Education
Red Deer Polytechnic recognizes achievements of graduates at 2023 Convocation
Friday, Red Deer Polytechnic (RDP) celebrated the Class of 2023 with families, community members and employees attending its 59th Convocation Ceremonies.
“Convocation is the most important day of the academic year, when we come together as a community to celebrate our graduates and all they have achieved,” says Stuart Cullum, President of Red Deer Polytechnic. “I congratulate the Class of 2023 and wish them every success as they start the next chapter of their lives.”
More than 620 of 1,470 eligible RDP graduates from 2023 attended the ceremonies in the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre. Little Buffalo Drum Group welcomed the graduates into The Fas Gas – On The Run Gymnasium with an Indigenous Grand Entry Song, which was performed to acknowledge and celebrate significant achievements in life.
This year is the first graduating classes of RDP’s Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences, Business Certificate, Business Diploma, Business Certificate Skywings and Bachelor of Applied Arts in Film, Theatre, and Live Entertainment – Film Production.
Brittany Parker received the Governor General’s Academic Medal (Collegiate Bronze Level), achieving the highest academic standing among all graduates from Red Deer Polytechnic’s diploma-level programs. Parker completed an Occupational and Physical Therapist Assistant Diploma, earning seven grades of A+ and a GPA of 4.0 during the 2022/2023 academic year.
“To earn the Governor General’s Academic Medal takes hard work, commitment and effective time management,” says Dr. Paulette Hanna, Interim Vice President Academic. “Brittany has demonstrated these important skills throughout her time at Red Deer Polytechnic and we are very proud of her accomplishments. We wish Brittany well as she embarks on her career.”
Parker and the entire Class of 2023 now join an esteemed group of more than 80,000 RDP alumni who are key contributors to industry and communities.
This year, Red Deer Polytechnic granted Honorary Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Degrees to both Dr. James Barmby and Dr. Russell Schnell for providing meaningful impact in Alberta and around the world. They were formally acknowledged at the Convocation Ceremonies.
Dr. Barmby is a respected post-secondary educator and leader who has made significant contributions provincially and nationally. His expertise and advocacy for higher learning have contributed to student success for almost 40 years. Along with his ongoing community involvement, Dr. Barmby is currently Co-chair of the Minister’s Advisory Council on Higher Education and Skills. Dr. Barmby, who was an Art and Design student at the Polytechnic, transferred to university before completing the program. At Convocation, he was also granted a Visual Art Diploma.
Dr. Schnell was recognized for his global contributions to environmental sciences. He was a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. Schnell discovered biological ice nuclei, which are effective initiators of natural precipitation, while working on the Alberta Hail Project. In recent years, he has built Little Free Libraries out of recycled materials and donated them to communities in Alberta and around the world to inspire youth.
Dr. Barmby and Dr. Schnell join a prestigious group of nine other individuals who have also received Honorary Degrees from Red Deer Polytechnic. The Polytechnic first began bestowing this honour in 2014.
More details about RDP’s 59th Convocation, the institution’s second as Red Deer Polytechnic, are available at: rdpolytech.ca/convocation.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Race- (and other-) based admissions will inevitably pave the way to race- (and other-) based medical practices, which will only further the divisions that exist in society. You can’t fight discrimination with more discrimination.
Perhaps it should be expected that a so-obviously ‘woke’ institution as the Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) would toss aside such antiquated concepts as academic merit as it prepares to open its new medical school in the fall of 2025.
After all, until recently, TMU was more widely known as Ryerson University. But it underwent a rapid period of self-flagellation, statue-tipping and, ultimately, a name change when its namesake, Edgerton Ryerson, was linked (however indirectly) to Canada’s residential school system.
Now that it has sufficiently cleansed itself of any association with past intolerance, it is going forward with a more modern form of intolerance and institutional bias by mandating a huge 80% diversity quota for its inaugural cohort of medical students.
TMU plans to fill 75 of its 94 available seats via three pathways for “equity-deserving groups” in an effort to counter systemic bias and eliminate barriers to success for certain groups. Consequently, there are distinct admission pathways for “Indigenous, Black and Equity-Deserving” groups.
What exactly is an equity-deserving group? It’s almost any identity group you can imagine – that is, except those who identify as white, straight, cisgender, straight-A, middle- and/or upper-class males.
To further facilitate this grand plan, TMU has eliminated the need to write the traditional MCAT exam (often used to assess aptitude, but apparently TMU views it as a barrier to accessing medical education). Further, it has set the minimum grade point average at a rather average 3.3 and, “in order to attract a diverse range of applicants,” it is accepting students with a four-year undergrad degree from any field.
It’s difficult to imagine how such a heterogenous group can begin learning medicine at the same level. Someone with an advanced degree in physiology or anatomy will be light years ahead of a classmate who gained a degree by dissecting Dostoyevsky.
Finally, it should be noted that in “exceptional circumstances” any of these requirements can be reconsidered for, you guessed it, black, indigenous or other equity-deserving groups.
As for the curriculum itself, it promises to be “rooted in community-driven care and cultural respect and safety, with ECA, decolonization and reconciliation woven throughout” which will “help students become a new kind of physician.”
Whether or not this “new kind of physician” will be perceived as fully credible, however, is yet to be seen. Because of its ‘woke’ application process, all TMU medical graduates will be judged differently no matter how skilled they may be and even when physicians are in short supply. Life and death decisions are literally in their hands, and in such cases, one would think that medical expertise is far more important than sharing the same pronouns.
Frankly, if students need a falsely inclusive environment where all minds think alike to feel safe and a part of society, then maybe they aren’t cut out to become doctors who will treat all people equally. After all, race- (and other-) based admissions will inevitably pave the way to race- (and other-) based medical practices, which will only further the divisions that exist in society. You can’t fight discrimination with more discrimination.
It’s ridiculous to use medical school enrollments as a means of resolving issues of social injustice. However, from a broader perspective, this social experiment echoes what is already happening in universities across Canada. The academic merit of individuals is increasingly being pushed aside to fulfill quotas based on gender or even race.
One year ago, the University of Victoria made headlines when it posted a position for an assistant professor in the music department. The catch is that the selection process was limited to black people. Education professor Dr. Patrick Keeney points out that diversity, equity and inclusion policies are reshaping core operations at universities. Grants and prestigious research chair positions are increasingly available only to visible minorities or other identity groups.
Non-academic considerations are given priority, and funding is contingent on meeting minority quotas.
Consequently, Keeney states that the quality of education is falling and universities that were once committed to academic excellence are now perceived as institutions to pursue social justice.
Diversity is a legitimate goal, but it cannot – and should not — be achieved by subjugating academic merit to social experimentation.
Susan Martinuk is a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and author of Patients at Risk: Exposing Canada’s Health-care Crisis.
From the Fraser Institute
The Waterloo Region District School Board recently announced it would remove garbage bins from classrooms, before suddenly reversing itself.
Strange as it sounds, the school board planned to replace classroom waste bins with larger bins in common areas outside of classrooms, ostensibly to reduce the amount of waste produced by schools. Apparently, the facilities superintendent and senior facilities manager (the people behind this idea) think garbage magically appears when garbage bins are in classrooms and disappears once you get rid of these bins.
Of course, reality is quite different. Students still must dispose of dirty Kleenex tissues, empty pens and used candy wrappers. The aborted plan gave students a ready-made excuse for extra hallway trips. To prevent this from happening, teachers would have to provide makeshift garbage bins of their own.
This is a prime example of administrators trying to impose impractical directives on teachers for the sake of virtue signalling. No doubt Waterloo school board officials wanted to be recognized as environmental leaders. Getting rid of garbage bins in classrooms is an easy and effortless way to look like you’re doing something good for the environment.
Indeed, teachers typically bear the brunt of bad ideas imposed on them from above. As another example, British Columbia K-9 teachers must now issue report cards with confusing descriptors such as “emerging” and “extending” rather than more easily understood letter grades such as A, B and C. A recent survey revealed that most parents find the new B.C. report cards hard to understand. While most had no trouble interpreting letter grades such as A, less than one-third could correctly identify what “emerging” and “extending” mean about a student’s progress.
While the B.C. Ministry of Education claims these new report cards are built on the expertise of classroom teachers, its own surveys found that 77 per cent of teachers were unhappy with the grading overhaul. Of course, their feedback was ignored by education bureaucrats, which means teachers must implement something most disagree with, and then bear the brunt of parental frustration.
And one can never forget the nonsensical “no-zero” policies imposed on teachers in every province, which prohibit teachers from giving a mark of zero when students fail to hand in assignments or docking marks for late assignments. The reasoning behind no-zero policies is that zeroes have too negative an impact on student grades.
Fortunately, no-zero policies have become less popular in Canadian schools, particularly after Edmonton physics teacher Lynden Dorval was fired for refusing to comply with his principal’s no-zeroes edict. Not only did the public overwhelmingly support Dorval at the time, but the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld an arbitrator’s ruling that Dorval’s firing was unjust. In the end, taxpayers were on the hook for paying Dorval two years of salary, along with topping up his pension. But this doesn’t mean no-zero policies have disappeared entirely. Plenty of assessment gurus hired by school boards still push them on gullible administrators and unsuspecting teachers.
Finally, there are the never-ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training sessions—possibly the worst fads ever imposed on Canadian teachers. In an obvious desire to justify their jobs, DEI consultants provide many hours of professional development to hapless teachers who have no choice but to attend.
When teachers push back, as Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto did during a DEI session a couple years ago, they’re subjected to harassment and derision. In this case, the social impact on Bilkszto was so negative he eventually and tragically took his own life.
The Bilkszto case had a chilling effect—teachers should go along with whatever they’re told to do by their employer, even when a directive doesn’t make sense. This is not healthy for any profession, and it certainly doesn’t benefit students.
Classroom teachers have far too many bad ideas imposed on them. Instead of making teachers implement useless fads, we should just let them teach. That is, after all, why they became teachers in the first place.
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