UPEI Co-op Education Programs Nationally Accredited

UPEI Co-operative Education Programs in Business Administration and Computer Science received formal accreditation by the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education October 8th. The rigorous, six- month accreditation process involved an in-depth review of UPEI Co-op Education policies and procedures by an external team of practitioners from universities and colleges across Canada.

Sonya Horsburgh, President of the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education, presented formal accreditation certificates to Business Co-op Director, Don MacCormac and Computer Science Co-op Director, Wayne Cutcliffe.

“The CAFCE Accreditation process is an in-depth self-study. Only pro- grams that have demonstrated they have met all of the required criteria are recommended for accreditation. UPEI should be very proud that their co- operative education programs have met these high quality national stan- dards,” said Horsburgh.

“This national accreditation is a positive endorsement of our co-operative education programs and of the experience that our students have here,” said UPEI President Wade MacLauchlan. “It also recognizes the important part that employers and our partners in the community play in making our co-op programs so successful.”

Dictionary editor makes case for Canadian English

Canadian version just as valid as British, American, lexicographer says

UPEI introduced the co-operative education option for students in the School of Business Administration in September 1996. Computer Science followed in May 2000, and the Physics department introduced its co-op option in 2003. The Physics program will be eligible for accreditation after it has graduated its first students.

Co-operative education is an academic program which allows students to integrate their classroom studies with real work experiences. Normally, students are accepted into the program in their second year of study. They are required to complete at least three four- month paid work terms which alternate with the normal academic courses in their respective fields of study. UPEI students have successfully completed work terms with a range of PEI businesses and government departments. In addition, they have taken advantage of work term opportunities in other parts of Canada, as well as internationally. This summer five students worked in a variety of employment settings in Scotland, Ireland, and New Zealand.

A study conducted by the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission has found that students who graduate with the Co-op option are more successful in securing employment in their fields, and they do so more quickly than other students. Co-op graduates have less student debt, and they are paid at a higher level

EDMONTON (CUP) -- Did you have a jelly donut

for lunch? Or was it a bismark? A jambuster? Or maybe a Burlington bun? Chances are, unless you've travelled across Canada, you didn't realize these are all the same thing.

"Donuts are a crucial part of the Canadian diet," said Katherine Barber, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, speaking at Grant MacEwan College Oct. 13.

Barber said difficulties understanding one meaning from many words may be common in a country as large and unique as Canada, where the English lan- guage "is not homogenous."

The second edition of the dictionary was released earlier this year, following the success of the first edi- tion. The first edition -- on top of spending more than a year on the Globe and Mail's bestseller list -- won the Canadian Booksellers Association's Libris Awards for non-fiction book of the year and special- ty book of the year in 1999.

Barber also spoke of the difficulties of being a lexi- cographer ("one who writes, compiles or edits a dic- tionary," according to an Oxford rival, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language), including the bad rap that comes with the job.

People call her all the time to complain about words being in the dictionary they don't know about. Her reply: "Every day of your life, you're going to come across words you've never heard. What's the point of a dictionary if it only has the words you know?"

There are also problems with the validity of the English spoken in Canada, in the eyes of both others and us. During a flight, she told someone she was compiling a dictionary of Canadian English, and he asked her why she wasn't involved with a publication of proper English.

"We need to realize," she said, "that our English is a

valid variety, and we don't need the British to vali- date us, and certainly not the Americans.”

UPEI Cadre September 14, 2004 page 15

The dictionary doesn't only contain Canadian words; it combines information on English words as they're used worldwide and as they're particularly used in Canada.

One of the major problems in using other bases of English words is space. With a database of 75 million words, the editing and publishing teams have to care- fully restrict what they put into the dictionary.

"We have a rule that we have to have 15 (uses) for a

_word before we put it in," Barber said.

If they tried to put in words with only four uses, or only four quotations of a word, the dictionary would be twice as thick, she added. This doesn't mean words that only have four quotations aren't words, she hastened to say, but rather they aren't used com- monly enough yet to be placed in the dictionary.

Canadian University Press Newswire