November, 2018 - In November 7-9, 2018, I was invited to attend Canadian Science Policy Conference and be part of a panel that discussed policy coordination issues in Canadian science policy. The panel included Dr. Creso Sa (moderator), Emina Veletanlic (PhD student from OISE/UT), Dr. David Moorman (senior advisor at CFI), Dr. Marc Fortin (Vice-President at NSERC) and me. The panel was informed by a White Paper that Emina Veletanlic and Dr. Creso Sa put together, partly informed by my paper published in the Journal of Science and Public Policy. Coordination is a long-standing problem where systemic barriers are inherent in the federal model through the existence of federal/provincial jurisdictions. It was suggested that Canada needs a strong national framework for innovation and a strategic plan and a more dedicated mechanisms to allow effective collaboration between policy and granting research agencies. We had a great turnout of people in the audience! Thanks to all involved!
September 7, 2018. The summer of 2018 was really busy, especially with various conferences that I attended. Really enjoyed the wonderful conversations with colleagues and friends from Canada, US, Estonia and more. Meeting new people, dicsussing exciting future projects helps to charge the batteries for the next academic year. I attended the following conferences:
1) CSSHE and CSSE in Regina, SK. Congress is always wonderful and the host city of Regina really surpassed our expectations. Everybody was so friendly, welcoming. They had even organized golf carts to take the tired participants around the campus... As a Board member of CSSHE I have the opportunity to follow how the conference comes alive from the early program planning stages to the actual presentations. Together with Roopa Desai Trilokear (York University) and Kumari Beck (Simon Frazer University), we presented our paper titled “Wicked problems” in Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Policy Agendas – The Missing Discourse of Internationalization'. Publication to be followed, hopefully :)
2) AABS (Association for the Advancement of the Baltic Studies) in Stanford, California, US. What a campus and how well-organized conference! Kudos to Liisi Esse, who was the main powerhouse behind putting the whole conference together. Cngratulations also to the new AABS President - Andres Kasekamp who recently took a professor position at the University of Toronto. It was great to connect with many academics from the University of Tartu as well as many from Latvia and Lithuania. My presentation was titled 'The ‘Hot Button’ Issue of Language in the Higher Education Administration of the Baltic States'. Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies (AABS), and it triggered quite an interesting response from the audience. This was my first ever AABS confernce and definitely will not be the last.
3) LPP (Language Policy and Planning Conference) in Toronto/OISE. Another first for me to attend a conference meant for linguists! Another fantastic experience. I was presenting with Soon Young Jang, a doctoral student at OISE. The title of our paper was "Governing Language Policies:Universities as Makers or Breakers of Linguistic Diversity". The presentation is based on the publication that you can access HERE.
4) ECSA-Canada (European Community Studies Association) - Conference was held in Toronto, Canada and my presentation was focusing on internationalizaiton and was titled "International Education as Public Policy – Comparing Policy Approaches in Canada & EU”.
March 12, 2018. This year a BEd student Melissa Guenter was awarded prestigious University of Manitoba Undergraduate Research Award (URA) to work with Dr. Tamtik. The research project that Melissa is working on is titled "Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Policy Agendas – The Missing Discourse of Internationalization" focusing on Canadian U15 research institutions and their diversity policies. Congratulation to Melissa!
September, 2018. Happy New Academic Year! September greeted us with an exciting news - a new book, titled "Comparing Post-Socialist Transformations" by Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, edited by Maia Chankseliani and Iveta Silova, is out. We are happy to report that a book chapter featuring country comparisons between Estonia and Kazakhstan by Emma Sabzalieva (University of Toronto/OISE) and myself is included in this volume. The writing process with Emma was really enjoyable as we both got excited by discovering interesting similarities and differences between these countries. It is not very common to find a country comparison of Estonia and Kazakhstan, yet these countries, we discovered, are both striving to become the new global powerhouses and using their higher education system to do it. You can read more about the chapter in Emma's blog HERE.
January 18, 2018. Faculty of Education hosted a session for undergraduate BEd students interested in summer research jobs. Dr. Merli Tamtik and her undergraduate research assistant Erin Mitchell gave a presentation on the research projects they worked on during the summer of 2017.
