Milena Stanoeva
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Alex Sévigny, director of McMaster University’s Master of Communications Management Program, presented his Big Thinking lecture, “Who's driving the story? Question period, social media, and changing political communications,” to a full house yesterday. We will be making a video of his lecture available shortly.
And keep an eye out for our next Big Thinking lecture featuring Janice Keefe of Mount Saint Vincent University, who will be talking about the challenges Canada will face as its population ages in the coming decades. Registration is now open.
Harvey Weingarten, president of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario, gave a talk at the 2012 Symposium of the Ontario Research Chairs in Public Policy at York University Monday. He talked about how academics engaged in public policy research need to rethink the ways in which they communicate their findings to policy-makers, emphasizing the need to make research relevant and accessible to politicians.
Robert Weiner, a former spokesperson for the Clinton administration, and Jaime Ravenet, a senior policy analyst at Robert Weiner Associates, published an op-ed this week following President Obama’s call to train and hire 100,000 new STEM teachers. They argue that the United States needs to study the humanities just as much as STEM disciplines if it wants to stay competitive and innovative.