Creso Sá

In this month’s column, Creso discusses the Council of Canadian Academies’ recently released report Powering Discovery, which was commissioned by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. “This is a serviceable but, by design, unambitious report, generally speaking; it is more interesting for what it tells us about Canadian science policy than for the conclusion it reaches.”

On June 28, Donna Heslin successfully defended her PhD thesis titled “Use of Social Media in the Promotion of University-Based Entrepreneurship Centres.” Her thesis examines how university entrepreneurship centres use Twitter to connect with internal and external stakeholders. Drawing from interviews with centre directors and an analysis of twitter feeds, the thesis identifies patterns in the use of symbolic imagery across centres located in different regions, as well as in the kinds of actors they engaged with.

Dr. Heslin is Manager, Entrepreneurship & Innovation Partnerships at the City of Mississauga Economic Development Office.

Dr. Emma Sabzalieva’s thesis Responding to major institutional change: The fall of the Soviet Union and higher education in Central Asia won the 2021 Comparative & International Education Society Eurasia Special Interest Group Dissertation Award. Congratulations, Emma!

New research by our team just published in PLOS One investigates gender gaps in scientific productivity and recognition among elite scientists in Canada, the US, and South Africa. Based on the analysis of a unique, hand-curated dataset including 943 researchers holding prestigious research chairs, our results show that even among elite scientists a pattern of stratified productivity and recognition by gender remains, with more prominent gaps in recognition. Check full article.

On Sept 1, Emma Sabzalieva successfully defended her PhD thesis “Responding to Major Institutional Change: The Fall of the Soviet Union and Higher Education in Central Asia.” Her thesis examines how the higher education systems of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan coped with a momentous disruption – the collapse of the Soviet Union. Combining in-depth accounts from faculty members who experience the transition with national statistical and policy records, the thesis identifies patterns of adaptation, continuity, and transformation.

Dr. Sabzalieva is a research associate at York University’s Faculty of Education.