The Black Hole

In a recent comment left on the site by SubC, a request was made to “look deeper” into the 20% number of PhDs becoming professors.  Specifically, the question was raised as to “how many that wanted an academic career in the first place actually ended up in one” and that a look into postdoctoral fellow […]

On November 30, University Affairs posted two articles  that summarise and discuss the major issues that came up in our session at the 3rd Annual Canadian Science Policy Conference: Is Canada producing too many PhDs? Yes, no and maybe The problem with PhD training in Canada It was really great to have Léo in attendance at […]

In my last blog posting, I discussed “The State of Aboriginal Learning in Canada” report and promised to talk more about potential solutions to the barriers to education faced by Aboriginal people in Canada. To that end, I have just finished reading two reports: Taking Action for First Nations Post-Secondary Education: Access, Opportunity, and Outcomes […]

For those who will be attending the conference this week and in particular those who will be attending the panel on the Education and Training of Scientists on Thursday afternoon, I have pulled together a list of popular posts on the topics that inspired the composition of the panel: The changing resources in Academia Professionals […]

QUICK REMINDER: For those that missed it, I’ll be chairing a session on the Education and Training of Scientists at this year’s Canadian Science Policy Conference in Ottawa next week.  I posted on the topic a few weeks back and would love to get more feedback from people on additional items or proposed solutions to how […]

I’ve been doing some work with the Aboriginal Health Program at my day job and it has reminded me of something that I’ve been meaning to blog about here: the rates of Aboriginal people in post-secondary education. Back when Dave and I were grad students and we were sitting around talking about “issues that face […]

In a break from normal lab routine, I’ll be dabbling in the black arts of science policy this November and running a session at the 3rd annual Canadian Science Policy Conference.  The conference runs from Nov 16th-18th and features an excellent lineup of speakers that should result in a fantastic push forward for science policy […]

I’m full of Thanksgiving dinner, so today’s posting is going to be a quick one! A friend of mine recently passed along this paper to me, as she thought it might be a useful tool in teaching research methods/statistics: Graphs for Dummies: The Troubled Geometry of Tim Hudak’s “changebook” by Jim Stanford. This paper from the […]

This summer featured our second summer series.  Last year’s “So you want to be a…” was followed up this year by “Notches in the STIC” which navigated through the key points of the Science and Technology Innovation Council’s recent report on Canadian Science.  This autumn should prove to be very busy, we’ll do our best […]

I was forwarded two articles last month (thanks Mike O!) from the world of Australian science policy.  In these articles, the debate centred on whether or not academics should be involved in making public policy.   The article that started the ball rolling was by Peter Shergold, Australia’s most senior public servant from 2003-08, who maligned the fact that […]

An excellent article appeared in University Affairs last week on a couple of programs in Canadian universities that try to address Professional Development for graduate students. In my current career as an evaluator in health care, professional development is an ongoing part of my job. In the performance planning process used by my employer, I don’t […]

At the end of August, an article popped out from Nature News that sent many PhDs and postdocs into a tailspin.  After asking 11 labs with a reputation for “working hard” and being allowed to visit just one of them, Heidi Ledford, profiled what she calls a 24/7 lab, that of high profile neurosurgeon Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa. […]

The Government of Canada has released details of its 2011 Recruitment of Policy Leaders program.   We’ve written before about becoming a public servant which contains information about this program and others in the Canadian Public Service.  If you are aware of other public service jobs for those with post secondary recruitment, please feel free to share […]

Quick Hit: The Lane Anderson Award for the best science writing in Canada has announced its finalists and a decision is expected on September 14, 2011.  Until then, consider browsing through the finalists for a glimpse at great Canadian science writing. Council of Canadian Academies:  Another Progress(?) Update In previous entries  I speculated on the […]

Two recent news stories: 1. Ottawa silences scientist over West Coast salmon study “Top bureaucrats in Ottawa have muzzled a leading fisheries scientist whose discovery could help explain why salmon stocks have been crashing off Canada’s West Coast, according to documents obtained by Postmedia News. The documents show the Privy Council Office, which supports the […]

With the goal of assessing the state of science and technology in Canada, it seems quite reasonable that the STIC report has identified the development of new knowledge as a key metric for assessing Canada’s relative and absolute performance.  The difficulty with such a task though is understanding what is meant by knowledge development – […]

Many reports have been written over the past 30 years about Canada and its R&D spending, and they clamour one after the other about Canada’s relative lack of investment into R&D.  We’ve been through periods of deep cutbacks and periods of very strong growth, yet one thing remains remarkably consistent – Canada underspends on R&D […]

In his last posting, Dave mentioned that statistic on Canada’s direct vs. indirect funding really jumped out of the STIC report. Another stat that really jumps out is something known as “Business expenditure on R&D (BERD) intensity.” BERD intensity is “the ratio of business R&D to a measure of output” – for example, business expenditures […]

One of the most obvious statistics that jumps out of the Science Technology and Innovation Council’s report is the method by which the Government of Canada elects to fund research and development. Funding was broken apart into two categories: direct funding (grants, loans and procurement) and indirect funding (tax credits and incentives) and the analysis was pretty […]

A quick break from our summer series on the STIC report to bring you some news about rules around paying trainee stipends from CIHR, NSERC and SSHRC grants. From the CIHR e-newsletter I just received: Tri-agencies harmonizing policies on stipends paid from grants The three federal granting agencies — CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC — are […]