Students more than welcome says Congress

 

Dear Editor,

 

While I was pleased to see the news article on Congress 2009 called “Academics flood Carleton” in the last issue of the Charlatan, I was very disappointed to read your editorial entitled “Students snubbed.” In my view this completely misrepresents the facts.

 

The Congress of the Humanities and the Social Sciences comprises the annual meetings of some 70-odd individual academic societies in Canada, and these meetings are intended in the first instance for the society members. Membership in academic societies is always open to students, and most encourage this strongly, in part by offering heavily discounted membership rates.

 

The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and Carleton University, who together sponsored Congress 2009, actually laboured long and hard to include students in the meeting. Let me outline just a handful of the ways:

Approximately 20 per cent of the thousands of research papers presented at Congress were delivered by graduate students, including many Carleton students.

 

Carleton undergrad students were also involved in the academic program, for example, Emily Crouch and Angela Crosbie (geography and environmental studies) whose work was also featured prominently in an article in the Ottawa Sun newspaper.

 

The very extensive music program was delivered almost entirely by Carleton students or recent alumni, and featured people like graduating bachelor of music student Kelly Craig, whose jazz combo performed throughout the week, and whose graduating recital closed the music program on Sun. May 31.

 

Carleton and the federation jointly sponsored Career Corner, an extensive program of workshops on topics of interest to graduate students looking for an academic career. I led one of these sessions myself, entitled “Getting your application to stand out: Teaching portfolio and hiring committee tips.”

 

The Royal Society of Canada offered to pay the registration fees for Carleton 
students who wished to attend their Wednesday session entitled “Rethinking identities in contemporary Canada.”

 

Carleton and the federation hired well over 100 Carleton undergraduate students to assist with the Congress. All were able to attend Congress events of interest to them at no charge; for example, I observed a number of Carleton students in attendance at the Friday “Breakfast on campus” event featuring Michael Geist and Susan Ormiston.

I could go on, but I think the point has been made. Students are an integral component of any academic community, and at Carleton we go out of our way, both financially and otherwise, to support their participation.