In Brief

 

Dans La Rue and Design Art

A vernissage was held Dec. 10 of work created by students in the Department of Design Art and high school students linked to Dans La Rue, the agency for street kids founded by Rev. Emmett Johns.

The joint initiative, launched in September 2001 as a pilot project, enjoyed such success that the following year it was included in the curriculum. The course offers Concordia students the opportunity to exchange ideas and mentor Dans La Rue students in a social and collaborative environment.

The Dans La Rue students receive multimedia training from university students, allowing them to develop skills and confidence, and explore their own visual expression.

Fresh Voices from Journalism

Congratulations to five students in the broadcast journalism program. They were among 16 winners across Canada of a contest run by the CBC called Fresh Voice.

They submitted proposals for mini-documentaries to the national competition. As winners, their proposals will be produced and broadcast on Newsworld and CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada in February.

They are Karen Biskin, Wendy Smith, Oswald Michelin, Joslyn Oosenburg and Sikander Hashimi.

JMSB students excel in UFE

Three students from the John Molson School of Business were among the 11 Quebecers who made it into the top 50 Canadian candidates writing the UFE this year. Congratulations to Jonathan Graham, Kathryn Johnston and Bradley Wells.

To become a chartered accountant, candidates must pass an intensive three-day evaluation known popularly as the UFE, short for uniform evaluation.

For the fifth consecutive year, the pass rate for Quebec candidates was higher than the national average. First-time writers in Quebec achieved a pass rate of 82.5 per cent, a result that is four points higher than the national average for the same group (78.4 per cent).

A total of 2,561 students from across Canada wrote the exam and 1,908 of them passed. Of those, 419 Quebec students were successful.

The evaluation is administered by the 16,800-member Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec. Its purpose is to measure candidates’ ability to integrate their knowledge, and to evaluate, analyze, address, synthesize and effectively communicate information. The subject matter includes assurance, taxation, information technology, risk management, corporate finance and management accounting.

Speaker on immigration

The John Molson School of Business Visiting Speaker Series for 2004-05 will present Keith Banting, a leading authority on Canadian social policy, on Wednesday, Feb. 9.

Banting has been an advisor to senior levels of government and is a former vice-president of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

He will present results of his most recent research, and has titled his talk “Immigration, Multiculturalism Policies and the Welfare State: Is there a tension between recognition and redistribution?”

The graduate programs in non-profit management and sport administration are Banting’s hosts, and he will meet with students in the DIA/DSA program before his public lecture.

Correction, addendum

In an article about gold medal winner Stephanie Fulton in our last issue (Dec. 2), we said her doctoral supervisor was Peter Shizgal. In fact, she was also supervised by Barbara Woodside. We apologize for the error.

In an article about CENPARMI, the Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence (CTR, Dec. 2), graduate students Ping Zhang and Karim Abou Moustafa were also on the team that won the Best Paper/Poster Award at a recent conference in Tokyo.