Canadian University Research Articles

Eating disorder risk in undergraduate students: exploring academic, wellness and social factors and potential to flourish

ABSTRACT Eating disorder (ED) psychopathology is a public health concern for undergraduate students and likely to coincide with university adjustment challenges. Using the National College Health Assessment (NCHA-III) (2023) survey, undergraduates enrolled at an Atlantic Canadian university (N = 887; mean age 22.1 years) were screened for EDs based on the Sick Control One-stone Fat Food (SCOFF) questionnaire, and assessed whether performance, wellness, and social factors predicted positive mental health (PMH). Overall, 29.4% (33.2% female vs. 21.9% male) screened positive for an ED, and relative to undergraduates not at risk, were more likely to report problems with academics, faculty, family, partners, and peers, greater isolation/loneliness, and weaker university belongingness, poorer health status, and greater psychological distress. Although more likely to languish, 20% of ED risk students were observed to flourish, with academic success, university belongingness, better health, and lower ED severity, distress, and loneliness predictive of higher PMH. Implications of findings are discussed.

Essential Primary Health Care Skills: Virtual Simulations for Nurse Practitioner Education.

Practice-based learning is essential in nurse practitioner (NP) education to ensure public safety and prepare students for independent practice. However, lack of clinical placement opportunities results in variability in clinical experience, necessitating educational innovation. To evaluate the usability, engagement, and impact of the Essential Skills for Nurse Practitioners virtual simulations (VS). Four VS covering concussion management, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), memory concerns in older adults, and prescribing medical cannabis were evaluated across 3 Canadian universities using self-assessment competency rubrics and the Classroom Instructional Support Perception (CRiSP) scale. Competencies improved significantly across all VS, with highest improvement in concussion management. CRiSP results indicated high usability and engagement with all VS, underscoring their effectiveness. Findings indicate VS can enhance students' readiness to manage complex clinical situations and help address clinical placement shortages.

Educational background, professional experience, and research productivity of Canada's academic ophthalmology leadership.

The aim of the study was to assess the educational background, professional experience, and research productivity of the Canada's academic ophthalmology leadership. This cross-sectional study focused on leaders from ophthalmology departments at 15 Canadian universities, as well as the Canadian Journal of Ophthalmology (CJO) editorial board and the Canadian Ophthalmological Society (COS) board of directors. Ninety-one academic leaders were identified, which included 15 chairs, 9 vice chairs, 17 hospital chiefs, and 15 program directors. Additionally, the 10 members of the COS board of directors and the 31 members of the editorial board of the CJO were included. The duration of professional experience was the longest for hospital chiefs (26.63 ± 7.08 years) followed by chairs (23.86 ± 6.11 years) (p < 0.001). Chairs had the largest mean number of publications (87.13 ± 73.17), followed by vice chairs (70.89 ± 78.29) (p = 0.012). The most common residency programs attended by position holders were offered by the University of Toronto, followed by McGill University. Forty-three academic ophthalmology leaders graduated from U.S. fellowship training programs (48.3%). CJO editors were most likely to have a professor appointment (p = 0.002), fellowship training (p = 0.042), U.S. fellowship training (p = 0.007), a larger number of publications (p = 0.006), and a greater h-index (p = 0.001). Chairs followed by vice chairs demonstrated the highest mean number of publications and h-index. More than half of the academic leaders had fellowship training either in the U.S. or Toronto. Prospective ophthalmologists interested in academic leadership may leverage these data to strategically guide their professional careers.

‘I wish I had been better prepared’: a mixed-methods study of psychological reactions, perceptions and opinions of cardiovascular preparticipation screening among young competitive athletes

ObjectiveTo evaluate the psychological reactions, perceptions and opinions of cardiovascular preparticipation screening (PPS) among young competitive athletes.MethodsThis convergent parallel mixed-methods study recruited 222 athletes (mean age: 18.7 years) who underwent...

Leadership Training for Department Chairs: Integrating Formal Training, Experiential Learning, and Mentorship

The study explores the link between formal training, experiential learning, mentorship, and the leadership development of department chairs at a Canadian university. Employing a framework analysis approach grounded in transformative learning theory, data from 17 semi‐structured interviews revealed that formal training imparted essential knowledge and skills to new chairs. However, the training's influence on the chairs' development varied, depending on individual career stages and previous leadership experiences. Participants identified experiential learning as a vital element of their leadership development, with prior leadership roles providing a solid base for a successful transition. Mentorship emerged as a transformative instrument, offering timely developmental opportunities through exchanges with experienced leaders. The study concludes that strategically combining learning approaches can enhance institutional leadership capacity and facilitate faculty members' transition into department chair roles, particularly in the context of the post‐COVID‐19 pandemic and the ongoing leadership crisis.

Obstáculos, Beneficios y Desafíos del Programa Collaborative Online International Learning entre México, Estados Unidos y Canadá: Experiencias Docentes

The objective of this article focuses on making known the obstacles, challenges and benefits experienced by forty-three teachers from Mexican, American, and Canadian universities who participated as presenters in COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) during the spring of 2023. This qualitative-descriptive research followed a participatory research method through sampling, the data was gathered from twenty presentations which included experiential data, which took place at ANAHUAC university in Mexico, City from September 6th to 8th 2023. The assumption is that the use of the COIL methodology allows the student to have an international and collaborative experience from different approaches and contexts without leaving the classroom, becoming a tool for the internationalization and expansion of the curriculum that, in turn, expands global and digital competencies of teachers and students. This includes suggestions for future teachers in the implementation of COIL courses.

The 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope: Construction, operation, and science

e ge University, Belgium), several Canadian universities (University of British Columbia, Laval University, University of Montreal, University of Toronto, York University, University of Victoria) and the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES, India). After several years of design work in Belgium and construction in India on the ARIES Devasthal site, the telescope saw its first light on 29 April 2022. Its commissioning phase lasted from May 2022 until June 2023 (beginning of the monsoon). The ILMT was inaugurated on 21 March 2023 and has been in regular operation since October 2023. The telescope continuously observes the sky passing at the zenith using the SDSS g^ r^ and i^ filters. This paper describes the ILMT, its operation, performance and shows some initial results.

Does ruminating about the previous night's drinking during a hangover predict changes in heavy episodic drinking? A two-wave, 30-day prospective study.

We examined whether hangover-related rumination-repeatedly dwelling on negative aspects of yesterday's drinking while hungover the following morning-predicts changes in three dimensions of heavy episodic drinking (HED) over time. N = 334 emerging adults (aged 19-29) from three Eastern Canadian universities who had recently experienced a hangover completed online self-report questionnaires at baseline (Wave 1) and 30 days later (Wave 2; 71.6% retention). HED was assessed in frequency (number of HED episodes), perceptions (how participants perceived the extent of their heavy drinking), and quantity (greatest number of alcoholic drinks consumed in a single HED episode) over the past 2 weeks. Levels of HED frequency, perceptions, and quantity declined overall from Waves 1 to 2. Exploratory factor analysis established two factors of hangover-related rumination: intrusiveness (unwanted thoughts about the previous night's drinking) and regret (desire to change future drinking behavior). Structural equation models revealed that intrusiveness at Wave 1 predicted the maintenance of higher frequency and perceptions of HED at Wave 2, even as these HED measures were generally declining; regret at Wave 1 also predicted the maintenance of HED perceptions at Wave 2. Neither Wave 1 hangover rumination factor predicted changes in HED quantity at Wave 2. Models controlled Wave 1 variables, including the relevant HED outcome, overall hangover severity, total number of hangovers, generalized anxiety symptoms, sex, age, and data collection site. Hangover-related rumination factors are associated with the maintenance of higher HED frequency (intrusiveness factor) and HED perceptions (intrusiveness and regret factors), suggesting risk for problematic alcohol consumption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

What do Canadian universities suggest on their webpages as future career and educational pathways following completion of a kinesiology or exercise science undergraduate program?

Kinesiology undergraduate programs are multidisciplinary, and graduates may navigate several post-graduate education and career pathways. This study summarized the pathways currently listed online by Canadian undergraduate programs following completion of a kinesiology or 'exercise science' degree. An environmental scan was completed by reviewing Canadian undergraduate program (n= 59) webpages and their list of future pathways (n=845). A content analysis summarized pathways into 46 common categories. The most mentioned pathway was education (n=60), with coaching, health promotion and physiotherapy next (n=46-48). Additional pathways included medical, allied health professions, business and exercise training (n=24-44). Most listed pathways likely require further training post-graduation.

The Role of Faculty in Designing Multicultural Curricula to Support International Student Adaptation

Canada’s higher education institutions have become a global hub for international students, fostering cultural diversity while presenting unique challenges related to adaptation and inclusion. This paper explores the pivotal role of faculty in designing multicultural curricula to address these challenges, enhance international student adaptation, and promote inclusivity. A multicultural curriculum integrates diverse cultural perspectives into academic content, enabling international students to feel validated and engaged while equipping domestic students with critical intercultural competencies. Faculty efforts to incorporate global viewpoints, adopt inclusive pedagogies, provide academic support, and foster intercultural competence are essential in creating supportive learning environments. The benefits of such curricula extend beyond individual student success, contributing to institutional reputation, fostering social cohesion, and preparing all students for success in an interconnected global society. By prioritizing multicultural curriculum design, Canadian universities can strengthen their leadership in equity, diversity, and global education. This paper underscores the importance of faculty initiatives in shaping inclusive educational practices that benefit both international and domestic students, ensuring a more equitable and globally conscious academic environment.

The moderating effect of weight loss intentions on dynamic associations between weight suppression and disordered eating.

Weight suppression refers to the difference between one's current and highest previous weight in adulthood and has been associated with development of eating pathology. Previous research has been agnostic as to whether reported weight suppression reflects deliberate weight control behavior, and few studies have assessed whether weight loss that occurs unintentionally (e.g., due to illness) is longitudinally associated with eating pathology. Undergraduates at a Canadian university (N=661; 81.4% female) completed three online surveys over six months. Longitudinal multilevel models examined the interaction of within-person fluctuations in weight suppression and between-person differences in weight loss intentions on binge eating, dietary restriction, and body dissatisfaction. Of participants who reported weight suppression at baseline, 47.6% indicated that their weight loss was unintentional. Compared to participants endorsing unintentional weight suppression, participants endorsing intentional weight suppression showed greater body dissatisfaction and binge eating across the assessment period (β=3.64, p≤.001 and β=2.32, p≤.001). Significant within-person effects were found only for restriction, indicating that when individuals reported greater weight suppression, they also reported more restrictive eating (β=0.89, p=.004). Contrary to hypotheses, associations between within-person fluctuations in weight suppression and disordered eating outcomes did not differ by weight loss intentions. Findings suggest that whether weight suppression is intentional may influence mean levels of disordered eating but may have limited influence on within-person fluctuations in weight suppression and disordered eating severity in a non-clinical sample.

The Emergence of Formalized Educational Leadership in Higher Education

In Canada, educational leadership is a term often used to describe specific types of academic and scholarly work in universities, colleges, CEGEPs, other post-secondary institutions (and in K-12 contexts, where the term’s usage is entirely distinct). Our interest is in how educational leadership is framed in the specific context of Canadian universities. While most universities recognize exemplary teachers through promotional criteria and often through awards, the academic literature provides little guidance on what exactly constitutes educational leadership in university settings. To trace the emergence of educational leadership as a formalized construct, we gathered data from Collective Agreements and other public-facing resources such as awards criteria from 48 Canadian universities to examine ways in which educational leadership was defined and/or enacted. Our national review identified several categories of activities commonly cited as examples of educational leadership, including significant forms of curricular development, formal leadership initiatives, the dissemination of public forms of teaching-related research or teaching-based resources, engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the carrying out of various forms of mentorship. Our review also found that educational leadership is constituted not only by these types of activities, but also by the capacity to demonstrate impact of these activities beyond the classroom. In addition to examples of ways to illustrate impact, we offer a working definition of educational leadership that reflects how it is emerging within the specific context of contemporary Canadian universities.

Peer Support and Pedagogical Conversations: Keys to Building Faculty Capacity in a Digital Age

With the COVID-19 pandemic, post-secondary institutions pivoted to providing hybrid or fully online courses and recognized the need to mitigate the challenges faced by faculty in navigating this shift. This study was conducted at one Western Canadian university and followed a design-based research approach that included three phases and utilized mixed methods (interviews and surveys). The purpose of this research was to build faculty capacity for online teaching and learning. Overall, findings indicated that while the need for capacity building and improving collective practice was heightened during the pandemic, it remains a persistent need because faculty are continually faced with adjusting to ongoing complexities related to teaching and learning. One of the areas identified to build faculty capacity in this study was ongoing professional development emphasizing peer support and collegial conversations to aid faculty in adjusting teaching practices to various modalities including online learning. This study is significant for post-secondary institutions and researchers interested in building faculty capacity and improving collective teaching practices.

Belonging beyond borders: a comparative analysis of international and domestic students at a Canadian university

Belonging beyond borders: a comparative analysis of international and domestic students at a Canadian university

“We haven’t agreed on that, and you’ll never get people to agree on that.” Contestation within the Canadian sport coaching professional project

Drawing on the findings from a larger institutional ethnographic study exploring gender, work, and professionalization in sport coaching in the Canadian university sport system, this paper brings to light the contested nature of the sport coaching professional project in Canada. We specifically focus on the efforts of the Coaching Association of Canada to advance its Chartered Professional Coach designation as the preeminent coaching credential and mechanism by which to progress its vision of the sport coaching professional project. However, key findings demonstrate that the Coaching Association of Canada and Chartered Professional Coach are met by university sport practitioners with an ambivalence that complicates, if not works against, the Coaching Association of Canada's efforts to professionalize sport coaching. This paper concludes by focusing on how the intraprofessional tensions within the sport coaching professional project, specifically the ambivalence around the Chartered Professional Coach, add to the challenges faced by women sport coaches in Canadian university sport.

Students' Reports of Challenges, Experiences, and Perceptions of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at Veterinary Colleges in Canada and the United States.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in veterinary medicine affects veterinarians, students, clients, and the regional availability of veterinary services. Veterinary students from 5 colleges in Canada and 5 colleges in the United States were surveyed about their challenges, experiences, and perceptions related to EDI, resulting in 456 responses (10.4%). A greater proportion of participants reported personal, financial, mental health, and physical health challenges during veterinary college compared to the proportion reporting these challenges before starting veterinary college. Statistically, participants who did not identify as White (odds ratio [OR]: 2.2, confidence interval [CI]: 1.1-4.3), who reported having a disability (OR: 5.0, CI: 2.1-12.1), and who identified as part of the LGBTQ2S+ community (OR: 8.5, CI: 3.8-19.2 ) were more likely to agree or strongly agree that discrimination occurs at veterinary colleges. Fewer participants reported experiencing discrimination in veterinary colleges (20.6%) compared to veterinary workplaces (36.8%). In the workplace, more participants reported the expectation of facing bias from clients than from managers or peers. The expectation of facing bias from clients was associated with the female gender (OR: 2.7, CI: 1.3-5.6), not identifying as White (OR: 7.4, CI: 2.5-21.3), and identifying as part of the LGBTQ2S+ community (OR: 2.7, CI: 1.3-5.4). More participants expected to practice in the same type of region as where they grew up rather than a different type of region. Thus, training future veterinarians from areas with region-based lack of access to veterinary services may be more effective than simply training more veterinarians. College EDI initiatives should include input from all participants and especially those who are most likely to experience discrimination, facilitating meaningful training and support.

The Current Canadian Landscape on Learning Analytics

The barriers to accessing electronic learning materials have significantly decreased in the rapidly evolving field of education technology. Learning Analytics (LA) has emerged as a valuable tool for improving institutional decision-making and student outcomes. This paper addresses the lack of detailed research focusing on the foundational stages of LA in Canadian universities by developing an automatic LA system to identify engineering students needing support. The initial phase involves examining LA practices in other institutions and evaluating the current landscape of LA implementation at scale among Canadian universities. Additionally, the paper explores the limitations of the LA features in Brightspace Learning Management System (LMS), specifically the Student Success System (S3), for detecting at-risk students and providing interventions. While statistical results demonstrating the effectiveness of LA in Canadian universities are lacking, proactive strides have been made, and more than 50% of universities investigated have implemented or planned to implement LA tools. This underscores the growing recognition of the need for LA to enhance academic performance and student success. The paper concludes by proposing a robust LA architecture as a reference model that prioritizes early identification of at-risk students which tackle the limitations of current LA features in Brightspace LMS.

SoTL as Reconciliation

In this article, I develop guiding questions to explore ways that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can contribute to advancing reconciliation in Canadian universities. I draw on decolonization and Indigenization literature to reflect on my SoTL practice, identify tensions, and look ahead to next steps in my research. Ultimately, I aim to invite co-reflection and extend dialogue within the community of SoTL scholars towards contributing to reconciliation through SoTL.

Enhancing Undergraduate Engineering Education: Collaborative and Reflective Practices in Professional Learning Programs for Instructors and GTAs

This study focuses on a professional learning program designed to enhance pedagogical practices for engineering educators at a Canadian university. Rooted in situated learning theory, the program encompasses key themes such as the philosophy of teaching and learning, fostering learning opportunities, designing course for learning, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Throughout the program, participants, including professors and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), engaged in understanding student-centered pedagogies, reflective practices, and collaborative learning within Communities of Practice (CoPs). Employing a case study approach, we investigate participants’ learning experiences with the program. The outcomes of this study reveal participants’ emphasis on student-centered pedagogies, recognition of the value of CoPs and instructional coaches, reflection on pedagogical change, and the challenges and tensions encountered during program engagement.

The Factors of Contributing to Adademic Misconduct of Engineering Students Survey: Preliminary Results

Academic misconduct is a serious problem in engineering higher education as it undermines student learning as well as the credibly of higher education institutions. The Factors contributing to Academic Misconduct of Engineering Students (FAMES) is a student survey developed to examine students’ perceptions on academic misconduct behaviour and to identify factors that predict self-reported cheating on proctored and unproctored assessments. The survey has been distributed at two Canadian universities. Preliminary results indicate that while students indicate they perceive some academic violations as inappropriate, other behaviours are not reported to be problematic. Students’ attitudes toward misconduct also depends on the assessment type. In addition, the less serious students consider an attitude, the more frequent they reported to engage in that behaviour. As has been reported elsewhere, students perceive academic misconduct among their peers happens at a much higher rate than what is indicated by aggregate self-reports. Future data analysis will include examining which factors related to the Fraud Triangle theory influence students’ decisions to engage in academic misconduct.