Funding

The �ؿ�ζSM has signed a Strategic Mandate Agreement with the province that recognizes the university’s leadership role in research and innovation, and establishes its enrolment and funding for the next three years.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for the �ؿ�ζSM,” said Cheryl Regehr, U of T’s vice-president and provost. “The new Strategic Mandate Agreement recognizes the excellence in research, innovation and teaching at the university, and provides metrics so we will be able to demonstrate this excellence and receive funding in a manner that reflects our position as a global university.”

Three years ago, the government adopted a new policy framework for post-secondary education, developing the Strategic Mandate Agreement (SMA) as a way to differentiate each of its 21 publicly funded universities. That first SMA recognized U of T’s global position as Canada’s flagship research-intensive university and its leadership role in the post-secondary education system. The 2014 agreement reallocated U of T’s undergraduate teacher education funding to its graduate level offerings, and created additional graduate spaces across university programs.

The second SMA adds more master and doctoral spots for students while trimming the number of undergraduate spots in response to Ontario’s changing demographics. It will provide funding for up to 631 new master’s students and 198 new doctoral students over the next three years.

While the university will still receive per-student funding from the province for both undergraduate and graduate programs, some funding will be moving into a differentiation envelope that will be based on performance in priority areas like student experience; innovation, economic development and community engagement; research excellence and impact; access and equity; and teaching and learning excellence. Funding will be held constant until 2020 while the province consults on the new funding mechanism and refines the list of key performance metrics.

Altogether, there are 56,000 domestic undergraduate students throughout the university. Under the new SMA, U of T Scarborough and U of T Mississauga will be held constant at current numbers, but U of T’s downtown Toronto campus will be reducing domestic undergraduate seats by 1,800 students over the three-year period. The move is part of the government’s response to demographic trends that show a dip in the number of 18- to 24-year-olds living in Ontario, Regehr said.

The province’s efforts to bolster U of T’s master’s and doctoral offerings mirror in part what is happening in the workplace.

“The increase in graduate spots meets the academic plans for divisions across the university who are developing new master’s programs, and the huge student demand for professional master’s programs,” Regehr said. “There’s a change in the workplace and what people need in this kind of economic environment.

“This speaks to the important programs we have at U of T that integrate research-informed practice and practice-informed research, so that we’re creating professionals who know how to use research to inform their decisions and have the skills to evaluate their own work to improve practice and policy.”

Now that the agreement has been signed, U of T divisions will begin exploring how they can align programs to meet targets.

Some metrics will include tracking undergraduate participation in study abroad and international exchange programs, and research experience with a faculty member. U of T will also be aiming to increase the participation of under-represented groups including raising the number of Indigenous students to 1,000 by the 2019-2020 school year.

The university’s global rankings and graduate employment rates will be reported, as well as the number of new startups formed and new inventions discovered.

“These metrics reflect the fact that we are among the top in the world, but we’re not funded for that, and it’s expensive,” Regehr said. “As time progresses, hopefully more money will go into the differentiation pot, and then we’ll actually get funding for these very important things that we do, that are part of our education mission.”

See the Strategic Mandate Agreement

Simple hepatitis C test among 62 research projects at U of T supported by Ontario government

ullahnor — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:02:07 +0000

Simple hepatitis C test among 62 research projects at U of T supported by Ontario government

ullahnor Fri, 07/14/2017 - 16:02

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Professor Shana Kelley of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy has developed an inexpensive diagnostic tool for early detection of hepatitis C. Her research is one of 62 projects at U of T that received support from the province (photo by Jennifer Robinson)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

City & Culture

Research

Funding

A simple, inexpensive diagnostic tool for early detection of hepatitis C – supported by funding from the Ontario government – could soon be helping people in some of the most remote corners of the Earth.

The research, supported with a $1.6-million grant, is one of 62 projects at the �ؿ�ζSM that has received support from the province, said Reza Moridi, Ontario's minister of research, innovation and science, who visited U of T on Friday and saw the Hep C test at work.

The disposable dipstick works much like a home pregnancy test, explained Professor Shana Kelley of the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy.

By placing a drop of blood on the dipstick, people can find out if they have the deadly blood-borne liver infection, which has affected over one hundred million people in the developing world, without the expense and delay of waiting for results from far away labs. If left untreated, Hep C can cause long-term health consequences – even death.

“We’re always looking at unmet needs where we think new technologies could really have an impact,” said Kelley, who is working with the Ontario startup company Xagenic to commercialize the made-at-U of T invention and bring it to market.

Reza Moridi, minister of research, innovation and science (left), U of T grad student Wenhan Liu and Trinity-Spadina MPP Han Dong pose with the simple, inexpensive diagnostic tool for early detection of hepatitis C in the Kelley Laboratory (photo by Jennifer Robinson)

“Bringing new tools to the diagnosis of a disease that affects so many people in a devastating way – that’s why we run our labs and try to develop new technologies so that we can solve problems,” Kelley said. “These are not unsolvable problems. They just need new solutions.”

During the tour Friday, Moridi said that researchers at U of T are taking on global challenges.

“Through investments like these, our government is supporting research projects that will lead to new discoveries and pave the way for new technologies, companies and jobs,” he said.

Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation, added: “Funding from the province of Ontario is critical to jump-start globally important research at the �ؿ�ζSM, from combating devastating diseases to developing cleaner technologies and better manufacturing processes, that has significant potential benefits to improve the lives of Ontarians, Canadians and people around the world.”

Carmen Logie, an assistant professor at U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, has two projects funded by the province. Her initiatives have the potential to reduce the growing number of young women in Canada with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV.

With reports of drug-resistant cases of gonorrhoea in the news and fewer chlamydia tests being administered to young women because of guideline changes in Ontario cervical cancer screening guidelines, educating women to prevent STI infections is increasingly important, she says.

Why rates are rising among young women is unknown, says Logie. It may be that too much focus has been placed on HIV prevention or the idea that STIs are “not as serious and curable.”

“One group of women that is overrepresented in the HIV epidemic – and less is known about STIs among this population – is African and Caribbean women,” said Logie. “Compared to other women, they have HIV infection rates that are seven times higher. Despite this, there is really very little evidence of what are effective STI and HIV prevention strategies with this population.”

U of T researchers receiving funding from the province. Assistant Professor Carmen Logie (second front left) is working on initiatives that have the potential to reduce the growing number of young women in Canada with sexually transmitted infections (photo by Jennifer Robinson)

Using $140,000 in early research funding from Ontario, Logie brought an effective American safer sex intervention strategy called Healthy Love to the Greater Toronto Area. Working with community agencies like the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention, the pilot was tailored to meet the needs of African and Caribbean women based on direct feedback.

Among the people Logie spoke with were recent arrivals to Canada who wanted to know what STIs were more common here, as well as women in lesbian, bisexual and queer relationships, the trans community and women who are incarcerated.

An important change they made was to expand Healthy Love’s education and outreach efforts beyond the usual heterosexual focus. Her team also trained and hired people from the community to conduct these interventions: “They were done by African and Caribbean women, for African and Caribbean women.”

“We had promising findings where we increased STI knowledge, condom use efficacy and STI and HIV testing increased as well,” Logie said. “What we’re doing now is trying to scale it up and have a more rigorous design with a randomized control trial.”

She’s also in the process of setting up an online digital storytelling centre called the SSHINE Lab (Stigma & Sexual Health Interventions to Nurture Empowerment) with $200,000 in provincial funding where women can use videos to tell their own stories and encourage others around the world to learn more about HIV, STIs and testing, and how to practise safer sex.

Supporting this kind of research is important, Logie says, “because it’s good for everybody when we address the social determinants of health like gender norms [and] racial and gender disparities. Really, we’re trying to create a more equal, inclusive and accepting society.”

Arts & Science doctoral-stream students on all three �ؿ�ζSM campuses to receive funding boost

lanthierj — Wed, 11 May 2016 15:49:14 +0000

Arts & Science doctoral-stream students on all three �ؿ�ζSM campuses to receive funding boost lanthierj Wed, 05/11/2016 - 11:49

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(photo by Ken Jones)

Kim Luke

Author legacy

Kim Luke

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Our Community

Students

School of Graduate Studies

Faculty of Arts & Science

Funding

Subheadline

Additional supports to be provided to help students complete their PhDs and prepare for careers

The Faculty of Arts & Science at the �ؿ�ζSM is planning significant improvements to graduate funding that will see students in the funded cohort receive at least $2,000 more in 2018-19 than they do today.

The initiative affects Arts & Science students on all three campuses.

“This is part of an overall effort to improve graduate student education at U of T,” said Joshua Barker, vice-dean of graduate education and program reviews in the Faculty of Arts & Science. “We have heard students’ concerns. We are very focused on helping our students complete their degrees in a timely fashion and ensuring they are well-prepared for academic and non-academic careers when they do.”

Doctoral student Baxter Robinson, co-president of the Graduate Economics Course Union, said “This funding increase is an excellent step in the right direction and I particularly appreciate Dr. Barker's emphasis on consulting student representatives while designing this policy change.”

Students eligible for the increase are domestic and international students in the funded cohort in Arts & Science programs on all three U of T campuses. As part of the funded cohort, students receive funding for up to five years of doctoral-stream study: some units direct this funding toward one year of master’s and four years of PhD study; others focus funding on five years of PhD study. All of the increase will be in the form of fellowship income.

In addition to the increases going directly to students, the Faculty of Arts & Science expects to provide $1.12 million in 2017-18, rising to $2.24 million annually in 2018 to create Program-Level Fellowship Pools in its departments, centres and institutes (“academic units”). These Pools will enable the academic units to address their own priorities for graduate education. Over the coming year, the units will, in consultation with their graduate students, establish a process for allocating funding from their Pools and share this process in a transparent fashion.

“This is a very exciting development for our graduate students,” said Virginia Maclaren, graduate chair of geography & planning. “I am particularly pleased about the flexibility offered to individual departments by the Fellowship Pools.”

Markus Stock, graduate chair of Germanic languages and literatures, said “The Program-Level Fellowship Pools will not only enable us to distribute additional fellowship funding to graduate students, but they will also give our unit some flexibility in deciding, in consultation with our graduate students, how these funds will be best spent to ensure their progress and success.”

These improvements to graduate funding represent a major investment on the part of the Faculty of Arts & Science, starting at $3.35 million in 2016-17 and rising to an ongoing annual investment of $6.7 million by 2018-19. The Faculty’s investment results in a 27 per cent increase in the U of T fellowships that will be provided to Arts & Science students.

Approximately 64 per cent of the 3,540 doctoral-stream students enrolled in Arts & Science programs are in the funded cohort. The first increase of $1,500 takes effect September 2016 and will be reflected in the funding letters sent to students over the summer. Additional planned increases of $250 per year will take effect in September 2017 and September 2018.

Under the Faculty of Arts & Science plan, by 2018-19, Arts & Science students in the funded cohort on all three campuses would receive at least $2,000 more fellowship support than they do today. That means that a student who currently receives $15,000 plus tuition and fees, can expect to receive tuition and fees plus $16,500 in 2016-17, $16,750 in 2017-18 and $17,000 in 2018-19.

In addition to these funding improvements, two new programs – Milestones and Pathways – will bolster support to students moving through their studies and help them to better prepare for their future careers. Both programs will focus on discipline-specific initiatives.

Milestones will provide workshops and retreats to help students reach key markers in their graduate training: advancing to candidacy, writing their dissertation and publishing an academic article. Pathways will provide the knowledge and skills that students need to succeed in their future academic or non-academic careers. A number of initiatives are currently underway in Arts & Science – from writing retreats in geography to industry internships in computer science and academic career placement counselling in English – and the Faculty hopes to scale these up so that more students can benefit.

The Faculty of Arts & Science’s initiatives align with a broader set of efforts to improve graduate education across the �ؿ�ζSM.

Read about graduate funding in Arts & Science

U of T initiatives focus on unique experience of graduate students

lanthierj — Wed, 11 May 2016 15:19:08 +0000

U of T initiatives focus on unique experience of graduate students lanthierj Wed, 05/11/2016 - 11:19

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(photo by Ken Jones)

Jennifer Robinson

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson

Topic

Our Community

Funding

School of Graduate Studies

Students

Graduate students face distinct challenges in pursuing their degrees and in transitioning from being a student to whatever comes next.

Long hours spent deep diving into research in labs, in libraries and in the field and then writing up their findings is an isolating experience for many. And it can be difficult to recognize and explain your skills and experience when job hunting outside of a university setting.

To help its graduate students succeed, the �ؿ�ζSM is increasingly focusing on their unique needs, from providing specialized career and mental health services to updating the supervisory best practices handbook to capture the student point of view.

Having programs directed expressly at their needs is “empowering” graduate students, says Andrea Constantinof, who is in her second year of doctoral study in physiology and serves as an academic and funding commissioner with the Graduate Student Union.

“It’s giving them the tools to communicate with their supervisors and gain confidence to apply for jobs both within and outside academia,” she says.

Locke Rowe, dean of the School of Graduate Studies and vice-provost of graduate research and education, calls these changes an important “reorientation” of the school toward the graduate student experience and program innovation based largely on student feedback.

“Being a graduate student is a different lifestyle,” he explains. “It is isolating in many ways. You often have a single point of contact — a supervisor or a small advisory committee. And graduate students told us they wanted graduate student-focused services. We have listened.”

A desire for greater transparency has also led the university to post graduate funding information and average degree completion times for all departments online. This summer, it’s conducting the first-ever survey of 10,000 U of T PhD alumni to find out where they wound up after graduating.

The university intends to use the study’s findings to determine best practices to help students meet milestones on their pathway towards doctoral completion and in transitioning to their new careers after graduating, perhaps even enlisting the support of alumni to provide guidance and mentorship to current students.

Over the last two years, the School of Graduate Studies has worked collaboratively with the Graduate Student Union to put more graduate-focused services in place.

On the health side of this equation, the university has made big strides in recognizing the mental health challenges that may arise over the years it takes to finish a graduate degree. The School of Graduate Studies now has an embedded counsellor and offers a series of mental health workshops directed specifically toward its students.

The Graduate Conflict Resolution Centre also offers students the ability to talk confidentially with trained grad-to-grad peer advisors about conflicts with their supervisor or roommates, financial difficulties and how best to prepare an academic appeal.

Graduate professional development is another area of intense activity at the school.

Workshops on resume building are of particular interest to Constantinof, who may pursue an alternative career capitalizing on her interests in entrepreneurship, coding and pharmacology.

It’s all about “learning how to market the skills that you have to make you more competitive when applying for jobs,” she says. “How do you stand out from the other PhDs?”

The Graduate Professional Skills (GPS) program is designed to help prepare students like Constantinof for their future in academia and beyond. It focuses on skills not typically learned within graduate programs but that can be critical to a whole range of careers. GPS, with some 100 offerings, is growing rapidly. One new initiative is the SGS Summer Institute, an intensive one-month program focusing on leadership and professional development.

“We need to do a better job to help our graduate students see all of the options that are available to them and prepare them now — not when they’re in the final throes of defending their dissertation,” Rowe says. “Our students have a tremendous amount to offer and we want to help them see all of the skills they can bring to whatever career they choose.”

Read about the increase in funding for doctoral-stream students in the Faculty of Arts & Science

U of T researchers awarded $5.2 million in funding for cutting-edge research

lavende4 — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 19:15:20 +0000

U of T researchers awarded $5.2 million in funding for cutting-edge research lavende4 Mon, 04/18/2016 - 15:15

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Yoav Finer (seated) with some of his Dentistry students (photo by Jeff Comber, Faculty of Dentistry)

Jennifer Robinson

Jennifer Robinson with files from Blake Eligh

Blake Eligh

Author legacy

Jennifer Robinson with files from Blake Eligh

Topic

A dentist intent on creating a more robust filling for cavities is among 19 U of T researchers sharing $5.2 million in new federal funding.

“Investments like today’s in Canada’s research infrastructure are incredibly important to the nation’s future,” said federal Science Minister Kirsty Duncan, who congratulated the researchers at an event held Friday at the U of T Mississauga campus.

“They give Canadian researchers the tools they need to make new discoveries that will better the lives of Canadians today and for years to come.”

(Below: Duncan and Assistant Professor Adriano Senatore/photo by Canadian Press via Industry Canada)

The investment was made by the Government of Canada through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s John R. Evans Leaders Fund, which is designed to help universities attract and retain the best and brightest researchers from around the world by giving them access to state-of-the-art research tools.

At U of T, the funding will support important work in a variety of areas such as preventing falls in vulnerable populations, improving breast cancer survival rates and improving acoustical architecture.

“I’d like to congratulate our researchers and thank the Government of Canada and the Canada Foundation for Innovation for their continuing support,” said Vivek Goel, U of T’s vice-president of research and innovation. “Every day, our researchers are engaged in an outstanding array of research aimed at tackling real world challenges that have the potential to benefit all of us. This funding will ensure that work can continue at the highest level.”

In the case of Dr. Yoav Finer, this could mean fewer painful (and expensive) trips to the dentist for all of us.

Every year, Canadians spend an estimated $3 billion to replace dental work that has failed. In fact, 70 per cent of all cavities filled by dentists will need to be replaced because current resin composites are susceptible to enzymes in saliva and bacteria (the dreaded plaque) that thrive in our mouths.

Dr. Finer and his team will use the $240,000 in funding they’ve receiving today to study ways to reduce plaque buildup, reduce bacterial aggressiveness and test different materials to develop a higher performing, more resistant filling for cavities.

�ؿ�ζSM Mississauga assistant professor of biology Adriano Senatore, whose research addresses some of the most fundamental and challenging questions associated with the nervous system and its evolution, attended the event.

“This welcome funding is helping me to equip my lab with cutting-edge research tools, such as a high-performance computer, state-of-the-art microscopes and an electrophysiology system,” he said. “These critical pieces of equipment will help us to better understand how the nervous system evolved, providing a broader understanding of our own nervous system function and disease.”

Federal investment will have an impact far beyond his own lab, Senatore said. “Personnel in this lab are using the equipment on a day-to-day basis and are learning how to use cutting-edge tools. They will take this knowledge forward in their own careers in industry and academia.”

Funding

U of T signs Strategic Mandate Agreement with province

See the Strategic Mandate Agreement

Simple hepatitis C test among 62 research projects at U of T supported by Ontario government

Arts & Science doctoral-stream students on all three �ؿ�ζSM campuses to receive funding boost

Read more about supports for grad students

Read about graduate funding in Arts & Science

U of T initiatives focus on unique experience of graduate students

Read about the increase in funding for doctoral-stream students in the Faculty of Arts & Science

U of T researchers awarded $5.2 million in funding for cutting-edge research

Read more about the event at UTM