In Nov. 2013, McMaster’s Fine Arts program received a $3 million donation—the largest donation ever made to the program—from McMaster alumnus Robert Fitzhenry to build a new addition to the studio space in Togo Salmon Hall. The space, which has not been updated since the 1960s, will be available for student use in Sept. of 2015. Named the Dr. Robert and Andrée Rhéaume Fitzhenry Studies and Atrium, the new addition will add 1,700 square feet to the studio space. The space is specially designed to let in plenty of natural light, and the atrium portion of the building will cover a courtyard workspace that will function as a reception area for students creating art. Fitzhenry graduated from McMaster with a BA in political economy in 1954. He dedicated the studio and atrium to his late wife, Andrée.
The brand new downtown health campus will be opened in spring of 2015. The building is 195,000 square feet, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified, and will provide space for 4,000 students and 450 McMaster employees. The building will see 54,000 patients per year and provide physicians to over 15,000 Hamilton residents who do not have a family doctor. This care will be provided at the Family Health Centre located on the third floor of the building, which will be a space where students can work alongside health care providers to treat patients. The campus will be located at the corner of Main and Bay Streets, beside the MacNab Transit Terminal, an easily accessible area.
The campus will also contain the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine, the School of Nursing’s nurse practitioner program, McMaster’s continuing health sciences education program, the Maternity Centre of Hamilton, Shelter Health Network, and the City of Hamilton’s Public Health Department.
The new L. R. Wilson Hall will reach substantial completion in Dec. 2015, meaning that parts of the building will be open to the public, although there will still be uncompleted areas. The building will serve as a home for liberal arts students and faculty, including the Faculties of Humanities and Social Sciences. The building will have five floors and will be 62,000 square feet in size. It will contain one large 400-seat classroom, two 100-seat rooms, and a number of smaller classrooms as well as research spaces and laboratories. In addition, the building will have a joint Social Sciences-Humanities student lounge, gardens, a cafe, a 350-seat concert hall, and a theatre space. The theatre features a unique “black box” design that can be adapted for difference performance needs. Along with student areas, the building will host the Wilson Institute for Canadian History and the Gilbrea Centre for Health and Aging, as well as McMaster’s Indigenous Studies program offices.
Wilson Hall is also LEED certified building made possible by a $45.5 million investment from the Ontario government, a $10 million donation from Chancellor Lynton (Red) Wilson, and a $1 million gift from the McMaster Association of Part-Time Students. In June 2013, construction began on the $65 million project, which will provide much needed space to liberal arts students at McMaster.
McMaster University and the McMaster Students Union have partnered to create a mental health plan that will be released on Feb. 25, 2015. The plan was first conceived at a student-led forum on mental health in April 2013 where recommendations were made to the university. Over 150 meetings held with students, staff, faculty, and groups were held to determine student needs, and five key priorities were developed.
First, the plan looks to increase the services at the Student Wellness Centre by adding one mental health support person immediately, and a second in the future depending on the budget at that time. It also hopes to focus more on students experiencing trauma, including childhood or gender-based trauma. Next, the plan will re-evaluate the policies for Student Accessibility Services, as they are over a decade old and do not properly take into account students with mental health disabilities. Third, the plan will train 100 front-line staff, including librarians, financial aid, or other staff that interact with students, in how to identify signs of mental health issues.
Internally, the university will increase coordination among services to better understand complex student cases. This will help student cases involving mental health to be better understood by the university so that students can receive the support they need. Lastly, Dr. Catharine Munn, McMaster psychiatrist and professor in the health sciences department, will be conducting research on child and young adult mental health, an area that does not have a lot of existing research. This research will be applied to the plan once completed to better understand how to serve students regarding mental health.
SOLAR and Mugsi will be replaced by a new system called Mosaic that will improve on the course selection and student account management tools. Mosaic aims to provide a platform that will serve students’ needs in one place. This includes admission status, student fees, scholarships and awards, registration, schedules, degree audits, and transcripts.
The new course selection system will assign students designated times to log on and register, without the notification that the system is full. Timetables will also be available immediately for students on the new system.
A McMaster initiative will change the way students interact with the University online.
The school is working on a project called Mosaic, an initiative that aims to replace the current business process with a new enterprise resource planning, or ERP system.
The project is set to be fully operational in the Fall of 2015, though the MUGSI/SOLAR revamp was originally slotted to launch this summer.
Mosaic is a “student service centre that will provide students with self service capabilities and one place for all their administrative information,” said Melissa Pool of the University Registrar.
Students will be able to log in and see their admission status, student fees, scholarships and awards, registration, schedules, and degree audits, according to Pool.
Students will also be able to request their transcripts online, as well as view their unofficial transcripts.
“You will be able to see your full record, as opposed to just partial like it is now,” said Pool.
MUGSI and SOLAR will be replaced with a new registration system. Students will still have designated times to log on and register, but will no longer receive that annoying message that the website is full.
“The rush to register at midnight will be replaced with staggered registration times that guarantee system access,” said Pool.
Students will be able to see their timetables immediately, and register into preferred sections if they are available.
“It really takes the anxiety out of the process,” said Pool of these changes.
However, if there is no room in your preferred section students will have to continue to check for spaces.
Staff and faculty across the University are already using a Mosaic system. This part of the project launched at the beginning of Dec. 2013 and is being used, mostly, for financial purposes such as research grant applications and awards.
The undergraduate application process will remain the same for the University but the grad school application process will be a part this new web system.
As it becomes closer to being ready for student use, Mosaic hopes to get student representatives to help in the decision-making processes.
“About 130 people are currently working on it in total,” said Sheldon Smart of Mosaic.
These people are always changing as different aspects of the project are put in motion. So far the new system has approximately 700 users per day. The project is also involved with Deloitte consulting firm, financial affairs, and University Technology Services.
Smart did not comment on how much exactly this project will be costing and if these costs will be affecting students directly. Students will not see the cost of Mosaic specifically on their list of student fees, but financing for the project will be coming out of the overall budget of the University.
A couple months into the project, Smart noted that there have been anticipated challenges as the system is brand new and training for users is ongoing.
Smart and Pool both believe that this project will result in an improved experience for the McMaster student.
“We are really excited to provide this for students,” said Pool.
Callum De Maria / The Silhouette
The night of August 8,2012 was the eve to my twentieth birthday. Some may ask how much fun I had that night, or what type of crazy fun-filled events went down before I turned 20 and left my teen years permanently behind. I simply reply to them with, “my night was spent at home, anxiously awaiting the arrival of midnight.” After saying this, people often looked puzzled but understood, thinking that I was waiting until my actual birthday arrived to go out and celebrate. These people have never heard of SOLAR before, and why it is a painful system that makes life extremely difficult and stressful for McMaster students on our time off in the summer.
When I was asked why I was staying in the night, I told them I had to choose my courses for school. The first reaction I got was laughter, followed by a series of questions: “Why does it start at midnight?”, “Doesn’t that only take a few minutes?”, etc. I did not have an answer for why it starts at midnight, which can be a very inconvenient time for many students, and whether it only taking a few minutes, us McMaster students can only hope and pray. First of all, SOLAR only lets a limited amount of users on at each time, with a time limit of 45 minutes, which means you need to be prepared that night for an excruciating grind with the mouse. If you do not get on at midnight, you must be prepared to sit in front of your computer and click, hoping that at some point you make it into SOLAR - which could take hours.
Course selection is an extremely important aspect of university. One of the most crucial points in the university year is making sure on this selected night in August, you get the courses you really want to take for the upcoming year. This is absolutely vital because you do not want to be paying money for a class you will not enjoy or take seriously.
Next, after the problem has been fully recognized, they would need to alter the system to make improvements. A first simple change would be restructuring when course selection opens because as previously stated, midnight may not be the most convenient time for a student to go on to the computer and select their courses. However that is a small matter in a huge problem. SOLAR and McMaster need to be able to prioritize students into courses they need. All that would have to be done is that instead of one day, they expand it into four days so that it is first-come, first-serve based solely on your year and program. This would also assist a lot more students into getting courses they not only need, but courses they are generally interested in, as most popular courses are filled by 1 a.m. before 90 per cent of the faculty has had a chance to sign on.
As much as I have bashed SOLAR and the system throughout this article, it is not exactly easy to register 25,000+ students into courses every year, and SOLAR does make it a lot easier for the school to do this in a timely matter with little to no faults, which can be extremely undervalued.
However, SOLAR is making it easier on the school and not the students. This is like owning a restaurant for example, and being the head chef. Kraft Dinner only takes a few minutes to make and it is easy, but will you keep your customers happy by serving them Mac`N`Cheese instead of the famous steak they stepped in the restaurant for? We students pay a tuition fee so that we can improve our education and help develop a future.
In order to do so, we must be confident in the courses we enroll in, and improving SOLAR will help provide this luxury for McMaster students.
The name Haman Man probably doesn’t ring a bell for most McMaster students. While most of the other candidates have aggressive poster campaigns and a perpetual campaign headquarters in MUSC, Man has so far flown under the radar. But in this year’s presidential election, the mild-mannered fourth-year student should not be underestimated.
RELATED: Selected questions and answers from our interview with Haman
Man’s campaign, as little advertised as it may be, focuses on the pillars of accountability, accessibility, engagement, and inter-university initiatives. The reasoning behind the pillars is reflective of his own personal commitment to change, which he has tried to pursue in his own way through his years at Mac.
“One of the factors in my decision [to run] was the fact I had been trying to make a couple changes at McMaster, and the avenues I took to get those changes weren’t really fruitful,” he explained.
His decision to run was recent – he submitted his nomination form in mid-January – but he hopes to embrace the opportunity to promote his causes. Along with accessibility issues, which encompass issues including access to SOLAR at peak registration hours, Man plans to start an anti-calendar, a course calendar with student reviews, and he hopes to promote student engagement in provincial and federal government.
While Man’s range of personal interests is broad, it doesn’t translate well into a platform; he has a few major points, but the scope of his plans is unclear. And without the social media and campus presence of his competitors, widespread support for Man’s campaign is unrealistic.
Man also envisions a different future for the MSU, one that emphasizes the union’s role in advocacy. His goals are consistently more long-term; in talking to the Silhouette, he spoke often of “paving the road” for future developments and improvements. But as optimistic as his dreams may be, Man has so far been unable to compete on the same level as some of the other candidates.
At McMaster, picking courses means long waits, late nights and a whole lot of frustrated students. Two years from now, that could all be different.
Sheldon Smart, public relations manager with University Advancement, said McMaster has set June 2014 as the goal for the relaunch of its student registration process.
“MUGSI and SOLAR will be dramatically changed,” he said. McMaster’s registration system is based on 1980s mainframe technologies, and the student population has exceeded the system's intended capacity.
Smart said student registration has been prioritized in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) process. Other components of ERP include research administration, finance, human resources and business intelligence.
“It’s very important that the student experience be improved,” said Smart. “We’ve heard in surveys and student feedback that our registration process isn’t where it should be and we’re working to fix that.
Huzaifa Saeed, VP (Education) of the MSU, noted that revamping MUGSI is a much larger project than most other upgrades.
“A lot of students don’t know that MUGSI isn’t a separate module. It’s linked to other things like the registrar, student records and financial aid, so it’s very difficult to replace it,” said Saeed, who sits on the Systems Renewal Steering Committee.
Smart said there is a good chance that the renovated student administration processes will be renamed.
By the end of January 2013, the University will have a more complete picture of what changes are needed and how they will be implemented.
In order to have all systems streamlined by the end of the multi-year process, student administration and accounting must undergo changes first to lay the groundwork.
McMaster’s business process currently includes over 20 distinct systems that need to be streamlined for smoother delivery. The University wants to move toward an electronic workflow, which means student records and transcript processing will be going digital.
According to the Systems Renewal Steering Committee, McMaster is currently the only major Canadian university that has yet to adopt an ERP system.
Remember the feeling of getting your report card? McMaster was faced with that feeling this October, as the Globe and Mail published its annual Canadian University Report.
The assessment, released on Oct. 25, tried to get away from the largely data-based rankings of other organizations, instead assigning letter grades to different aspects of the university’s performance based on student surveys.
And McMaster’s administration was certainly pleased with the report card results.
“It’s extremely gratifying to be ranked by students as providing the highest quality teaching and learning experience in Canada,” President Patrick Deane told the Daily News, referring to McMaster’s first-place finish in its division for quality of teaching and learning.
Most notably, Mac ranked first in campus atmosphere, research opportunities and quality of teaching and learning, as well as second in student satisfaction, where it placed behind Western.
It also made an impression at the lower end of the large school division, placing second to last in city satisfaction and information technology. And naturally, McMaster’s infamous SOLAR system earned the university last place in course registration.
“If you take all the rankings, they add up to an interesting perspective that we’re strong, but there are some areas which need our attention,” said Deane.
The premise of the Globe’s rankings is a survey of current undergraduate students. For the 2013 rankings, 33,000 undergrads responded to a survey, and their responses, given on a scale of 1 to 9, were converted into corresponding letter grades. But the entire premise of this style of ranking is problematic, said Lonnie Magee, an economics professor at Mac.
“How would a university student be able to know about another school?” he asked. “It’s so driven by how you compare it with what you’re expecting.” He explained that since students attend only one university, such a comparison not particularly useful.
The Globe and Mail addressed this criticism in its 2012 Canadian University Report, released last October. Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, an education consulting firm that advises the Globe on the annual report, argued that student surveys are a reliable method of devising rankings.
“Another criticism [of the report] was that student[s] … had no idea what was available at any school other than their own. That’s true to some extent – but if year after year a particular institution gets results which are particularly good or particularly bad compared to other institutions of its type, then the results start to gain in validity,” Usher argued.
Magee notes that such results come from the “temptation to make the results more objective, to accumulate statistics and present them to show that your rankings are based on these ‘hard facts’ that have been collected.” He cautioned that qualitative factors like student satisfaction are tough to compare.
The Canadian University Report is one of two major Canadian university ranking publications. The other, administered by Maclean’s, is the more well-established of the two. It will release its 22nd annual rankings issue this year, while the Globe has just published its 11th.
Rather than following the Globe and Mail’s approach of a heavily student-based survey, Maclean’s compiles a number of factors to generate its rankings. Schools are divided into three categories: medical-doctoral, comprehensive and primarily undergraduate, in order to improve the comparison.
But the factors it uses for this comparison, made up largely of data from Statistics Canada and federal funding agencies, are sometimes criticized for not being entirely relevant to students or administration.
Mike Veall, an economics professor at McMaster, has published work on the effectiveness of the Maclean’s rankings. He described their methods as being a “little bit suspect in terms of gaining indicators.”
“It’s not quite clear that the indicators match quite well with what students or administrators should care about,” he said.
While there are many factors, the rankings do consider data like the number of library holdings and amount of money available for current expenses per weighted full-time-equivalent student.
McMaster has also been rated by broader, global organizations. But these, too, have their limitations.
The Times Higher Education (THE), for example, produces a rankings issue considered to be one of the best in the world.
This year, McMaster placed 88th overall in their report. But the THE also ranks by faculty, and in the “clinical, pre-clinical, and health” category, McMaster earned 14th place in the world, making it the top school in the category in Canada.
Meanwhile, QS, a British firm, ranked McMaster 152nd. A Shanghai-based organization Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) placed McMaster this year at 92nd.
International rankings methods provide a different set of criteria. While Maclean’s and the Globe consider student satisfaction, such firms as QS and THE factor in a school’s industry influence and international impact – an area where McMaster can’t compete as well, especially when factors like number of Nobel Prize winners are considered.
But in the end, a bad report card doesn’t have a huge effect on a school, Veall said. In his 2005 study, co-authored by Qi Kong, a Mac undergrad at the time, he concluded that a change in ranking has little effect on a school’s enrolment share or the entrance average of its students. A shift of one place in the rankings can, at best, change the mean entrance average by 0.3 percent, although Veall emphasized that this conclusion was “not particularly robust.”
But even though the rankings may not matter much in the end, it doesn’t mean McMaster can’t be happy with a good report card.
Official Rules
Getting started...
1. If SOLAR is full, take a drink.
2. If you see the FIPPA Notice but still get shut out, take a drink.
3. If you close SOLAR by accident, take two drinks.
4. If your browser crashes, finish your drink.
5. Take one drink for, according to Facebook, each person who picked their classes ahead of you on your selection day. Bastards.
Once in SOLAR...
6. Take a drink if SOLAR says course selection is unavailable, even though it should be.
7. Take a drink for every class you want that’s full.
8. If SOLAR doesn’t work properly with your browser, finish your drink.
And, finally...
9. When you’re done picking your classes, take a drink for every hour you spent in front of the computer.
A special thanks to Alyscia McMullin and friends
