Is this the right thing to do?

Some of you might have heard of the plans to sell half of the UNB woodlot off to developers. I honestly have never been there, but it seems like a bad idea. I've heard that UNB has one of the best forestry faculties in the country. I would expect the woodlot is an invaluable resource to this faculty. Developing it would have a negative impact. UNB really should celebrate and advertise its strengths, not hide them, or atrophy them. Virtually no one hears anything but the engineering faculty really advertised. Thing is, UNB Engineering, while good, is only in the middle of the pack, where faculties where we're really tops or close nationally, like Forestry (or Computer Science) don't get near the attention they deserve, and people only really find out that they're really great ... after they go to UNB. Through my own university search, and talking to people still in high school, UNB has this reputation as the place people from New Brunswick go because they can't get into anywhere better. It really is undeserved, and the university is not fixing it.

Oh my ...

There was a really big college shooting at Virginia Tech today ... shocking and horrifying - not much info out yet, but here's one article.

PS - This is my 100th post. Whoo-hoo! Wish I had a better topic.

Cool UNB reasearch

A friend of mine found this on Slashdot - its something cool happening at my school - and majorly useful I expect - more portability for hydrogen is good:

“The challenge is to find a safer, more efficient and economical way to store hydrogen so that it can be released on demand,” explained chemist Sean McGrady, the lead researcher on the project. “The way to do this is to turn hydrogen into a compound — a solid — so you can use it when you want, safely, in the amount you want.”

Hydrogen gas is typically stored under pressure in large metal cylinders, approximately four feet high. These cylinders are heavy and expensive to transport. Since they are under pressure, they also pose a safety hazard.

“We’ve reached a milestone with our ability to condense hydrogen into a usable solid,” said Dr. McGrady. “The next step is to produce a safe, compact storage system for the compound that is both lightweight and affordable.”

The full release is worth reading, but the gist of it is here.

The Premier is giving me free money!

Well, it appears Shawn Graham's Liberals are following through on their election promises, and giving all New Brunswick students attending university full-time at a New Brunswick public university free money. $2,000 to be precise. I'm happy ...

Nice to see this is getting attention

Hmm ... UNB made the news again, this time for not having an accessible campus - its true - I am lucky enough not to be disabled, but I wouldn't be attending UNB if I was. There is a young man in a wheelchair in one of my classes, and he's perpetually late, likely because he probably has to go halfway around campus to find a route that uses ramps, not stairs, to get up the hill. There are large numbers of rooms that simply cannot be reached without using stairs, and many other places where one would have to go far out of their way to find a path without stairs. I would agree with the writers of the CBC article that the university could, and should, be doing more to make the campus accessible.

Maclean's University Survey Failing

I just started my first week at my new school, the University of New Brunswick, and I was e-mailed a message that UNB is following many other schools in pulling out of the annual Maclean's university survey. The survey is a tool that has been used to rank Canadian universities for years, and is (was?) fairly well regarded by potential students. This has changed with the large scale university pullout - the school's main beefs are that the rankings are general for the entire school, instead of focusing on faculty, and inaccuracies in statistics gathering (small sample sizes for instance). Generalizing would work better in America, but in Canada you tend to apply more to the faculty more than you apply to the school (my acceptance letters all read along the lines of "The faculty of Computer Science is pleased to welcome you to [insert school here]), leading to an inaccurate picture of the school. These schools are not just angry at being low on the lists either. The University of Toronto, one of the first to withdraw, was ranked first in its category in last year's survey. (Interestingly, Maclean's still has links to the university ranking pages on its homepage)

Roughly half of the universities included in the last survey have withdrawn, listed here with their rankings (by number of schools in their classification - eg. 3/11 for the third ranked school of eleven - there are some ties) in the last survey: University of Toronto (1/15), McMaster University (11/15), University of Ottawa (12/15), University of British Columbia (4/15), Simon Fraser University (3/11), University of Alberta (6/15), University of Calgary (14/15), University of Lethbridge (13/21), University of Manitoba (15/15), l'Universiti de Montrial (7/15), Dalhousie University (13/15), Brandon University (16/21), Brock University (14/21), Laurentian University (19/21), l'Universiti de Moncton (15/21), Trent University (8/21), Carleton University (8/11), Concordia University (8/11), Queen's University (5/15), University of Windsor (11/11), York University (10/11), University of Western Ontario (not sure), and University of New Brunswick (7/11).