GRADZETTE THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA’S GRADUATE STUDENT MAGAZINE JUNE 2015
Students, staff mourn ‘death of education’ as budget passes Page 3
GRADZETTE THE UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA’S GRADUATE STUDENT MAGAZINE
JUNE 2015
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Gradzette c/o The Manitoban Newspaper Publications Corporation 105 University Centre University of Manitoba Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2N2 General inquiries and advertising Phone: (204) 474.6535 Fax: (204) 474.7651 Email: editor@gradzette.com Editor: Marc Lagace Copy Editor: Bryce Hoye Designer: Marc Lagace Contributors: Marc Lagace, Leila Mostaço-Guidolin, Beibei Lu Cover: Beibei Lu
The Gradzette is the official student magazine of the University of Manitoba’s graduate student community and is published on the first Monday of each month by the Manitoban Newspaper Publications Corporation.
The Gradzette is a democratic student organization, open to participation from all students. It exists to serve its readers as students and citizens. The magazine’s primary mandate is to report fairly and objec¬tively on issues and events of importance and interest to the graduate students of the University of Manitoba, to provide an open forum for the free expression If you have a passion for writing, jourand exchange of opinions and ideas, and to stimulate nalism, photography, or illustration meaningful debate on issues that affect or would oththe Gradzette is looking for individuerwise be of interest to the student body and/or society als to get involved with the producin general. tion process of the U of M’s graduate student paper. The Gradzette serves as a training ground for students interested in any aspect of journalism. Students and The Gradzette currently offers 10 other interested parties are invited to contribute. Please cents per word for freelance articles, contact the editor listed above for submission guide$7 per photo/graphic used, and $30 lines. for images used on the cover. FreeThe Gradzette reserves the right to edit all submissions lancers will be added to a contact and will not publish any material deemed by its editoripool and emailed with potential aral board to be discriminatory, racist, sexist, homophobic ticle, photo, or graphic assignments or libelous. Opinions expressed in letters and articles are when they become available. solely those of the authors. Interested applicants please send The Gradzette is a member of the Canadian University your resume and at least two (2) rePress, a national student press cooperative with memcent work samples to editor@gradbers from St. John’s to Victoria. zette.com. All contents are ©2014 and may not be reprinted without the express written permission of the Manitoban Newspaper Publications Corporation.
FREELANCE
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‘The death of education’
Students, faculty sound off as U of M board of governors passes budget cuts Marc Lagace A small congregation of staff and students gathered outside the Alan A. Borger Sr. Executive Conference Room on May 19 to eulogize the University of Manitoba. The mock funeral was held an hour before the University of Manitoba board of governors were scheduled to meet in the Engineering and Information Technology Complex conference room to pass an operating budget and financial plans for the 2015-16 academic year.
university administration announced a plan to cut faculty and non-academic unit budgets by roughly four per cent across the board last November.
“Education has been sick for a long time— centuries really—and although it made a brief recovery through the 60s and 70s, it has been on a quick and painful decline ever since,” said Naill Harney, treasurer for the Canadian Federation of Students–Manitoba and a This was the latest in a series of rallies since member of the Student ActionNetwork, the
TOP: Just a few of the tombstones set up in the Engineering Complex atrium for the funeral. BOTTOM: Naill Harney eulogizes the University of Manitoba in front of a mock coffin 3
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organizers of the funeral.
said that while administration invited faculty “Today, our university passes a budget so into their discussion on the university’s longseverely toxic that it is fatal to our university’s term strategic plan, these massive budget cuts health. Today, our education has passed away.” have come as a shock. The U of M made $14.4 million in overall “[At no point] when that strategic plan was budget cuts to the upcoming fiscal year. Of being discussed within faculties was there any that, $8 million will come from faculties, who indication that agreement to that strategic plan were told to find ways to cut four per cent off would result in $14 million-worth of cuts, their bottom line. In turn, the university has and $8 million-worth of cuts to just faculties budgeted $8.8 million to invest into upgrading alone,” he said. classroom and lab technology. Hudson said he would like to see the university “I think the first death was definitely adopt a more open model for drafting it’s transparency and democracy on our campus,” budgets in the future, with more consultation said Matthew Brett, one of the organizers of provided for students and faculty to outline the event. “We still don’t even know what their priorities. these cuts are going to look like in different “Municipalities have participatory budgeting faculties and departments, that is not how a models, other universities have participatory university—a public institution—ought to be budgeting models where there really is governed, and we’re not going to stop until we consultation. Where there really is unit-level see serious changes. conversations about where are your priorities, “We’re not going anywhere. This budget is where do you want to build, where do you getting adopted, yes, but we’re still going to think that there is some room if we need to do cuts,” said Hudson. fight it every step of the way.” Lack of consultation and transparency has been an ongoing issue regarding this budget. Mark Hudson, incoming president of the University of Manitoba Faculty Association,
“That should obviously include students as well. What do you want? Do you want nice classrooms, or do you want to have a class to choose to take? And I don’t think that there
“Pretty classrooms, pretty laboratories... with no students and no professors.”
Photos by Marc Lagace
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– Cameron Morrill, Asper School of Business associate professor and former UMFA president
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was that kind of consultation.”
and laboratories,” Morrill said.
International students will likely be the most affected by the new budget, as they will see their tuition fees increasing by 10 to up to 18 per cent. This will cause problems for students already studying at the U of M with a set budget allocated for education. With faculties offering fewer sections for courses offered, there may be headaches for international students trying to meet credit hour criteria required for full-time student visas.
“Pretty classrooms, pretty laboratories—with no students and no professors. I hoped I’d never live to see this.”
“These cuts are serious, and they have effects on people’s lives. International students, I think, are going to get hit very hard,” said Brett. Cameron Morrill, an associate professor in the Asper School of Business, offered a poignant illustration of how these cuts will directly affect a student’s access to education at the U of M. Due to last year’s cuts, Morrill said Asper was forced to turn away 224 students from other faculties who were interested in studying accounting.
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Radhika Desai, a professor in the faculty of political studies, said the point of pursuing a post-secondary education has been lost amidst administration’s attempts to cutback. “Ultimately, the reason to have an education, to keep education alive was never to make more money,” said Desai. “Yes of course it helps societies to become more productive, but not in any sort of direct way. So the more we orientate towards money in all respects, is another instrument—a very blunt one—in which education has been murdered.”
The board of governors passed the 2015-2016 budget, with University of Manitoba Graduate Student Association president Kristjan Mann one of only two voting members objecting. University president David Barnard has said “We’re going to cut $8.5 million from the that the university community should expect faculties who deliver the courses and the another round of similar budget cuts next year. programs to our students. And we’re going to The full 2015-16 operating budget is available spend $8.8 million in renewing the classrooms be viewed by the public online.
Get your research featured in the GRADZETTE Are you a graduate student eager to promote your research and provide exposure for your work in the master’s or doctoral program? The Gradzette is looking for individuals interested in participating in our ongoing “Researcher Profile” column, which seeks to showcase important and exciting U of M research for a larger audience. If you would like to be featured in an upcoming “Researcher Profile,” please contact editor@gradzette.com with details regarding your field of study, a short blurb about your current research, and any pertinent contact information for interview purposes.
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Mohammad Rabbi looks over test results in his labspace in the Apotex Centre on the Bannatyne Campus. Photo by Leila Mostaço-Guidolin
Small molecule, big hope: Innovating inflammatory bowel disease therapy Researcher Profile: Mohammad Fazel Alam Rabbi Leila Mostaço-Guidolin
Imagine living with a chronic inflammation of all or part of your digestive tract. Add some symptoms, such as severe diarrhea, pain, fatigue, and weight loss. Medication? Forget it. There is no cure to this condition. It doesn’t sound very encouraging, does it? The unfortunate part of this story is that this disease exists and it is called inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). IBD primarily includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, which can lead to debilitating and sometimes lifethreatening complications. Luckily, there are some researchers working very hard to find drugs and therapies that might help to alleviate the symptoms and hopefully lead to the cure of such complicated disease.
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Mohammad Rabbi, a PhD. candidate in the department of immunology and internal medicine, is one such researcher who is working under the supervision of professor Jean-Eric Ghia. “IBD is thought to arise secondary to a genetically determined susceptibility to inflammation triggered by unknown environmental factors,” Ghia explains in his U of M research profile. “The most common course of disease is one of recurrent relapses. The disease and relapses include behavioural, neuroimmune, endocrine and enteric neuronal dysregulation, all of which may be interconnected.” Rabbi has been studying how a small peptide
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relapsing intestinal disorders of complex pathogenesis … including Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). IBD is the most “Mucosal inflammation in inflammatory bowel common and serious chronic inflammatory disease patients is characterized by an alteration condition of the gastrointestinal tract. of Chromogranin A (CgA) production. CgA is recognized as a neuroendocrine tumor marker Approximately 15 out of 100,000 Canadians are present in the enterochromaffin cells (EC) and affected by each disease, according to Rabbi. can serve as a prohormone for shorter bioactive “Current treatments for IBD address the fragments,” Rabbi said. symptoms and are not curative, and they have EC cells are found in the epithelia tissue of the potentially serious side effects. Thus, new, digestive tract and the respiratory tract. They effective and safer therapies are required,” said are distributed widely in the epithelium of the Rabbi. stomach, small bowel, and colon. “As the cause of IBD is not well understood, “A certain portion of CgA is highly conserved the elucidation of new regulatory pathways throughout evolution suggesting that it has implicated in the IBD’s pathogenesis will have great potential in the development of new important biological functions,” said Rabbi. therapeutic strategies” Rabbi. Two peptides (short chains of amino acid) derived Rabbi’s research is highly novel, and they expect from CgA, catestatin and its short version called it to lead to new diagnostic markers in IBD and cateslytin, are known to have antimicrobial and to development of new antibacterial peptides. chemotactic properties. The vision of Rabbi and his supervisor is To explain the role of the peptides that he has to develop a better understanding of the been studying, Rabbi highlighted some aspects pathogenesis of IBD and, in so doing, to develop of the disease: new treatment paradigms that are both safer and “Inflammatory bowel diseases are chronic, more effective than current treatment options. can affect monocytes, which seems to have antimicrobial activity.
Rabbi’s research has the potential to provide new theraputic treatments for thousands of Canadians living with inflammatory bowel diseases. Photo by Leila Mostaço-Guidolin
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Congratulations! To the graduating class of 2015 Photos by Beibei Lu
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THE GRADZETTE BULLETIN BOARD CAMPUS BEAUTIFICATION DAY 2015 The University of Manitoba is looking for volunteers to help clean up and beautify the Fort Garry campus on Thursday, June 4 and the Bannatyne Campus on Friday, June 5. Activities will include planting flowers, edging trees, picking up litter, raking leaves and twigs and spreading wood mulch. Physical Plant staff will be on site coordinating everything and providing garbage and recycling bags as well as a limited number of rakes, shovels and litter picking tools. Volunteers are encouraged to come with their own pair of work gloves and their own rakes, shovels or hand trowels. Lunch and refreshments will be provided courtesy of Aramark, and volunteers will be entered to win prizes, including a grand prize pair of airline tickets to anywhere West Jet flies in Canada or the continental USA. For more information, please email campbeau@umanitoba.ca.
U OF M RESEARCHER WINS WESTERN CANADA 3MT PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD Back in February, Rebecca DeLong Dielschneider wowed both the judges and the audience at the U of M Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition with her presentation “Lysosomes as targets in Leukimia.” She walked away with both first place and the People’s Choice Award. Dielschneider qualified for the Western Canadian 3MT competition, hosted by Thompson River University. While there, she won the People’s Choice Award again, and joined 10 other presenters for the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies People’s Choice award. Congratulations to Rebecca for getting her research recognized on the national stage! If you missed it, you can CLICK HERE to check out the Gradzettes’ coverage of the U of M 3MT competition from our March 2015 issue on the Gradzette website.
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