Creso Sá

Suppose you are in charge of a government initiative with a large budget and lots of visibility. And that in launching the initiative you make a splash around the country. You host several town halls promoting it. Read full text.

Check Karin Fisher’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the impacts of current geopolitics on open research and international collaboration. If you’re not a Chronicle subscriber, you may be able to access it through your library [if you are affiliated with U of T, click here].

If the vaunted features of science that are used rhetorically to promote and justify its status as an aid to international affairs are truly valued, it would be precisely in the most trying circumstances that science diplomacy should remain a viable alternative. Read full text.

On February 28, Nadiia Kachynska successfully defended her PhD thesis titled “Fostering Global Norms of Research Excellence: National Policies and Strategic Responses of Public Universities in Central and Eastern Europe.” Her thesis examines national policy interpretations of global research excellence norms in Poland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine, and how universities have responded to these norms. Drawing from interviews with policy experts and senior university administrators at 9 case study universities and documentary analysis, she explains how university organizational identities shape their responses to global norms, bringing a perspective from outside of “the global core” to the scholarly discussion on university research excellence.

Dr. Kachynska is a Strategic Program Manager at George Brown College.

In this month’s University Affairs column, Creso argues that we need to go beyond the tired old rhetoric of both critics of university conservatism and opponents to administrative rationalization to focus on effective management. Read the full text.