Endings and beginnings

The gathering of students, faculty and alumni who came together for my last Residency Gala Dinner as MCM Director, at Trius Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. A lovely night. I was very grateful. Sometimes we immerse ourselves so completely in something, that we don’t see the years roll by, focused as we are on the exciting task …

A Peek into Academic Life: Jul & Aug is “The Writing Season”

Today, I woke up and felt like a man with a mission. A mission to write. Academic life can seem idyllic to many outside the business: professors, especially those with tenure, can largely set their own hours, work from home, and get to interact with energetic and interesting people of all ages. While there is …

July 1st – A Day of New Beginnings

Well, yesterday was finally July 1, 2011. A fateful day. A day of change and thresholds. Before I tell you why it was so important, I have to say that I spent the evening in lovely surroundings, at my friend and colleague, Dr. Terry Flynn’s house in Kitchener. He and his wife put together a …

How I became an academic: from tenure until the present

During the last month, I have been recounting the story of how I became an academic. In this, the final blog entry in this series, I discuss what it was like settling into the reality of becoming a middle-career academic and learning to savour life a little. During the last two years before tenure, I …

How I became an academic: Building the communication studies program & getting tenure 2001-2006

In this seventh post about how I became an academic I’ll describe how the pre-tenure experience was for me and how I had an unusual time as a young professor, co-founding a brand new program in communication studies. It was quite a ride for young professor in his late twenties and early thirties! The tenure …

How I became an academic: my first day of teaching & September 11, 2001

In the last six posts, I have described, in a somewhat impressionistic fashion my journey from elementary school through to getting hired as an assistant professor at McMaster University. In today’s post I describe my first teaching experiences and how September 11 marked them. The story starts on September 11, 2001, really, but first a …

How I became an academic: Getting hired into the tenure-track at McMaster

In the last five blog posts, I described to you my journey from elementary school to the end of my postdoctoral fellowship among the Mìgmaq and how it all led to me becoming an academic. In this blog post, I will describe how I was hired at McMaster. I got a phone call from my …

How I became an academic: My brief postdoc with the Mìgmaq and Danielle Cyr

In the last four blog posts, I described how my experiences in elementary school all the way to my PhD thesis defense influenced how I became an academic. In this post, I will describe my brief post-doctoral fellowship under the supervision of Danielle Cyr, during her time as interim Vice-Rector of the Université du Québec …

How I became an academic: thesis writing and defense

In the last three blog posts, I have recounted how my elementary, high school, undergrad, early grad and year in France led me to become an academic. In this blog post, I take the story to the end of graduate school, and the introspective journey that was my PhD thesis writing and defense. I returned …

How I became an academic: my year in Paris at the ENS

As I mentioned in my last blog post,the last thing I did in the second year of my PhD was to apply to spend a year as a guest of the French state. I applied to become a pensionnaire étranger at the École Normale Supérieure on the rue d’Ulm in Paris. I wasn’t sure why …