Dr. Robert and Andrée Rhéaume Fitzhenry Studios and Atrium (September 2015)

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.

Downtown Health campus (April/May 2015)

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.

L.R. Wilson building reaches substantial completion (December 2015)

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.

Mental Health Plan (February 2015)

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 to be replaced with Mosaic (March 2015)

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.

Dawn Martin-Hill began lobbying for a Native studies program during the final year of her undergraduate degree at McMaster 23 years ago. Her departure as director from the Indigenous Studies Program (ISP) in July was bittersweet; she leaves her post just as the program turns 20, and now takes on the new role of the Paul R. MacPherson Chair in Indigenous Studies.

But the future is uncertain for the program she once headed.

The position of director has been vacant for four months, with McMaster’s Associate Vice-President (Academic) Peter Smith stepping in as acting director.

In October, the McMaster First Nations Student Association hosted a send-off for retired elder-in-residence Bertha Skye, as well as professor Hayden King, who has accepted a position at Ryerson.

Martin-Hill’s role as Chair in Indigenous Studies is an exciting development for her, but it means her new office is in the Department of Anthropology in Social Sciences.

The ISP does not reside under any faculty, nor does it offer a degree to its students – only a combined honours option.

“There are many discussions underway on how the Indigenous Studies Program could evolve, including the possibility of a four-year degree,” said Smith.

The program is expected to get some new space in the Wilson Building, to open in 2014. Its current department office is in the basement of Hamilton Hall.

The early years

Since its infancy, the Indigenous Studies Program has stood on shaky legs.

Martin-Hill began the paperwork to set up a Native studies program shortly after former McMaster president Peter George set up a committee on Native issues.

“The program didn’t go anywhere for three years,” said Martin-Hill, who said she wanted to start a program, not simply a wellness or student services centre for Native students.

Things were also difficult for Martin-Hill at the time on a personal level.

When she was writing her dissertation, Martin-Hill was homeless and lived in a friend’s basement. After getting her PhD in anthropology, Martin-Hill was teaching 18 units, developing the program and raising two daughters.

Upon returning from maternity leave, Martin-Hill found that her contractually limited appointment no longer existed, and the position of ‘academic director’ was widely posted.

“I didn’t know if I was going to have a job,” she said.

“I look back on [that time] and I was struggling with poverty. I don’t know how I did it,” she said.

Martin-Hill applied and ended up getting the job, but the hardships didn’t stop there.

Funding troubles

It’s an elaborate process to apply to the provincial government for Aboriginal funding. There’s more paperwork than other faculties are required to complete, said Martin-Hill. And although ISP has been successful in receiving funding, she says it has been a bittersweet triumph.

ISP currently runs on Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education and Training (PSET) funding.

“PSET tripled our budget, and it was so exciting because we were going to be able to have our own recruitment officer, elders-in-residence and everything we’d dreamed of over the years,” she said. “But we pretty much lost control over where the funding was going at that time.”

“The funding is for student services – not exactly what we wanted, which was someone to promote indigenous studies. You see it all the time; no one knows we’re here,” said Martin-Hill.

“The President’s Committee wanted us to open the doors to health sciences because there were no Native doctors [at McMaster],” she said.

Martin-Hill wrote a proposal to start the Aboriginal Student Health Sciences (ASHS) office, and ISP received funds to pay a salary for someone to have an Aboriginal office in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

“It was a lot of work and it didn’t benefit ISP financially. But it was something the community [component of the President’s Committee] wanted,” said Martin-Hill.

The ASHS team works to help promote the success of current and incoming Aboriginal students in the health sciences.

What will the future hold?

In her new position, Martin-Hill no longer has the same administrative responsibilities.

“As senior faculty, I’m still here to assist in key decisions,” said Martin-Hill, who has been doing work on a stand-alone degree for the program.

“Research shows that the students want to complete a degree, and the President’s Committee has agreed. We have the application pretty much ready to go, but it needs to go through budget approval,” she said.

“We really need faculty. We’ve been asking for a very long time and it’s been a dream of ours for 20 years,” she said.

She expressed concern and hesitation about where things will go with provincial funding geared toward student services.

Still, Martin-Hill says she has faith in the Program and the views McMaster’s president Patrick Deane has expressed.

“There’s also discussion going on for a graduate program, which would be thrilling. I do think we have an excellent program and I hope we can build on that. That’s my goal.”

An architect has been chosen for McMaster’s new liberal arts building, which was announced last summer following a funding commitment from the Ontario government.

Although the details will not be public until the University’s Planning and Building Committee approves the architect later this month, the Wilson Building for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences will seek to accommodate new ways of teaching.

“We were looking for an architect who had experience in designing innovative learning spaces,” said Mohamed Attalla, the University’s Assistant Vice-President (Facility Services). “It’s part of our mandate at McMaster to develop learning space standards that meet the needs of the future.”

The traditional lecture-style teaching method may not fit with that vision, he said. The new spaces will be better suited to discussion and group work, as well as the infusion of more technology into teaching

Construction will begin in May 2013, and the building is scheduled to be complete by September 2015, when the incoming class of undergraduate students will be going into their fourth year.

The Wilson Building comes in part as a response to the ageing of the arts quad, the set of buildings adjacent to the student centre where most of the offices and classrooms for the humanities and social sciences faculties are held.

Funding for the $65-million building will come from a $45.5-million provincial grant announced last summer, $10 million donated by McMaster’s chancellor Lynton (Red) Wilson and a $1-million gift from the McMaster Association of Part-time Students. The University will cover the rest.

Wilson, the building’s namesake, donated his portion in 2007, which prompted the University to seek the remaining funds.

In addition to classrooms, the building will include lounge spaces and a performance theatre.

The building will go on the current site of Wenthworth House, which is set to be demolished at the end of the school year. The Phoenix, a bar owned by the Graduate Students Association, recently closed its Wentworth House location and will reopen above Bridges Café in the Refectory building on Sept. 4. The other tenants of Wentworth House have until the end of the year to find new homes.

A team has been assembled to consult on the building’s design. The team includes the deans of Social Sciences and Humanities, four professors from the two faculties and the McMaster Students Union’s president Siobhan Stewart.

“My priorities are whatever humanities and social sciences students deem to be appropriate for the space. I think it’s about trying to find a balance between both faculties, because they have unique needs,” said Stewart.

Stewart has consulted with Alex Burnett and Lisa Bifano, who are current students and presidents of the social sciences and humanities societies, respectively. She is pushing for two additional seats for student representatives, one for each faculty society.

“As it is now, we’re in the older building with the lead problems in the water and Internet access not reaching certain lecture halls,” said Burnett. “By constructing this Wilson Building, it’s validating that we are appreciated as an academic discipline, as opposed to being those students in the arts quad. Having updated facilities in terms of Internet and capable desks that aren’t falling apart and places where professors can actually project their slides that’s not the wall is the most universal stuff.”

In choosing an architect, McMaster also looked for someone who would be sensitive to the needs of the community, said Attalla. The Wilson Building will be situated near campus’ main entrance on Sterling Street, close to neighbourhoods where students and permanent residents cohabitate.

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