I have to do something, you’ll still see me researching,” says Allen, who emigrated from Jamaica to Canada in 2015 and is interested in studying sociology and physiology.

“I really want to try the sciences because I love experimenting,” she says. "I really enjoy testing things to see how they really work.”

Because of her keen interest in university, one of her high school teachers suggested she check out Imani, an academic mentorship program run by the department of student life at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Now in its 12^th year, the program pairs Black U of T student mentors with Black youth in the East Scarborough community.

Since 2005, more than 1,000 students between Grades 1 and 12 have taken part in the after-school program. In that same time, more than 500 U of T Scarborough students have volunteered as mentors, facilitators and co-ordinators. This year alone, 91 students from six local schools have taken part – one of the largest cohorts since the program started – while 47 mentors and 13 student staff and leaders, all from U of T Scarborough, have volunteered.

Imani is important because it’s a one-of-a-kind program that helps youth in racialized and underserved communities in Scarborough directly, says Dorian Grey, a fourth-year U of T Scarborough student and volunteer in the program.

“There aren’t many programs that overwhelmingly show Black leaders in a university setting, so having this is important for Black youth in our community,” says Grey.

From October to April, U of T student leaders meet with mentees once a week. During their meetings, mentees talk about their week in a group format before breaking out into smaller groups for homework sessions. Following the breakout sessions, there are workshops led by U of T facilitators or guest speakers on topics ranging from options for post-secondary education to professional opportunities.

In recent years, the program has evolved to feature workshops that more pointedly focus on themes such as identity, critical thinking and civic engagement in the context and unique experiences of the Black community.

“We are trying to bring more opportunities to our Black student population here at [U of T Scarborough] in the way of education and experiences,” says Elvis Ibrahimovic, Student Life’s community engagement co-ordinator.

U of T Scarborough student volunteers also receive personal development through training opportunities, like a recent workshop held by Amorell Saunders N’Daw, U of T Scarborough's director of governance, and An Evening with Black Professionals, where 20 professionals talked to students about their careers and handling complex work situations that connect to race.

Allen’s mentor Tele Kapkirwok, a third-year international student from Kenya, joined Imani two years ago. She initially expected to attend the weekly program to help students with homework, but her involvement quickly grew into something much more.

“A big moment for me was when I saw that Imani gets students excited about post-secondary education and they see for themselves that it’s attainable – they can do it and there’s space for them,” she says.

The Imani program continues to nurture community ties by inspiring youth in Scarborough (photo by Joseph Burrell)

Many of the mentors and mentees also relish the energy and passion that are emblematic of the program.

“The energy that you feel when you step into the environment every single Wednesday – you want to be there,” says Donocan Iwelomen, a Grade 12 student at St. John Paul II.

That energy was especially evident when those in the program went to a February screening of Black Panther, and also collaborated on creating a video series about the experiences of Black Canadians with Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre.

The Black Panther experience carried over into this year’s Imani academic mentorship recognition ceremony, the final event that marks the end of the program.

“Imani forever,” said Grey to applause while dressed as the titular character from the movie.

During the ceremony, students received laptops from NavaCup, an organization founded by Ganesh Navaratnarajah and dedicated to raising funds to buy computers for marginalized students. Graduating students in the program also received a small scholarship towards their post-secondary education from Toronto-area businesswoman Damiris Moro.

This year, kente cloth sashes – a traditional cloth from Ghana that is used to mark significant rites of passage – were awarded to Imani mentees and mentors of the year for the first time.

For Allen, this past year will especially stick out because of the many memorable experiences and friendships she made in the program.

“I can’t wait to come back next year,” she says.

Take a stand: a U of T historian shares her story of being a young refugee

ullahnor — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 16:12:06 +0000

Take a stand: a U of T historian shares her story of being a young refugee

ullahnor Wed, 04/05/2017 - 12:12

Cutline

Associate Professor Nhung Tuyet Tran with her family in Michigan soon after arriving in America as a Vietnamese refugee. She is pictured standing in the bottom row with her brothers (photo courtesy of Nhung Tuyet Tran)

Topic

With the renewed debate in Europe and North America over refugees, Bruce Kidd, vice-president of U of T and principal of U of T Scarborough, shared his blog this week with Nhung Tuyet Tran, associate professor of Southeast Asian history in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

She shares her story below about her experiences as a refugee escaping Vietnam, being in a refugee camp and eventually settling in the United States – first in Michigan and then Texas.

I never realized that I was an American patriot until I moved to Canada and before this year is over, I may become a Canadian patriot, though through a circuitous route. I rarely share my own story, in part because of my revulsion at the liberal elite’s desire to consume compelling struggles. I want to be known for my scholarship and teaching, a privilege that people of European descent in my field enjoy, rather than being reduced to a representation of the refugee experience. However, last year, in the midst of the largest humanitarian crisis of our times, the fate of Syrian refugees, I felt that it was irresponsible not to speak out.

I was born in Vietnam immediately following the end of the American War, to parents of modest peasant backgrounds. My parents had no formal education, but they could read and write. My father had been a soldier in the French colonial army and had lost his leg on a land mine sometime in 1953-54. My mother was from a moderately successful peasant family from the north, whose own grandparents were executed during the land reforms of 1956. In Saigon, they were among the million or so new migrants who placed pressure on the physical infrastructure of the new state, but also formed the locus of political support for the president of the new Republic of Vietnam, himself an ardent Catholic. Handicapped and uneducated, my parents did what they could to make do: my mother sold tofu on the streets of Saigon and my father took jobs here and there. In the 1960s, they benefitted from the influx of American capital, and alone or together, as memories are blurred, opened a small bar. At some point in the early 1970s, my mother’s hand was maimed when she intervened to protect a patron at the bar.

After 1975, the new Vietnam was not kind to two disabled, Catholic individuals whose migration south signaled a political betrayal. At that point, they had six children, and cared for two maternal uncles, who were teenagers at the time. Twice, they tried to commission escape, only to be turned in by family members. The third and final time, to conceal their efforts, my two eldest sisters, aged 10 and eight, traveled on the back of trucks and buses to a coastal city of no great distance, but seven hours away, to negotiate our family’s escape.

So it was, as the story has been relayed to me over the years, one summer day in 1979, my parents somehow got my six older siblings, my newly born three-month-old sister, my uncles, and me to that port town and on a wooden boat with other families. My parents had always maintained that this would have been our last try, that they had made their peace with the unknown beyond the shores of the South China Sea, or death for their children and wards. I have no real memories of the escape, but one vague manufactured one of the ship that rescued our family. A Norwegian ocean liner had spotted our tiny boat after a few days and we were taken onto it. Real or manufactured, my earliest memory is the sensation that I was stepping onto a steel boat as large as a city, and that automobiles could drive around it. The ship took us to the nearest refugee camp from our location, as the laws of the seas required, in Singapore, which is when my own memories emerge, sometimes with the help of photographic images, which remain the only evidence I have of my existence before the age of five.

In the image [directly] above, I am pictured with my brother in our refugee camp. My hair is freshly shorn to prevent the spread of lice among the refugees. The image [below] captures our arrival in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My father is on the far right and another one of my brothers is carrying his wooden leg. On the left, my mother is carrying my sister, who would have been close to one at the time. The [lead] picture [at the very top of the post] is, as far as I know, our first "family photo" with eight of the nine kids (I'm the girl in the front row), on one Sunday after mass in 1981 or so. My youngest brother had not been born yet. The picture reveals a happy and settled family, but it also obscures other stories, moments of great generosity on the one hand, but also exploitation and discrimination during our early years in the United States.We had been sponsored by a Dutch Reform Church, but with strings attached, it soon emerged. The picture captures a happy moment after mass, but also conceals the fact that we had just been evicted from our home, owned by the congregation, because we would not convert. In retrospect, the eviction seems all the more enraging because my parents, siblings and I had worked long hours harvesting blueberries on farms affiliated with the church. Despite the organization’s decision, a congregant, whom I remember as a tall man who used to take us out into the city, continued to visit. He helped us to apply for public housing and other assistance. One Christmas Eve, he even brought hand-me-down clothes, including my favorite, a Miss Piggy nightgown. Eventually, my parents moved us to Texas, and we left behind cold Michigan winters.

In Michigan and Texas, my family survived because of the government programs implemented to help the weakest among us. My mother worked 14 hours a day in a restaurant and my father did manual labour, but it was not enough. Between the ages of eight and 12, I de-headed and peeled hundreds and hundreds of pounds of shrimp, alongside my younger sister. The shrimp would then be sent to be packaged elsewhere and sold in gourmet stores around the country. My older siblings all worked part-time jobs, not for spending money, but to pay for essentials in the household. Still, it was not enough, and it was the public services for the poor that sustained us.

Despite our poverty, the Medicaid program, which provided basic medical care, ensured that in emergencies we would still receive prescription medications and acute care. The Food Stamp Program, a food-voucher system, did not satiate our hunger but did prevent us from starvation. The Housing Section 8 Program, which helped the poor find suitable housing, ensured that we were not homeless. With the small welfare stipend, my parents could pay rent and the gas bills so we did not freeze in Michigan, die of heat exhaustion in Texas or forego basic hygiene items like soap.

As our basic material needs were met at home, our intellectual and psychological needs were nurtured at school. Then, in the 1980s, the educational structure in the United States was good enough that we could attend our local schools and receive quality education. The federally funded university grant and loan programs allowed us to attend university. Throughout these years, we had to start over many times, twice because of robberies in our tiny home and another time when our house burnt down. We faced xenophobia, racism and inequality in our America, but we also benefitted from the incredible structural generosity of a nation and the personal generosities of others around us. From the bureaucrat who could have made our lives more difficult but instead gave us the benefit of the doubt, to the teachers who recognized our thirst for knowledge and sent information about enrichment programs to us. Personal generosities, however, were no replacement for that safety net, and it was our fortune to have the two that enabled us to survive.

Despite its failings, our America was one in which the poor had access to basic healthcare, a more compassionate immigration system and a solid education system. These institutions are essential in a fair society. Since the first weeks of this new administration, the President and the Republican-led Congress are dismantling it. They have drawn on language to turn Americans against one another, and it is only three months in.

Lucky as I am to enjoy a stable position in Canada, I have a responsibility to share my story as we see similar sentiments take shape here. The defunding of education in Ontario, and the stripping of programs to help the poor in cities across Canada, are muted examples of those American initiatives.

I share my story also, not only to resist the xenophobic, Islamophobic rhetoric, often accompanied by violence, that has been unleashed in the United States and in Canada, but to counteract language that is emerging from progressive circles, too. The distasteful discourse around the potential “brain surge” that may flow into Canada as a result of the travel bans in the United States directs attention away from the real suffering that these individuals face. Refugees and victims of religious discrimination should be welcomed because it is right to protect them against state-sponsored violence, not because they can help the bottom line. If I made any contributions to society, it is not because I had any promise as that young child in the refugee camp, it was because of those institutional structures.

As a teacher of the history of Southeast Asia, I retell stories of courage and cowardice that have shaped the contours of our modern world. I have never seen any person who has stood up and taken a stand against oppression regret it later in their lives, though there are many stories of those who turned away, and regretted it for the rest of their lives.

I believe that Canadians who enjoy the benefits of influence and position have a responsibility to take a stand and speak out against the injustices they see, whether south of the border or in our own communities. Canadian leaders should add substance to their rhetoric of fostering a just and inclusive society, by welcoming refugees not because they can become great citizens, but because it is the right thing to do. A living income, access to social services and equal access to education is what makes great citizens. As my neighbours, friends and colleagues work to bring Syrian refugee families to Canada, and to see how differently RCMP officials are greeting refugees fleeing the United States, I feel proud. However, I am mindful of how quickly public opinion can turn.

As I write this blog, I am also preparing my application for Canadian citizenship, so that in the next year or so, should my application be approved, I can exercise my civic duty to vote in local and provincial elections. My own father voted in every election from the time he became an American citizen to the day he died, on the morning of the 2002 mid-term elections. At the end of a lengthy illness, he was declared brain dead that morning. After he was gone, I collected his things and saw that after so many years, he still carried his voter’s registration card in his wallet. He had become an American patriot and exercised his most sacred of duties faithfully. Our elected leaders answer to us, and as citizens of a just society, it is our responsibility to demand it of our representatives.

Ten U of T social media stars to follow

Romi Levine — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 22:06:26 +0000

Ten U of T social media stars to follow

Romi Levine Mon, 02/06/2017 - 17:06

Cutline

U of T has many interesting faculty, students and alumni who offer interesting takes on politics, life and the economy (photo by ThoroughlyReviewed.com via Flickr)

Topic

University of Toronto's sharpest minds and wittiest wordsmiths are taking to Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to share their expert insights and unique perspectives with communities inside and outside the university.

Here are just a few to follow:

Sabrina Cruz NerdyAndQuirky

Even before her first year at U of T, Cruz was a YouTube star. The Schulich Leader has over 100,000 subscribers and millions of views.

Follow if: you like funny takes on pop culture, history and science

Dr. Mike Evans DocMikeEvans

Evans is an associate professor at University of Toronto's medical school. His popular YouTube videos on health education attracted the likes of Apple who recruited him to work on a digital health care project.

Follow if: you want to learn more about health and wellness in a fun and entertaining way

Danielle Martin @docdanielle

Martin, an author and assistant professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, tweets about big ideas around innovation in health and medicine.

Follow if: you’re interested in learning how to make health care better

Jonathan Sun @jonnysun

Engineering alumnus Sun is a jack of all trades but is best known for his odd, yet hilarious, Twitter account which has inspired him to write a book.

Follow if: you need a good old-fashioned laugh

why do birds
suddenly appear
every time
you are near
just like me
they long to be
creeping u out with their beady eyes
— jomny sun (@jonnysun) January 17, 2017

Renée Hložek @reneehlozek

Astrophysics professor Hložek takes to Twitter for insight into our place in the universe.

Follow if: you’re into space talk and social justice

Aisha Ahmad @ProfAishaAhmad

Ahmad, an assistant professor at U of T Scarborough’s department of political science and the Munk School of Global Affairs, weighs in on the most pressing issues facing Canada and the U.S.

Follow if: you want thoughtful insight and good reads on the latest news

Adrian Phiffer @officeofadrianphiffer

Architect and lecturer at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design uses Instagram as a way of showcasing the work of his design firm while highlighting the creativity of his students.

Jeffrey Dvorkin @jdvorkin

At a time when the media is considered the official “opposition” by the Trump administration, commentary from people like Dvorkin, director of the journalism program at U of T Scarborough, is all the more important.

Follow if: you care about the future of journalism and freedom of the press

Joshua Gans @joshgans

Gans, Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and professor of strategic management at U of T's Rotman School of Management, offers a snarky take on business and current affairs.

Follow if: you like to smirk while reading the latest on the Trump saga

Sarah Kaplan @sarah_kaplan

As director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy, Rotman School of Management Professor Kaplan takes on the worlds of business and equality and the ways they intersect.

Follow if: you’re fired up from the Women’s March

Do you have a favourite U of T tweeter, YouTuber or instagrammer? Let us know!

(photo at top by ThoroughlyReviewed.com via Flickr)

University of Toronto faculty, experts and students respond to Trump's travel ban

ullahnor — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 16:05:04 +0000

University of Toronto faculty, experts and students respond to Trump's travel ban

ullahnor Wed, 02/01/2017 - 11:05

Cutline

Volunteer lawyers join protesters at the Los Angeles International Airport to demonstrate against U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order banning citizens from seven Muslim majority countries (photo by Konrad Fiedler/AFP/Getty Images)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Author legacy

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

With the world reeling and global markets reacting to U.S. President Donald Trump's new travel ban, University of Toronto faculty and students are tapping into their expertise to find fitting responses.

“At the Faculty of Law, we have a special responsibility to champion the rule of law, ” said Dean Edward Iacobucci. “This week’s seemingly cavalier dismissals of international norms and shared legal understandings by the U.S. President are especially troubling for our community.”

In a statement released Jan. 31, Iacobucci said the Faculty of Law is working on a number of initiatives in response to the ban.

“We have posted on social media and online our willingness to consider late applications from prospective students who may be affected, directly or indirectly, by the travel ban to the U.S.,” he said. “We have also reached out to some Canadian JD students in the U.S. who may wish to transfer to U of T in light of recent events.”

On Feb. 3, the Office of the Provost posted a memo highlighting information and resources for students, faculty and staff across the university – including examples of ways members of the U of T community could help, such as consideration of late applications for admissions and hosting events at U of T previously scheduled for the U.S.

Read the complete memo

Read the Globe and Mail story about U of T efforts

Iacobucci said the Faculty of Law had learned of a planned conference at Columbia University in March that was to involve Yemeni scholars now banned from travel to the U.S.

“Out of basic collegiality, and also to offer a concrete manifestation of our rejection of careless, heavy-handed, and intolerant approaches to national security, we have offered to host the workshop at the Faculty and are working with our colleagues at Columbia to see whether this is feasible.”

Read the complete statement

The department of political science in the Faculty of Arts & Science also issued a statement “categorically” condemning Trump's executive order and calling for action by such groups as the Canadian Political Science Association, the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association.

“We would hope that political science associations with conferences or meetings scheduled in the United States will consider moving locations, or at the very least, creating participatory opportunities for those who cannot, or do not want to, travel to the United States while this executive order is in effect at the very least, creating participatory opportunities for those who cannot, or do not want to, travel to the United States while this executive order is in effect,” the statement said.

Read the complete statement

Individual faculty members and researchers from across the university are also taking a stand. U of T Engineering Professor Peter Robert Herman found himself staging a brief but very personal protest at an academic conference in San Francisco.

Herman's PhD student, Ehsan Alimohammadian, was detained for 14 hours in San Francisco International Airport on the weekend and denied entry to present his research at the conference.

With his student sent back to Canada, Herman presented the research instead, taking a few minutes to express his opposition to the policy.

Read the Globe and Mail story about Ehsan

Professor Peter Robert Herman protesting President's Trump's travel ban which led to his PhD student being denied entry to the U.S. to present his research to a conference for SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics (photo courtesy of Peter Robert Herman)

Associate Professor Emily Gilbert, of the departments of geography and planning and Canadian studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science, is an expert in borders, Canada-U.S. relations, immigration and mobility. Gilbert had weighed in on Trump's first week in office – but that was before he signed the executive order for the travel ban.

In an interview with U of T News on Jan. 31, Gilbert said the travel ban is “racial profiling” and she called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take decisive action rather than just “tweeting on the importance of diversity and Canada’s welcome to refugees.”

“We in Canada should be concerned on all kinds of levels,“ Gilbert said. “Not only because many residents and citizens will be subject to these new authoritarian and discriminatory laws, although this is, of course, very important. But because we have become so deeply implicated in border security with the United States, with extensive information-sharing on immigration and visa applicants, refugee-vetting, and entry-exit data at the land border.”

Over the weekend, President Meric Gertler spoke out against the executive order.

“The strength of research and teaching at the University of Toronto has always been based upon our ability to welcome the most talented individuals from around the world, and the freedom of our faculty and students to travel abroad for purposes of scholarship and study," Gertler said. “Actions that impede this would be terribly harmful to our academic community, and to Canadian research and scholarship more broadly.

“The idea of targeting and restricting the travel of individuals on the basis of their nationality or birthplace is antithetical to everything we stand for as an institution and a country.”

Read how U of T is keeping close watch on U.S. travel restrictions

Emerging scholars at the university are also offering analysis, with op-eds calling on Canada to do more.

Simon Frankel Pratt and Craig Damian Smith, PhD candidates in political science wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star, saying that by banning refugees, and specifically targeting Muslims, Trump has made the United States a security liability. Pratt researches counterterrorism, intelligence and national/international security. Smith researches the connections between irregular migration systems and regional security.

Both argued that refugees and asylum seekers often provide a crucial source of intelligence on security threats like terrorism and transnational organized crime, and now Trump’s ban among other things “harms information-sharing and undermines the campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. has just hamstrung its abilities to gain vital counter-terrorist threat intelligence, and as part of the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing partnership, Canada also loses out.”

Read: banning refugees harms U.S. security

Lama Mourad, another PhD candidate in political science, also wrote an op-ed for the Toronto Star, tapping into her own personal experiences as a child of refugees and her research into how Lebanon has responded to the Syrian refugee crisis, to call on Trudeau to repeal the Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S.

Read: Trudeau should repeal refugee agreement with U.S.

Gilbert is also calling for the rescinding of both the Safe Third Country Agreement and the Designated Country of Origin status.

“The United States can no longer be considered a safe country,” Gilbert said. “We need to make it easier for vulnerable peoples in the United States to seek refuge in Canada.

“The prohibition against refugees further underscores the ways that this vulnerable group is increasingly securitized, that is, characterized as a security risk. With the sweep of a pen, the most at risk are deemed to be the most risky. And this is despite the fact that no acts of terrorism on U.S. soil have been associated with refugees in more than four decades. This is not evidence-based decision making.”

In his statement, the Faculty of Law's Iacobucci said people are continuing to engage in “in ways small and large” in efforts related to the travel ban.

“Universities are grounded on the simple, incontrovertible premise that ideas matter,” Iacobucci said. “Our community, and others, will continue to provide great and good ideas to counter the small and the bad.”

Course evaluations: report cards for your professors

geoff.vendeville — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 16:48:28 +0000

Course evaluations: report cards for your professors

geoff.vendeville Wed, 11/30/2016 - 11:48

Cutline

Lera Nwineh, a double major in philosophy and political science, talks about a prof that has made a huge impact on him this year

Geoffrey Vendeville

Author legacy

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Undergraduate Education

Faculty of Arts & Science

Political Science

Teaching

Learning

University of Toronto students can now fill out online course evaluations, sharing their ideas about what works – and what needs work – in the lecture halls and labs across campuses.

Faculty – like David Roberts, an assistant professor, teaching stream, of urban studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science – say that feedback makes a big difference.

After reading one criticism about how his course on cities and pop culture was too focused on North America, Roberts says, he added a week on Godzilla and monster movies in post-war Japan.

And when students said they had trouble understanding the takeaways from assigned reading, Roberts began providing questions with the readings – to help students read more effectively.

“There are lots of ways that we as professors learn to do our jobs better because of the feedback we get from the students,” he says.

But what does it feel like to read the evaluations?

“It just reminds you of being a student again where you take a deep breath before you check your mark. It's the same thing. These are our marks, in some capacity."

Assistant Professor David Roberts of urban studies says course evaluations help him improve lessons and reading material

Teodora Pasca, a third-year double-major in criminology and ethics, society and law, says often students get busy studying for exams and forget to fill out the evaluations.

But she usually makes it a point to set aside time for the evaluations. She says it's important to give professors feedback to improve the quality of teaching next year or to compliment a great instructor.

This year, she plans to praise a teacher whose course on policing made her want to delve deeper into the subject.

“I think those are the best profs – the ones who encourage you to find out more,” she said.

U of T News asked students to write a note to their favourite prof – see a photo gallery of the results:

Ryan Hurl in the department of political science says the best comments are those that help him improve the course – when students point out gaps in the reading material, for example.

Because he teaches a large introductory course on American politics, he says he also appreciates when students say when they have already covered a topic on the syllabus in high school – or when their professor’s pop culture references are a little dated.

“As I head into my mid-40s, I think of the present as anything that happened since 1996. You forget that young people don’t see the world that way,” he says.

Read about last year's course evaluations

All evaluations are confidential.

A sense of humour occasionally comes in handy. Years ago, Hurl says, he received a fashion critique comparing his style to that of Napoleon Dynamite but “that was in the early 2000s so maybe my clothes have gotten better since then.”

And professors say they cherish constructive and positive comments.

“Maybe some students feel bad sending a direct email to say they’ve enjoyed the course,” Hurl says. “Every time that happens it feels great, but I’ll take anonymous praise as well.”

Learn more about course evaluations and how to complete them

Gender equity at the University of Toronto

lanthierj — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 11:52:52 +0000

Gender equity at the University of Toronto

lanthierj Fri, 09/30/2016 - 07:52

Cutline

“We have an incredibly rich diversity of students, and we want to ensure our faculty and staff more closely reflect our student body," Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr says (photo by Ken Jones)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Author legacy

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

Topic

The University of Toronto released a report today that shows how far the university has come in hiring, retaining and promoting female faculty in the past decade – and identifies areas where women continue to be under-represented.

“A great international university is strengthened when we have the views and talents of a broad, diverse range of people committing to the generation of knowledge and the teaching of our students,” said Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr.

“We have an incredibly rich diversity of students, and we want to ensure our faculty and staff more closely reflect our student body so that our students can find inspiration about the kind of opportunities that are available to them.”

Regehr said she expects the data in the Gender Equity and Pathways to Leadership report to trigger conversations across the three campuses, helping administrators improve the gender makeup of their faculty.

It’s just one of several initiatives underway at the university addressing diversity in U of T’s faculty ranks, Regehr said, adding the university plans to release updated data annually, along with race-based statistics once those become available.

“It’s about transparency,” said Sioban Nelson, vice-provost of academic programs and faculty and academic life.

“You can see different disciplines which have long struggled to attract women, as well as some divisions that traditionally have more gender disparities in the ranks between men and women. That data is now at the disposal of divisions to use when they’re doing their academic planning. We’re keen to support academic divisions so they can do that analysis, make those priorities, and have the strategies to ensure that they can attract the most diverse pool from which to hire and retain outstanding faculty.”

Other initiatives include a University Fund allocation, launched by the provost’s office in the spring, setting aside $1.5 million to help departments pay for salaries of diverse faculty from under-represented groups who are hired this year, particularly Indigenous faculty, racialized faculty, and women in STEM fields. Twenty positions were filled almost immediately, and another 10 positions were added.

The university has also joined the National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development, which provides support for junior and mid career faculty, as well as graduate students. This organization offers many resources for women and racialized faculty in fields where there may be few. An updated employment equity survey has also begun to collect data on race.

Faculty

‘Incredible leadership’: U of T provost Cheryl Regehr leaves an enduring legacy

After a harrowing escape from Sudan, U of T scholar Nisrin Elamin calls on the world to pay attention

Highway death toll signs associated with more crashes, researchers find

Read more about the study in the Los Angeles Times

U of T to implement salary increase for more than 800 women faculty members

See the joint statement issued by the university and UTFA

U of T mentorship program helps Black youth pursue post-secondary education

Take a stand: a U of T historian shares her story of being a young refugee

Ten U of T social media stars to follow

Sabrina Cruz NerdyAndQuirky

Dr. Mike Evans DocMikeEvans

Danielle Martin @docdanielle

Jonathan Sun @jonnysun

Renée Hložek @reneehlozek

Aisha Ahmad @ProfAishaAhmad

Adrian Phiffer @officeofadrianphiffer

Jeffrey Dvorkin @jdvorkin

Joshua Gans @joshgans

Sarah Kaplan @sarah_kaplan

University of Toronto faculty, experts and students respond to Trump's travel ban

Read the complete memo

Read the Globe and Mail story about U of T efforts

Read the complete statement

Read the complete statement

Read more about the PhD student denied entry to the U.S.

Read the Globe and Mail story about Ehsan

Read how U of T is keeping close watch on U.S. travel restrictions

Read: banning refugees harms U.S. security

Read: Trudeau should repeal refugee agreement with U.S.

Course evaluations: report cards for your professors

U of T News asked students to write a note to their favourite prof – see a photo gallery of the results:

Read about last year's course evaluations

Learn more about course evaluations and how to complete them

Gender equity at the University of Toronto

Read more about the survey

Read more about Connections and Conversations

Look through additional data on women in U of T’s tenure stream