Trent establishes Canada's first
doctoral program in Native Studies
Trent will admit the first cohort of students to Canada's inaugural
doctoral program in Native Studies in September 1999.
Dean
Paul Healy announced the program's approval to Trent Senate at its Sept.
22 meeting, noting that Trent's will be just the second Native Studies
PhD program in all of North America. The other is at the University
of Arizona.
The
program underwent a year-long rigorous academic review by Trent and
the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies. The latter involved two-day
site visits to Trent by three nationally recognized experts: Dr. Richard
Preston, Department of Anthropology at McMaster, Dr. Michael Asch, Department
of Anthropology, University of Alberta, and Dr. Jay H. Strauss, Department
of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona.
The
consultants agreed that there is a significant need for such a program,
Healy said, and that Trent with its long-established reputation for
Native Studies is a logical place for it to be located. The consultants
also said the department had the focus and resources and an excellent
milieu for this distinctive doctoral program. A significant emphasis
in the new program will be on aboriginal knowledge.
"Trent
views the new PhD program only its second PhD offering after
Watershed Ecosystems as a significant new educational initiative
that will be of benefit to aboriginal and non-aboriginal persons across
Canada," said Healy. Trent conferred its first three PhDs in Watershed
Ecosystems at the 1998 convocation.
Don
McCaskill, a Native Studies professor and a previous department chair,
serves as the first graduate program director for a term extending to
June 30, 2001.
"What
makes the PhD program so unique is that is was designed by a committee
composed not only of academics and aboriginal community people, but
also traditional aboriginal community people," said McCaskill.
"One of the central tasks of the newly-established curriculum development
committee will be to incorporate traditional aboriginal knowledge with
academic scholarship." During the second year of the three-year
program, students will be required to do a practicum field placement,
working for an aboriginal organization or in an aboriginal community.
Trent
introduced Canada's first Native Studies program in 1969. Starting in
1978, Trent was also the first Canadian University to offer an honours
year in Native Studies.
Degrees
for Trent's PhD program in Native Studies could first be conferred in
2002.
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