Workplace Blog

The Globe and Mail: Alberta will pay millions to pick the world’s brains

At a time when Canadian research budgets are being slashed, Alberta is using its financial clout to scour the globe for scientific “superstars” who will be offered $20-million each to conduct research in the province for the next decade.

“We’re looking for the very best of international-calibre investigators,” said Kevin Keough, head of the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, which is spearheading the richest award of its kind in Canada, to be announced today. “I think we happen to be in a good position at this point to be able to recruit some stars to Canada.

“These are people you don’t come by everyday,” he said.

In a bid to attract up to three researchers when the first set of awards is handed out next year, the foundation will kick in $10-million at a rate of $1-million a year while the province’s three major postsecondary institutions — University of Alberta, University of Calgary and the University of Lethbridge — will match that contribution if successful in wooing a bright light.

The Chronicle NewsBlog: Hunger-Striking Professor Says He Will Eat When MIT Grants Him Tenure

A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said today he would not end his weeklong hunger strike until MIT revoked its decision to deny him tenure. “So that’s one of my demands, immediate tenure,” said James L. Sherley, an assistant professor of biological engineering, in a telephone interview. “Nothing else will do. Nothing else will stop me from this hunger strike.”

If he were granted tenure, Mr. Sherley said, he would remain at MIT, despite his view that institutionalized racism lay behind the denial of his bid for tenure. Mr. Sherley, who is black, said he thought he could make a contribution to the institute that goes beyond science. “MIT will start to change,” he said, “and I actually would like to be here to effect some of that change because I’m quite a resource now for what’s wrong with the system.”

Tufts Daily: A recent Harvard Divinity School study examines separation of church and campus

According to the “hoot and cry of the far-right, American universities are all bastions of atheism and communism,” University Chaplain Reverend David O’Leary said, referring to a stereotype of the college professoriate as a demographic largely devoid of religion.

It was in response to such long-held allegations that researchers at the Harvard Divinity School recently implemented a study to determine the religiosity of college and university professors around the country.