Now it's 'St. Paul's University College'

based on a news release from the UW media relations office

St. Paul's United College at the University of Waterloo now is officially St. Paul's University College, a name change that reflects the growing academic bent and international thrust of the residential teaching institution.

St. Paul's, which continues as an affiliated institution with the University of Waterloo, teaches Waterloo students courses in international development, world religions, spirituality and personal development, and native studies. The photo at top shows the college building as it appeared in 2003 with its former title.

"We are changing our name, not our historic values,” says principal Graham Brown. “St. Paul's University College expresses more effectively to our audience the type of education we provide and ensures that all who wish to participate are welcome. The University of Waterloo, alumni and the United Church of Canada have been very supportive of this change. Perhaps most important of all is that the name change coincides with exciting new educational initiatives by St. Paul's in co-operation with the faculty of environment that are attracting excellent new students to the university."

The university college partners with the faculty of environment in offering Waterloo students a bachelor of environment degree in international development. The degree program, which provides students with environmental knowledge so that they can plan sustainable projects, features an eight-month international field work placement.

Waterloo students — both undergraduate and graduate — can live in the 190-bed residence at St. Paul's. They can also join an environment living learning community at the university college.

As well, St. Paul's provides students with the opportunity to live in La Bastille, the French-floor residence. Students plan French culture events and they attempt to speak French on the floor at all times.

St. Paul’s becomes the last of the four institutions traditionally known as “church colleges” to put the word “university” into their names. The others are St. Jerome’s University, Renison University College, and Conrad Grebel University College.

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After a trip, some notes on Trois-Rivières

I wonder how many Daily Bulletin readers knew until this moment that Trois-Rivières, a swinging town halfway between Montréal and Québec City, was the “Cultural Capital of Canada 2009”. That’s according to the federal government, anyway. I learned about this honour (for which Trois-Rivières apparently nosed out Kitchener) when I stopped there for some eighteen hours during my vacation travels last month. I’m back on campus now, and hope readers will indulge me in a few remarks about where I’ve been.

Visiting Trois-Rivières, I just about had time to admire the landmark Laviolette Bridge, eat an Italian dinner, and watch a low-budget little parade that was part of the “cultural capital” celebrations and included folks in costume paying tribute to the city’s pioneers. This year is the 375th anniversary of the community — which means that when Waterloo was established as a town in 1857, Trois-Rivières had already outgrown its bicentennial. No wonder the downtown includes an arrondissement historique.

On the way back to my motel, just so I could say that I’d done it, I took a drive around the main campus of UQTR, the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. This institution is probably best known at Waterloo for its Patriotes, who face the Warriors from time to time in hockey and basketball, but academically it boasts a sizeable engineering school, research institutes focusing on pulp and paper technology and hydrogen energy, and a school of chiropractic (said to be the only one at a public university in North America), among other assets. On the central campus (pictured), I noticed two landmarks of interest: a towering wind turbine, and an old puddingstone tower that once served as a windmill beside the St. Lawrence.

The whole experience reinforced an idea that I’ve held for many years, which is that we in English Canada — even in the academic world, where you’d think there would be a fair amount of interchange quite apart from a hockey rivalry — really know very little about what goes on in French Canada. I presume the same is true in the other direction. Back when I was editing the Gazette, and as far back as the 1970s when UW provided some support to help the Université de Sherbrooke develop Canada’s second university co-op program, I’ve wondered whether there might be something that campus publications could do to help bridge the gap, but I still don’t know what it is.

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. . . and campuses passed along the way

I paid a visit to one other campus during my vacation trip: the picturesque and historic Dartmouth College, which is not in Nova Scotia, as somebody thought when I first mentioned it, but in Hanover, New Hampshire. Dartmouth is one of the eight Ivy League institutions, and although it has such amenities as an engineering school and a business school, my tourist-style visit was really to the original liberal arts college that’s at the heart of Dartmouth and that surrounds Hanover’s village green.

I narrowly escaped getting a parking ticket while I was there (if you think parking is tough on this campus, you should have a look at that one) and I walked past the stern façade of Dartmouth Hall with its construction date emblazoned on the front, 1784. No surprise that I spent quite a long time in the bookstore, which opens off the village’s main shopping street, and perhaps no surprise that I took a brief look inside the picturesque Baker Library, the iconic building at the head of the green.

Dartmouth is celebrating a new president this summer — Jim Yong Kim, an AIDS researcher who arrives from the Harvard medical school — and the lobby of Baker Library featured an exhibit about the retiring president. That’s James Wright, who had been a history professor and administrator at Dartmouth for some forty years.

Otherwise, there wasn’t much academic content in the trip I made last month (the key word would be “vacation”), although I drove past directional signs for lots of campuses. That’s easy to do with educational institutions scattered so thickly in eastern Canada and the American northeast, and all the easier as the number of branch campuses continues to grow rapidly.

For instance, I passed through Kemptville, south of Ottawa, and caught a glimpse of a familiar logo with an unusual twist (left). What used to be known as the Kemptville College of Agricultural Technology is now an acknowledged campus of the University of Guelph. If you have occasion to order a book through Trellis, the computer system operated by the libraries of Guelph, Laurier and UW, you might notice Kemptville’s library as one of the locations to which items can be delivered (or from which items can be borrowed). Guelph also has campuses in Ridgetown and Alfred, and at Humber College in Toronto.

Finally, a note for those who ask every summer when I get back: yes, I spent some time at Chautauqua, enjoying everything from concerts to lakeside scenery. The theme lectures during the week I was there were centred on “The Brain”, and the Friday night pops concert was by an ABBA tribute band. Oh, and the answer to the other question is yes, I certainly did see some rain.

However, you gotta come home sooner or later. Back on campus, let me say many thanks to Patricia Bow, who has ensured that the Daily Bulletin appeared without interruption while I was away. Tomorrow morning I’ll remark on some of the things that seem to have been taking place at UW while I was away.

CAR

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