Names in the News

 

The Globe and Mail published an article on March 23 about Concordia’s $350-million construction and how it was made possible by a bond issue. Vice-Rector Services Michael Di Grappa and Peter Bolla, Executive Director, Facilities Management, and Jerry Tomberlin, Dean, John Molson School of Business, were all quoted. The article said that $2 billion in bonds has been issued over the past three years, mainly to large universities.

Bart Simon (Sociology/Anthropology), author of Undead Science: Science Studies and the Afterlife of Cold Fusion (2002) was interviewed by the Salt Lake [Utah] Tribune about the somewhat flaky image of ongoing interest in this holy grail of physicists. In 1989, scientists at the University of Utah claimed to have achieved cold fusion, which involves achieving nuclear energy at a much lower temperature than normally required, but it was soundly debunked. Simon told the Tribune that had cold fusion been debated in the scientific literature before it was torn apart in the mainstream media, it might have survived as a respectable field of study.

Simon was quoted on a quite different subject in La Presse recently. In an article on what parents need to know about their children’s involvement in computer games, Simon said that it’s not like watching a movie with your child. Games are learned by playing. Parents should put in a few hours at the keyboard — and, Simon said, having played Pac Man as a teenager won’t do. Simon has started a new academic initiative called GameCode (see CTR, March 19).

Danielle Marchessault (Geography/Planning/Environment) was credited in the Journal de Trois-Rivières with setting up 70 plots of land for the purpose of communal gardening projects in Cap-de-la-Madeleine and Trois-Rivières.

The new book by Lillian Robinson, principal of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute for women’s studies, was noted in The Gazette. The book, called Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes, looks at the mythology behind bosomy comic icons like the Invisible Woman, She-Hulk or Canada’s little known Nelvana of the Northern Lights.

Also in The Gazette, Martin Martens (Management) was interviewed by Peggy Curran about his projected student field trip to the Antarctic. In an earlier issue, he commented on the strategy used by Norman Hébert, Jr., who owns several car dealerships at the Complexe de l’Auto Rive-Sud under different names to minimize risk and reach a broader market.

Suresh Goyal (Decision Sciences/MIS) was quoted in Paul Delean’s investing strategy column in The Gazette. He was one of a number of readers who wrote in to disagree with an investment professional who said investing is too complicated for the average person. Goyal and others told Delean that alternatives to managed mutual funds, i.e., low-cost index funds and exchange-traded funds, minimize management expenses and are well worth the trouble.

Paula Wood-Adams and Nadia Bhuiyan (Mechanical/Industrial Engineering) were featured by Stephanie Whittaker in an article published in The Gazette and subsequently in the Ottawa Citizen about women making their careers in engineering. Hany Moustapha, an executive at Pratt & Whitney who is also director of the Concordia Institute for Aerospace Design and Innovation, told Whittaker that women make up 40 per cent of the 50 students at CIADI because of female applicants’ communications and teamwork skills.

In the Globe and Mail, Michel Magnan (Accountancy) said that the fact that Nortel cut its work force by about two-thirds from early 2001 through 2003 could have contributed to the accounting problem it is now facing. Magnan was profiled in the March 2004 issue of CA magazine in an article entitled “Profs of the Profession.” He discussed one of his projects identifying determinants of corporate environmental reporting across social-political setting. He was also interviewed by Finance about supplement Employee Retirement Plans for executives and how this is just the tip of the iceberg as not everything is fully disclosed.

On CBC Radio’s Home Run, Jordan Le Bel, who is a chef as well as a professor of marketing, was interviewed on the history of Irish food, which includes more than spuds.

David Bernans (CSU) is featured in a new documentary, Waiting for Martin, which premiered in the Hall Building recently. The Ottawa Citizen said, “It’s a strident political film given at times to juvenile media stunts to provoke reactions from authorities and Liberal party officials, who continually deny Mr. Bernans access to [PM Paul] Martin. But it raises questions about Mr. Martin’s rise to the top, the direction the country is heading, and the lack of a strong opposition.”