2011 Conference

Philip G. Altbach

Director, Center for International Higher Education, Boston College

Philip G. Altbach is J. Donald Monan, S.J. University Professor and director of the Center for International Higher Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. He was the 2004–2006 Distinguished Scholar Leader for the New Century Scholars initiative of the Fulbright program, and in 2010 was an Erudite Scholar of the Government of Kerala in India. He has been a senior associate of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Harvard University.

Altbach coedited the International Handbook of Higher Education. His most recent books is World Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America, Leadership for World-Class Universities: Challenges for Developing Countries and Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution.

Paul Axelrod

Former Dean, Faculty of Education, York University

Paul Axelrod is a professor and former dean (2001-08) in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto. He has published widely on the history and politics of schooling and post-secondary education. His books include: Scholars and Dollars: Politics, Economics and the Universities of Ontario, 1945-1980; Making a Middle Class: Student Life in English Canada during the Thirties; The Promise of Schooling: Education in Canada, 1800-1914; and Values in Conflict: the University, the Marketplace and the Trials of Liberal Education. He is editor of the journal, Historical Studies in Education/Reveue d’histoire de l’éducation. His current research is a collaborative project on policy-making in Canadian post-secondary education, 1990-2007.

William Ayers

Formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)

William Ayers, formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society.  Ayers has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. He is currently the vice-president of the curriculum division of the American Educational Research Association, and a member of the executive committee of the AERA Council.

Pallava Bagla

Chief Correspondent (South Asia), Science

Pallava Bagla has been a globally acclaimed award winning Indian science communicator and photojournalist for 25 years, and during this time he has come to be respected for his breaking news stories and for having showcased Indian science and technology to the world in more than 15 continuous years of writing for Science, the prestigious weekly magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Washington D. C. He is today the Chief Correspondent (South Asia) for Science. Four years ago he joined as Science Editor for India’s highly respected private television channel NDTV – New Delhi Television. He is author of several books, the most recent being `Destination Moon: India’s quest for Moon, Mars and Beyond.’ published by HarperCollins India Private Ltd in 2008. Another book `Trees of India’ is a large format pictorial book was published by Timeless Books in 2000. Most recently, in 2010, he was awarded the `David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism’ given by the American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, for his landmark writings which exposed the Himalayan glacier blunder by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was the first Indian to receive this prestigious award.

Jorge Balán

Senior Research Scholar, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University

Jorge Balán joined SIPA last March as an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar to work with Columbia’s Global Centers. He will be assisting efforts to build new Global Centers in Latin America and to develop cross-regional research projects within the Columbia global community.

A graduate in sociology from the University of Buenos Aires, Balán obtained his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1968. He published extensively on issues of labor migration, urbanization, and social policy in Latin America during the following 25 years. In the 1990s he developed a large-scale collaborative project on higher education reform policies in the region. As a Senior Program Officer with The Ford Foundation in New York, he managed the International Higher Education and Public Policy Initiative between 1998 and 2006. Balán had major responsibility for funding research and outreach projects in the US as well as supporting the higher education programs of regional offices in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Dr. Balán has held visiting faculty appointments at several research universities in the US and at the Ontario Institute for Studies of Education in Toronto. His most recent book, with Phil Altbach, is World Class Worldwide: Transforming Research Universities in Asia and Latin America.

Phil Baty

Deputy Editor, Times Higher Education

Phil Baty, deputy editor, is responsible for Times Higher Education’s international coverage, and is the editor of the World University Rankings.

Phil has been with the magazine since 1996, as reporter, chief reporter, deputy news editor and news editor.

He received the Ted Wragg Award for Sustained Contribution to Education Journalism in 2010, part of the Education Journalist of the Year Awards, run by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. He was commended as a finalist for the Award for Outstanding Education Reporting for National Journalists in 2007. In the same year, he was a runner-up for the annual Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism, run by The Guardian newspaper and Private Eye magazine. He also made the longlist for this award in its inaugural year, 2005.

Phil, who was educated at Hookergate Comprehensive School in Tyne and Wear, has a history degree from King’s College London, and a postgraduate diploma in journalism from City University London.

Simon Beck

Manager, Custom Content Group, The Globe and Mail

Simon Beck has been with The Globe and Mail since 1999 and has served as both its Review editor and News editor before launching the Canadian University Report undergraduate survey and magazine in 2002 and the GlobeCampus website in 2007.

After studying modern languages at Oxford, Mr. Beck began his career as a journalist in the U.K. He later became the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong‘s news editor and, later, that paper’s Washington correspondent.

Agneta Bladh

Former Rector, University of Kalmar

Agneta Bladh obtained her PhD in Political Science at Stockholm University in 1988. From 1998 to 2004, Dr. Bladh served as State Secretary at the Swedish Ministry of Education and Science, responsible for Higher Education and Research. From 1995 to 1998, Dr. Bladh served as Director General at the National Agency for Higher Education. She was the Rector at University of Kalmar in Sweden from 2004 to 2010.

Dr. Bladh is a member of the Administrative Board of the International Association of Universities and a member of several boards of national agencies, as well as university boards in Sweden.

Nicole Blanchett Neheli

Co-ordinator, Journalism Broadcast Program, Sheridan Institute of Technology

Nicole Blanchett Neheli is the program Co-ordinator of the Journalism Broadcast Program at Sheridan Institute of Technology.  Her current area of research and study is participatory journalism. She is also a section editor for The Canadian Journalism Project: J-Source. Before joining the academic world, she worked at Citytv in Toronto for almost ten years, mostly as a news show producer.

Nico Block

Former News and Features Editor, McGill Daily

Niko Block formerly edited the News and Features sections of the McGill Daily. He has also worked for The Dominion Magazine and Palestine Monitor, and has sat on the board of directors of McGill’s campus-community radio station, CKUT, for two years. He has written on topics ranging from urban planning in Montreal, to the housing crisis in the US, to the uprisings in the Middle East. Following the recent federal election, he initiated and helped coordinate the National Day of Action for Electoral Reform, which took place on May 14 in at least ten cities across the country.

Peggy Berkowitz

Editor, University Affairs

Peggy Berkowitz is editor of University Affairs, the award-winning magazine published 10 times a year by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. The magazine covers issues in postsecondary education and trends at universities, and is the number-one source of career advertising for faculty positions in Canada. She is also assistant director, editorial services, for AUCC.

Before joining University Affairs, Peggy spent most of her career in daily newspapers, as staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She also worked for the Ottawa Citizen (as education reporter) and CBC Radio, and freelanced for magazines and newspapers in the U.K. and North America.

Tony Burman

Head of Strategy, The Americas, Al Jazeera

Tony Burman is Al Jazeera’s head of strategy in The Americas and was Managing Director of Al Jazeera English from 2008-2010.  Currently based in Washington and Toronto, he oversees AJE’s efforts to expand its reach and reputation in the U.S. and Canada as the world’s leading global news provider.

Between 2000 and 2007, he was Editor-in-Chief of CBC News in Canada., overseeing CBC’s TV, radio and online operations. In his 35-year CBC career, he was also an award-winning news and documentary producer in more than 30 countries, spanning the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the United States and Latin America.

John F. Burness

Visiting Professor, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy, Duke University’s Terry Sanford School of Public Policy

John F. Burness is Visiting Professor at the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University’s Terry Sanford School of Public Policy where he teaches on higher education and the media and writes on higher education policy issues. Burness is a 1967 graduate of Franklin and Marshall College; in 2010-2011, he served as Interim President of Franklin and Marshall. Over a nearly 40 year career, Burness was the senior public affairs officer of four major research universities–Stony Brook, Illinois, Cornell and from 1990-2008  he was Duke’s  Senior Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations. Burness is a staunch advocate of the First Amendment. The  news offices reporting to him won numerous national journalistic awards. He is an honorary life member of the North Carolina Press Association, the first non newspaper person so honored in the organization’s more than 125 year history. In 2008 he was awarded a RIAS Kommission Fellowship in Berlin, Germany.Burness has lectured widely, including  The Freedom Forum Center for Media Studies at Columbia University and Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. He has  consulted for some 20 leading  universities and research organizations and has served as a director of numerous national  higher education organizations. He is a trustee of Franklin and Marshall College and of Durham Technical Community College. Burness is also senior counsel to Widmeyer Communications.

Erin Cauchi

Freelance Journalist, Former President, Canadian University Press

Erin D. Cauchi is a freelance journalist and MSc student at the Columbia University School of Journalism. From 2010 to 2011, she was President of the Canadian University Press (CUP), North America’s oldest student press cooperative. During her tenure there she also held the positions of CEO and Board Chair of Campus Plus, the national corporation responsible for the placement of ad campaigns in college and university publications.

Prior to her presidency, Erin coordinated the John H. McDonald Awards for Excellence in Student Journalism and CUP’s media mentorship program. From 2008 to 2009, she represented the Ontario region on CUP’s Board of Directors and was Executive Editor of The Strand newspaper at the University of Toronto.

Erin has interned at Toronto alt weekly EYE WEEKLY (now called The Grid) as well as Canada’s national music magazine Exclaim!

Erin holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science from the University of Toronto as well as a Diplôme Approfondi de Langue Française.

Alan Chartock

President and CEO, WAMC

Alan Chartock is President and CEO of WAMC. He was educated at Hunter College and American University and received his Ph.D. in political science from New York University. Dr. Chartock is Professor Emeritus of Communication and Political Science at the State University of New York, a syndicated columnist and author, and a regular commentator for both radio and television. Chartock developed two of the state’s largest and most successful student internship programs. He is the founder and publisher of The Legislative Gazette, an award-winning newspaper staffed by professional journalists who teach a full complement of students their craft each semester, and the recipient of numerous teaching awards, including the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award of Excellence in Teaching, the New York State/United University Professions Award for Professional Excellence, and the SUNY/Council Award for Educational Achievement and dozens of awards from his radio colleagues. He has been awarded three honorary doctorates and recently received the Radio Television Digital News Association’s Edward R. Murrow Award.

Ying Cheng

Executive Director, Center for World-Class Universities Graduate School

Ying Cheng is a lecturer and the Executive Director of Center for World-Class Universities at Graduate School of Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). He obtained his bachelor degree in Polymer Science and Engineering from SJTU in 2000 and his doctoral degree in S&T and Education Management from SJTU in 2007. In 2007-08, he studied as a postdoctoral fellow at the Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques (OST) in Paris. He has worked full time at Office of Planning and Graduate School of Education (formerly Institute of Higher Education) of SJTU since 2000.

His current research interests include the benchmarking, evaluation and ranking of universities, and the use, analysis and design of scientometric indicators and methods for supporting decision-making. He is responsible for the annual update and new development of the Academic Ranking of World Universities.

Mary Churchill

Research Fellow, Middle East Center at Northeastern University

Mary Churchill is the Executive Director and one of the Founding Editors of the University of Venus blog. She created University of Venus with Meg Palladino in January 2010.

Mary is currently a Research Fellow at the Middle East Center at Northeastern University and a management consultant at Queens College, CUNY. Last year, she was a Senior Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs with the International Education team at Northeastern University. She has over twenty years of management experience in higher education and over ten years of experience teaching at the post-secondary level.

Ken Coran

President, OSSTF/FEESO

A former teacher bargaining unit president in OSSTF/FEESO District 11, Thames Valley, Ken was elected to the Provincial Executive as Executive Officer in 2001 and as Vice President in 2003 and again in 2005. He was first elected as President in 2007 and was re-elected as President in 2009 as well as this past March for an additional two year term.

Coran began his teaching career at East Elgin Secondary School in the former Elgin County Board of Education.   He then moved on to West Elgin Secondary School in West Lorne, Ontario where he was the department head of science. With the amalgamation of school boards in 1997, Coran became the OSSTF/FEESO District Officer in the newly formed Thames Valley District School Board.  He served in that position until his election in 1998 as the teachers’ bargaining unit president in OSSTF/FEESO District 11, Thames Valley.

George Q. Daley

Director, Children’s Hospital, Boston/HHMI; Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Boston

George Q. Daley, M.D., Ph.D. is the Samuel E. Lux IV Professor of Hematology/Oncology and Director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Children’s Hospital Boston. He is also Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Associate Director of Children’s Stem Cell Program, founding member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and past-President of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (2007-2008). Dr. Daley seeks to translate insights in stem cell biology into improved therapies for genetic and malignant diseases. Important research contributions from his laboratory include the creation of customized stem cells to treat genetic immune deficiency in a mouse model (together with Rudolf Jaenisch), the differentiation of germ cells from embryonic stem cells (cited as a “Top Ten Breakthrough” by Science magazine in 2003), and the generation of disease-specific pluripotent stem cells by direct reprogramming of human fibroblasts (cited in the “Breakthrough of the Year” issue of Science magazine in 2008).  As a graduate student working with Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore, Dr. Daley demonstrated that the BCR/ABL oncogene induces chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in a mouse model, which validated BCR/ABL as a target for drug blockade and encouraged the development of imatinib (GleevecTM; Novartis), a revolutionary magic-bullet chemotherapy that induces remissions in virtually every CML patient. Dr. Daley’s recent studies have clarified mechanisms of Gleevec resistance and informed novel combination chemotherapeutic regimens.

Luisa D’Amato

Reporter, Waterloo Region Record

Luisa D’Amato has been a reporter at the Waterloo Region Record for 26 years, specializing in education issues. She has won, and received honourable mention for, several provincial and national journalism awards. She is on the part-time faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University, teaching “Media and Society” in the communication studies department. She has a B.A. from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and a Master’s degree from the school of journalism at Columbia University in New York. She has a deep love of her craft, which she believes still encourages dissent, enriches democracy, and exposes bullies both human and institutional.

Jean Desormeaux

Program Co-ordinator, Advanced Television and Film Program, Sheridan College

Jean Desormeaux is the coordinator of Sheridan College’s Advanced Television and Film Studies program (ATVF). Before joining Sheridan, Desormeaux was the formidable VP of production for Alliance Communications in the ’90s. His production credits include Johnny Mnemonic and Due South.

Daniel de Vise

Reporter, Higher Education, Washington Post

Daniel de Vise is higher education reporter at the Washington Post and author of the College Inc. blog. He has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including stints at the Boca Raton News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, San Diego Union Tribune, and Miami Herald. He is a graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities.

Sara Diamond

President, Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD)

Dr. Sara Diamond is the President of the OCAD University, Canada’s “university of the imagination”. She holds a PhD in Computer Science and degrees in new media theory and practice, social history and communications. While retaining OCAD University’s traditional strengths in art and design, she has led her university to become a leader in digital media and design research and curriculum through the Digital Futures Initiative, towards new research in Inclusive Design and health and design, as well as in sustainable technologies and design. She has also led OCAD University to begin the unique Aboriginal Visual Culture Program. She currently serves on the Ontario Ministry of Culture’s Minister’s Advisory Council on Arts & Culture, the Board of Directors of the Toronto Arts Council Foundation and ORANO, Ontario’s high speed network, the board of National Centre of Excellence GRAND and IO (Interactive Ontario) and SACUR with the Association of Universities and University Colleges. She is founding Chair of the Mobile Experience Innovation Centre and current co-chair (with RBC).She is a visualization, wearable technology and mobile media researcher, artist and designer. She is co-principle investigator on the Centre for Information Visualization/Data Driven Design, an OCADU/York University major initiative.

Wilf Dinnick

Founding Editor, CEO, OpenFile

Wilf Dinnick is Founding Editor and CEO of OpenFile, a network of local online news sites. OpenFile is delivering the service of local journalism faster, easier and more effectively to communities. It is a collaborative news site. Your story is the news on OpenFile. You suggest a story, we assign the reporter and together we shape local news. As a foreign correspondent, Wilf had the good fortune to report from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe and all over the Middle East. He covered the war in Iraq, Afghanistan’s first democratic elections, the South Asia tsunami, the death of Pope John Paul II and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. Wilf is an award-winning journalist and has worked for all three Canadian networks. He was also an International Correspondent for CNN and the Middle East Correspondent for ABC News. Wilf has had some amazing experiences, but co-founding OpenFile is far and away the greatest highlight so far.

Judith Doyle

Assosiate Professor, OCAD U’s Faculty of Art

Judith Doyle (Associate Professor) chairs Integrated Media in OCAD U’s Faculty of Art. In 1978, Doyle co-founded Worldpool, an artists network using proto-internet technologies including telefacsimile for long-distance exchange. Doyle’s films screen widely; awards include Best Documentary, Brooklyn International Film Festival (“The Last Split Second”, 2000). Current projects include ‘GestureCloud’ – a collaboration with Beijing-based artist Fei Jun on networked physical/virtual installations, and an Artist in Residency at Baycrest’s Memory Link program, developing assistive technology for people with acquired brain injury.

Jeffrey Dvorkin

Executive Director, Organization of News Ombudsmen

Jeffrey Dvorkin is the Executive Director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO), a group of international journalists committed to public accountability and self-regulatory journalism around the world.  He also teaches in the joint journalism program at Centennial College/University of Toronto and held the Rogers Distinguished Visiting Professorship of Journalism at Ryerson University from 2008 to 2010.

Mr. Dvorkin’s career includes stints at various news organizations around the world, including CBS News, CBC TV, CBC Radio and NPR.

Mr. Dvorkin has co-authored four position papers on objectivity and balance in public broadcasting for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington and has been a consultant on issues of media accountability in Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Turkey, Portugal, Armenia and Chile. He is on the board of the International News Safety Institute. In June 2010, Mr. Dvorkin was in Guinea and Niger for the US Department of State doing pre-election training for journalists in West Africa.

Mary Dwyer

Senior Editor, (University Rankings), Maclean’s

Mary Dwyer has been responsible for coordinating Maclean’s annual university rankings since 1994. In 2006, she helped to develop Maclean’s interactive online ranking tool and in the following year, oversaw a major revision to the ranking methodology. In addition, she serves as an editor on the annual Maclean’s Guide to Canadian Universities, as well as the annual Student Issue and Professional Schools Issue.

Mary holds a B.A. in English and Drama and an M.A. in Drama from the University of Toronto.

Natasha Eloi

On air reporter, Space Network

Natasha Eloi has interviewed actors like Will Smith, Ellen Paige, Samuel L. Jackson, and Daniel Craig at movie junkets, directors George Romero and Frank Miller on set, and has talked space with astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Chris Hadfield and Marc Garneau. Born in Hammersmith, England and raised in Toronto, Eloi began her television career during her last semester at Stephen Leacock C.I. in Toronto. She quickly rose up the ranks from intern to become the first female to join Citytv’s Live Eye working as an operator, technical director, and live camera operator for various programs. Natasha joined SPACE in 2000 where she took on the role of videographer. There Natasha was responsible for investigating, shooting, and reporting on a wide range of topics for the station’s science fact show SPACENEWS. She now works as an INNERSPACE on air reporter.

Kathy English

Public Editor, Toronto Star

Kathy English is public editor at the Toronto Star. She began her journalism career at the Brantford Expositor in 1976. She has since reported and edited for six Canadian daily newspapers including the Star and the Globe and Mail. She taught newspaper journalism at Ryerson School of Journalism for 10 years. In her Ryerson sabbatical year, she completed a Master’s degree in Canadian history, writing a thesis on 20th century newspaper ownership trends and the demise of family ownership in Canadian newspapers. After departing from Ryerson’s journalism faculty,  she launched websites for two Canadian media companies, SunMedia (Lifewise.ca) and Transcontinental Media (Mochasofa.ca) and also directed the launch of the San Francisco-based parenting website, BabyCenter Canada. Kathy served on the board of the National Newspaper Awards for 5 years and is a current board member of the Association of Newspaper Ombudsmen. She also serves on the Ethics committee of the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Paul Fain

Assistant Vice President, Widmeyer Communications

Paul Fain is an assistant vice president for Widmeyer Communications, where he works with colleges and higher education-related organizations on media outreach, marketing and crisis communications. From 2004 until this February, Fain was a senior reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education. His coverage for the newspaper included college leaders, finance and governance. Fain has written for many other publications, including The New York Times and Washington City Paper, and his work has been honored by the Education Writers Association and the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. He speaks regularly to gatherings of college leaders and has been quoted often in the news media.

Dan Falk

Science journalist, Broadcaster, and Author

Dan Falk is a freelance science journalist and author. He’s written about science for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, The Walrus, Astronomy, and New Scientist, and has been a regular contributor to the CBC Radio program Ideas. He’s written two popular science books, Universe on a T-Shirt, and In Search of Time. This coming academic year, he’ll be pursuing a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.

George Fallis

Professor of Economics and Social Science, York University

George Fallis is a University Professor and Professor of Economics and Social Science at York University in Toronto. He did his BA at the University of Toronto, his PhD at Princeton University, and worked for the federal government and a provincial research agency before joining York University. At York, he has been Chair of the Department of Economics, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Chair of the Senate Academic Policy and Planning Committee. He has been Academic Colleague on the Council of Ontario Universities and an auditor of degree programs at Ontario universities. He has published widely on housing policy, urban policy, and written on constitutional reform. His current research deals with universities: their roles and responsibilities in the 21^st century; the place of an undergraduate liberal education; and the role of university-based research in national innovation.

His most recent book is Multiversities, Ideas, and Democracy (University of Toronto Press, 2007). In February 2011, he delivered the Annual Giambattista Vico Lecture at York University, “Democratic Deficit: Universities and the Future of Democracy.”

Philip Fine

America’s Editor, University World News

Philip Fine is Americas Editor for University World News. He helped found the publication in 2007 with a group of international education journalists. For 10 years he was Canadian Correspondent  for what is now called Times Higher Education. He has been a journalist since 1990, with a good deal of his time covering higher education. He is also an award-winning obituary writer for the Globe and Mail and writes business articles for the Montreal Gazette.

Ronak Ghorbani

Editor, Shameless Magazine

Since her first year as an undergraduate student at Ryerson’s School of Journalism, Ronak has worked with alternative campus press. Whether it was reporting for the Ryerson Free Press (a politically progressive campus paper) or starting the online radio show Rebel Grrrl’s Music, Ronak found solace in alt-media. She has written for publications such as NOW Magazine, Exclaim! and rabble.ca and is a former co-Editor-in-Chief of feminist magazine McClung’s. Her research into the world of feminism and social media has been featured in the Toronto Star. This past fall Ronak started her masters in the Ryerson/York University joint program in Communication and Culture and holds the position as Deputy Chairperson of Education for the Ryerson Student’s Union Graduate Executive. Ronak is currently the arts editor for Shameless Magazine, Canada’s independent voice for smart, strong, young women and trans youth.

Marc Glassman

Editor, POV Magazine & Montage Magazine; Film Critic, Classical 96.3 FM

Marc Glassman, the recipient of the Toronto Arts Award in literature in 2000, is an editor, journalist, teacher, broadcaster and the Artistic Director of This is Not a Reading Series, a multi-disciplinary programme that explores the creative process in literature. Marc is the Editor-in-chief of Point Of View, Canada’s leading periodical on documentaries and independent cinema and Montage, the journal for the Directors Guild of Canada. He has taught Documentary history at Ryerson University, reviews film for Classical 96.3 FM and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Cinematheque Ontario.

Brian Goldman

Physician; medical journalist; host of CBC Radio 1’s White Coat, Black Art

Dr. Brian Goldman is one of those rare individuals with great success in more than one high-pressure field. For more than 20 years, he’s been a highly regarded emergency physician at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. He’s also parlayed his medical expertise into an award-winning career in medical journalism.

Millions of Canadians know Goldman as CBC Radio One’s on-the-air “house doctor,” serving up medical information and advice to 20 afternoon shows across Canada. In addition, he created and hosts the CBC Radio One’s White Coat, Black Art. On the show, Goldman takes listeners through the swinging doors of hospitals and doctors’ offices, behind where the gurney lies. It’s a biting, original and provocative show that will demystify the world of medicine.

He has worked as a health reporter for The National, CBC Television’s flagship news program, and for CBC-TV’s The Health Show. Also, Goldman served as senior production executive during the launch year of Discovery Health Channel, Canada’s only 24-hour channel devoted to health programming.

Goldman released his first book in September 2010, The Night Shift – Real Life in the Heart of the ER, published by HarperCollins. He attempts to show you hour by hour what happens in the ER during a typical night shift, and to pull back the curtain to reveal the culture of emergency medicine.

Noreen Golfman

Professor of English and Dean of Graduate Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Noreen Golfman is a professor of English and Dean of Graduate Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She has just completed almost 4 years as President of the Canadian Federation of Social Sciences and Humanities, a national education advocacy group. She has been active in a number of other professional and community roles, notably as founding director of the St. John’s International Women’s Film Festival (in its 22^nd year) and as Vice Chair of the Newfoundland Labrador Film Development Corporation. Since 1994 she has been Chair of the Steering Committee of the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, an advocacy group that promotes public broadcasting. She has worked as a freelance commentator, reviewer/performer for CBC radio and television. Her research focuses largely on Canadian film.

Shari Graydon

Media educator, author, journalist, critic

Shari Graydon Shari Graydon is an award-winning author, journalist and media critic currently putting her 20 years of experience on both sides of the media microphone to work as the Catalyst for Informed Opinions,  a project designed to train and support scholars to make their expertise more accessible to the public discourse.

A former newspaper columnist, TV producer and commentator for CBC radio and TV, she also served as press secretary to a provincial premier, the co-founder of the BC Association for Media Education, and as president of MediaWatch. In this capacity she delivered hundreds of interviews and dozens of guest commentaries. She has also taught communications, media relations and presentation skills at Simon Fraser University, delivered communications training to public and private sector organizations in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa, and produced a TV series for the Women’s Television Network.

Adam Habib

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, Innovation and Advancement, University of Johannesburg

Adam Habib is Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, Innovation and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He has held academic appointments over the last decade at the Universities of Durban-Westville and KwaZulu-Natal and the Human Science Research Council. Prior to being appointed Executive Director of the Democracy and Governance Programme of the Human Science Research Council in 2004, he served as the founding director of the Centre for Civil Society and a research professor in the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Habib’s research interests include democratisation and development, contemporary social movements, giving and solidarity, institutional reform, race, redress and citizenship, and South Africa’s role in Africa and beyond. He has recently concluded a study on the state of academic freedom in South Africa, and sat on the task group on academic freedom and institutional autonomy established by the Council for Higher Education.

Doug Hart

Institutional Researcher, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Doug Hart holds Ph.D. is Sociology from York University. He joined the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education as a Research Officer in 1977. Doug is a principal investigator for the biennial OISE/UT Survey of Educational Issues which has tracked public opinion on educational issues since 1978. He became Institutional Researcher at OISE/UT in 1997, shortly after the merger of OISE and the Faculty of Education at U of T.

Matthew Hays

Writer and Critic, The Globe and Mail and Montreal Mirror

Matthew Hays is a Montreal-based journalist, critic and author. His articles have appeared in a broad range of publications, including The Globe and Mail, The Montreal Mirror, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, The Toronto Star, Cineaste and Cineaction. He’s a contributing editor for the national film magazine POV. Hays teaches courses in film studies, communication studies and journalism at Concordia University, where he received the Concordia Alumni Association’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2007. His book, The View from Here: Conversations with Gay and Lesbian Filmmakers (Arsenal Pulp), was cited by Quill & Quire as one of the best books of 2007 and won a 2008 Lambda Literary Award. He served as a programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008-09. He is the co-editor (with Thomas Waugh) of the Queer Film Classics book series.

Jason Head

Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Toronto

Jason Head is a vertebrate paleontologist who specializes in the evolution of reptiles and the relationship to climate change over the past 66 million years. He has conducted fieldwork in Colombia, Uruguay, Pakistan, India, Tanzania, Mali, Jordan, and throughout North America. In 2009, Jason described the world’s largest snake, Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a 60 million year old boid from Colombia, and developed a method to estimate past environmental temperatures from the reptile fossil record. A native of southeastern Michigan, Jason received his B.S. in biology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1995, and his Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University in 2002. He held a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biological Informatics at the Smithsonian Institution and Queen Mary, University of London until 2005. Jason is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, but will be joining the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 2011. His experience in science-media interactions includes chairmanship of the Education and Outreach Committee of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, science-media liaison for the Science Media Center of Canada, and membership in the Media Liaison and Media Rapid Response committees of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

John Helliker

Director, Screen Industries Research and Training Centre (SIRT)

John Helliker, Director, Screen Industries Research and Training Centre/Sheridan College (SIRT), worked for over twenty years as a freelance director, production manager, and writer within the Canadian film and television industry. His credits include production management for children’s series television such as Degrassi and OWLTV; multiple series as a writer for TVOntario; and directing of independent shorts, children’s television and a feature film. At Sheridan, John has taught directing, visual effects and previsualization, a new course jointly taken by directing, cinematography, and production design students, production technologies within the film, television, gaming, and interactive industries.

Alfred Hermida

Associate Professor, Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia

Alfred Hermida is a digital media scholar, journalism educator and online news pioneer. Since 2006, he has been an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia, Canada. Through his research at UBC, and his earlier work at the BBC, he has built an international reputation as an authority on new media, with his work appearing in Journalism Practice and New Media and Society. His research interests include participatory journalism, social media and emerging genres of digital journalism. An award-winning journalist who served for four years as a Middle East correspondent, Hermida is a 16-year veteran of the BBC and was a founding news editor of the BBC News website in 1997. He has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, The Guardian and NPR.  He writes on developments in digital journalism at his award-winning blog Reportr.net.

Robin Hogen

Director of Strategic Affairs, Yale University

Robin Hogen joined Yale in 2008 as Director of Strategic Communications after a 30 year career in corporate communications.

He is responsible for developing and executing communications strategies to advance a number of major institutional priorities, including the prominence of Yale College, the quality of science and medicine at Yale and the promise of the new West Campus. He heads a team of six communications officers  who cover the campus – telling the stories of Yale.

Prior to returning to his alma mater, Hogen helped to manage the corporate reputations of some of the most respected companies in America, including United Technologies, Merck, Fisher Scientific, and Purdue Pharma. He helped these companies deal with major crises, achieve and celebrate important milestones, expand into new markets, and gain competitive advantage through the creative deployment of the full spectrum of communications tools and strategies. Robin’s areas of expertise include media relations, issues management, internal communications and strategic philanthropy.

Hanson Hosein

Director, Master of Communication in Digital Media, University of Washington

Hanson Hosein is the Director of the Master of Communication in Digital Media at the University of Washington in Seattle, and the host of Media Space on UWTV. He specializes in storytelling, social media strategies and new models of communication. As President of HRH Media, he employed this expertise to direct the award-winning documentary films “Rising from Ruins” and “Independent America: The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop,” as well as to provide high-level consulting services on communication strategy.

Seattle Magazine named Hosein “Most Influential” in 2010.

Stella Hughes

Senior Information Officer, UNESCO

Stella Hughes is Senior Information Officer at UNESCO.  From 1981 to 1997, Stella Hughes worked as a broadcast journalist for Radio France International and, as a consultant, was involved with the establishment of the first community radio stations in Soweto and other townships in South Africa. She was also Paris correspondent for several years for New Scientist magazine and the Times Higher Education Supplement. Stella Hughes joined the cabinet of the Director-General of UNESCO in 1997.

Scott Jaschik

Editor, Inside Higher Ed

Scott Jaschik is one of the three founders of Inside Higher Ed. With Doug Lederman, he leads the editorial operations of Inside Higher Ed, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, career advice, blogs and other features. Mr. Jaschik is a leading voice on higher education issues, is quoted regularly in publications nationwide and publishes articles on colleges in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post andSalon. He has been a judge or screener for the National Magazine Awards, the Online Journalism Awards, the Folio Editorial Excellence Awards and the Education Writers Association Awards.

Mr. Jaschik is a mentor in the community college fellowship program of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media. From 1999-2003, Scott was editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Previously at The Chronicle, he held numerous other positions and his reporting work was honored by Investigative Reporters and Editors and The Washington Monthly.

Andrew Jaspan

Founder and Editor, The Conversation

Andrew Jaspan is The Founder and Editor of The Conversation. Previously he edited The London Observer, The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday, and Sunday Herald in the UK. He was invited in 2004 to be Editor-in-Chief of The Age and The Sunday Age in Melbourne, Australia. He is Asia-Pacific Director of Innovation Media International, on the Board of the RMIT Global Cities Institute, a speaker and participant in the Australian Davos conference, a participant in the 2020 Ideas Summit, and regular contributor on ABC radio.

Glen A. Jones

Ontario Research Chair , Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement
Associate Dean Academic, OISE/University of Toronto

Glen Jones is the Ontario research chair in Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement and the Associate Dean, Academic at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. His research focuses on higher education systems, policy and governance and he is a frequent contributor to the higher education research literature. In 2007 he held a visiting fellowship at Fudan University in Shanghai and in 2008 he was an Erasmus Mundus visiting professor at the University of Oslo.

His edited books include Creating Knowledge, Strengthening Nations: The Changing Role of Higher Education (with Patricia McCarney and Michael Skolnik) and Governing Higher Education: National Perspectives on Institutional Governance (with Alberto Amaral and Berit Karseth). An expanded version of his 1997 book Higher Education in Canada: Different Systems, Different Perspectives was translated into Chinese and published by Fujian Education Press in 2007. In 2001 he received the Distinguished Research Award from the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education.

His most recent book (co-edited with Roopa Desai Trilokekar and Adrian Shubert) is entitled Canada’s Universities Go Global and was published by Lorimer in 2009.

Suanne Kelman

Interim Chair, School of Journalism, Ryerson University

Suanne Kelman is currently the Interim Chair of Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, where she has taught since 1993. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto and taught those subjects, as well as African Literature, for one year at the University of Sierra Leone. Before becoming a member of the faculty, she worked for CBC radio’s program Sunday Morning, its television show The Journal and then the Globe and Mail. She continues to freelance as a writer and broadcaster. She is the author of All in the Family: A Cultural History of Family Life, published in 1998. She writes regularly for The Literary Review of Canada.

Mark Kingwell

Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto

Mark Kingwell is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine.  He is the author of fifteen books of political, cultural and aesthetic theory, including the national bestsellers Better Living (1998), The World We Want (2000), Concrete Reveries (2008), and Glenn Gould (2009).  His articles on politics, architecture and art have appeared in, among others, Harper’s, the New York Times, Utne Reader, BookForum, the Toronto Star, and Queen’s Quarterly; he is also a former columnist for Adbusters, the National Post, and the Globe and Mail.  Mr. Kingwell has lectured extensively in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Australia on philosophical subjects.  He is the recipient of the Spitz Prize in political theory, National Magazine Awards for both essays and columns, an Outstanding Teaching Award at the University of Toronto, and in 2000 was awarded an honorary DFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design for contributions to theory and criticism.  His recent books are a collection of his essays on art and philosophy, Opening Gambits (2008), and, with Patrick Turmel, the edited collection Rites of Way: The Politics and Poetics of Public Space (2009).  He is at work on a book about 21st-century democracy.

Paul Kniest

Director, Policy and Researcher Unit of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) Australia

Paul Kniest has worked in the Policy and Researcher Unit of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) Australia since 2002.  As the director of the Unit, Paul is responsible for coordinating the Union’s research and analysis of public policies that affect the professional interests and working conditions of university staff, including funding, performance indicators for learning and research, academic freedom, institutional autonomy and intellectual property.  The Unit also has oversight of the Unions relationships with government and media.

Prior to working with the NTEU Paul was a lecturer in economics at the University of Newcastle (Australia) and prior to that he worked as research economist for the Australian government and the OECD in Paris.

Jane Knight

Comparative, International, Development Education Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Dr. Jane Knight, University of Toronto, focuses her research and professional interests on the international dimension of higher education at the institutional, national, regional and international levels. Her work in over 60 countries with universities, governments, UN Agencies, and foundations helps to bring a comparative, development and international perspective to her research, teaching and policy work.  She is the author of numerous articles/chapters/books on internationalisation concepts and strategies, quality assurance, institutional management, mobility, cross-border education, trade, education hubs and regionalization. Recent books  include Higher Education in Turmoil-The Changing World of Internationalization (author), Financing Access and Equity in Higher Education (editor), and Higher Education in Africa: The International Dimension (co-editor). She is an adjunct professor at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, a Fulbright New Century Scholar 2007-2008, and sits on the advisory boards of several international organizations and journals. In 2010 the University of Exeter awarded her an Honorary LLD for her research and policy work on the international dimension of higher education. From 2010 to 2011 she was a visiting Japan Foundation scholar at Waseda University working on a comparative study of the regionalization of higher education in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Richard Lachman

Assistant Professor, Digital Media in the School of Radio and Television Arts, Ryerson University

Richard Lachman is an Assistant Professor, Digital Media in the School of Radio and Television Arts at Ryerson University. The Gemini-award winning producer is also a creative and technical consultant for new media projects, primarily focused on entertainment and transmedia properties. His professional projects have included partners such as Discovery Channel Canada, CTV, CityTV, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, and his works in the computer games industry have shipped millions of copies.

Patric Lane

Health and Science Editor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Patric Lane is health and science editor at UNC News Services, the main news and communications office for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can find him on Twitter at @patriclane.

Originally from New Zealand, Lane began his communications career in journalism, working first as a political reporter and Parliamentary correspondent for www.newsroom.co.nz, an online news agency, before joining Radio New Zealand, his home country’s public broadcasting radio network. His work with RNZ News earned him recognition as a finalist and a special commendation in the “Individual Radio Journalist of the Year” category in the New Zealand Radio Awards in 2005.

Mark Langer

President, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations
Professor of Film Studies, Carleton University

Mark Langer became the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations’ (OCUFA) 28th president on July 1, 2009. He has been a professor of Film Studies at Carleton University since 1977, following work at Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has served as the head of the undergraduate and graduate programs in Film Studies at Carleton, led the university’s Directed Interdisciplinary Studies Program, and served on the Board of Management of Women’s Studies and on Senate and Senate Executive at Carleton. Prof. Langer teaches a variety of courses related to film history, national cinemas, genres and animation. His research interests are devoted to the early work of Robert Flaherty (the “father of documentary”) and to the animation studios headed by Walt Disney and Max and Dave Fleischer. He has written a book on the Fleischers and a number of articles on Flaherty, Disney and the Fleischers in Cinema Journal, Film History, Screen, Animation Journal, Art History, Film Comment, Blimp, and other journals.

Lisa Lapin

Assistant Vice President of University Communications, Stanford University

Lisa Lapin is the Assistant Vice President of University Communications at Stanford University. As Stanford’s senior communications official, Lisa Lapin oversees University Communications and serves as chief spokesperson for the university.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2008, Lapin headed communications at the University of California, Davis where she led external and internal communications at the 30,000-student public research university. Lapin has served as a Commissioner on the CASE Communications and Marketing Commission, as a director of the CASE District VII board, and is active in numerous communications organizations including the American Marketing Association and the communications advisory board of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.

Lapin spent 15 years as an award-winning reporter and editor at major daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News and The Sacramento Bee.

Jenny Leonard

Editor, Futurity

Jenny Leonard has been managing editor of Futurity.org since its launch in 2009. She selects the stories and art featured on the site, oversees social media outreach, and plays a role in partnership development and site promotion. She also is assistant director in communications at the University of Rochester, where for the past 11 years she has contributed as writer and editor to a range of print and online publications. Jenny has a master’s degree in English from East Carolina University.

Paul Lewis

President and General Manager, Discovery Channel, Canada

Paul Lewis, as President and General Manager of Discovery Channel in Canada, is responsible for all of the network’s day-to-day operations including programming, production and marketing as well as business and strategic planning.  He also oversees operations for five additional channels – Discovery World HD, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery (I.D.), Science Channel and travel + escape – as well as a production company, Exploration Production Inc., which makes and distributes award winning documentaries for the international market.

Lewis joined Discovery Channel in 1994 as Executive Producer of in-house programming and helped create the world’s first daily science magazine show.  He has also developed and executive produced numerous documentaries, series and live specials.  Including Discovery Canada’s most ambitious project ever — Race to Mars and Mars Rising – a multi-platform concept that he conceived and developed.

April Lindgren

Director, Ryerson Journalism Research Centre

April Lindgren is an assistant professor of journalism at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism and director of the Ryerson Journalism Research Centre. Before joining the School of Journalism faculty in 2007, Prof. Lindgren worked for more than 25 years as a political correspondent and editorial writer in Ottawa and Toronto. Her print and on-line stories appeared in publications including the National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Windsor Star, Montreal Gazette, Vancouver Sun, Edmonton Journal and Calgary Herald. Prof. Lindgren was the 2005-2006 St. Clair Balfour Journalism fellow at the University of Toronto. She is a graduate of Carleton University and has a diplôme from the Graduate School of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Her novel, Headline: Murder was published in 2008.

Brenda Longfellow

Faculty of Fine Arts, York University

Brenda Longfellow is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and film theorist who teaches in the Department of Film at York University. After completing Weather Report in 2008, a television documentary that explores the effects of climate change on communities around the world, she has embarked on a series of musical shorts exploring the complex weave of delusion, dream, and willful complicity that inform the evolution of the Tar Sands in Northern Alberta. Dr. Longfellow has published numerous articles on feminist film theory and Canadian cinema in CineTracts, Screen, CineAction and the Journal of Canadian Film Studies. She is a co-editor of the anthology Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women Filmmakers.

Nora Loreto

Communications Coordinator, Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario

Nora Loreto is the Communications Coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario. Previously, she served two terms as the Treasurer for the Canadian Federation of Students–Ontario and held three positions on the Executive Committee of Local 24-Ryerson Students’ Union, including President and Vice-President of Education.

Nora began her post-secondary studies at Ryerson University in journalism. In 2008, she became the News Editor of the Ryerson Free Press and has been the Editor-in-Chief since April 2009.

Nora holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration and Governance with minors in Journalism, History and Politics.

Nora is a recipient of the Canadian Association of University Teachers’ excellence in student journalism award for an article she co-authored with Rebecca Granovsky-Larsen in 2009.

Karen MacGregor

Editor, University World News

Karen MacGregor is a South African correspondent who reports for Newsweek (New York) and has written for newspapers including The Sunday Times (London) and The Globe and Mail (Toronto), as well as regularly for UNESCO, Paris. Ms MacGregor holds an MA in International Relations from the University of Kent and was a foreign editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement.

Scott MacKenzie

Associate Researcher, Roberts Centre for Canadian Studies, York University

Scott MacKenzie is author of Screening Québec: Québécois Moving Images, National Identity and the Public Sphere (Manchester UP, 2004) and Guy Debord for the French Filmmakers Series (Manchester University Press, forthcoming). He is also co-editor of Cinema and Nation (with Mette Hjort, Routledge, 2000) and Purity and Provocation: Dogma ’95 (with Mette Hjort, BFI, 2003). He is co-investigator of the Visible City Project + Archive at York University. In 2011-2012, he is an Associate Researcher at the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies at York University.

Minelle Mahtani

Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Planning, and Program in Journalism, University of Toronto

Minelle Mahtani is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning, and Program in Journalism at the University of Toronto. She works in the area of mixed race studies, media and minority representation, and critical multiculturalism. She is President of the Association for Canadian Studies and is the former Chair of CERIS – Ontario Metropolis Centre. She was a television producer at CBC TV News and acted as strategic counsel for IMPACS – the Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society in Vancouver. She is also a Massey College Senior Fellow and on the board of Academic Matters.

Sidneyeve Matrix

Queen’s National Scholar, Department of Media and Film Studies, Queen’s University

Sidneyeve Matrix is Queen’s National Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Film at Queen’s University. She teaches courses in mass communications and marketing, digital and social media. She has a Master’s degree from The University of Western Ontario, a graduate certificate from Syracuse University and a PhD from The University of Minnesota. She is an Associate Editor (social media) of The Journal of Professional Communications. In 2010, Professor Matrix began teaching in the Queen’s School of Business Executive Development Centre and at Rutgers University Center for Management Development.

Professor Matrix is a regular digital trends analyst for national media outlets, including CBC News and CBC Radio, CTVGlobeMedia, Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet, The Canadian Press, Sun Media and CanWest Global. Her educational technology initiatives and research have been featured in University Affairs Magazine, Macleans, Yahoo!, MSN.ca, Canada.com, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She works as a social media developer helping brands increase their digital IQ at MatrixMediaFX and is a professional blogger for Macmillan Publishers and Cyberpop!. She is recognized as one of the Top Marketing Professors on Twitter.

Sandy McKean

Associate Dean, Television and Journalism, Sheridan College

Sandy McKean is the Associate Dean, Film, Television  and Journalism, in the Sheridan College Faculty of Animation, Arts and Design in Oakville, Ontario. Sandy joined Sheridan College in late 2006 after more than three decades of experience in the Canadian media industry.

His journalism career has been extensive including stints as a daily newspaper reporter, a wire service reporter with Canadian Press, and numerous assignments with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a radio and television news reporter, producer, executive producer, Director of Administration and Staff Development and Head of Network Television News for Canada’s public broadcaster.

John Mighton

Governor General’s Award winning playwright, Fields Institute Fellow in Mathematical Sciences, University of Toronto, founder of JUMP Math

John Mighton is a mathematician, author, playwright, and the founder of JUMP Math. He is the lead curriculum developer for the JUMP Math Student Workbooks and Teacher’s Manuals. Mighton’s national best-selling book, The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematical Talent in Every Child, describes his successes with JUMP, and how anyone can learn and teach math. John is a playwright, who has won several national awards including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, the Dora Award, the Chalmers Award and the Siminovitch Prize. His play Possible Worlds was made into a full-length feature film directed by Robert Lepage. Dr. Mighton is currently a Fellow of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and has also taught mathematics at the University of Toronto

John Miller

Professor Emeritus, Former Chair of the School of Journalism, Ryerson University

John Miller is professor emeritus and former chair of the School of Journalism at Ryerson University. He has won two national reporting awards in the last 10 years writing for community newspapers and serves on the business advisory board of Multimedia Nova Corporation, Canada’s largest publisher of diversity media. His research centres on how minorities are depicted in mainstream media.

Elizabeth Monier-Williams

Research Communications Officer, York University

Elizabeth Monier-Williams has worked in Toronto’s education sector for nearly a decade, and currently manages research communications at York University. She has previously worked in media relations at the University of Toronto where she also led the inaugural build of the Ulife website. Her professional interests include content development, communications strategy, blogging, the news cycle, privacy online, social media and disintermediation.

Elizabeth also writes theanalyticeye.com, which provides website, communications, social media and marketing analysis.

Sean Morrison

Director, University of Michigan Center for Stem Cell Biology

Since 1999, Sean J. Morrison’s laboratory at the University of Michigan has studied the mechanisms that regulate stem cell self-renewal, stem cell aging, and the links between stem cell function and cancer. Their work has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House (2003), the ISEH McCulloch and Till Award (2007) the AAA Harland Mossman Award (2008), and a MERIT Award from the National Institute on Aging (2009). In addition to Dr. Morrison’s lab research, he has worked to improve government policies related to stem cell research at the state, federal, and international levels. He was a leader in the successful campaign to constitutionally protect embryonic stem cell research in the state of Michigan. Dr. Morrison has testified before the US Congress on the subject of stem cell research, and has spoken out on issues that concern the international stem cell community as an officer and director of ISSCR.

Dr. Morrison’s laboratory identifies mechanisms that regulate stem cell self-renewal, and the ways in which these mechanisms undergo temporal changes between fetal and adult stem cells. Identification of these mechanisms makes it possible to understand how stem cells are maintained over time and how their function changes to match the changing growth and regenerative demands of tissues.

Robert Morse

Director of Data Research, U.S. News & World Report

Robert Morse is the Director of Data Research for U.S. News & World Report. He is  in charge of producing the Best Colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the Best Graduate Schools, Best High Schools and World’s Best Universities rankings all of which are published annually by U.S. News & World Report.  He takes the lead role in survey design, ranking methodology changes and higher education research as well as monitoring data collection for all the academic rankings published by U.S. News.

Mr. Morse developed almost all of the current methodologies that are used in the Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools ranking projects and has been working full-time on both the Best Colleges and Best Graduate Schools publications starting in 1989. U.S. News has published the Best Colleges rankings annually starting in 1987. The Best Graduate Schools rankings have been published annually by U.S. News starting in 1990.  The Best High Schools rankings were published for the first time in December 2007. The World’s Best Universities were published for the first time in November 2008.

Mr. Morse is the author of the popular U.S. News blog on rankings called “Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings.”

Bill Murphy

Vice President for Communications, University of Rochester

Bill Murphy has been vice president for communications at the University of Rochester since 2006. He is responsible for the University¹s communications efforts including overall strategy, media relations, periodicals, publications, graphic identity, and the Web.  Murphy has held leadership positions in communications at Illinois, Chicago, and Ohio State.  He has a Ph.D. from Chicago in modern Irish history.

David Naylor

President, University of Toronto

David Naylor has been President of the University of Toronto since 2005.  He earned his MD at Toronto in 1978, followed by a D Phil at Oxford where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. Naylor completed clinical specialty training and joined the Department of Medicine of the University of Toronto in 1988.  He was founding Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (1991-1998), before becoming Dean of Medicine and Vice Provost for Relations with Health Care Institutions of the University of Toronto (1999 – 2005).  Naylor has co-authored approximately 300 scholarly publications, spanning social history, public policy, epidemiology and biostatistics, and health economics, as well as clinical and health services research in most fields of medicine. Among other honours, Naylor is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Foreign Associate Fellow of the US Institute of Medicine, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Josh O’Kane

Reporter,

Josh O’Kane is a onetime scientist-in-training who discovered writing entirely by mistake when he reviewed a William Shatner CD in his
freshman year. This literally took him to the top of the Canadian student press – he would eventually spend a year as chief national editor of the Canadian University Press (CUP) newswire. He is entering his second year of Ryerson’s master of journalism program.

O’Kane grew up in New Brunswick and attended its namesake university, where he served as editor in chief of the Brunswickan — Canada’s
oldest student publication. (He begs the Queen’s Journal and Dalhousie Gazette to better research their similar claims.) He eventually gave
up the Shatner beat and spent five years reporting on students and student life. He has contributed to Q on CBC Radio One and has written
for the Telegraph-Journal, OpenFile.ca, Exclaim Magazine, Here Magazine and student newspapers from coast to coast. This summer he is
reporting for The Globe and Mail.

John O’Leary

Editor, The Times Good University Guide

John O’Leary is a journalist and education consultant, who works for a variety of newspapers and magazines, universities and national organizations. He edits The Times Good University Guide and is co-author of the Top Universities Guide, which includes the QS World University Rankings. He edited The Times Higher Education Supplement from 2002 until 2007 and was Education Editor of The Times for 10 years before that. He is the author of Higher Education in England, published by the Higher Education Funding Council for England in 2009, and has a degree in politics from Sheffield University.

Penny Park

Executive Director, Science Media Centre of Canada

Penny Park has extensive hands-on experience in radio and television science journalism in Canada. From 1980 to 1995, she worked as a producer and senior producer with “Quirks and Quarks,” the award-winning weekly science program on CBC radio. Since 1995, Park has been with the Discovery Channel, where she helped develop the show now called “Daily Planet”. Originally from Montreal, she first earned a BA in linguistics from the University of New Brunswick and then a B.Sc. (Honours) in biology from the University of Guelph in 1980.

She became the inaugural Executive Director of the Science Media Centre of Canada in 2010.

Lynn Pasquerella

President, Mount Holyoke College

A celebrated philosopher and medical ethicist, Dr. Pasquerella is President of Mount Holyoke College.

Pasquerella majored in philosophy and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke in 1980. She received a full fellowship to Brown University, where she earned a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Pasquerella has written extensively in the areas of medical ethics, theoretical and applied ethics, metaphysics, public policy, and the philosophy of law. She also is a passionate advocate for women’s education and credits her training as an ethicist with helping her reach beyond the academy to engage communities—both locally and around the globe—on issues of women’s empowerment. Previously, she was the principal investigator on a $3.5 million National Science Foundation grant to promote the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, and math. Since 2008, she has served as project leader for a research team with the Africa Center for Engineering Social Solutions, working to improve the lives of women in an AIDS-ravaged section of Kenya.

Julie Peterson

Vice President for Communications, University of Chicago

Julie A. Peterson is Vice President for Communications at the University of Chicago.  In that role she is responsible for the University’s strategic communications plan and coordinates communication efforts across the campus.  Prior to joining the University of Chicago in July 2007, she served at the University of Michigan in a variety of positions including Director of News and Information Services, Associate Vice President for Media Relations and Public Affairs, and Interim Vice President for Communications.  Ms. Peterson was involved in the University of Michigan’s defense of its admissions policies, managing all of the media and web communications leading up to and immediately following the Supreme Court rulings in June 2003.  She previously worked in media relations at Indiana University, where she holds a B.A. degree in journalism and an M.B.A. in marketing.

Lisa Philipps

Professor and Associate Dean, (Research, Graduate Studies & Institutional Relations) at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University

Lisa Philipps is Professor and Associate Dean (Research, Graduate Studies & Institutional Relations) at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, Toronto.  She has held previous faculty appointments at the University of Victoria and University of British Columbia, and has been a visiting scholar at Melbourne Law School, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and other leading institutions.  She publishes widely in the areas of tax law, fiscal policy, and feminist legal studies.  Her recent publications include co-edited books on Tax Expenditures: State of the Art (Toronto: Canadian Tax Foundation, 2011) and Challenging Gender Inequality in Tax Policy Making: Comparative Perspectives (Oxford: Hart Publishing Inc., 2011).  Lisa received the Osgoode Hall Law School Teaching Excellence Award in 2005.  She is a regular media commentator on taxes, budgets and women’s legal issues and has worked with the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) and the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) to inform community groups and parliamentarians on fiscal policy issues.  As Associate Dean, Philipps has led the development of Osgoode’s first strategic research plan and the growth of its international partnerships.  She holds degrees from the University of Toronto (LL.B. ’86) and York University (LL.M. ’92), and practiced tax law with Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP before embarking on her academic career.

Murray Pomerance

Professor, Department of Sociology, Ryerson University

Murray Pomerance is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Media Studies Working Group at Ryerson University. A prolific writer his recent publications include Michelangelo Red Antonioni Blue: Eight Reflections on Cinema (U. California), Edith Valmaine (Oberon) and The Horse Who Drank the Sky (Rutgers U. Press). He is editor of the “Horizons of Cinema” series from SUNY (State University of New York) Press and the “Techniques of the Moving Image” series at Rutgers University Press.

Ann Rauhala

Associate Professor of Journalism, Ryerson University

Ann Rauhala is an Associate Professor of Journalism at Ryerson University.  In her 20 years in the news business,  Ms Rauhala was Foreign Editor, a beat reporter and a columnist at the Globe and Mail newspaper and later, a television documentary maker at the CBC. Her scholarly activities include an investigation of the attitudes and demographics of top news decision-makers in Canada and an interdisciplinary analysis of media coverage of child care.  While a reporter, she won the Robertine Berry Award from the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. This year she won the Dean’s teaching award in the Faculty of Communication and Design. Her anthology of essays, The Lucky Ones, about adoption from China, was published in 2008. She teaches writing and editing courses, including Health and Science Journalism, Covering the City and Essential Editing, to Master’s students and undergraduates.  She has a Ryerson BA in Journalism and a BA and MA in English from the University of Toronto.

Dzulkifli Abdul Razak

Vice-Chancellor, University of Science Malaysia

Professor Dzulkifli Abdul Razak is currently Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia, a position he has held since 2000.

He also serves as Vice-President of the International Association of Universities, a UNESCO affiliated organisation, and is a member of the Asia-Europe Meeting, the Education Hub Advisory Committee, the Executive Council of Association of Commonwealth Universities and the Advisory Committee of World Universities Forum. Since 1995, he has served on the World Health Organisation (WHO) Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Policies and Management and was a member of the WHO Scientific Advisory Committee on Tobacco Product Regulation from 2000 to 2002. At the national level, he is the Chair of Malaysian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee and Chair of Malaysian Examination Council and also serves as Advisor to the National Higher Education Research Institute. He is a Fellow of the Malaysia Academy of Science and the World Academy of Art and Science. From 2007 to 2008, Professor Razak served as President of Association of Southeast Asia Institutions of Higher Learning.

He has been recognized for his contributions the world over and has been the recipient of many honors and awards.

Valeria Román

Vice President, World Federation of Science Journalists

Valeria Román is a science journalist for Clarín Newspaper in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is the vice president for World Federation of Science Journalists. Argentina’s Konex Foundation selected her as one of the 100 best journalists in the country in 2007. She was a 2004-2005 Knight science journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (MIT), USA, and the 2003 medical journalism program fellow at the WHO, Geneva (Switzerland). She has published her first book for lay people:, Darwin 2.0 La teoría de la evolución en el siglo XXI. The book is about evolution theory, its updates, and applications. It also reveals the barriers to teach evolution in Argentina, Chile and other Latinoamerican countries. She was lecturing at different cities to promote evolution education in 2009.

Mark Rosenfeld

Associate Executive Director, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA)

Mark Rosenfeld is the Associate Executive Director of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA) which represents 17,000 professors and academic librarians in Ontario universities. He is also the editor of OCUFA’s journal Academic Matters  which examines from a variety of perspectives current trends in Canadian and global higher education and consideration of academe’s future direction.

He is a graduate of York University and the University of Toronto and has a Ph.D in Canadian labour history.  He has taught at the University of Toronto, York University and the University of Edinburgh and has been a policy advisor in the Ministry of Education and Training and Ministry of Labour.  His publications include articles ranging in topic from government funding and policy directions for universities in Ontario to provincial labour market adjustment programs.  He has also co-edited a book titled Gender and History in Canada.

Dr. Indira Samarasekera

President, University of Alberta

Indira V. Samarasekera is the president of the University of Alberta, one of Canada’s most respected research-intensive universities. A highly regarded leader, she is often invited to speak on higher education, research, and science and technology issues including at the World Economic Forum, the National Science Foundation in the US, and the Science and Technology Forum in Japan. She is a member of Canada’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council and the Presidential Visiting Committee at MIT, and sits on the boards of the Bank of Nova Scotia, Conference Board of Canada, and the Public Policy Forum. She is an officer of the Order of Canada and has received three honorary degrees, among many other honours. She was educated at University of Ceylon (B.Sc), University of California-Davis (M.Sc.) and University of British Columbia (PhD, Metallurgical Engineering).

Michael Schoenfeld

Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations, Duke University

Michael J. Schoenfeld is Vice President for Public Affairs and Government Relations at Duke University, where he oversees communications and advocacy for the university and medical center and serves as Duke’s chief spokesperson. He is also teaches a course on media and politics.

Under his leadership, Duke has energized its digital media presence and enhanced Duke’s capabilities in global communications, marketing and strategic communications. Schoenfeld is also one of the co-founders of Futurity (www.futurity.org), a multimedia consortium of the leading research universities from the U.S., Canada and the U.K.  He came to Duke from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, where he was vice chancellor for public affairs from 1997-2008 and led a comprehensive public affairs program that earned multiple CASE awards, Emmy awards, and contributed to a significant increase in the university’s national and global visibility.

Jeffrey Selingo

Editor, Chronicle of Higher Education

Jeffrey J. Selingo was named editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education in August 2007, a decade after joining its staff as a reporter. He now directs more than 60 editors, reporters, and correspondents, in print and online.

For five years before becoming editor, he served as an assistant managing editor and senior editor at The Chronicle, overseeing coverage of higher-education policy, campus leadership, and fund raising. During that time he directed Chronicle surveys of college president and trustees as well as its yearlong series, “The Growing Divide,” which examines widening financial disparities between “haves” and “have-nots” in higher education. From 1997 to 2002, he covered state politics as a reporter at The Chronicle.

Ivan Semeniuk

News Editor, Nature

Ivan joined Nature in May 2010 after many years of working in print, broadcast and online science media. Among other roles, he has been a television producer and columnist for Discovery Channel in Canada and the US Bureau Chief for New Scientist. He began his career developing programmes and exhibits at the Ontario Science Centre. He received his journalism degree at Boston University, following an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy. He was named an MIT Knight Fellow in science journalism in 2007 and a Canadian Journalism Associate Fellow in 2009. Prior to coming to Nature he was journalist-in-residence at the Dunlap Institute, University of Toronto.

Ivor Shapiro

School of Journalism, Ryerson University

Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director Ivor Shapiro teaches ethics and feature reporting and conducts research into aspects of ethics and excellence in journalism. He chairs the ethics advisory committee of the Canadian Association of Journalism, and is the founding editor and current ethics editor of the Canadian Journalism Project (J-Source.ca), a national website providing information, commentary and resources related to the achievement of, and challenges to, journalistic excellence.

Born and raised in South Africa, Shapiro immigrated to Canada in 1985. He is a former contributing editor of Saturday Night magazine and managing editor of Chatelaine magazine. He has written feature articles for those magazines as well as Toronto Life, The Walrus, Maclean’s, Today’s Parent and The Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Magazine, among others. Ivor has been honoured six times at the National Magazine Awards and has been a finalist for a Canadian Association of Journalists award for investigative journalism. His first book of literary journalism, What God Allows: The Crisis of Faith and Conscience in One Catholic Church (Doubleday, New York: 1996), was praised by critics in Canada as well as the U.S. Shapiro’s magazine writing has been chosen for several anthologies, and he is the editor of The The Bigger Picture: Elements of Feature Writing (Emond Montgomery Press, 2008). His academic research has been published in Journalism Practice, Canadian Journal of Communication, and Newspaper Research Journal.

Yojana Sharma

Asia Editor, University World News

Yojana Sharma is Asia Editor of University World News. She was a foreign correspondent for many years for news agencies and major newspapers including the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald with postings in Geneva, Brussels, Central America, Hong Kong and China, New Delhi and Berlin before returning to London as an international affairs writer and commentator for the Times Educational Supplement. She has a degree in International Relations from the University of Sussex, a postgraduate qualification in Digital Media Management from London University and studied International Economic Relations at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Her books include the novel The Buffalo Thief (published in French as Les Jardins de Mardpur ) and an analysis of India’s satellite television industry: Television in India: Perspectives and Opportunities in a Changing Environment.

Bianka Siwińska

Editor-In-Chief , Perspektywy

Bianka Siwińska is the editor-in-chief  “Perspektywy”, an educational magazine with a circulation of 30,000 to 50,000 copies.  The magazine focuses on the national and international aspects of higher education.  Siwińska is the co-chair of  “Study in Poland”, a joint program of the Conference of Rectors and Perspektywy Education Foundation.  She is the author of “Education goes global! Strategies of Internationalization of Higher Education” Warsaw, 2008; the first book of internationalization of higher education published in Poland.  She initiated a national campaign “Dziewczyny na politechniki!” (Girls go to Technical Universities!)

Yasaman Soudagar

Physics, University of Toronto

Yasaman Soudagar is a PhD candidate, started her doctorate in École Polytechnique de Montréal in experimental optics. At the moment she is in the University of Toronto, Dep. of Physics. Yasaman is a firm believer in science outreach and is a recipient of a $5000 Laser Fest outreach grant.

Vinita Srivastava

Assistant Professor, Journalism, Ryerson University

Vinita is assistant professor of journalism at Ryerson University. She specializes in project management, multimedia and web production. Vinita spent a decade in the New York publishing industry, both as a reporter (the Village Voice, Vibe, Savoy) and as an editor (the New York Times, Oprah, Spin, Harper’s Bazaar). She has also reported for radio and was co-host and producer on WBAI Radio. From 2001 to 2005, she published *BrownSugarOnline, the first online magazine for young South Asian women. Over the past five years, she has developed a specialized multimedia curriculum for both graduate and undergraduate students. She is the director of The Verse City project, a campus community partnership that teaches media skills to marginalized youth. She is currently conducting fieldwork for an oral history project on media and the hip hop generation.

Michelle Stack

Associate Professor, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia

Dr. Michelle Stack is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies, and a Faculty Associate for the UBC Graduate School of Journalism.  Michelle’s work explores how journalists and academics think about each other and how this affects public discourse about research. She argues better relationships between journalists and academics are needed for an inclusive democracy. Michelle’s research about journalism and education connects to her lifelong work in social justice.

Michelle has interviewed politicians, journalists and bureaucrats to investigate the role of media in educational policy.  She maintains that media education is not just for kids. She contends that lifelong media education is central to increasing the political/policy engagement of people.

Prior to becoming an academic Michelle worked as a political advisor, communications director and policy consultant.

Ken Steele

Senior Vice-President, Academica Group Inc.

Ken Steele is co-founder and Senior Vice-President of Academica Group Inc., which has offices in London (Ontario), Toronto and Boston. Ken’s area of consulting practice is institutional brand strategy and recruitment marketing, and he has led major projects in recent years for Lethbridge College, the University of the Fraser Valley, Mount Royal University and the University of Saskatchewan, among others.

Four years ago, Ken founded a free daily newsbrief, Academica’s Top Ten, which summarizes important events, emerging trends, research findings and aspects of youth culture for more than 8,500 subscribers, including college and university presidents and senior executives, government policy analysts, faculty, high school guidance counselors and national media editors. Ken has written numerous articles and white papers on institutional marketing and strategy, a syndicated column on graphic design and a regular blog on higher education issues, and now manages a YouTube channel featuring notable higher education commercials.

Ken holds a BA (Hons) in English Language and Literature from The University of Western Ontario and an MA in English Literature from the University of Toronto.

Wisdom Tettey

Professor, Department of Communication and Culture, University of Calgary

Wisdom Tettey is a Professor in the Department of Communication and Culture, at the University of Calgary. He has held various administrative positions in higher education, including Interim Dean. His research expertise and interests are in the areas of mass media and politics in Africa; ICTs, civic engagement and transnational citizenship; the political economy of globlalization and ICTs; brain drain, diaspora knowledge networks and higher education capacity building in Africa. Among his publications are: The Public Sphere and the Politics of Survival: Voice, Sustainability, and Public Policy in Ghana (2010); Challenges of Developing and Retaining the Next Generation of Academics: Deficits in Academic Staff Capacity in African Universities (2010); African Media and the Digital Public Sphere (2009); Staff Retention in African Universities: Elements of a Sustainable Strategy (2006); The African Diaspora in Canada: Negotiating Identity and Belonging (2005). He is currently leading a World Bank Institute-sponsored initiative aimed at networking the Diaspora Ghanaian academics to support graduate student training in Ghana. He has served as a consultant, advisor and policy analyst for various organizations including the World Bank (higher education in Africa),  Partnership for Higher Education in Africa (academic staff retention), International Association of Universities (doctoral programs in sub-Saharan Africa), the World Bank Institute (Diaspora Mobilization), the United Nations Development Programme (Mass Media and Information Technologies), and the Third World Academy/SciDev (Brain Drain).

André Turcotte

Associate Professor, School Of Journalism and Communication, Carelton University

Dr. André Turcotte is Associate Professor in Communication and Quantitative Research Methodology at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication. Prior to joining Carleton, he taught at McMaster University and the University of Toronto.

Over the years, he has provided public opinion research advice to many of Canada’s leading private sector firms as well as several government organizations. Between 1992 and 1993, he was the co-editor of The Gallup Poll. He was part of the polling team for the Chretien Liberals in the 1993 Federal Election. Between 1994 and 2000, he was the official pollster of the Reform Party of Canada and its Leader, Preston Manning. He has also provided advice to several political leaders.

He is the co-author of the recently released book entitled “Dynasties and Interludes: Past and Present in Canadian Federal Elections” which examines every federal election between 1867 and 2008.

Greg Van Alstyne

Director of Research, sLab, Associate Professor of Design, OCAD

Greg Van Alstyne is sLab’s (Strategic Innovation Lab) Director of Research and Associate Professor of Design at OCADU. He is an accomplished creative director and design educator with proven abilities in research, writing and concept development, along with visualization, art direction, and design management. Van Alstyne has twenty years of experience in art and editorial direction, branding, logo and typeface development, interaction design and environmental graphic design for international clients including MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, Rizzoli, Prada, Rem Koolhaas/OMA, and the National Film Board of Canada.

Rinaldo Walcott

Chair, Sociology and Equity Studies, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Rinaldo Walcott is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and the Women’s and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto.  His teaching and research is in the area of black diaspora cultural studies and postcolonial studies with an emphasis on questions of sexuality, gender, nation, citizenship and multiculturalism. From 2002-2007 Rinaldo held the Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies where his research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Innovation Trust.

Cat Warren

Editor, Academe

Cat Warren is currently editor of Academe, the magazine of the American Association of University Professors.

Before returning to academe to get her PhD in 1990, Cat Warren was a reporter for several newspapers across the United States, including the Hartford Courant. In 1995, she joined the faculty at North Carolina State, where she has taught a wide range of courses in journalism and media and in gender studies. She publishes in journalistic venues as well as in academic ones—on media criticism, cultural studies, and issues in higher education.

Joel Westheimer

University Research Chair, Democracy and Education, University of Ottawa

Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair in Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is co-founder and executive director of Democratic Dialogue, a research collaborative dedicated to the critical exploration of democratic ideals in education and society. Westheimer’s recent award-winning book is Pledging Allegiance: The Politics of Patriotism in America’s Schools (foreword by the late Howard Zinn). He’s currently working on his third book, Restoring the Public in Public Education. He is the recent recipient of the Canadian Education Association’s Whitworth Award “for education research that matters.” A former musician, Westheimer grew up in New York City where he was also a public school teacher. He lives with his wife and two children in Ottawa where, in Winter, he ice-skates to and from work.

John Willinsky

Khosla Family Professor of Education, Stanford University

John Willinsky is Khosla Family Professor of Education at Stanford University and Professor (Adjunct) at the University of British Columbia. He is director of the Public Knowledge Project at Stanford, UBC, and Simon Fraser University, which produces the world’s most widely used software for journal publishing. Much of his work, including his book, The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship (MIT Press, 2006), winner of two outstanding book awards, as well as PKP’s award-winning open source software for journals and conferences, is free to download through the project’s website (http://pkp.sfu.ca).

Joseph Wilson

Education Advisor, MaRS Discovery District

Joseph is currently an education advisor at MaRS. He also writes on issues of technology and culture for NOW Magazine, The Globe and Mail, Spacing and Yonge Street. He is the Executive Director of the Treehouse Group, dedicated to fostering innovation by hosting cross-disciplinary events.

Jeff Zabudsky

President, Sheridan College

Dr. Jeff Zabudsky is Sheridan’s sixth President, a position he assumed on February 1, 2010.   Prior to joining Sheridan, Dr. Zabudsky worked at post-secondary institutions in Nova Scotia, Ontario and Alberta, including six years as President and CEO of Red River College in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Dr. Zabudsky holds a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Alberta, a Masters of Distance Education from Athabasca University, and a Bachelor of Applied Arts Degree in Broadcast Journalism from Ryerson University.