It's National Engineering Week

Here in Canada it's National Engineering Week from February 24 to March 4 (I guess making NEW 9 days is a kludge?). The national site is mostly aimed at younger kids and includes some cool profiles. It's sponsored by the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers and various other associations.

The Ontario site seems targeted for a slightly older audience, maybe middle school and high school. The list of Ontario sponsors is here. There was an insert in the Globe and Mail yesterday, which you can view here. The insert has a bunch of good articles, including "Engineering is all around us: Across our country's vast expanse, Canadians are connected by a legacy of engineering acheivements" and "Eastern Canadian robotics games inspire Ontario youth."

There are also some inserts from previous years here. Every year I email the organizers to complain that the current newspaper insert isn't online right away, and they finally seem to have listened; I'm sure they got a lot of requests asking for the current insert to be online.

Science Matters: If I were Prime Minister

David Suzuki's February 16th Science Matters column is called Internet Can Bring Communities Together.

There are now hundreds of "If I were Prime Minister" videos up on the tour website (www.davidsuzuki.org). Some are silly. Some are inspiring. Some are familiar faces and others complete strangers. But they are all Canadians who have ideas on what our politicians can do to make Canada a world leader in sustainability.

*snip*

The videos are one way to do that. At each event, young Simon, our videographer, is there ready to record clips of people expressing the kinds of changes they would make if they were prime minister. Sometimes people are shy, but more often than not, Simon is practically mobbed by people wanting to express their opinions. That's especially true of the realityTV generation, who has been raised under the blinking light of a camcorder and has few reservations about talking to one.

*snip*

What we need now is to rationalize our economy with ecological reality. This means we need to shift our economy to be cleaner and smarter. We need to stop subsidizing polluting industries. We need to create targets and timelines to reduce pollution to levels that do not jeopardize our natural systems. It means our environment, not our economy must be the real bottom line.

You can catch the tour blog, podcasts, celebrity videos, with the tour home page here. There are an astonishing 268 videos on the YouTube group.

Conference & OA call for papers

Thought I'd combine these two bits of news...

• ENRICHING THE ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE OF COLLEGE SCIENCE STUDENTS, May 22-24, 2007 at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
  http://www.umich.edu/~slc/conf/homeslc.htm
  
  Plan to attend this national conference May 22-24, 2007 at the
  University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Conference sessions will cover
  topics related to:
  
  ---peer-based programs
  ---collaborative learning and supplemental instruction
  ---increasing participation of underrepresented students in the sciences
  ---science study skills and/or tutoring and/or advising
  ---innovative uses of technology in science education
  ---undergraduate research and service learning programs
  ---learning communities
  ---and much more...
  
  The conference will provide a gathering place for a diverse group of
  educators, including learning center professionals, faculty, program
  directors and others who are committed to supporting undergraduate
  science students outside of the formal classroom. We are inviting
  educators from all types of colleges and universities, including
  two-year community colleges and four-year comprehensive, liberal arts,
  and research institutions.
  
  The conference will feature approximately 50 concurrent sessions plus
  two featured speakers: Saundra Y. McGuire, director of the Center for
  Academic Success at Louisiana State University and Robert Megginson,
  mathematician and associate dean for undergraduate and graduate
  education at the University of Michigan.
  
  
• Open Access Research (OAR): Call for Papers
  
  We have recently started Open Access Research (OAR)
  <http://ojs.gsu.edu/oar>, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that will enable greater interaction and facilitate a deeper conversation about open access, including topics such as:
  
  open access journals
  institutional support for open access
  open access publishing services and software
  open access repositories (both institutional and subject-based)
  electronic theses and dissertations
  the impact of open access on scholarly research and communications.
  
  If you are engaged in research relating to open access, or if you have an article in mind, please contact us. OAR's first issue will be in August, 2007 and will subsequently be published three times a year. Submissions received by March 31, 2007 will be considered for the August issue; subsequent submissions will be considered for future issues.
  
  Send inquiries to:
  
  William Walsh
  Head - Acquisitions
  Georgia State University Library
  100 Decatur St. SE
  Atlanta, GA 30303
  wwalsh@gsu.edu
  
  Editors-in-Chief: John Russell (University of Oregon), Dorothea Salo (George Mason University), William Walsh (Georgia State University), Elizabeth Winter (Georgia Institute of Technology). Please see our website for a full list of editors and editorial board members. Open Access Research is published by the Georgia State University Library using Open Journal Systems (http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs) software.
  
  Via Skye Hardesty on PAMNET.