The last INK news day has come and gone. I stumbled on to my last story as I was walking to the story meeting. In the research and innovation centre (or, new lab building, as most students call it) I saw that a crew was setting up the Aboriginal Students Career Centre's career fair. A quick search online found me the organizer, and the story was good to go.
Darlene MacDonald runs the centre and she told me about how the career day is really meant to just show students and employers what opportunities are out there. She said that some students who come from reserves aren't always aware of what jobs are possible with certain degrees, and the career day gives them real physical examples and people to answer their questions.
After that I hung out at the fair, talked to some students, and took some photos.
What really made this story was the fact that I found a recent First Nations University grad who works for a company he first came in contact with at the same fair in 2010.
To find out more details about how the career fair helped him, check out the full article:
Making connections: U of R’s Aboriginal Career Centre’s Career day brings students and employers together
Friday, November 25, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Election!
This week, Saskatchewan had its 27th provincial election, and everyone at Ink worked had to put together a special edition of the paper.
I was assigned to cover the Green Party and their leader, Victor Lau. I arrived at Regina's Hungarian Clun around 8:30, and things were well under way. Right away, I was invited to sit with a group of young candidates and a few of their supporters. I chatted with a lot of people throughout the evening, and they were all so excited to have press at their event.
By 10 o'clock, the night was over, and I had to hurry back to the Ink newsroom to put everything I learned together into a story. Here's the result:
No Green on the other side
I was assigned to cover the Green Party and their leader, Victor Lau. I arrived at Regina's Hungarian Clun around 8:30, and things were well under way. Right away, I was invited to sit with a group of young candidates and a few of their supporters. I chatted with a lot of people throughout the evening, and they were all so excited to have press at their event.
By 10 o'clock, the night was over, and I had to hurry back to the Ink newsroom to put everything I learned together into a story. Here's the result:
No Green on the other side
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
URSU goes old school to give students new voice
After an extra long break, our class finally got back in the Ink groove.
Today's story is about the University of Regina's student's Union (URSU) and their latest campaign stunt. (I'll give you a hint, it involves mass faxes)
They've been running an aggressive student issue campaign since the election was called and they're going to keep doing so until the election. When I spoke with Paige Kezima, URSU's VP of external affairs, she told me how URSU really wants to battle student apathy by getting students informed about election issues.
URSU has put together a list of five areas they believe need to be addressed:
1. Housing
2. Tuition costs
3. Day care availability
4. Aboriginal education
5. Student votes
Unlike tradition party campaigns, URSU has really tried to engage young people. Last week they held a memorial for democracy as a way to raise awareness about low voter turn out rates, and next week they're hosting a karaoke for students and candidates at The Owl.
I spoke to a lot of students around the school, many of whom said they didn't know a whole lot about the election. Those who did raised some great points. One first-year political science student questioned how effective a four year tuition freeze would really be. What about everyone who comes after? He asked.
Another student raised a point about housing. His rent was raised so high that he eventually had to move out, and once he did, he couldn't find anywhere affordable to live in Regina, and was forced to move to Lumsden.
Unfortunately, I didn't have room for all of that in my story. But I'm glad I could share them here.
This is a short piece that concentrates on the issues of the cost of education and the dangers of student debt, a topic I'm sure many students here at the U of R can relate to.
Check it out:
Students send mass faxes to NDP and Sask Party
Today's story is about the University of Regina's student's Union (URSU) and their latest campaign stunt. (I'll give you a hint, it involves mass faxes)
They've been running an aggressive student issue campaign since the election was called and they're going to keep doing so until the election. When I spoke with Paige Kezima, URSU's VP of external affairs, she told me how URSU really wants to battle student apathy by getting students informed about election issues.
URSU has put together a list of five areas they believe need to be addressed:
1. Housing
2. Tuition costs
3. Day care availability
4. Aboriginal education
5. Student votes
Unlike tradition party campaigns, URSU has really tried to engage young people. Last week they held a memorial for democracy as a way to raise awareness about low voter turn out rates, and next week they're hosting a karaoke for students and candidates at The Owl.
I spoke to a lot of students around the school, many of whom said they didn't know a whole lot about the election. Those who did raised some great points. One first-year political science student questioned how effective a four year tuition freeze would really be. What about everyone who comes after? He asked.
Another student raised a point about housing. His rent was raised so high that he eventually had to move out, and once he did, he couldn't find anywhere affordable to live in Regina, and was forced to move to Lumsden.
Unfortunately, I didn't have room for all of that in my story. But I'm glad I could share them here.
This is a short piece that concentrates on the issues of the cost of education and the dangers of student debt, a topic I'm sure many students here at the U of R can relate to.
Check it out:
Students send mass faxes to NDP and Sask Party
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Are the arts students really starving?
Yesterday marked my first day as an Ink reporter. The paper is divided into beats, and I'll be covering campus news for the semester. My first story was inspired by a national CTV story that ran earlier in the week about graduates with arts degrees earning a lot less of a return on their educational investment than other faculties. As an arts student myself, I found this particularily intruiging.
I don't know when I started to accept the stigma about BAs, or how the stigma reached me in the first place, but I certainly wasn't surprised by the statistics CTV used. But, given my own personal interests I've always defended arts students, myself included. So, needless to say, I was excited about this story.
For a while I tried to find a member of the Arts Student Association, but that didn't pan out. Eventually, I just wondered outside the Jschool and asked a few people what they were taking. Almost right away I got the interview I used in the piece. Brianna Rotelick is a first-year here at the U of R, and she's taking general arts because she was waitlisted for education. For her, an arts degree will be a stepping stone to what she really wants to do: teach English. Not surprisingly, she's frustrated that he stepping stone costs $23,000. She gave me a great interview with quotes that worked really well with the rest of the story.
Next I spoke with Richard Kleer, the dean of the faculty of the arts. Right away he showed me conflicting statistics to those from the CTV article. They were even potentially from the same study. CTV never did tell me which study they used, despite a few phone calls. Kleer spoke of the value of arts degrees, and about how many students enrolled in his faculty aren't necissarily there to find jobs that will make them rich. They do it because they love it, he said.
My last interview was with Elissa Curr, who works at the University's Career Centre. She was another great interview. She told me about the challenges arts studetns can face, but she also offered constructive suggestions for those looking to boost their resumes before they graduate.
All in all, I'm happy with the story. Because it's a topic I'm quite interested in, it would have been nice to have more time to work on it and really dive into some of the statistics available. Even without those, I think it sends a clear message that perhaps the stigma of the arts degree needs to be retired.
Here's the story:
A university education is a big investment, and students expect big returns. But some statistics suggest that arts students are getting the short end of the stick. The University of Regina's dean of arts takes issue with the numbers.
A recent CTV story cited some studies with conflicting statistics, but the article concluded that arts students made the lowest returns annually on their income, with percentages as low as four to six per cent.
“I worry that people read things like this and just accept it as gospel fact,” said Richard Kleer, dean of the faculty of the arts at the University of Regina.
Kleer doesn’t agree with the notion that arts graduates always earn the least on their educational investments. Referencing a 2007 federal Department of Finance report that shows educational returns from 1995 to 2002, Kleer pointed out that returns vary by discipline, not simply by faculty.
For example, in 2002, the rate of return for men with a BA in a social science discipline was 9.5 per cent, whereas a man with a science degree in agriculture or biology only had a return rate of 4.6 per cent. In the same year, women with humanities related degrees had a return of 9.3 per cent, again a much higher return than suggested by the CTV story.
“I don’t know how the stereotype got established in the first place,” Kleer said, “But people now believe it and it’s very hard to break it, even if it’s not true.”
While not every student pursues an arts degree with the goal of working within their discipline, using an entire degree as a stepping stone can be frustrating.
“I want to be an English teacher,” first-year U of R student Brianna Rotelick said. However, the journey there could take Rotelick a little longer than the usual four years. After being wait-listed by the faculty of education, Rotelick decided to take an arts degree before getting her education credentials.
“I thought (an arts degree) would be a good place to go because it’s something I’m passionate about,” she said.
But Rotelick doesn’t love everything about getting an arts degree.
For one, Rotelick isn’t fond of having to use an entire degree as a stepping stone.
“It sucks,” she said. “I’m paying for my own schooling and the fact that I’m paying all this money for a degree that I’m probably not going to be able to do anything with makes it hard to go to class sometimes.”
“When you come out of Arts, you don’t always know what to go in to, and it can be hard,” said Elissa Curr, the U of R Career Centre’s recruitment liaison coordinator. “The challenge (with arts students) I would say is that employers might find that Arts students are too generalized,” she said. However, Curr said this isn’t always the case.
Curr said that the best way for arts students to get a higher return on their education is to ensure they graduate with the skills they need for employment. One method to get these skills is by participating in the University of Regina’s co-op program, Curr suggested.
An arts graduate herself, Curr said liberal arts are a great field that can lead to great opportunities. “I found having that arts background definitely helped me find what I wanted to do and opened a lot of doors that might not have been opened previously,” she said.
I don't know when I started to accept the stigma about BAs, or how the stigma reached me in the first place, but I certainly wasn't surprised by the statistics CTV used. But, given my own personal interests I've always defended arts students, myself included. So, needless to say, I was excited about this story.
For a while I tried to find a member of the Arts Student Association, but that didn't pan out. Eventually, I just wondered outside the Jschool and asked a few people what they were taking. Almost right away I got the interview I used in the piece. Brianna Rotelick is a first-year here at the U of R, and she's taking general arts because she was waitlisted for education. For her, an arts degree will be a stepping stone to what she really wants to do: teach English. Not surprisingly, she's frustrated that he stepping stone costs $23,000. She gave me a great interview with quotes that worked really well with the rest of the story.
Next I spoke with Richard Kleer, the dean of the faculty of the arts. Right away he showed me conflicting statistics to those from the CTV article. They were even potentially from the same study. CTV never did tell me which study they used, despite a few phone calls. Kleer spoke of the value of arts degrees, and about how many students enrolled in his faculty aren't necissarily there to find jobs that will make them rich. They do it because they love it, he said.
My last interview was with Elissa Curr, who works at the University's Career Centre. She was another great interview. She told me about the challenges arts studetns can face, but she also offered constructive suggestions for those looking to boost their resumes before they graduate.
All in all, I'm happy with the story. Because it's a topic I'm quite interested in, it would have been nice to have more time to work on it and really dive into some of the statistics available. Even without those, I think it sends a clear message that perhaps the stigma of the arts degree needs to be retired.
Here's the story:
A recent CTV story cited some studies with conflicting statistics, but the article concluded that arts students made the lowest returns annually on their income, with percentages as low as four to six per cent.
“I worry that people read things like this and just accept it as gospel fact,” said Richard Kleer, dean of the faculty of the arts at the University of Regina.
Kleer doesn’t agree with the notion that arts graduates always earn the least on their educational investments. Referencing a 2007 federal Department of Finance report that shows educational returns from 1995 to 2002, Kleer pointed out that returns vary by discipline, not simply by faculty.
For example, in 2002, the rate of return for men with a BA in a social science discipline was 9.5 per cent, whereas a man with a science degree in agriculture or biology only had a return rate of 4.6 per cent. In the same year, women with humanities related degrees had a return of 9.3 per cent, again a much higher return than suggested by the CTV story.
“I don’t know how the stereotype got established in the first place,” Kleer said, “But people now believe it and it’s very hard to break it, even if it’s not true.”
While not every student pursues an arts degree with the goal of working within their discipline, using an entire degree as a stepping stone can be frustrating.
“I want to be an English teacher,” first-year U of R student Brianna Rotelick said. However, the journey there could take Rotelick a little longer than the usual four years. After being wait-listed by the faculty of education, Rotelick decided to take an arts degree before getting her education credentials.
“I thought (an arts degree) would be a good place to go because it’s something I’m passionate about,” she said.
But Rotelick doesn’t love everything about getting an arts degree.
For one, Rotelick isn’t fond of having to use an entire degree as a stepping stone.
“It sucks,” she said. “I’m paying for my own schooling and the fact that I’m paying all this money for a degree that I’m probably not going to be able to do anything with makes it hard to go to class sometimes.”
“When you come out of Arts, you don’t always know what to go in to, and it can be hard,” said Elissa Curr, the U of R Career Centre’s recruitment liaison coordinator. “The challenge (with arts students) I would say is that employers might find that Arts students are too generalized,” she said. However, Curr said this isn’t always the case.
Curr said that the best way for arts students to get a higher return on their education is to ensure they graduate with the skills they need for employment. One method to get these skills is by participating in the University of Regina’s co-op program, Curr suggested.
An arts graduate herself, Curr said liberal arts are a great field that can lead to great opportunities. “I found having that arts background definitely helped me find what I wanted to do and opened a lot of doors that might not have been opened previously,” she said.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Let me introduce myself
Hi readers.
My name is Jamie Fischer. I'm a fourth-year journalism student studying at the University of Regina. I'm a lit lover, a dog owner, and beginner photographer.
In this blog I'll share my stories with you. But, unlike Ink readers, you'll get the story from start to finish.
As I said earlier, I'm a student, so I'm always looking to learn. If you read, watch, or listen to something on this blog and know a way it could be improved, please do share your thoughts. I have no qualms about reading criticism, I'm here to learn.
So, my dear readers, now you know a little bit about me. I'm sure by the time this blog project is over you'll know much more, and hopefully I'll know a little about you.
Until next time.
My name is Jamie Fischer. I'm a fourth-year journalism student studying at the University of Regina. I'm a lit lover, a dog owner, and beginner photographer.
In this blog I'll share my stories with you. But, unlike Ink readers, you'll get the story from start to finish.
As I said earlier, I'm a student, so I'm always looking to learn. If you read, watch, or listen to something on this blog and know a way it could be improved, please do share your thoughts. I have no qualms about reading criticism, I'm here to learn.
So, my dear readers, now you know a little bit about me. I'm sure by the time this blog project is over you'll know much more, and hopefully I'll know a little about you.
Until next time.
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