UTSC Commons Magazine Spring 2016 by U of T Scarborough

RISK/REWARD: UTSC launches young entrepreneurs p10

EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION: What does it look like in the classroom? p6

SPRING 2016

News

Insights

Research

Culture

Community

MAKING THE CALL ALEK KRSTAJICâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S billion-dollar telecom deal

INSPIRED BY NATURE: Inside the new Environmental Science and Chemistry Building p20

KEYNOTE

A magazine for the alumni, friends and community of the University of Toronto Scarborough Spring 2016 Volume 6, Issue 1 Produced by the Department of Communications & Public Affairs 416-287-7089, utsccommons@utsc.utoronto.ca Editor Chris Garbutt

A mosaic at the University of Heidelberg depicts the trivium that was part of the medieval higher education system: Latin grammar (including literature), rhetoric (which also covered law) and logic. The subject matter may have been designed for the demands of the day. But

the goal in the Middle Ages was just like the goal of the modern university: to train the next generation of young minds. Universities have always responded to the forces of change while holding to the core values of the academy. The face-to-face relationships of professorto-student, student-to-student, professor-to-professor—these represent tradition in a way that drives progress. We are well aware that our students expect much more than a first-class education. They expect to have an additional edge over graduates from other institutions. One way UTSC delivers on these expectations is by building translational qualities into the academic program—in the lab, in the studio, and in the workplace through co-op programs. We live in an exhilarating era of constant, rapid and unpredictable change. Universities help to make sense of it all. Can we say where higher education is headed? I have the privilege of working with faculty who are setting the pace when it comes to interdisciplinary teaching and research, responding to emerging markets and technologies, innovating without breaking with tradition. We are a community of scholars committed to making a difference by promoting discovery, knowledge and understanding on issues of local, national and global importance; driving change as we respond to it; and preparing students for citizenship in a global and diverse world. The enduring mission of higher education is the development of human beings and society through the cultivation and enrichment of the mind and spirit. We help shape people, who help shape societies across the globe. This is a great, worthy and timeless cause.

H. Bernie Kraatz, PhD Vice-Principal, Research, University of Toronto Scarborough

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Principal Photographer Ken Jones Communications Intern Sayada Nabi Art Direction, Design & Production Hambly & Woolley Inc. Editorial Advisory Group Pankaj Aggarwal Associate Professor, Department of Management Maydianne Andrade Professor, Department of Biological Sciences Andrew Arifuzzaman Chief Administrative Officer Dan Bender Professor, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies Joe Hermer Associate Professor, Department of Sociology Shelley Romoff Director, Communications & Public Affairs Georgette Zinaty Executive Director, Development & Alumni Relations To contact us, please visit UTSCCommons.ca, email utsccommons@utsc.utoronto.ca or write us at UTSC Commons, Communications & Public Affairs, 1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 UTSC Commons has a circulation of 30,000 and is published twice a year by UTSC’s Department of Communications & Public Affairs. All material is copyright © 2016 University of Toronto Scarborough and may be reprinted with written permission. Alumni receive the magazine free of charge. For information about how you can support University of Toronto Scarborough, please contact Development & Alumni Relations at 416-287-7115, advancement@utsc.utoronto.ca or at the postal address above. Visit us online UTSCCommons.ca Facebook utsc1 Instagram & Twitter @utsc The University of Toronto Scarborough respects your privacy. We do not rent, trade or sell our mailing lists. If you do not wish to receive the magazine, please contact us at 416-978-2139 or 1-800-463-6048 or address.update@utsc.utoronto.ca

UTSC COMMONS

CONTENTS

SPRING 2016

features

10 16 20 22 26

RISK/REWARD

As students take on the entrepreneurial challenge, UTSC helps them get it right. by Kelley Teahen

THE RIGHT CALL

UTSC alum Alek Krstajic just made a billiondollar telecom sale. That doesn’t mean he’s done. by Donna Paris

mosaic STORIES OF UTSC

New oral history project aims to tell stories not previously heard. p2 BREAKTHROUGH THINKING

A new biosensor may just hold a key for detecting diseases. p4

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

When students apply their learning, amazing things happen. by Laurie Stephens

REVOLUTION (TWEETYCH)

What if Twitter had been around in the sixties? by Daniel Tysdal

Above: Find out what happens inside the new Environmental Science and Chemistry Building. Cover: Photography by Margaret Mulligan.

DISCUSS

How experiential education looks in the classroom. p6 Visit us online at

INSPIRED BY NATURE

The new Environmental Science and Chemistry Building combines sustainability and top-level research. by Patchen Barss

UTSCCommons.ca

campus news

A Co-op experience leads to a placement in Paris. p28 Food pop up gives students a taste of curry. p29 New transit plan good news for UTSC. p29

meeting place

An unexpected turn leads to a new life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. p32

from the field

What do you get when you combine university and high school classes? Solutions to local problems. by John Lorinc p8

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

MOSAIC Ideas & Observations

TELLING THE STORIES OF UTSC

A special endeavor called the Scarborough Oral History Project shares stories of immigrant women, of community elders, of people who’ve led dramatic lives. And now the project also shares stories—often colourful—of the last 50 years at U of T Scarborough through the eyes of students, faculty, staff and alumni. These oral history initiatives began in 2013, after three academic colleagues talked about creating an interdisciplinary Nearby Studies program that would look at the community’s reality—not at media portrayals. “Retelling the stories of Scarborough from within,” is how Associate Professor 2

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Connie Guberman, Teaching Stream, Women’s and Gender Studies, describes the project. Groups of students from different academic disciplines worked with community partners to make digital audio recordings and take still photos of participants from all walks of life. Then, as part of UTSC’s 50th anniversary celebration, the project came to the campus itself. Students in two summer courses held conversations with an array of people. Professors talked about students and students about professors. Cleaners and administrative assistants and people of widely diverse backgrounds all shared their candid recollections. The result is Stories of UTSC: 1964-2014, a curated online collection that is part of Scarborough Oral History Project’s newly launched digital archive. The summer courses and a related multimedia exhibit at the Meeting Place were supported by a grant from UTSC’s 50th Anniversary Legacy Fund.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, you can participate too. With a free app linked at storiesofutsc.ca, you can take a selfie, record your UTSC story and upload it to the collection. The digital archive will soon encompass the broad collection of first-hand accounts that students have gathered, and will continue to gather next fall, of the lives of Scarborough people. Other oral history material, collected in many UTSC courses over the years, will also be eligible. “These are the stories of our Scarborough neighbourhood community, and they shouldn’t be lost,” says Guberman. “That’s the ultimate goal of the project — the development of a searchable, community-accessible, oral history digital archive. Students, scholars, faculty and community members will be able to go in and access the material in many different ways.”

MOSAIC

ENABLING CITIZEN RESEARCH

Inside every citizen dwells a potential

researcher. By promoting citizen engagement, an online research platform called Participedia aims to connect these latent researchers with those already in the field. Bettina von Lieres describes Participedia as “a citizen-led platform that allows researchers, citizens and policy-makers to really work together to put research out into the open on these new, emerging forms of citizen engagement.” Von Lieres is interim associate director of UTSC’s Centre for Critical Development Studies, and also Participedia’s director of teaching and learning. She teaches courses in political science and international development at UTSC, and

Participedia case studies frequently appear in her curriculum. “There is an increasing sense in the world where people feel that they should hold their governments accountable,” says von Lieres, “and citizen engagement is seen as a way of making states and governments listen to citizens.” Growing up under apartheid in South Africa, von Lieres was always interested in issues of citizen engagement. “When democracy was introduced in South Africa, there was a lot of focus on the state, building a democratic state, but there wasn’t enough focus on citizens,” she says. One aim of Participedia, she explains, “is to get experts and non-experts together, because citizens and practitioners are the ones that experience these innovations.”

take home

WEBOPTION: IN CLASS, ONLINE Sometimes you just can’t make it to class. Or perhaps your schedule makes it impossible to attend the class you really want. UTSC’s WebOption records lectures for dozens of courses so students can be in class on their own time, or even enrol in a video-only version of a course. It’s a pioneering program that has attracted the attention of other campuses, including the St. George’s Faculty of Arts & Science. And non-students are getting in on the action. Some professors report that parents and relatives approach them to say they enjoyed the lectures, too.

Number of years UTSC has offered the service.

130

Courses offered through WebOption UTSC in the 2014-2015 school year, a 24 per cent increase over three years.

32,244

Enrolment in courses served by WebOption in 2014-2015.

Bettina von Lieres: citizen engagement makes governments accountable.

Students employed as videographers to make these lecturecasts possible. Not only does WebOption make life convenient for students, it also provides jobs.

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

breakthrough thinking

TINY SENSOR—HUGE POTENTIAL

Prof. Xiao-an Zhang

A pH imbalance is serious business.

Low pH levels can lead to cystic fibrosis, ischemia or cancer. But it’s been difficult to gauge these levels using current technology. A new sensor, developed at U of T Scarborough enables a higher degree of precision when gauging pH levels in the human body. A pH level is a measurement of the activity of protons, which are tiny charged particles that tend to attach to other molecules. “Being able to detect pH levels in a living biological system in real time is crucial to detecting and understanding 4

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

conditions associated with pH imbalance,” says Xiao-an Zhang. A chemistry professor at UTSC, Zhang is an expert in developing chemical probes for biomedical imaging. Various nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging techniques do exist, but they don’t offer an accurate-enough picture of different protonation states in real time. They are hard to measure in tissues because they move rapidly, notes Zhang, making it difficult to capture molecular location using conventional NMR time scales.

The new sensor provides a unique solution to that dilemma, by offering a slow proton exchange mechanism. “The probe we developed can slow down proton movement and view protons at various states,” says Zhang. “It can clearly see both protonation states, so it makes for a more sensitive and accurate measurement.” The immediate goal is to use the sensors in medical imaging. Zhang says they could have applications in other fields too, such as environmental science, biology and food studies, in areas including food production and quality control.

MOSAIC

DID YOU KNOW? Gallery hosts all-female exhibition

Why was the outside wall of the

Doris McCarthy Gallery pink? We went inside and discovered that the pink wall was part of the Material Girls exhibit, curated by Blair Fornwald, Jennifer Matotek and Wendy Peart from Regina’s Dunlop Art Gallery. “Material Girls leaps from its reference to pop-icon Madonna’s hit song into a maximalist world of deep ornamentation and layering,” says DMG director Ann MacDonald. The exhibit explores ideas of womanhood juxtaposed with capitalism, the feminized body and space. Material Girls is different from past exhibits as all the exhibiting artists are women and the entire installation intends to defy the authority of the white cube of the gallery.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS It’s a first: two U of T Scarborough

students are about to graduate with both an Environmental Science Bachelor’s degree and a Master in Engineering. Chinmaya Bhatt and Jonathan Stokes are the first two students in the Combined BSc/MEng Program, in

Jonathan Stokes (left), with Prof. Mandy Meriano (centre) and Chinmaya Bhatt.

“I think we are at a place where having an all-male show, or largely male show, is so common that to have an all-female exhibition somehow feels radical,” says Matotek.

Some interior walls were painted blue and yellow, to act as colourful backdrops for the sculptures and paintings that challenge gender-based stereotypes.

For more information about this or other exhibits at the DMG, visit utsc.utoronto.ca/dmg

which environmental science students can work concurrently towards completing an Honours Bachelor of Science and a master’s in either Chemical or Civil Engineering, all within five years. “When applying I thought, ‘what a unique opportunity to take engineering, when you’re not an engineer,’” says Stokes. “It’s allowed me to be a

part of a community I would not traditionally be exposed to as a student in the sciences.” The program is designed to get students to think differently, through its exposure to widely different academic perspectives. “What makes us different from the science students or engineering students is that we have knowledge of both,” says Bhatt. “In science you identify problems, and in engineering you find ways to solve them. So with this program we are able to do both.” The program gives students an edge when they enter the workforce. “It allows our students to become more specialized so that they can confidently tackle today’s environmental challenges,” says Mandy Meriano, associate professor, teaching stream, in Environmental Science. The first of its kind at U of T, the program creates a new opportunity and shortens the time to graduation. UTSC now offers a similar combined program in Psychology and Social Work, and more paths are being explored. UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

DISCUSS THINKING AND DOING How UTSC brings together learning and experience To many, the job of higher education is to develop informed, thinking citizens. To others, it’s to prepare students for the job market. But why not both? U of T Scarborough prides itself on its experiential education, encouraging students to both apply and reflect on their learning. We asked faculty members from three disciplines what this looks like in their classrooms: Clare Hasenkampf, associate professor in Biological Sciences and director of the Centre for Teaching and Learning; Garry Leonard, professor of literature and film; and Anya Tafliovich, associate professor, teaching stream, in Computer and Mathematical Sciences. Garry Leonard: I have a class of 350. Ten

per cent of their grade is a journal, which includes an idea from the class, the work that the students chose to talk about and, most importantly, something that made it relevant to their life. Clare Hasenkampf: Wow, 350! GL: Students ask, “How are you going to grade it?” I tell them: “By the level of engagement. If it looks like you cared about it then I’ll care about it.” They’re very heartfelt and they’re very experiential. I’m always trying to resist focusing too much on the almighty GPA. But I’m not naïve. 6

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

CH: That assignment is a really good example of feeding into a grade in some way, but also prioritizing their development, their thinking. To me, thinking is doing. As an academic, a lot of what we do is think critically. Anya Tafliovich: My field is software engineering. Lots of my students feel they need the incentive of the grading. So I tailored my marking scheme to grade the thinking, the engagement, the innovation, what matters at the end when they graduate, and what it means to be a professional software engineer. Part of the grading is done by the actual client of the software product they’re developing. Every project begins with a client. There’s a competition at the end of the term with a judges’ panel made up of clients and one computer scientist. Everybody else looks at what the students produced to see if it meets the client’s requirements. They need to decide how to get there, what process to choose, and how to communicate. One client is a historian. Does a historian understand what you mean when you ask, “Do you want this database or that database?” So students learn to rephrase the question. And they come up with really innovative solutions. CH: We have to make disappear that dichotomy between assessing their learning for learning and assessing their learning for a grade. I did get rid of some of the problems in one of my courses when I made the experiential component worth more and aligned it more closely with what was going on in the rest of the class.

AT: You’re trying to see how to give

incentives so that they don’t think they’re sacrificing their grade by actually learning. CH: What all three of us are doing is encourage students to be practitioners. Immediately, in first year, I try to say that you’re not just a student in science, you’re a scientist in training. AT: That’s right. CH: You may not envision being an academic, but you may envision yourself as someone who really takes the last bit of meaning out of something and applies it to something. AT: I try to say that in first-year classes, too. CH: Give them the control over one variable. Change the time or the temperature, and it’s amazing to see how much just that shifts things. They have to make a decision and live with the consequences.

“ What we’re doing is encouraging students to be practitioners.” GL: That’s why I do free writes. I want

students to be invested, and they’re not going to be invested without control over a variable. CH: We’re trying to help them become the doers, right off the bat, even if the doing is thinking. Take the risks now. Why wait to

DISCUSS

Garry Leonard

Clare Hasenkampf

Anya Tafliovich

take the risk after you’re on a probation in a job? Why not take the risk in first year? Then gain some confidence to take bigger risks. And one of the clear-cut things that our campus really can stand by is the fact that we have Co-op. AT: Yeah. When I start talking about how to do state-of-the-art software development, how we’re doing this today and why, I will ask, “Did anybody experience this?” Someone says, “Yes, in my first co-op term we had this and this,” and all of a sudden everyone’s listening. CH: In biology we’ll tell students, “You really have to keep a good notebook.” And they’ll yawn: “Who needs a notebook?” And then we have students go work at a pharmaceutical company, and they come back and say, “One of the

doctor’s assistants forgot to initial the notebook after this particular event and six months’ worth of clinical trials were thrown away.” All of the students relate to that. AT: What they create in this course is not thrown away. It stays out there. It matters to the students. Here’s this functional product. CH: Someone’s counting on them. AT: And they get jobs out of it. What gets you a job in software engineering? Your transcript? Or a link to your project on the Web where they can play with the site that you’ve built? CH: Most of my students don’t become biologists. Some might work for investment firms. Detecting a trend is detecting a trend, so is writing a report that actually says what you want it to say, in a transparent way. We’re helping them see the value

of habits of mind that we are asking them to develop, that they translate into whatever they’re doing. GL: For my final exam I tell students, “I’m going to give you a poem that will have many of the issues that we’ve discussed, but it won’t be a poem we’ve discussed.” You see the panic. AT: A trick question! GL: Here’s the trick. It’s going to be in the form of a letter to a friend, explaining the poem. I call it their road test. I say, “If I’m going to give you a license to discuss poetry, I have to make sure you don’t go out there and wreck yourself or somebody else.” They get a kick out of that, but it does emphasize that they now have a skill they didn’t at the beginning of the term. And it’s not me just saying: you did it. They experienced it. UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

from the field

AN URBAN ALLIANCE High school and UTSC students share the classroom to solve community problems by John Lorinc

Last fall, several students from Blessed Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School in Malvern met with Raymond Cho, councillor for Ward 42, to talk traffic. They had a simmering concern about unsafe road conditions near their school. The students walked Cho through a potential solution—a series of new pedestrian crossings that they had developed with third-year City Studies students from UTSC. Cho was interested and will take the ideas to a council committee for consideration. “There’s some policy action taking place as a result of the research,” says Ahmed Allahwala, associate professor, teaching stream, in UTSC’s Department of Human Geography. “The ball is rolling.” The project emerged from an innovative partnership that was established last year between UTSC’s City Studies program; TAIBU, a non-profit health centre in the nearby Malvern area; and the high school. TAIBU is concerned with disparities and barriers that affect the black community, and Allahwala met several educators at Blessed Mother through a contact at TAIBU. After reviewing the curriculum, Blessed Mother Principal Nadia Young recommended that Allahwala’s students be paired with a Grade 9 geography class. The two classes broke into eight teams of six—three from Blessed Mother, three from UTSC. The teams then conducted workshops to develop research projects based on problems that face 8

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

the area, which is home to many newcomers, racialized minorities and low-income families. “The teams would go out and conduct community-based research from youth perspectives, focusing on issues of community well-being and social justice,” says Allahwala. Blessed Mother geography teacher Michelle Paolini says her students were initially a bit tentative, but they developed good working relationships with the university class. She says the UTSC students gave them a sense of what higher education is like. “This was a great way for them to see it, without me having to say much.” The project gave the teens a platform to have their concerns not only validated but put forward to planning officials. “They felt a lot of times that their opinions don’t matter,” says David Bazargan, a fourth-year City Studies student . Other teams looked at how local park design could be rethought to minimize safety risks. One nearby park had only a single pathway, and walking through it meant confronting bullies. One change that could help: a network of paths. Another team focused on the mismatch between facilities in the community centre and activities that local youth might actually do. “There’s just a basketball court and a skating rink, which isn’t that useful,” Paolini says. Adds David Bazargan: “We could work together to create a solution that catered not only to their needs, but also to the needs of the city.”

FROM THE FIELD

Geography students from a nearby high school participated in a joint class with UTSC students to find practical solutions to local issues.

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Risk/ Reward More young people than ever are taking up the entrepreneurial challenge. UTSC students are learning how to get it right By Kelley Teahen Illustrations by Rachel Idzerda

You think it’s pretty good. But how do you translate that idea into a career? How do you know it’s a risk worth taking? In higher education your GPA is just one way to measure success. Risk and perseverance are at the heart both of the scientific research method and of entrepreneurship. That’s what U of T Scarborough is here to support. For Management Lecturer and entrepreneur Bill McConkey, entrepreneurship support “meshes really nicely with our mandate as a university: we are developing students’ critical thinking ability.” Gray Graffam, an academic and entrepreneur who joined UTSC in 2013, founded and now directs The Hub, an early-stage innovation and business incubator. He says the university has a key role in supporting students to discover, innovate, and develop promising ideas. As part of university studies, 10

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

BILL MCCONKEY — Management lecturer and entrepreneur

GRAY GRAFFAM — Academic and entrepreneur

Photography by

ou’ve got an idea.

RISK/REWARD

I WILL TELL A STUDENT: I’M GLAD YOU’VE GOT AN IDEA BUT AN IDEA ISN’T ENTREPRENEURSHIP. WE NEED TO LOOK AT ALL THE OTHER INPUTS. CAN IT BE BUILT? AT WHAT COST? SHOULD IT BE BUILT?

CHRIS BOVAIRD —

Associate professor in Strategic Management

aspiring entrepreneurs learn discipline, says McConkey. “I will tell a student: I’m glad you’ve got an idea but an idea isn’t entrepreneurship. We need to look at all the other inputs. Can it be built? At what cost? Should it be built? Who’s going to buy it? At what price? Do you have a team? Who do you need? I tell students they need a disciplined structure,” he says, expressed in a value proposition and fleshed out in a business plan. “That examination allows something to grow, or to go away quickly. A true entrepreneur knows it’s not about bubbling up creative thoughts: it’s about getting it done. And if it fails, you learn how to package up that creativity and get it done better, next time.” For nearly 20 years, McConkey and his Management colleagues have provided in-class and post-class support to dozens of entrepreneurs. Among them are Dev Basu, who founded the marketing firm Powered by Search; Andrew Peek, Verne Ho and Satish Kanwar, who together started up software design company Jet Cooper, which has since been

acquired by Shopify; and Derrick Fung, who created Tunezy, a service that helps artists sell experiences such as backstage passes to music fans, and is now part of SFX Entertainment. “‘Entrepreneur’ is not a job description but a personality type,” says Chris Bovaird, associate professor in Strategic Management. “Entrepreneurs are people who are prepared to take risks, because they believe in their ability to change things.” Within their classes, or at The Hub, students get introductory training that includes business strategy, financing, consumer insight, and business modelling. In his introductory entrepreneurship course, McConkey covers how to create a business plan, an investor memo, marketing strategy, an organizational (staffing) plan, and provides how-to’s on financing, franchising and small business management. A pilot entrepreneurship course in computer science, offered for the first time in winter 2016, covers industry, market and competition research; testing; business modeling; pitching; sales and marketing; and funding. Any UTSC student can come to The Hub for programming delivered by Graffam or through workshops provided by the innovation hub, MaRS. The Hub is part of a larger entrepreneurial ecosystem at U of T under the umbrella of the Banting & Best Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, one of 10 CampusLinked Accelerators in the province receiving support through the government-funded Ontario Centres of Excellence. Graffam explains that The Hub is designed to fit with UTSC’s institution’s strengths: 1

• INCLUSIVITY

The Hub is open to any student, in any discipline. Graffam notes that accessibility is crucial for a campus that prides itself on being welcoming and close-knit. In 2015 and 2016, The Hub and the campus’s UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Academic Advising & Career Centre co-sponsored an Entrepreneur Expo with guest speakers, a fair featuring students and graduates who have launched businesses, and a networking lounge. 2

• COLLABORATION ACROSS DISCIPLINES

Projects with great potential will include people across disciplinary boundaries. A computer science student might have a great technology idea but benefits from the marketing smarts of management students. 3

• CO-OP PROGRAM

UTSC is U of T’s Co-op campus. This allows students to create paid work terms, supported by entrepreneurial seed money, to test their ideas and create business plans, often working out of The Hub.

• ENTREPRENEURSHIP

AS AN ACADEMIC PROGRAM

UTSC’s Department of Management has offered entrepreneurship courses for nearly two decades and introduced an entrepreneurship stream for its BBA in 2014. This year the Department of Computer Science plans to launch a similar stream. “My students grew up with thinking anyone in computer science can have a very, very clever idea and become a millionaire,” says Francisco Estrada, an associate professor in Computer & Mathematical Science. “They do have very, very innovative ideas, but they don’t know how to turn those into a product or how to set up a business.” 5

• R OOTED IN THE

EASTERN GTA

A longer-term mission for The Hub is to develop new businesses that flourish locally. 6

• DIVERSITY AND INTERNATIONAL RANGE OF STUDENTS

Nearly 20 per cent of UTSC’s students are international and many more are first generation Canadians. International connections played a key role for Dikshant Batra and Nathan Tran Trinh when forming their company, Nova & Sentio (see opposite).

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Having the skills to conceive, test and build a business or enterprise is increasingly critical to future success. According to Statistics Canada, unemployment rates for those seeking work under age 25 is more than double that for older workers. Job growth is coming from selfemployment: 40,000 self-employed jobs were created in December 2015 while private and public sector jobs have not budged. “The generation we grew up in had a false promise,” says recent graduate and entrepreneur Ravi Ravindran. “We were told to go to university, get good marks, and you’ll get a good job. Since 2008 and the market crash, that is not the reality. Knowing the opportunity is not out there, we’ve been forced to create it.” Ravindran is not alone in his conclusions. Ernst & Young, an international professional services firm, conducted its fourth Global Job Creation and Youth Entrepreneurship Survey in 2015. In questioning nearly 3,000 youth ages 18 to 25-year-olds in 13 “key global economies,” the survey discovered that 65 per cent want to run their own business — 27 per cent immediately and 38 per cent after learning by working for someone else. Armed with best practices, accessible mentors and firm business discipline, supported with space, seed money and the enthusiasm of fellow students, UTSC entrepreneurs are getting the start they need. “You have to learn by doing it,” says Graffam. The students who take the plunge into entrepreneurship “…are that breed: they learn from that experience of doing. They take great joy and pride in the doing, every step along the way.”

1/ CASE STUDY

RISK/REWARD

NATHAN TRAN TRINH — (BA, 2013) Psychology

DIKSHANT BATRA — 4th-year Management Co-op

/Why UTSC

/The first step

/Challenges

Tran Trinh wanted to stay in Toronto and UTSC was close to home. Co-op appealed to him, though he didn’t participate in the program. Dikshant Batra came from India as an international student.

Batra’s father, an auto industry distributor in India, saw the need for more affordable and accessible auto-care products like waxes, polishes and wheel cleaners. Through Nova & Sentio, Tran Trinh and Batra examined the supply chain between manufacturer and consumer, finding ways to make it more efficient.

The first shipment of Phoenix1-branded products reached India in December 2015. Some products were damaged in transit.

/The idea The two met on an organizing team for a student competition. Both had business ideas—Batra in web development and Tran Trinh in social media marketing. They set up an agency, first focused on digital, and later social media branding, but both offerings failed to attract customers. The partners changed gears and created Nova & Sentio to tackle a number of initiatives, the first being Phoenix1, a line of car-care products that is being distributed in India.

/The launch Nova & Sentio commissioned a new private label brand of car-care products from an American manufacturer and set out to distribute it to Indian wholesalers.

/UTSC support Management Lecturer Bill McConkey has been their champion and mentor. Nova & Sentio has relied on recruiting staff through paid UTSC co-op terms, including one for Batra, who used The Hub as his workspace. They also credit Hub Director Gray Graffam with providing timely advice on funding, sources so they could successfully navigate the myriad entrepreneurship programs and venture capital funds available in Canada.

/Meeting the challenges Batra travelled to India this winter to meet face-to-face with wholesalers as the first container of product arrived and make sure any problems were resolved. Tran Trinh says sales have been “very positive”: they had $100,000 in orders in advance.

/What success looks like Nova & Sentio continues to explore new ways of improving the value chain to better connect manufacturers to consumers and creates further business opportunities based in Canada but connected internationally. Says Tran Trinh, “We intend to grow.”

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

2/ CASE STUDY /Why UTSC “I think there’s huge growth ahead in social entrepreneurship and [UTSC] is a socially aware campus: we are very activist-oriented. So many of us are first-generation students and immigrants, and there’s an influx of new ideas that immigration brings.”

/The idea A magazine dedicated to issues in mental health, by students for students, their friends and families. Young wanted to do something she was “really passionate about and still creatively oriented.”

/The first step She met with UTSC’s Chief Administrative Officer Andrew Arifuzzaman who had earlier worked at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He thought it was a “really interesting idea,” Young says, and encouraged her to proceed.

/The launch Young searched through her existing student networks to create a core team. She interviewed experts across the GTA and attended Mad Pride, a conference on mental health. “We raise awareness about mental health so often,” says Young. “But there’s the 14

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

KAREN—YOUNG

Final year Psychology and Health Studies other side of the coin: educating students so they can self-affirm about mental-health issues.” She coined a name for her educational publication: Minds Matter Magazine.

/UTSC support “We have a built-in audience and resources, as well as access to promotional mass email lists.” Young taps student talent to research, write and design the magazine from among those building a portfolio for graduate or professional schools. She took one Co-op term working full-time on the magazine. The Minds Matter team also found mentors from publishing, mental health and entrepreneurism from among UTSC’s faculty and staff, including: • Jeffery Dvorkin, Lecturer and Journalism Program Director; board member of the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma • Dr. Tayyab Rashid, clinical psychologist, Health and Wellness Centre • Gray Graffam and The Hub: “We’re considered a school club but also a start-up. We really started to become familiar with The Hub through UTSC Dragons’ Den pitch competition in fall 2015; we won $7,000 to help launch the magazine.”

/Challenges “We started in 2014 with 20 people, then had to cut it down to 12 because we didn’t have defined niches within the team: we were all a little bit lost.” They also found the initial idea of a print magazine wasn’t economically feasible.

/Meeting the challenges She re-structured, creating an administrative layer of team leads skilled in operations, editorial and creative portfolios and let these leaders recruit teams. The group moved to a digital-only publication plan, with a soft-launch, posting online articles in January 2015. The first full e-issue was published in November 2015.

/What success looks like “Our focus right now is producing content, and we are developing goals for circulation and reach.” Young envisions the magazine drawing audiences beyond UTSC. Young’s work in The Hub is helping her determine how to grow from student club and startup to sustainable enterprise.

RISK/REWARD

CASE STUDY /Why UTSC “Neuroscience is huge at UTSC. As well, it’s a smaller campus, more interconnected. I was raised in Scarborough and am the first one in my family to go to university, so I didn’t want to go too far.”

/The idea Ravindran is a “serial entrepreneur.” He started his first of three companies at 19 as a “middleman between builders and manufacturers for security-system sales and installations.” His latest adventure is Mapian, a map-based social network for what he calls “crowdsourced geotag news.” “My generation has FOMO — fear of missing out,” he says. “People have social anxiety when they see all the things people are doing on Snapchat and YikYak. If you’re bored, with Mapian, you can connect to things that are right around you.”

/The first step Ravindran had “no idea” about programming, coding or building apps. “What I’m good at is people; I had to find others who were really good at programming.”

/The launch Mapian launches this spring, “geo-fenced” to UTSC, with plans to expand to other

RAVI RAVINDRAM —

(BSc, 2015) Neuroscience and Psychology campuses. Initially, it will be a for-studentsonly network. So far 300 people have tested the app.

/UTSC support Ravindran first connected to The Hub shortly after it opened in 2013. “Ravi just won’t quit,” Graffam says. “And that’s good. When you’re an entrepreneur, it helps to be very determined about getting things done.” Ravindran’s academic studies did not cover entrepreneurship so Graffam provided him with workshops and training and understanding. Recently Graffam guided Mapian through its pilot phase of testing to get the start-up user experience feedback.

/Challenges Ravindran has faced several hurdles in three years with Mapian. Because he didn’t have deep knowledge about the technical side of his enterprise, he needed to learn how to communicate effectively with his team about the product and its functions, and to explain his idea to potential investors.

/Meeting the challenges Ravindran boned up on the technology and coding by reading and studying to improve his knowledge. He also looked for individuals

he could work with who he could trust and who had initiative, who in his words “could own the process” rather than just supply technical programming. He also realized that pitch competitions are about more than winning—he could learn from people’s questions and make connections to experts at these events. Ravindran eventually hit it big with LaunchPad, the Tamil Entertainment Television’s $1-million start-up investment competition. Mapian is one of four winners of the competition, and received $100,000 for 10 per cent of the company.

/What success looks like The LaunchPad funding pays for staff who are getting the network ready for launch: Ravindran as founder, three programmers, a community manager and a social media specialist. The next measure will be commercializing the product: will Mapian gain the critical mass of popularity needed to be commercially viable? Finances aside, success to Ravindran also means creating something that solves real problems in the world, something that has potential and impact, that creates a legacy. “I want to be someone who positively influences a billion people in my lifetime. That’s my definition of being a billionaire.”

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

UTSC alum Alek Krstajic recently engineeered the sale of Wind Mobile to Shaw Communications. But donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t expect him to retire anytime soon

THE RIGHT CALL UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Photography by

By Donna Paris Photography by Margaret Mulligan

Photography by

ALUMNI PROFILE

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

CONSIDER ou negotiate the successful sale of a company for more than a billion dollars. Then what? Jet off to a new adventure every week? Move to a desert island? Retire to Florida? Not if you’re Alek Krstajic (BA, 1989), the CEO of Wind Mobile Corp. It’s business as usual, so you get up and go to work. “I spent my entire career wanting to make enough money to retire and play—I did it early, then realized it wasn’t going to make me happy,” he says. Krstajic’s not kidding. With a career that spans decades, he picked up invaluable experience working at Rogers Communications for 10 years, leaving as a senior vice-president, and went on to become president of Bell Mobility, overseeing more than $4.5 billion in revenue. Then he founded Public Mobile in 2009 and sold it to Telus Corporation in 2013 before accepting his current position at Wind Mobile in March last year. This past December, Shaw Communications Inc. acquired Wind Mobile for $1.6 billion. “We’re very excited—it’s a 18

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family-run organization that shows a real spirit of competition,” says Krstajic. “There’s such a great balance with the Shaw family, it reminds me of the early days at Rogers.” Krstajic has no problem working with telecommunications giants but even as an underdog, he’s a leader in the field, furthering his vision with creative and innovative solutions. “At Public Mobile, our goal was to put a cellphone in everyone’s hands by charging a flat rate for service instead of per-minute fees,” he says. “Everyone has the right to communicate wirelessly, it’s not just a privilege reserved for someone who can afford it.” This philosophical belief dovetails nicely with a low-cost model for the market share that Public Mobile was targeting. Likewise, it was Public Mobile that offered its customers Siren in 2009, a music download service, the first of its kind in Canada. Most recently, Wind Mobile struck a deal with the TTC, becoming the first wireless company to offer its customers the ability to talk and text on platforms and concourses.

rstajic’s a busy guy. He serves on a number of boards for both public and private companies—and he’s a big supporter of UTSC, where he earned a degree in economics, and he works hard to connect with other supporters. He’s also a worldclass sailor who has competed in the Canada’s Cup. When asked where this kind of drive comes from, Krstajic says simply, “I grew up the son of immigrants, in a blue-collar working-class family—and I had some tough jobs when I was young.” It didn’t take him long to realize the importance of an education. “U of T was transformational for me,” says Krstajic, who grew up in the east end of Toronto and went to Riverdale Collegiate. “When I went to UTSC, I met people from different backgrounds and cultures,” he says. “University gave me the solid background I needed to go off into the business world and to work with people like Ted Rogers.” Furthermore, at UTSC, Krstajic was exposed to more affluent lifestyles through friends and from playing sports. “I realized that was something that I really wanted and desired,” he says. ports were among his great loves at UTSC, rowing and skiing on the Varsity teams, picking up skills from a combination of individual athletic efforts and working with others on a team. “At U of T, I learned the importance of teamwork—and when you play sports, you want to win, you don’t want to be average,” he says. He also went into the military after high school. “That’s where I learned leadership skills—the most important one being, there’s always a way to make it work.” The secret to his success? Years of experience. “Recently I gave a keynote address about why the vast majority of entrepreneurs fail,” he says. “They fail for different reasons but one is that when people are very young and they start a business, they

ALUMNI PROFILE

haven’t acquired management skills yet.” As an entrepreneur, Krstajic says that one of the biggest hurdles he had to overcome was not having the safety net and infrastructure of a large organization. “When you have your own company, you have to be prepared to roll up your sleeves and do everything yourself,” he says. ne thing is for sure, Krstajic gets things done. “I’ve been pretty blunt most of my life, driven by an efficiency chip that I have,” he says. “When I was younger, I was accused of being even more blunt, so I’ve modified my leadership style over the years—I think I have a good balance now.” And he’s very transparent, he adds. Krstajic was raised to believe in the concept of honour, so when he gives his word, he keeps it. “Ultimately, the people that work for you need to trust you,” he says. “The fastest way to gain that trust is to explain where you are going, why you are going there and how you are going to do it. If you get that right,

then people will work hard to make things happen.” It also doesn’t hurt when you meet some people along the way who are willing to help you and to mentor you. Krstajic credits three men with doing just that. He spent a decade working with Ted Rogers, who gave him opportunities within the company to learn about business, giving him tools he needed and even finding a program for him to attend specializing in mergers and acquisitions. “Ted was a huge influence in my life, and when he died, it was very profound for me. I feel as if I did not appreciate him as much as I should have.” At Rogers, Krstajic also worked with John Tory, now Toronto’s mayor. “Hands down, John Tory is the smartest man I know, and he still remains my mentor today,” he says. “I was the young guy just wanting to get the job done at all costs. But John is all about collaboration, and he made me appreciate the power of consensus building. He made me reflect on decisions and taught me the importance of philanthropy and giving back.”

Ultimately, the people that work with you need to trust you

iving back is important to Krstajic—and his wife, too, who worked for Plan Canada where she started the Because I Am a Girl campaign. “We support some nonprofits, including Plan Canada projects in developing countries, health care in our area, and some of the funds that help the families of wounded or fallen soldiers,” he says. “And U of T, of course. It’s my academic foundation, so I want to support the university, and I want to continue to support it.” Most recently, perhaps in a nod to the original idea of wanting to put a cellphone in the hands of every Canadian, Wind Mobile is assisting Syrian refugee families in Canada by offering free cellphones and two years of Wind service at no charge. Speaking of philanthropy, the third person Krstajic got to know was Peter Munk, the 88-year-old founder of Barrick Gold Corporation, and co-founder of The Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation. So far, the fund has distributed more than $160 million, going mainly toward health care and education, including $35 million to the Munk School of Global Affairs. Munk was an investor in Public Mobile. “We would have lunches, just the two of us, and it wasn’t even that he has been such a mentor as an inspiration to me—he is a top business leader and an intelligent visionary,” says Krstajic. As for retirement, Krstajic isn’t going there anytime soon. “After one of those lunches, I came home and told my wife, ‘I’m never going to retire to Florida and go for walks along the beach every day,’” he says. “I’ll visit, but this is what I want to do. I’m in my 50s now and I know that will make me happy.” So Krstajic follows Peter Munk’s simple advice: “You rest, you rust.” For now, he says there’s still a lot to be done at Shaw. “We used to say, ‘Only God knows when Ted Rogers is going to retire,’ ” he adds. “Hopefully they will say the same about me.” UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Inspired by Nature Earth, wind, heat and water all play a role in the new Environmental Science and Chemistry Building By Patchen Barss

niversity of Toronto Scarborough’s new 10,220 m2 Environmental Science and Chemistry Building (ESCB) connects teaching and research labs with administrative offices, centred around a sunlit atrium populated with collaboration spaces and student lounges. The ESCB’s most innovative architectural features draw on the sun, the air and the Earth. Designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects, it’s a building inspired by nature and designed to inspire those who study nature. Located north of Ellesmere Road, the new building blends harmoniously with existing structures, and also anticipates further developments outlined in UTSC’s master plan.

ARCHITECTURAL AND DESIGN FEATURES: 1. Geothermal heating: About 80 boreholes extend 210 m into the ground—much deeper than the building is tall. The boreholes extract heat from the Earth, supplying about a quarter of the total heat for the building—at no monetary or environmental cost.

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

2. Earth Tubes: Underground spaces naturally moderate extreme temperature changes, which is why basements are cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Six earth tubes run underground drawing outside air into the building. Baffles in the tubes slow the air, allowing heat exchange with the surrounding soil. Earth Tubes provide non-mechanical air conditioning for the entire administration wing of the ESCB.

3. High-performance curtain wall: An insulating glaze and 5 cm of spray foam line the external aluminum façade. The foam itself is not innovative, but the way it is protected is. Layers of drywall and a carefully designed ventilation system ensure the insulation remains pristine and efficient indefinitely.

Images courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects

MORE THAN NUMBERS

RESEARCH CLUSTERS: Water: Researchers in the new building study many facets of waterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from dispersion flow where the Don River meets Toronto Harbour, to the effect of microorganisms on the chemistry of lake water. Others study how best to protect against groundwater contamination. With water becoming an increasingly precious and controversial natural resource, the ESCB positions Scarborough as a worldleading hub of aquatic expertise. Climate change: While the building itself is designed not to accelerate climate change, many faculty members inside work on projects that could help slow or even reverse global warming. The building is a central hub for laboratory and field research stretching from studies of the climate right here in Toronto, all the way to the North and South Poles.

4. Fritted Glass: The lab windows face southwest, while skylights stream sunlight into the atrium. Too much sun risks creating glare and hotspots in the building. Diamond Schmitt used uniquely tapered sun shades on the windows that create patterns evocative of wind-on-sand and tree bark. In addition, the glass uses a process called fritting to help diffuse the light, creating more even lighting and heating. Fritting also fits into the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bird-friendly design strategy, creating a sufficient opacity to prevent birds from flying into the glass.

5. Artificial light: Researchers work long hours. For those inside when the sun isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t shining, the ESCB is completely wired with high-efficiency LED fixtures, which consume less electricity than either traditional incandescent or fluorescent lights. Solar and occupancy sensors help ensure natural daylight is maximized and electricity use is minimized.

Biological chemistry: Using everadvancing biomedical imaging and simulation techniques, researchers at the ESCB work to understand life at the molecular level. Using magnetic resonance and fluorescence imaging, researchers can watch the chemistry of life play out in real time, observe proteins fold, and even manufacture customized molecules with major potential for biological applications. Biogeochemistry: The chemical composition of soil, air and water changes constantly. Endless transformation is driven by bacteria and fungi, plants and animals, wind and water, as well as countless other forces. At ESCB, researchers study how and why some chemicals persevere and accumulate in an ecosystem, while others disappear. Their work speaks to environmental issues ranging from carbon capture to persistent organic pollutants. Environmental chemistry: Researchers in this cluster are doing more than creating new knowledge about environmental chemistry: they are developing entirely new methods and tools for doing science. Researchers here are pioneers in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging, which reveals the chemical processes of nature moleculeby-molecule, as well as in developing inexpensive techniques to sample airborne organic compounds.

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Are You Experienced? When students apply their learning, amazing things happen By Laurie Stephens Photography by Riley Stewart

E’VE ALL HEARD OF THE YOUNG JOB-SEEKER’S CATCH-22:

you need experience to get work, but you can’t get experience without the work. For decades, UTSC has been on the case. The university offers dozens of Co-op programs that help graduates break the seemingly vicious cycle. And Co-op is just one approach. Other forms of what we call experiential education can also show employers that a new grad has applicable, handson knowledge. By participating in experiential education, students connect with the world outside the university, discover the career possibilities their education will afford them, and even get a leg up on the competition. But it’s not just about work. Applying your class work to a real-life situation deepens the learning. Here are just a few examples of how UTSC students bring their learning to life. 22

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Leo Li and Prof. Francisco Estrada

ROBOTS, FOR KICKS

Here’s a Computer Science course for those who love soccer, think robots are cool, and have never lost their fondness for Lego. In CSC C85—Embedded Systems, students build tiny, soccerplaying Lego robots, and pit them against each other in an actual match. The course came about when Associate Professor Francisco Estrada was asked to evaluate an existing course on microprocessors. He suggested, instead, a course on embedded systems. Basically, this means anything with a processor that is designed for a specific purpose, from a smart watch to an airliner. “Robots are a prime example of embedded systems,” says Estrada.

“The course contains a good amount of material on robotics. And what could be more fun, as a project to bring all the course material together, than robots playing soccer?” For 12 weeks, about 60 students work in teams to build the robots, using a variety of tools, including standard Lego robot kits. Then, they put their tiny robots to the test in an actual competition on a miniature soccer pitch. Estrada says his goal is to give students practical experience in developing software, and help them find work in the ever-expanding embedded-devices market or carry out further study or research in this field. “Students have to deal with

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Kim Vuong

frustration caused by their robots not behaving as they are expected to, have to come up with creative and practical solutions to unexpected events, and spend a good amount of sleepless time working on this project,” he says. “But without fail,” he adds, “each year after the competition I have students come to me and say that it was awesome, and well worth the work.” Leo Li is a fourth-year Specialist in Computer Science, Software Engineering Stream. He describes CSC C85 as the most challenging course at UTSC—and the most rewarding. “To successfully build a soccerplaying robot, we had to find and piece together relevant information and knowledge either gained through each

other, the instructors, or research,” he says. “I think these skills are quite difficult to teach within a classroom, which is why I value this course.”

REAL RESEARCH FOR REAL PEOPLE

How do you make research come alive for students? Connect it to real people who are living the experience. That’s Assistant Professor Michelle Silver’s goal in HLT C22— Health, Aging and the Life. This year, her students worked in groups to research issues in aging, then presented their findings to about 50 seniors who had just finished an exercise class at the nearby Malvern Family Resource Centre.

Silver says the entire experience— the presentations and the conversation that followed—was a unique learning opportunity for both students and seniors. “The discussions afforded the students a chance to hear the seniors’ perspectives on topics they had been focused on during the term,” she says. “Several students who participated mentioned how it opened their eyes to future jobs that would involve working with older adults.” Kim Vuong, a third-year student in Health Studies Co-op, worked on a project about the benefits of physical exercise in reducing older adults’ risk of Alzheimer’s, dementia, depression and anxiety. From her course materials and volunteer experience at a long-term care facility, she knew that seniors age at different rates and in different ways. But she says the site visit to Malvern was a revelation. “I was surprised to see that the seniors were very active and engaged in various forms of exercise, including aerobics and Zumba,” she says. Vuong is now applying the knowledge she gained in the course to her volunteer work at the long-term care facility, and is considering careers in which she can continue to work with seniors. In her current job, as a pension assistant, Vuong says she has “a unique opportunity to assist older adults with pension inquiries.”

A WINNING FORMULA

When Steve Song began his full-time Management Co-op placement at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General, he expected to learn what it was like to be a public servant in finance and accounting. What he didn’t expect: to influence how the Ministry prepares its annual budget. “When preparing for the Ministry’s annual compensation forecasting worksheet, I identified a way to improve a formula to save the government budget $125,000,” says Song, a fourth-year Management Co-op student who will graduate in UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

Steve Song

December. “This may not be a big number in the government budget, but I felt that I was actually contributing to the province that I live in.” Co-op is a game-changer for UTSC’s Management students, says Christine Arsenault, managing director of the Department of Management. “Our students apply what they have learned in class, and they also pick up valuable business skills that help to launch their careers,” she says. “Their work can have huge benefits for employers, and most of our Co-op students receive full-time job offers prior to graduation.” Song’s duties included helping to prepare budgets and forecasts, conducting financial analysis, helping to improve financial and business processes and producing reports, spreadsheets and financial documents. His experience let him gain a 24

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Luula Hassan

comprehensive understanding of public-sector financial management— one that can help him find future employment. “All I had heard about government is that it was ‘boring’ and ‘old school,’” he says. “But after I actually worked in a ministry, I found that all those rumours were just rumours. People in my branch were smart. They cared about my experience and provided me with great help.”

HUMANITARIAN HOPE

It isn’t often that a university student gets to assist Canadian diplomats in humanitarian efforts overseas. But Luula Hassan’s Co-op placement allowed her to do just that. The third-year student travelled to Geneva, Switzerland, to lend support to the Mission of Canada, Humanitarian Affairs, just as the

refugee crisis was emerging in spots around the world. Her work involved researching and analyzing emerging international humanitarian issues, preparing diplomatic reports for briefings and being part of delegations representing Canada at meetings of international organizations. “My placement at the Canadian Mission came at a time when migration was receiving great international attention,” says Hassan, who is majoring in Public Policy and Health Policy. “I attended a number of interesting meetings at the UN on the humanitarian situations in various countries such as Syria, Burundi and Yemen. “I was able to learn and understand the structure of not only the Canadian government but various international and multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, the International

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Organization for Migration.” Roger Francis, Director of the Arts and Science Co-op program at UTSC, says Hassan’s experience illustrates why co-op programs in postsecondary education are so valuable. “The Co-op model presents a recipe that supports the academic interests of the learner, while lending to a highly marketable skills base,” he says. “It brings an enriched context to the classroom as students return from work term with industry perspective that allows for advanced sharing and learning with their fellow students.” From Hassan’s perspective, the placement was a chance to gain experience in an area of study and work that is hard for undergraduates to

access. She says she gained exposure to the work of the Canadian government in humanitarian affairs, and also, by consistently contributing to diplomatic reports, the chance to strengthen her writing skills.

LEARN BY TEACHING

Connecting a student’s scholarly knowledge to practical application in a community environment—this is the foundation of Kamini Persaud’s course, CTL B03—Introduction to Service Learning. Sameeha Zaynab says her placement at YouthLink’s Pathways to Education program in Scarborough Village allowed her “to be an effective tutor, using my skills in writing, reading and comprehension in English and social sciences.”

Sameeha Zaynab and Prof. Kamini Persaud

YouthLink serves a multicultural community of high school students at various academic levels, and Zaynab says her placement there allowed her to bridge the gap between theory and practice. In the course (offered through the UTSC Service Learning and Outreach program, Centre for Teaching and Learning) students are placed in a community setting. There, they must apply the concepts and approaches they’ve been taught in the classroom. “They must then reflect on how their scholarly knowledge has contributed to their performance,” says Persaud, “and also on how that service experience informs their academic understanding.” She says it is “this reciprocal learning, and student reflection on this reciprocal learning, that separates service learning from other forms of experiential learning.” Persaud’s course has two components: in-class and placement. The in-class portion introduces students to the educational approach of service learning and to concepts and key skills they’ll need to learn from their placement experiences. Placements can be either “inreach” or “out-reach.” In-reach placements involve students returning to a course they have successfully completed, and working with the instructor to enrich the learning of currently enrolled students. Out-reach placements allow students to take concepts they’ve learned in the classroom and bring them to community organizations. They study the current needs of the communities, and the effectiveness of approaches that are being used to meet those needs. “Students serve as academic role models and are exposed to the real needs of their communities,” says Persaud. “As they use their scholastic knowledge to help others, their area of study becomes more relevant to them and their motivation to learn is revitalized.” UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

REVOLUTION (Tweetych) Tweets composed July 15, 1967, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Twitter.

From Fauxccasional Poems, a collection of poetry that imagines alternative events in history, by Daniel Scott Tysdal. Tysdal is an Associate Professor in the Department of English. He is the author of two other books of poetry, The Mournerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Book of Albums and Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method as well as the creative writing poetry textbook, The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems. Illustration by Carol Cheung, an artist and fourth-year student in Art History and Studio at U of T Scarborough. 26

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REVOLUTION

@clearlyleary (Verified Account) Turn on, tune in, tweet out #twitrev @therealcheguevara (Verified Account) Don’t care if I fall as long as someone take up my acct and keeps tweeting. Free T 4 RT #twitterrevolution

#twitterrevolutions

@landslideLBJ (Verified Account) SMH Brezhnev says he and #ussr are world power. Then why refuse to join the #twitterrevolution

#trending

@psychedelicpearl kk RT@droboogiebeatle: Twitter u bigger den us now and we biggr den Jesus ;) #twitrev

@revmlk (Verified Account) In the end we don’t remember the tweets of enemies but the friends who don’t favorite/RT #twitrev @prezdegaulle (Verified Account) Vive le #twitter libre! Vive le twitter #français! Et vive la #france! #twitrev

@NationalNOW @landslideLBJ how r u tweeting to bring #women into full participation in the twittersphere tmb #twitterrevolution

@thefamilyman if u no no sense makes sense join our #tweetup: http://ow.ly/CdqKN #twitrev #twitterrevolution #twitter #revolution

@newordersuharto (Verified Account) hey @therealcheguevara and all u #commies why dont u follow me jk #twitterrevolution @campbellsoup (Verified Account) In the future, every tweet will trend for 15 seconds. #twitrev #twitrev @chairmao (Verified Account) IMHO 2 read 2 many books is harmful. Let 100 tweets bloom! #twitterrevolution

UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

CAMPUS NEWS

FROM THE SIX TO THE CITY OF LIGHT Five months in Paris sounds like a

pretty good gig, and for Constantina Varlokostas, her work term in France really got started during her local Co-op placement. “The Co-op, study and work term abroad were deciding factors as to 28

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why I chose to study Management & International Business at UTSC,” says Varlokostas. The program requires students to complete two domestic work terms, an international study term and an international work term. She spent five months in fall and

winter completing both her international study and work terms in France. Her Co-op placement with Mercedes-Benz Financial Services (MBFS) Canada, was instrumental to getting the international work term of her dreams. “I was fortunate enough that one of my colleagues I had met had a predecessor working at MBFS France. She knew I was travelling to France for a study term and looking for an international work term,” says Varlokostas. Her colleague put in a good word to the Paris office, and after a series of interviews, she landed a contract. Varlokostas worked alongside a team manager on a project called GET Ready, a complex operation aimed at unifying all MBFS companies through a single process. Varlokostas was there the night of the November 2015 attacks, and University of Toronto’s Safety Abroad office was the first to contact her to make sure she was okay. “My coordinators were especially considerate of the situation, they had even skyped to me to see how I was feeling,” says Varlokostas. UTSC staff were quick to keep friends and family aware that she was safe and well. Beyond building international work experience, Varlokostas also was able to improve her language skills. “Paris was my top choice,” she says. “I’ve been studying French ever since I was young so I really wanted the opportunity to really strengthen my conversation skills. By immersing myself in the culture I was really able to grasp the language.”

CAMPUS NEWS

BETTER TRANSIT AT LAST!

It could be transformative for U of T Scarborough—a

A TASTY MIDTERM

Usually, you can’t take food into an exam. But UTSC’s

Edible History: History of Global Foodways is not your usual class. Instead of a regular midterm test, the course offered a food pop up, organized by Professor Daniel Bender, teaching assistant Nick Tošaj, and Carmen Yung of the Culinaria Research Centre. Students made international curries and served them to everyone who came by. “For a day the students became the educators, teaching people about the various curries we cooked up,” says Tošaj. The course explores the evolution of eating traditions around the world through lectures and cooking demonstrations. The pop up got people talking about food and history, and Tošaj, for one, says he would do it again “in a heartbeat.”

new city-wide transit plan that would substantially improve access to the campus. The plan includes a 17-stop extension of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT, which would end at UTSC. “This plan serves our growing student population, faculty, staff and all of the Scarborough community with a rational transit solution,” says UTSC Principal Bruce Kidd. “Well-planned transit can significantly contribute to the quality of life for people in Scarborough by providing mobility,” says Professor Andre Sorensen, “with higher intensity of use along key corridors.” Sorensen is Chair of the Department of Human Geography and author of a report covering transit options for Scarborough. With all the false transit starts in this part of the city, this one shows real promise as it’s supported both by Mayor John Tory and Chief Planner Jennifer Keesmat. Council will consider a report from the planning office and the TTC in June. Ward 43 Councillor Paul Ainslie even ensured that the report will include integrating the transit proposal with UTSC’s master plan. UTSC is already an important transit hub in the eastern GTA—675 buses arrive here every weekday. UTSC Commons | Spring 2016

HIGH PRAISE FOR IDS

International Development Studies at

CATALOGUING UNDERGRAD RESEARCH

A new tool—designed at U of T Scarborough—will make it easier for undergraduate students to get involved in research. Developed by the Office of the Vice-Principal Research and the Academic Advising & Career Centre (AA&CC), the new UTSC Research Catalogue provides a list of all research opportunities at UTSC and at partner institutions, an overview of the research activities listed, and also showcases faculty research profiles. “Faculty can broaden awareness about their research opportunities and offer advice to students who may want to do research with them, while students can also learn about the skills and experience they can acquire,” says AA&CC Director Jennifer Ankrett. The new catalogue is available to all UTSC students on the Career 30

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Learning Network (CLN), an online hub that helps students manage their academic and career goals. “Having a research catalogue available through CLN is an ideal fit,” says Ankrett, “because it allows undergraduates interested in doing research the ability to start planning ahead and learn about the breadth of research opportunities at UTSC.”

U of T Scarborough has been recognized as a standout in the 2016 Maclean’s University Rankings. “To get that recognition from an outside body was fabulous,” says Associate Professor and IDS Director Paul Kingston. “I think for us it was recognition for years and years of having great programming.” IDS is an interdisciplinary program available as a specialist co-op or a major, where students are able to take courses from other departments such as media, art and anthropology. “Two international scholars who reviewed our program came to the unanimous conclusion that our curriculum and the experiential learning aspects of the program are unique not only in North America, but in fact around the world,” says Leslie Chan, acting chair of Centre for Critical Development Studies. The program isn’t resting on its laurels. “We hope to launch a range of graduate experiential learning opportunities in the next few years,” says Kingston.

Scarborough Courses Register now! Flexible schedules to fit your busy lifestyle. Hybrid courses (best of in-class and online) available. Choose from business to creative writing to arts and languages. Courses start in May.

Pranya Yamin Social Media and Digital Coordinator Student, Business & Professional Studies

learn.utoronto.ca/utsc

416.978.2400

MEETING PLACE Alumni News

SPOTLIGHT Inspired by the Congo

Valerie Visani BA, 2010

After graduation, Valerie Visani (BA, 2010) moved to Los Angeles to go to law school. She thought she’d end up working there as an entertainment lawyer. Instead, she married the man she loved (also a UTSC alum), which led to a move to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “Funny how life throws you curveballs,” says 32

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Visani. “I said, ‘All right, I guess there goes Hollywood.’” Visani, who now works as a visiting professor at Université Protestante au Congo, was totally unprepared for the experience. “I had watched movies, but I couldn’t grasp the gravity of it all until I got there.” The Canadian government advises against non-essential travel to the DRC, which is one of the poorest and most dangerous places in the world. At first, Visani had no idea about

the daily struggles of her students. For instance, she would give an assignment at the end of the day and expect it to be turned in the next morning. “But many of my students don’t have access to electricity 80 per cent of the time,” she says, “and can’t afford computers. So they have to save money and book time at an Internet café, then walk miles to get there. That’s not all. They also have to collaborate and arrange groups to travel together for safety.” Visani has now adjusted her course syllabus. Instead of providing online links for assignments, she photo copies articles for her students. Recently, Visani participated in TEDxUTSC. “I wanted to share my students’ stories and shed light on how lucky the students are here in Canada,” she says. “I want to tell them this: Just by living here, you have won the geographic lottery.” But she also wants to tell people how committed her students are, and how positive about the future. “When we think of Africa, we think about war and poverty. We don’t often think about the students working hard every day,” she says. “It’s very inspiring.” Sometimes she thinks about the life she planned to lead. “I started out wanting something totally different. But really, I don’t think I would be as happy if I had stayed in Los Angeles.” These days, when she leaves the DRC, she only thinks about going back.

MEETING PLACE

WHO’S DOING WHAT 1

When you’re surrounded by likeminded people doing cool things, it can really have an impact on you. That’s what Tomash Devenishek (BBA, 2008) says he learned at U of T Scarborough. “When I was in school, one of my buddies sold a start-up company for a few thousand dollars. That was a big deal—it was so inspiring.” Devenishek credits the university with giving him opportunities he may not have had otherwise, like the chance to take part in the co-op program. “I was at (car-sharing company) AutoShare when it was just starting up,” he says. “It was very exciting to get in at that level, and it was great exposure to the digital marketing world.” Most in his program went into accounting or finance, but Devenishek’s heart has always been in marketing. “Digital was just beginning to emerge,” he says, “and it has always

been a passion of mine. Right from the time when my parents got me my first computer, I’d sit around exploring this wonderful world of technology.” Now, Devenishek is doing some pretty cool things himself, such as building a platform (cevees.com) where young people can collaborate with peers and career counsellors to create resumés they can easily tailor for different job applications. He’s also running a successful digital agency (peller.tech) that helps other technology start-ups develop their ideas into early-stage applications. Not everyone can boast their alma mater is one of their clients, but Hamza Khan (BA, 2010) can proudly do so. Khan is the co-founder of Splash Effect, a digital media agency that focuses on marketing for 2

educational organizations. He says he can’t imagine where he’d be without UTSC. He started as a student, worked in Student Life and continues to provide consulting services to the department. But his path, he says, “wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.” Originally, Khan was on the doctorlawyer-engineer track, following his immigrant father’s dream. “My father was right, those are honourable careers. But my passion was for the arts— for communication, for storytelling.” Khan met his mentor, motivational speaker Drew Dudley, in a workshop one day. He remembers Dudley saying, “You don’t go to university or college just to get a degree. You go to grow and to discover the person you will be for the rest of your life.” This gave Khan the courage to talk to his father. 1 Tomash Devenishek 2 Hamza Khan

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“I said, ‘Pop, I love you. I can become a mediocre lawyer at best, or I can have an amazing career in marketing.’ My father understood that,” says Khan, “and the rest is history.” The wheels are always turning for Khan. A high performer, he’s happiest when something’s going on. In fact, he was a speaker at this year’s TEDxUTSC conference, his first book, Getting More Sh*t Done, is coming out this summer. A self-taught cook from Toronto, Vijaya Selvaraju (BBA, 2008) is a chip off the old block. “I come from a family of cooks, and ever since I was a kid I was always helping my mom in the kitchen.” Selvaraju says she was lucky to grow up in Scarborough, where she was surrounded by so many cultures. She’s adventurous, so after school she’d negotiate with her mother to go out for Vietnamese or Thai or

Mexican food—whatever cuisine she wanted to explore. “When Food Network started airing in Canada, I was watching that instead of Power Rangers or the cartoons that my friends liked,” she says with a laugh. Little did Selvaraju know that she’d be on TV herself one day, first on a travel show for kids, then appearing regularly as a food expert on The Marilyn Denis Show and as the Indian cuisine expert on One World Kitchen, a series on Gusto TV. “When I speak to students, I always tell them that it’s okay to be diffferent, it’s okay to go through a rough patch, but to be realistic and ask yourself, ‘Is this something I’m good at? Is this something that I can get better at over time?’” she says. “Finding your calling is what you’re meant to do in life. For all of the things I do right now, it blows my mind that people pay me to do them, these things I love to do!”

3 Vijaya Selvaraju 4 Peter Zhu, right, at a reception in Hong Kong with U of T President Meric Gertler. 3

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CMY

After graduation, Peter Zhu (BSc, 2013) interned at the Bank of China (Canada), then worked at Citibank, before landing at Manulife. “I had specialized in applied math, so insurance was well related,” he says. Zhu then engineered a move to Manulife Hong Kong. Since his parents live in Beijing, they’re happy about that. “Hong Kong is actually a better place for me,” says Zhu, “as I can visit them often.” Zhu says the workday in Hong Kong is “actually very different. There is so much more competition going on with insurance. So, of course, that requires a lot of overtime work.” The day doesn’t automatically start at 9:00 and end at 5:30, as he says it often does in Canada. What’s coming down the pipeline for Zhu? “In the future, I’ll probably get an MBA degree, then open up my own firm.”

UTSC DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNI RELATIONS

JOIN US FOR THE BIGGEST EVENTS THIS SPRING 5TH ANNUAL LEADER2LEADER CONFERENCE

SPRING REUNION

U of T Scarborough April 29, 2016

U of T Scarborough May 28 and 29, 2016

What are some Big Ideas that will shape, change, influence and tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems? Join successful UTSC alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs and industry professionals who will lead you in a full day of leadership learning and networking on the UTSC campus.

Rediscover your alma mater! Sit in on a talk from a favourite professor at our Classes Without Quizzes, mingle with fellow alumni, explore your artistic side through the Doris McCarthy Gallery, take a campus tour and enjoy some delicious food at our Principal’s Cookout. Open to family and friends.

For more info and to register visit:

www.utscLeader2Leader.com

www.utscSpringReunion.com

If you have any questions about these events or other future opportunities, please contact us at alumni@utsc.utoronto.ca or call 416.287.5631. You can also visit us online at alumni.utsc.utoronto.ca

ANNOTATION

Go through the turnstiles of the Toronto

Pan Am Sports Centre (TPASC), take the stairs and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be right next to people actually climbing the walls.

The 12.5 m rock climbing wall is one of the tallest in the eastern GTA.

During consultations about what

features TPASC should have, members of the UTSC community overwhelmingly identified a desire for a climbing wall.

Staff, faculty and students lobbied hard for it, and even contributed ideas for the design.

When the wall became a reality, so did Climb UTSC (climbutsc.ca), a brand new club that quickly grew to more than 80 members. Climb UTSC holds climbing sessions and instruction not only at TPASC, but also at outdoor locations such as Rattlesnake Point, outside Milton, Ont.

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Any TPASC member

can sign up for learnto-climb lessons or just drop in. Check the schedule at utsc. utoronto.ca/athletics/ climbingwall.

Chart the best course for your life in the years ahead. Start with preferred insurance rates.

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