SFU Graduate Studies

The 26th Annual Fall Semester TA/TM Day — The Teaching Orientation Program — is coming up in September.

Friday, September 9, 2011
8:30 am–4:30 pm
Opening Plenary Session: Diamond Alumni Centre | SFU Burnaby

TA/TM Day addresses teaching and technological skills that are essential for you as a teaching assistant or tutor marker. Advance registration is not required, but your time at TA/TM Day counts toward your TA/TM work hours for the fall semester.

The fall 201 program for TA/TM Day is now available.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Two significant changes are coming this fall in SFU’s Financial Aid and Awards office.

Changes to Student Loans for BC Students
The governments of Canada and BC are integrating their full-time student financial assistance programs (Canada Student Loans and BC Student Loans) to simplify your borrowing experience. Whether you have previous BC student loans or you are a first-time applicant, you will be affected. For further information, see http://www.aved.gov.bc.ca/studentaidbc/integration.htm

Changes to Work-Study and Bursary Assessments
Financial Aid and Awards will be implementing changes to the bursary and Work-study assessment processes to address the growing financial need of our students.  This may affect your funding eligibility. Application period:  August 29–September 16, 2011.

Need Advice?
If you have any questions regarding these changes, please meet with a Financial Aid Advisor.  Financial Aid Advisors are available at the Burnaby campus in person or by phone (778-782-4356) during the following drop-in times:

Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30 am to 3:30 pm
Wednesday, 9:30 am to 2 pm
Friday, 10 am to 3:30 pm

Limited drop-in times are also available at the Surrey and Vancouver campuses.  Please see http://students.sfu.ca/financialaid/dropin-advising.html for days and times.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

The Office of the Dean of Graduate Studies will be presenting two scholarship writing workshops this August for SFU graduate students who would like to apply to the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship (for PhD students) or the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (or any other postdoctoral fellowship).

Topics that will be covered:

SFU’s Student Learning Commons will be offering several Academic Integrity workshops, open to all SFU students, through Fall 2011 at the Burnaby and Surrey campuses.

Academic Integrity 1: Why and how to use other peoples’ words and ideas
Learn about expectations regarding academic integrity at SFU, as well as strategies for integrating other peoples’ words and ideas into research papers to avoid plagiarism and add authority to your voice.

• Friday September 9, 10–11:30 am, Bennett Library, Rm 7200, Burnaby
• Thursday September 29, 12 noon–1:20 pm, Yosef Wosk Student Learning Commons, Surrey

Academic Integrity 2: Paraphrasing techniques
Paraphrasing is an important skill for academic writing. Learn effective strategies to incorporate others’ ideas into your research essays.

• Thursday, September 15, 3:30–5 pm, Bennett Library, Rm 7200, Burnaby
• Thursday, October 6, 12 noon–1:20 pm, Yosef Wosk Student Learning Commons, Surrey

Visit their website to reserve for these and other Student Learning Commons workshops. (See also their workshops on the thesis template.)

• SFU Learning Commons: Ensuring Academic Integrity
• SFU Library guide on plagiarism
• SFU Policy: Code of Academic Integrity and Good Conduct
• SFU Task Force on Academic Honesty and Integrity

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

The eligibility and exemption requirements for the U-Pass BC program have been changed for the Fall 2011 semester.

In a nutshell: You will only be exempted from the U-Pass BC fee if you:

• have a mailing address which is not in Metro Vancouver AND
• are registered in an off-campus section for your course
• OR qualify in one of the individual exemption categories

If you are planning to be out of town while working on your thesis, field study, directed studies, or co-op term, we recommend that you update your mailing address in SIMS and contact your graduate program to register in an off-campus section for the fall semester. Registration opens on July 11.

In addition, the new U-Pass BC machines will require that you get your student card’s magnetic strip activated. For current students, the activation can be done during office hours at the three SFU campuses, beginning in August. Please see SFU’s U-Pass website for further details.

We strongly recommend that all current graduate students get their cards activated before the Labour Day weekend. (SFU Surrey students should pick up their new cards at the Surrey campus, as those cards also act as door passes.)

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

The SFU library offers a number of e-books which can be read on your computer or downloaded to your e-book reader. Most are in PDF format They’ve put together a help page for your reference.

How to find downloadable e-books
To find downloadable e-books, search the Library Catalogue, limiting your search to eResources and include one of the following e-book publisher names as keywords in your search:

• springerlink – for access to e-books from the publisher Springer
• sciencedirect – for access to Elsevier e-books
• crc – for access to CRC Press (CRCnetBase) e-books
• “palgrave connect” – for access to Palgrave e-books

For all e-books you will be asked to log in with your SFU computing ID and password if you are working from off-campus.

Republished with permission from the SFU Library. See also other SFU Library Services for Graduate Students.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

If you need a little comic relief from the stresses of graduate school, check out the PhD comics website.

The website’s archives go back to the beginning of the strip, which Jorge Cham created when he was a mechanical engineering grad student at Stanford.

• Nature.com: “You’ve got to laugh …“
• Chronicle.com: “Dawdling and Doodling” and “A Comic Strip That Skewers Academe Will Become a Live-Action Movie“
• Wikipedia: Piled Higher and Deeper

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Tyler Cowen: Academic Publishing from Kosmos on Vimeo.

Tyler Cowen, a George Mason University economics professor, shares a few tips for graduate students about getting published in academic journals. The presentation was recorded in May 2011 at the Institute for Humane Studies Summer Research Fellowship weekend seminar.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

The SFU Library is looking for graduate students to provide feedback on the library’s services.

Specifically, they’d like a few graduate students to participate in a panel on Tuesday, June 14, 2:30-4 pm in the Bennett Library, Burnaby campus:

For the panel, we’d ask you to address the open ended questions listed below in about 10 minutes, and then participate in discussion with the librarians in attendance and the other invited graduate students. The event will be very informal–aside from thinking about the questions ahead of time, no other preparation will be required on your part. We will have videoconferencing to include people from all three campuses.

• Describe the challenges and opportunities you face as a researcher.
• Describe changes in research methodologies in your discipline. What about changes in teaching strategies?
• Thinking about these questions, what could the Library do for you and other graduate students to better respond to your existing and/or emerging needs?

If you are interested in participating, email Elaine Fairey — efairey@sfu.ca — before noon on June 10, 2011.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

SFU’s Convocation, June 14–17, is always inspiring and delightful — albeit occasionally chilly and even foggy!

The Convocation schedule is now posted, as are the honorary degree recipients’ biographies.

Best of all: Convocation will be webcast live, so if you’re graduating, your family and friends can watch the event on their computers. (Additional tip: Sarah McLachlan will be performing three songs as part of the June 15 morning ceremony.)

The live webcast video link will be posted on the SFU home page and on the SFU convocation webpage.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]