Where wannabe journalists are flocking
By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, September 15, 2011 - 3 Comments
Universities are rolling out newly minted master’s programs. Just don’t call it a profession.
Carmen Smith used to think she didn’t need graduate school. And why would she? Even before finishing her bachelor of journalism degree at Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., Smith was the publisher of a women’s magazine called Belle, which she founded.
But she changed her mind after an academic adviser told her about a new master’s in journalism program offered at King’s College in Halifax that could help her do better with her own publication. “I really thought it was interesting to see how they were developing their program around entrepreneurial journalism,” Smith recalls. “That’s why I came.”
Smith, now 22, is one of a growing number of wannabe journalists heading to master’s programs in Canada. Before 2000, there were only two degrees available in the country, at Carleton University and the University of Western Ontario. Today, there are six, with the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Wilfrid Laurier University both gearing up their own programs.
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Retaining Success
By Carson Jerema - Thursday, November 18, 2010 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments
Carleton University has found a new way to keep students from flunking out
Stephanie Hamway went from F's to A's | Photograph by Yvonne Berg
At the end of her first year at Carleton University, Stephanie Hamway was struggling with poor grades and a program she didn’t like. “I rushed into university before I fully realized what I wanted to do,” she says. But after spring finals, she got an email from the school’s Student Academic Success Centre, offering to help her create a plan to fix it. Today, in her third year, she has an A average.
Identifying at-risk students and getting them the help they need to stay on track is an obstacle all universities encounter, though some more than others. Retention rates, measured as the number of students who go on from first year to second year, range from a low of 70.3 per cent at Brandon University to a high of 95 per cent at Queen’s University.
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Student sues Carleton for broken nose
By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 3:40 PM - 3 Comments
Skidmore didn’t file his claim until four years later
A former Carleton University student who was “viciously and brutally assaulted” inside a campus dorm is suing the school for failing to protect his safety. In a case that could force every university to ramp up security, David Skidmore claims Carleton is just as responsible for his broken nose and lingering bouts of depression as the two students who allegedly attacked him. “It was a terrifying experience,” says his lawyer, Kevin Wolf. “Things like that should never happen on a university campus.”What happened on Sept. 12, 2003, was no doubt traumatic. A first-year student at the time, Skidmore says he was punched, kicked and knocked unconscious after coming to the aid of a female neighbour who was “being harrassed” by two other students. But his lawsuit—which demands $750,000 from his assailants and the school—begs the obvious question: what more could Carleton have done to prevent such random fisticuffs?
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More more more meta
By Paul Wells - Friday, September 12, 2008 at 4:22 PM - 12 Comments
Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communications has a blog devoted exclusively to how the media cover the election. So you vote; politicians try to influence it; journalists cover the politicians; and the Carleton crew blogs about the journalists. Now that‘s meta!!!
But it’s an A-team: Jeff Sallot, late of the Globe; Chris Waddell of long service at the Globe and the CBC; and Paul Adams, who worked for many years at the CBC and the Globe and whose humour we all miss on campaign tours. (Early in the 1997 campaign I watched Jean Chrétien poke his head out of a train car in Montreal for a photo op. “Incredibly, this is the high point of my career,” I said, bored speechless. “I’m not surprised,” Paul replied.)
