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Campus Notes

SMU brand wins international awards

Team work makes the dream work! The External Affairs team partnered with groups across campus to bring the refreshed brand to life: L-R: Nadine LaRoche, Director, Integrated Communications; Lisa Neily, Creative Services Specialist; Kate Elliot, Social Media Strategist; Richard Lafortune, Web Developer; Ameeta Vohra, Web Content Editor; Rachelle Boudreau, Manager, Internal and Strategic Communications; Margaret Murphy, Associate Vice-President, External Affairs; Micheala Avery, Communications Specialist; Alex Beckett, Manager, Digital Experience; Shannon Doane, Web Developer; Mary Ellen Beazley, Creative Services Officer; Shannon Morrison, Administrative Assistant; Erin Sargeant Greenwood, Vice-President, Advancement and External Affairs. Missing from photo: Cale Loney, Communications Manager, Media Relations and Issue, External Affairs

One year ago, following extensive consultation and months of collaboration (during a pandemic!), the university officially launched the refreshed brand for Saint Mary’s.

Now the project is being recognized for excellence in the field.

Thousands of colleges, universities and secondary schools from across the United States, Canada and beyond submit work for consideration to the U.S.-based Education Digital Marketing Awards and the Education Advertising Awards, which recognize exceptional work educational marketing communications, branding and advertising.

Saint Mary’s took home awards for the following categories:

  • Gold:       Digital Video Ad (Less than 2 minutes)               

  • Gold:       Logo/Letterhead Design 

  • Gold:       Outdoor             

  • Gold:       Website

  • Silver:      Institutional Website Category

  • Bronze:   Digital Video Category 

  • Merit:       Integrated Campaign

Congratulations to the many people who contributed to this project!

Learn more about the Saint Mary’s University brand.

SMU creative writing contest winners announced

The English Language and Literature department is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s creative writing contests. The Writing Contest Committee shares a few thoughts on each of the winning entries.

The Joyce Marshall Hsia Memorial Poetry Prize:

First prize
Julien Sheppard BA’21, current MA History student, Patrick Power Fellow in Applied History 

We were moved by the narrative energy and particularity in these poems, and by the exactness of the perceptions of natural detail (the shimmer of gaspereau). One believes in the human voices, the characters one encounters: “When did you stop asking / about Margaret?” Some of the poems drew us in with their chilling images, their calculated ambiguities; others by immersing us in a conjured matrix of human and creaturely relationship. 

Second prize
Patrick Inkpen, BA student, English major

We liked the range of themes, forms and tones in this submission, and the way this poet marries poetic convention to original perception. There’s a compelling oddness about many of these poems, despite their traditional formal structures. 

Third prize

Melisa Kaya, BA student, English major, Creative Writing minor

We admire this poet’s attention to detail, to the metapoeic resonances that are possible on the page. The locutions are unexpected and vivid: "I crawled from my mother’s hollow like a squirrel of a willow ...." The concrete poem which begins the submission felt fresh and true: a new perception wrested from language, given linguistic form. 

The Margó Takacs Marshall Memorial Prize For Excellence In Short Story Writing

First prize – “Gone for Good”
By Melisa Kaya, English major 

A metanarrative characterized by an uncompromising wildness, an unwillingness to resolve; it seemed to us the most interesting of the submissions, though we sometimes struggled to follow the narrative thread. Still, we have decided to honour it with the first prize, to recognize its ambition and its distinctness, vis-à-vis the other submissions.

Second prize – "Where Do We Go?"
By Alex Baker, MA Philosophy student

A grisly existential tale, which surprised us with a new take on a familiar genre-fiction scenario. The sentences are compellingly constructed and the characters and settings are deftly evoked.

Third prize – "Soliloquy of Something"
By Theodore Moss III, BSc student 

A story that gradually brings us into sympathy with what initially seems a one-note narrator: the story moves from simplicity to complexity in a way that is compelling. What begins as a simple story about teenaged love and rejection becomes a complex story about friendship and meaning.

The annual poetry and short fiction contests are open to any student currently enrolled at Saint Mary’s University. Next year’s deadline for submissions will be in March 2023. Some of the previous winners have gone on to become nationally celebrated writers, such as Sue Goyette, Jenny Haysom, Jill MacLean and Danny Jacobs.

Young researchers to benefit from new partnership with German accelerator facility

Participants in a Zoom meeting

Saint Mary’s University and GSI recently signed a new mobility program agreement to promote research collaborations.

Promoting exchanges and training opportunities for students and early-stage researchers is at the heart of a new mobility program agreement recently signed by the university. The agreement promotes academic and research collaborations between the two signees, Saint Mary's University (SMU) and GSI/FAIR, an accelerator facility in Darmstadt, Germany.

Researchers working at FAIR/GSI use radioactive ion beams for exploring fundamentals of nuclei to understand nature's strong force, creation of elements and conditions in exotic cosmic environments such as neutron stars and supernovae. Some of the methods also give information for nuclear medicine applications.

Their work is on experiments using the accelerator facility, which involves working on a variety of state-of-the-art radiation detectors and electronics. They also will be developing and working on software for data analysis and simulations. The GET_INvolved Programme at GSI provides international students and early stage researchers with opportunities to perform internships, traineeships and early-stage research experience in order to get involved in the international FAIR accelerator project while receiving scientific and technical training.

This agreement between the Canadian university and the German accelerator facility is exciting news to researchers and undergraduate and graduate students who will have the opportunity to further their education and research by collaborating at this world-class facility.

“This new partnership between Saint Mary’s University and our colleagues at GSI/FAIR represents our shared commitment to international research and collaboration,” says Saint Mary’s University President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray. “As scholars, we are linked by our desire to create knowledge, to explore frontiers and to demonstrate the significance of discovery and innovation to civil society.”

“Our partnership is built around these shared values and our acknowledgement of the importance of providing opportunities for early-career researchers,” adds President Summerby-Murray. “Together, we are investing not only in advancing scientific inquiry but in the success of future scholars. I offer my congratulations to everyone involved in the launch of this important collaboration.”

About GSI/FAIR

The Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe (FAIR) project is under development. (Image copyright ion42/FAIR)

The GSI Helmholtz Centre in Darmstadt, Germany is a research centre operating a world-leading accelerator facility for research purposes. About 1,600 employees work at GSI and in addition approximately 1,000 researchers from universities and other research institutes around the world come to GSI every year to use the facility for experiments. The centre provides unique opportunities in the fields of hadronic and nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, atomic, laser and plasma physics, as well as material science, biophysics and nuclear medicine.

At GSI, FAIR (Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research in Europe) is currently being built. An international accelerator research facility with antiprotons and ions, it is being developed and constructed in cooperation with international partners. It is one of the world’s largest construction projects for international cutting-edge research. The FAIR project was initiated by the scientific community and researchers of GSI. The GSI accelerators will become part of the future FAIR facility and serve as the first acceleration stage.

For more information on the the GET_INvolved-Programme, contact:

Professor Rituparna Kanungo, Saint Mary’s Astronomy and Physics Department:
Rituparna.Kanungo@smu.ca

Dr. Pradeep Ghosh, GSI/FAIR:
Pradeep.Ghosh@fair-center.eu


Sowing the Seeds of Peace: Northern Ireland Peace Education Program

A group of 16 Saint Mary's students are building on a longstanding legacy of peace education in Northern Ireland this week.

The students—representing diverse areas of studies in Arts, Science and Commerce—are taking part in the Northern Ireland / North of Ireland Peace Education Program, facilitated by Peaceful Schools International and the Faculty of Education at Saint Mary's.

Now in its 18th year, the unique experiential program prepares the participants to conduct peace education workshops for elementary school children in Belfast. The students have a full itinerary including workshops, outreach and meetings with community partners involved in peacebuilding, as well understanding the history and cultural perspectives of Northern Ireland.

The group returns to Halifax on May 9. Check @smuhalifax for updates on their experiences, and stay tuned for a future story upon their return!

Faculty of Arts Update: Department and program name changes

With registration starting this week for the Fall and Winter terms, the Faculty of Arts would like to update students and staff on several program and department name changes.

Two programs have new names that will officially take effect on September 1, 2022. These new names are reflected in the 2022-2023 Academic Calendar and on Banner for Fall and Winter course selection. Both programs have new course acronyms as well:

  • Ancient Studies (ANCS), formerly known as Classics (CLAS); and

  • Global Development Studies (GDST), formerly known as International Development Studies (IDST).

Please note that program requirements will not change in either of these programs. For students who have already declared a major, minor, honours or concentration in Classics or International Development Studies, those program names will remain the same on your transcript. The new program names will apply for students who declare majors or minors from September 1 onward.  

We are also pleased to announce a new department, plus two department name changes within the Faculty of Arts:

The Ancient Studies program continues to reside within the Department of Languages and Cultures.

Contact the departments directly if you have questions about the new names. If students have any questions about program requirements or course selection, please feel free to reach out anytime to the BA Advising Office