If you teach in a business faculty or are a fan of the Globe and Mail career pages, then you'll no doubt have heard about executive coaches, also known as life coaches outside the corporate world. Simply put, a coach helps a person to identify his or her goals, personally or professionally, and the means to get there.

As last spring's convocation approached, Paul Davenport, president of the University of Western Ontario, had reason to feel apprehensive. The spring convocation is a public celebration for every university, a feel-good time when graduates are feted and their parents join them on campus.

Graduates of creative arts therapy programs need a healthy dose of the frontier spirit. The field "has been around for almost as long as psychotherapy but we're still involved in pioneering work," says Stephen Snow, coordinator of drama therapy in Concordia University's department of creative arts therapies.

Mathematician Lisa Jeffrey is a bright splash of colour and vibrant energy on a dull and dreary afternoon in Toronto. Dressed in a neat red suit with a fashionably tied scarf at the throat, she sits forward in her chair in the sitting area of the Fields Institute like an intensely focussed hummingbird.

Internationalization is a hot topic on Canadian campuses these days. Nearly every university in the country has named this a priority in its strategic plan.

Most university administrators and faculty members don't wake up in the morning or go to sleep at night thinking about quality assurance - but that could change. There is a rapidly expanding international quality assurance movement in higher education and "its influence is at work on us even if we are unaware of it," says Donald Baker, director of the secretariat of Ontario's new Postsecondary Education Quality Assessment Board.

If you want to know how far Canadian universities have come in recognizing and accommodating diversity, you could start by looking at how much information is available on the topic. A significant sign of progress is that more institutions are gathering data on the services they provide, says Donna Hardy Cox, a professor at Memorial University’s school of social work.