BBC audio news broadcasts from 1969 to 1986 ready for researchers

The vast collection of 9,000 hours of daily BBC World Radio News broadcasts on audio tape collected by the late Professor Denis Diniacopoulos has been preserved by the Concordia Centre for Broadcasting Studies.

The broadcasts have been dubbed digitally on several thousand CD-ROM discs, and together with their subject indexes, have been prepared for research use. The work has gone on since last year under the centre’s head of archives Professor Howard Fink.

The completion of the project is being celebrated with a reception and public lecture tomorrow afternoon in the Atrium of Samuel Bronfman House.

Professor John D. Jackson, of ConcordiaÕs Department of Sociology and Anthropology, a co-founder of the centre, will speak on “Conformists, Multi--formists and Searchers,” a report on radio use among 18-to-24-year-olds according to the birthplace of their parents.

Jackson did his study through focus groups and interviews. He was interested in how radio use interacts with identity management — in this case, how young Montrealers use the radio in relation to their ethnic background.

This is the second lecture in a series that started last year. The series is called Public Culture after Modernity, and is given this spring under the direction of sociology professor Greg Nielsen, director of the centre, in collaboration with the Culture of Cities Project.

Diniacopoulos, a communication studies professor at Concordia who died in 1997, had long been a faithful listener to the BBC World News, and he taped virtually every broadcast between 1969 to 1986.

The centre established the Diniacopoulos/BBC World News Project after his death, through matching funds from his family and the Faculty of Arts and Science.

This project includes not only the BBC News archives and the lecture series, but also a research component, and a number of substantial fellowships, both graduate and undergraduate.

For more information, contact the CCBS Web site, at
http://ccbs.concordia.ca.

John D. Jackson will speak on “Conformists, Multiformists and Searchers,” at 2:30 p.m. tomorrow, Friday, March 28, in the atrium of Samuel Bronfman House, at 1590 Dr. Penfield, corner of Côte des Neiges Rd.

Board of governors: call for nominations

The nominating committee of the Board of Governors invites nominations for representatives of the external community to serve as members of the board.

Every nomination must include a detailed curriculum vitae and a succinct statement explaining, from the perspective of the nominator, how the candidate could contribute to the university.
The nominating committee is charged with recommending members from the external community to the board of governors.

The composition of the board provides for 23 of the board’s 40 members to be representative of society outside the University. Appointments are for renewable three–year terms. There is no honorarium for service as a board member.

It is the aim of the nominating committee to maintain full membership of a responsible and effective board of governors, which is responsive to the changing needs of students, the university, and the immediate community.

Our governors must be (1) genuinely interested in education and the well–being of students and (2) energetic and actively committed to Concordia University.

Every governor is expected to serve on at least one of the standing committees of the board and may, from time to time, be involved in special projects.

In evaluating nominations, the nominating committee will take into account the candidate’s connection with Concordia, the candidate’s activities in the local community, and the complementarity of the candidate’s attributes to those of other board members.

All nominations will be acknowledged, and retained for consideration by the nominating committee in this and subsequent years.

To be considered for vacancies in the coming academic year, your nomination must be received no later than April 30, 2003. Please forward nominations, in confidence, to Danielle Tessier, Director, Board and Senate Administration, Room S–BC–320, Concordia University.

CASA co-hosts forum for student executives

Incoming and outgoing executives of Concordia’s business students association, CASA, took part in a roundtable conference with their peers from other universities from March 13 to 16.

Roundtable is held every year to ease the transition to student government, and give newly elected student leaders an opportunity to learn from others with experience. This year’s edition had the theme “ leadership in a competitive global market,” and was hosted by the Faculty of Mangement at McGill, and the École de Sciences en Gestion de l’Université du Québec à Montréal as well as Concordia’s John Molson School of Business.

The event costs about $100,000 to stage, and most of this money came from corporate sponsorship, as well as donations from the organizing schools. Over 230 delegates also paid a fee to attend. Among the speakers was Assistant Professor Martin L. Martens, an expert on the management techniques of the early 20th-century explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, who kept his ice-bound crew alive for two years in antarctic ice.

He read from the crew’s diaries to dramatize the importance of leadership.

Outgoing CASA president Peter Tragoulias said that the committee worked especially hard to offer personal formation seminars as well as sessions relating to student government issues, “ensuring that everyone took home something for themselves as well as their school.”

Communications in the spotlight

Congratulations to Derek Cassoff (Communications Officer, Arts and Science), who won a CASE I honourable mention recently for Panorama, the faculty’s monthly newsletter. It was one of six publications honoured by District I of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.

Concordia’s Marketing Communications Department also received a CASE I honourable mention in the Best Outdoor Advertising category for last year’s ads for Concordia on the transit system. The award was presented at CASE I’s annual conference in New York recently.

Chris Mota (Co-ordinator, Media Relations) will be a judge for both the RTNDA (Radio and Television News Directors’ Association) National TV News Awards and the Central Canada Radio News Awards.

Call for nominations: 2003 Graduate StudentsÕ Association election

President (1)
Vice-President (4): One each for Advocacy, Finance, Services,
External Directors from Faculty of Arts and Science (Arts-3, Science-1), Fine Arts (1), John Molson School of Business (2), Engineering and Computer Science (2)
Director registered as an independent student (1)

The nomination period runs until April 5 at 5 p.m. Voting will take place April 15-22. Nomination packages are available at the Grad House, 2030 Mackay.

Return to Kandahar airs on CBC TV

Concordia master’s student Nelofar Pazira will be featured in Return to Kandahar, a program to be aired on March 27 at 9 p.m. on CBC television.

Pazira, who was born in Afghanistan, became a well-known figure last year when she turned her concern for a childhood friend in Afghanistan into a haunting movie called Kandahar (also aired on CBC on Monday).

The film was shown at film festivals around the world, and Pazira became a passionate defender of the embattled Afghan people. Keep up the good work, Nelofar!

Shooting hoops for Cancer Society


Four Concordia students will host a three-on-three basketball tournament on Saturday, March 29 to benefit the Canadian Cancer Society.

Teams can be co-ed and single participants are encouraged to attend. Each team of three will play a minimum of two matches.

The students undertook to organize the tournament as an assignment for the course Fitness and Sport Management, taught by George Short in the Department of Exercise Science.

Student organizer Mohamed Sheikh said that the group chose the Canadian Cancer Society from a list of charities because “it’s a very worthy cause.”

He continued, the incidence of “lung cancer is increasing and it is costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”

Registration is $10 per player and all proceeds will benefit the charity. The tournament will take place between 10 a.m.-5 p.m. in the Loyola Gym, 7200 Sherbrooke St. W. For more information, call Mohamed Sheikh at 483-0778 or xuskada@hotmail.com or Carl Loubert at 962-2275.