With fall classes well underway, the Centre is alive with the activity that always accompanies the beginning of a new term. Being in a relatively isolated spot on the campus that doesn't attract much traffic, it is especially nice to have so many students in the hallways and the library again.
We are particularly pleased about the forthcoming publication of two significant books. In twenty-four essays spanning the history of the co-operative movement in Canada, Canadian Co-operatives in the Year 2000: Memory, Mutual Aid, and the Millennium marks three significant events: the ninetieth anniversary of the CCA, the ICA Québec congress in August 1999, and the one hundredth anniversary of the Desjardins Movement in 2000. The collection focusses on the issue of how the Canadian co-operative movement undertakes and adjusts to change, and also reflects on the diversity of past and present leadership.
The SANASA Model: Co-operative Development through Micro-Credit, to be published in co-operation with the Canadian Co-operative Association, examines the historical, legal, financial, and social underpinnings of Sri Lanka's credit union movement. The book came out of the case study done by Dan Ish, Ingrid Fischer, Lloyd Hardy, and Ian MacPherson last December. The CCA has been involved with the movement since 1990 and felt it was important for SANASA's activities to be documented and shared with other institutions seeking a viable model of micro-credit delivery.
After eighteen months of confusing comings and goings, the body count at the Centre is almost back to full capacity. Byron returned from a year's research leave in Provence (among other places) in July, and Michael from a six-month sabbatical in Costa Rica and Chile in late August, though he will be off for another six months beginning in January.
Marianne left in late October for a year's maternity leave. The new co-op baby arrived 30 October—a boy weighing seven pounds, twelve ounces, named Jonah. With brothers Paul and Stéfan, that makes three little boys for Marianne and Mark.
The Centre welcomes Jo Anne Ellis, who is replacing Marianne as office manager for the year. Jo Anne has worked on campus for eleven years—two years in the College of Home Economics prior to its demise, and most recently in the College of Medicine, where she worked for nine years.
We also welcome our new librarian, Carol Shepstone, whom we enticed away from the John M. Cuelenaere Library in Prince Albert, where she was the assistant director of circulation and reference. Prior to that, she worked in a number of areas in the UBC library system.
And after more than a year with a vacant faculty position at the Centre, we have posted the position to replace Lou. In an effort to cast as wide a net as possible, we sent a copy of the posting to hundreds of individual faculty members across the campus. The deadline for applications is 15 November and the interview process will begin shortly thereafter. We are hoping to have someone in position in January.
A large group of people from western Australia, including fifteen farmers, two bank managers, and an agricultural specialist, spent the day with us on 23 August as part of a study tour of Saskatchewan and midwestern US value-added ventures.
We hosted three visitors from the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Co-operatives 7-8 September. In Canada for the ICA Congress in Québec, they specifically requested a visit to the Centre. This is the same group that played host to Murray and Brett on their trip to China last year.
Later in September, Mario Carrier came to see Murray, Michael, and Lou on various matters. Mario heads a research group funded by the Desjardins movement in Québec and is on sabbatical in Edmonton. He has established a working relationship with the Centre and plans to make a number of trips to Saskatoon during his year in the West. He and Michael are both associated with the New Rural Economy Project and plan to do some collaborative research beginning in December, when Mario will be making his next visit.
The first of this season's seminar series, designed to showcase our current and on-going research projects, as well as complementary work by others, took place 18 October. Murray gave the presentation, titled "Interdisciplinarity and a Problem-Based Approach to Economic and Social Development." It was an auspicious beginning. We advertised it well and were rewarded with standing room only in the Dief Centre theatre, as well as a lively discussion afterwards that spilled out into the lobby of the Diefenbaker Centre.
Byron has assembled an Advisory Panel for the Centre's newest research area, Community-Centred Technology Programs. This has resulted in the launch of another seminar series based on the expertise of panel members, who will visit the Centre at regular intervals on an individual basis. The first of these seminars will be on 18 November. For more details, see the section on Byron's activities later in this report.
The in-house discussion group, which offers Centre staff an informal opportunity to ask questions or offer opinions on matters related to co-operatives or other relevant areas of interest, has begun again as well. During our first meeting we discussed the issue of conflict of interest in co-operative organizations and their boards. Rocky promised chocolate cheesecake cupcakes to ensure perfect attendance.
Teaching, Research, Presentations, Publications, and Administration
Murray Fulton
Teaching
Murray is teaching two courses this semester: Economics 231.3: Economics of Co-operatives,and International Studies 498.3: Co-operatives: An International Perspective (with Michael Gertler)
He is currently supervising one PhD and three MSc students. The PhD candidate is an interdisciplinary student at the Centre, Rochelle Smith, while the MSc students are in agricultural economics. He is also a committee member for a number of other students.
Research
Murray's current research examines the producer and consumer benefits of genetically modified crops; the economics of open-access rail transportation; exclusive relationships in the food system; mergers in the food industry; and member commitment in co-operatives. He has completed, with Andrea Harris, an ADF research project on machinery co-operatives, which will be published in three parts as additions to the Centre's booklet series in the near future. He has been supervising David Simbandumwe in an update of the co-operative statistics for the province. And he contributed a chapter titled "A Systems Approach to the Challenges Facing Co-operative Education and Co-operatives" to the Centre's forthcoming book on the co-operative movement in Canada.
Papers Accepted for Publication
With Yongmei Tang, "Testing the Competitiveness of a Multistage Food Marketing System: The Canadian Chicken Industry," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics.
With Michele Veeman and Bruno Larue, "The Impact of Export State Trading Enterprises under Imperfect Competition: The Small Country Case," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics.
With D. Giannakas, "Agricultural Policy Analysis in the Presence of Misrepresentation and Cheating," American Journal of Agricultural Economics.
With D. Giannakas, "Output Subsidies in the Presence of Misrepresentation and Cheating," European Journal of Agricultural Economics.
With L. Keyowski, "The Producer Benefits of Herbicide-Resistant Canola," AgBioForum.
Presentations
28 April: "Networking and Co-operative Education" at Association of Co-operative Educators Institute, Saskatoon.
7 May: "Mergers in Agriculture" at Alberta Agricultural Economics Association annual meeting, Red Deer.
26 May: "The Future of Co-operatives in a Globalizing Economy" at 1999 Strategic Marketing Conference: The Changing Role of Marketing in the New Millennium, Banff.
11 June: "Co-operative Organizations and Member Commitment" to The Role of Co-operative Entrepreneurship in the Modern Market Environment conference, Helsinki.
24-25 June: (with Lynette Keyowski) "The Impact of Technological Innovation on Producer Returns: The Case of Genetically Modified Canola" at the Transitions in Agbiotech: The Economics of Strategy and Policy conference, Washington, DC.
11-14 July: (with Michele Veeman and Bruno Larue) "The Impact of Export State Trading Enterprises under Imperfect Competition: The Small Country Case" at the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society and Western Agricultural Economics Association joint annual meeting, Fargo.
11-14 July: (with D. Giannakas) "Member Commitment in Co-operatives" at the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society and Western Agricultural Economics Association joint annual meeting, Fargo.
19 October: "Interdisciplinarity and a Problem-Based Approach to Economic and Social Development" to the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives Seminar Series, Saskatoon.
1-3 November: Case study presentation on MD Foods (the Danish dairy co-op) to the Co-operative Institute, Montebello, PQ.
9 November: Presentation on value chains to FCL's regional board meeting in Regina.
12 November: "Member Commitment as a Necessary Element for Co-operative Formation" to the NCE-194 Conference, Kansas City.
16 November: Presentation on New Generation Co-ops to the Producer Conference in Fargo, ND, which brings together producers from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota to discuss key economic issues affecting the five jurisdictions.
23 November: Participation in a CBC Ideas show on the Canadian Wheat Board at Agribition, Regina.
Administration and Other Activities
Murray is currently serving as co-chair, with Morris Altman of the Department of Economics, of the Research Committee of Council. He also continues his work as vice-chair of the Agri-Food Council.
Brett Fairbairn
Teaching
Brett is teaching three courses this term: History 287.3: The Origins and Development of Co-operatives in Europe, History 882.6: Graduate Seminar in Rural Social History (with Jim Handy and Michael Hayden), and History 898.3: History of Participatory Organizations and Their Leadership
He is supervising seven MA students in History, including two doing topics related to co-ops (one on rural depopulation in Saskatchewan, and one on co-operative fruit marketing in the Okanagan from the 1940s to the 1970s).
Research
With Ian MacPherson and Nora Russell (eds.), Canadian Co-operatives in the Year 2000: Memory, Mutual Aid, and the Millennium (Saskatoon: Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, forthcoming 1999). Brett's contribution includes the introduction and the following two essays: "Raiffeisen and Desjardins: Co-operative Leadership, Identity, and Memory" and "Ordinary and Exceptional: Leadership in Prairie Consumer Co-operatives, 1914-1945."
"Community Values, Democratic Cultures? Reflections on Saxony's Place in the German Co-operative Movement, 1849-1933" in Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830-1933, ed. James Retallack (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).
"The Rise and Fall of Consumer Cooperation in Germany," in Consumers against Capitalism? Consumer Cooperation in Europe, North America, and Japan, 1840-1990, eds. Ellen Furlough and Carl Strikwerda (Lanham, etc.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999).
"Co-operative Development and the State: Case Studies and Analysis," research report to the Co-operatives Secretariat, Government of Canada, final report anticipated late 1999. (Brett was the principal investigator and co-ordinated the project, which included research cases on Australia and the US; he co-authored the US case as well as writing introductory and summary documents).
"A History of the Co-operative College of Canada." Brett was the supervisor of this four-month project. He hired and worked with Jodi Crewe, who conducted research, collected documents, and prepared an initial outline and analysis of the college's history. Jodi worked with an advisory committee consisting of Harold Chapman, Ole Turnbull, Eric Rasmussen, Skip Kutz, and Leona Theis, who met several times to provide input into the project. Carol Hunter of the Canadian Co-operative Association, Ottawa, provided documents out of CCA files. Jodi also did research in The Co-operative Consumer newspapers donated by FCL to the Centre's library; and at Saskatchewan Archives. We are planning to publish the results as one of the Centre's Occasional Papers; it will serve as a proposal for doing a full-fledged history.
Brett is also editor/moderator of CASCnet, the listserve of the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation, a new electronic group for people interested in research concerning co-operatives, launched in September 1999.
Publications
Review of Simone Lässig, Wahlrechtskampf und Wahlreform in Sachsen (1895-1909) (Weimar, etc.: Böhlau Verlag, 1996), in German History, forthcoming.
Review of Werner Schönig und Ingrid Schmale (eds.), Gestaltungsoptionen in modernen Gesellschaften. Festschrift für Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jürgen Zerche zum 60. Geburtstag (Regensburg: Transfer Verlag, 1998), in Internationale Wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz über die Geschichte der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung, 3-4 (1998): 544-46.
Review of Johnston Birchall, The International Co-operative Movement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), in The International History Review XXI, 1 (March 1999): 181-84.
Review of Benjamin Lapp, Revolution from the Right: Politics, Class, and the Rise of Nazism in Saxony, 1919-1933 (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997), in The Journal of Modern History, forthcoming.
Presentations
30 April: "Prairie Connections and Reflections: The History, Present, and Future of Co-operative Education," at the Association of Cooperative Educators conference, Saskatoon (to be co-published by ACE and the Centre).
10 May: "Issues of Organizational Financing, Ownership, and Control: Co-operative Models," to the staff of Financial Policy Branch, Ministry of Finance, Province of Ontario, Toronto.
11 May: "Principle, Pragmatism, Collaboration, Resistance: German Co-operatives and National Socialism, c. 1930-1950," at the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation conference, Ottawa.
12 May: "The Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation (CASC)," to joint meeting of CASC, Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche et d'information sur les entreprises collectives (CIRIEC), and the Policy Research Initiative of the Government of Canada, Ottawa.
14 May: "Co-operative Movements in Saskatchewan," three-hour lecture in course COP 614: Questions coopératives contemporaines, in the programme Maîtrise en gestion et développement des coopératives of the Institute pour recherche et enseignement sur coopératives de l'Université de Sherbrooke (IRECUS), Faculté d'administration, Sherbrooke.
11 June: "The Historic Basis and Need for Co-operatives: Can Co-operatives Maintain Their Historic Character and Compete in the Changed Environment?" at the Iowa State University conference on Farmer Co-operatives in the Twenty-First Century, Des Moines.
28 August: "Co-operative Values and the Cold War: The Rebuilding and Undermining of the German Consumer Movement, 1945-1955," at the ICA's International Research Forum in Québec.
2 September: "The Role of the State in Co-operative Development: State- Co-operative Relations in the USA," presentation to council of federal and provincial officials responsible for co-operatives, Québec.
8 October: "Co-operative Thought and Models in Germany after 1945: Consumer Co-operatives, the Mittelstand, and the Cold War" at the meetings of the German Studies Association, Atlanta.
Administration
Brett is director of graduate studies in the Department of History, as well as a member of the department's executive. He is a member of the PhD Committee in the College of Graduate Studies and Research, and also chair of the Saskatchewan Archives Board.
Michael Gertler
Teaching
Michael was a resource person for a CIDA-funded workshop on Sustainable Regional Development, July 1999, at the Universidad de La Serena, Chile, participating for four weeks under the auspices of the University of Regina team.
He is teaching three classes this fall: Sociology 204.3: Rural Sociology, Sociology 402/802.3: Advanced Seminar in the Sociology of Agriculture, and International Studies 498.3: Co-operatives: An International Perspective (with Murray Fulton)
Michael is co-supervising one interdisciplinary PhD student, one interdisciplinary MA student, and four MA students in Sociology. He is also on committees for one MA and three PhD candidates in Geography.
Research
Sabbatical research project: "Producer Co-operatives and Sustainable Rural Development." Michael was on sabbatical from 1 January to 30 June 1999, and spent most of his time in Costa Rica and Chile, where he did fieldwork on the roles of rural co-operatives in the sustainable development of agriculture and regional economies. His investigations will continue in Central and South America from January to June 2000.
Consulting
Resource person, Taller de Medio Ambiente (Workshop on the Environment), Conferencia Regional Vision y Perspectivas del Comercio Regional, Programa de Modernizacion para Empresas Cooperativas Agroprecuarias y de Comercializacion de Centro América/Canada, San Salvador, El Salvador, April 21, 1999. Contracting agency: Confederación de Cooperativas del Caribe y Centro América (CCC-CA).
Redrafting of proposal, "Hurricane Mitch, Central America, Agro Industrial Co-operative 'Phoenix' Project," May 1999. Contracting agency: Canadian Co-operative Association, Americas Regional Office, San José, Costa Rica.
Publications
"(Agri)Cultural Innovation, Durable Communities, and Long-Haul Economies," in Farm Communities at the Crossroads: The Challenge and the Resistance, ed. Polo Diaz, JoAnn Jaffe, and Bob Stirling (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Centre, in press).
"Building Sustainable Communities" and "Organic Agriculture and Community Development," in Exploring Organic Alternatives: Meeting the Challenges of Agriculture, Health, and Community (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Extension Press, in press).
"Sustainable Communities and Sustainable Agriculture on the Canadian Prairies," in Community Processes for Sustainable Development, ed. John Pierce (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999).
"Indian Urban Reserves and Community Development: Some Social Issues," in Urban Indian Reserves: The Saskatchewan Experience, ed. Joseph Garcea and Laurie Barron (Saskatoon: Purich Publishing, 1999).
Lou Hammond Ketilson
Despite the demands on her time as associate dean of Commerce, Lou's interest in and commitment to the Centre remain strong. She has begun to look back with yearning and nostalgia at the years she spent here, the view through her rose-coloured glasses revealing a realm of order and serenity which, frankly, puzzles those who live in the reality she left behind.
Lou took part in the CASC meetings in Ottawa in May, along with a number of other Centre personnel. She gave a paper based on material from the Impact Study.
As vice-chair of the ICA Research Committee, Lou was heavily involved in the ICA Congress in Québec City in August/September, where she presented another paper based on the Impact Study and helped organize a global women's committee whose interests are focussed on the role of women in co-operatives.
She provided a chapter for the Centre's Canadian Co-operatives in the Year 2000 titled "Leadership in the New Millennium," and is in the preliminary stages of collecting articles for a book on women in co-operatives.
The Canadian Co-operative Association has recently approached Lou about the possibility of doing some research on aboriginal communities and their use of co-op models. If it goes ahead, this will be a joint project with CCA, CCC, and the Assembly of First Nations.
The Centre has participated in an application for a SSHRC Community University Research Alliance grant, with a proposal for the formation of an institute called the Community University Institute for Social Research. If the application is successful, the work will involve all Centre faculty. Lou has been asked to be the co-director, along with Len Usiskin from the Quint Development Corporation, for the community economic development module of the proposed institute.
Byron Henderson
Byron returned from research leave at the end of June. His research work focussed on the application of network technology to education and commerce. While away he worked with the ICA to develop an online trade portal for co-operatives, and he became the founding editor of the ICA publication, E-Commerce Bulletin.
In July, he acted as an invited consultant to the World Bank in Turkey to provide an assessment of the technology component of the Turkish Basic Education Program.
Two years ago, the Centre initiated its Community-Centred Technology Programs (CCT Programs), with Byron as its first head. This research and teaching area is developing projects and educational programs in the area of technology applied to support communities and co-operative organizations. Since the inception of the program, Byron has drawn together a group of technology leaders to advise and support the work of the Centre. The group has been formalized as the CCT Advisory Panel, whose first members are:
Dr. Jim Spohrer—IBM Almaden Labs, California
Dr. Tom Erickson—IBM Watson Labs, New York
Anil Srivastava—CEO, AcrossWorld Communications, California
Randy Whiting—CEO, CommerceNet Consortium, California
John Lilly—COO, Reactivity Inc., California, Washington, and Texas
Steve Cisler—Community Specialist, Tachyon.net, California
Dr. Ed Gaible—Executive Director, EOE Foundation, California
Dr. Jeremy Roschelle—Senior Research Manager, SRI International, California
Professor Lorne Falk—Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
Mary Treacy—International Co-operative Alliance, GenevaMembers of the advisory panel will provide support in many ways, including assistance with the development of projects. One of the first of these began this summer and early fall. The partnership will be among the Centre's CCT Programs, AcrossWorld, CommerceNet, the U of S College of Commerce, and the Indian State of Maharastra and its Warana Co-operatives. The project will look at how electronic commerce can assist agricultural co-operatives in India to improve their economic growth. This is planned as the first of several projects bringing e-commerce to primary and secondary economies.
Advisory panel members will also travel to Saskatoon regularly to offer public seminars on their work in technology and community. Steve Cisler will give the first of these on 18 November, on the topic of community networks and community telecentres. Tom Erickson, Ed Gaible, Randy Whiting, and Anil Srivastava have agreed to be the next speakers, beginning in the New Year.
As part of the work of linking the advisory panel to the CCT Programs, Byron has been named to the advisory board of AcrossWorld and has also been named a senior research fellow of CommerceNet.
Throughout the summer, Byron launched a series of online research publications called "Compile.net." These publications, five of which have been released, provide research compilations in economics and technology. These, plus an online newsletter, will form the core of the CCT Programs' online publications. In addition, the Centre will this month release the first of Byron's Technology Briefing Booklets (see details below), which, together with Occasional Papers (such as his 1998 Online Education paper), will serve as the CCT Programs' printed output.
Byron is currently preparing the first in a new series of Technology Briefing Booklets for co-operatives. The first will be titled "Smart Cards for Membership Participation," taken on at the suggestion of the Co-operative Union of the Slovak Republic, which has invited Byron to speak at its annual conference on 25 November. His topic will be "E-commerce and Smart Cards."
Finally, Byron is working with Lou to develop a substantial e-commerce component for the College of Commerce's MBA program. The first of these classes will apply lessons learned from the Warana Co-operatives in India. This and others that are planned will eventually form a specialty area in co-op management courses.
Nora Russell
Much of Nora's time since the last director's report has been spent working on the Centre's major forthcoming publication, Canadian Co-operatives in the Year 2000: Memory, Mutual Aid, and the Millennium. The editing is complete, the authors have all responded to the queries, and Nora is now in the process of entering all the editorial changes to the manuscript prior to design and layout. In addition to working on the book, Nora has been busy with a number of other projects, including the annual report, two newsletters, and two Centre booklets. One is the presentation Brett gave to the ACE institute in April, titled Prairie Connections and Reflections: The History, Present, and Future of Co-operative Education, which we are publishing in co-operation with ACE, who we are thrilled to announce has purchased four hundred copies of it. The second is A Car-Sharing Co-operative in Winnipeg: Alternatives and Recommendations, by Dave Leland of Red River Community College, which has been on the back burner for some time. Brett's booklet is due from the printer 10 November; Dave's is waiting to be proofread and will go to the printer before the end of the month.
Another significant Centre publication due to go to the printer this fall is The SANASA Model: Co-operative Development through Micro-Credit, which is the document that came out of the SANASA case study by Dan Ish, Lloyd Hardy, Ingrid Fischer, and Ian MacPherson, who spent most of last December in Sri Lanka. Because of other pressing projects, the editorial work and typesetting was hired out to a freelancer, though Nora devoted a lot of time to supervising the project and put the final touches on the layout. The book will be ready to go to the printer once it is proofread and has a cover design, which is near the top of Nora's to-do list.
We also have three more Centre booklets in various stages of production. All three are based on Murray and Andrea's research on the machinery co-ops in Québec. The first has been edited, again, by an outside freelancer, though Nora will be responsible for the layout and the rest of production. The other two are awaiting editorial attention.
There has been considerable demand for Centre publications since the last director's report. Nora has arranged for reprints of the following: Byron's The Components of Online Education: Higher Education on the Internet; and two reprints of each of the following: Murray and Andrea's Comparative Financial Performance Analysis of Canadian Co-operatives, Investor-Owned Firms, and Industry Norms; Brenda, Andrea, and Murray's New Generation Co-operatives: Rebuilding Rural Economies; and the Proceedings of the Women in Co-operatives Forum.
Nora has filled in her spare time with a number of smaller projects: she redesigned the Norm Bromberger bursary information sheet and application form; arranged a display for the ACE conference in Saskatoon and prepared a list of publications and an order form; wrote and designed a blurb advertising our upcoming Canadian Co-operatives in the Year 2000 book for distribution at the ICA congress in Québec City; wrote and designed ads for the StarPhoenix's Co-op Week Supplement and Prairie Dog newspaper's annual co-ops issue; wrote and designed ads for OnCampus News for the Centre Seminar Series and also the job posting for the open teaching and research position at the Centre; prepared an ad for the seminar series; and designed an ad for Byron's new Community-Centred Technology Program's seminar series, which begins this fall.
With the idea of helping to raise the Centre's profile in the community, she also designed a brochure advertising the Centre's library (awaiting printing), which will be distributed to our sponsors, libraries and departments on campus, and the branches of public libraries in major Saskatchewan centres.
Nora is also responsible for the director's reports on an on-going basis.
Rachel Sarjeant-Jenkins
Rachel left the Centre in August for a position as chief librarian at the Medicine Hat Public Library. We miss her sense of humour and her quirky idiosyncrasies but wish her well with her new responsibilities.
Carol Shepstone
The Library
The library had been neglected for six weeks when Carol took it on, and she tackled the backlog with enthusiasm and soon had things in order. She came to us from the John M. Cuelenaere Public Library in Prince Albert, where she was the assistant director of circulation and reference. Her previous experience includes the specialized library at UBC's Museum of Anthropology and its archives, as well as the government documents and humanities and social sciences sections of UBC's main library.
Since arriving at the Centre in early October, she has been busy familiarizing herself with the collection and with the co-operative community; with library procedures, policies, and catalogue software; and with current research interests and projects of Centre faculty and staff. A lot of her time has been spent dealing with backlogged material—six week's worth of three different newspapers to clip for the vertical file and the bulletin board, cataloguing, acquisitions, queries, etc. Rachel had catalogued 187 items in the past few months and Carol has added a few more, for a total of about 200 since the last director's report.
In addition to the day-to-day library activities, Carol has been assisting students with course research projects and answering other reference questions, including an e-mail from Seoul, South Korea, requesting information on transitional economies. She has been making connections with other information and technical folks on campus; exploring relevant resources on campus available electronically and assessing how these might be of value to Centre research; and assisting with a bibliography for Murray and Michael's International Studies course.
It should also be noted that in the yearly shuffle of office machinery, the Resource Centre has acquired two additional computers for library users to access the catalogue. And coming soon, once Byron has figured out how it works and has ironed out all the bugs, is the CD-Rom burner, which will reside in the library, with Carol as the keeper of the flame. In technology's relentless quest to store more and more information on smaller and smaller things, the burner will allow individuals to back up their hard drives and store enormous amounts of information on a single CD-Rom disk. The burner was purchased in anticipation of possible Y2K problems and will provide a fast and efficient way to protect all of the work being done by Centre faculty and staff.
The Website
Now that she has become more familiar with our Mac system, Carol has begun to update the web pages that need attention. In September, before she even came to work at the Centre, she and Nora attended two days of workshops titled Writing for the Wired World and Managing Web Content, which, though very business oriented, nevertheless provided useful information for the management of our own site. Carol also attended a workshop on how to make the most of the university's WebEvent Calendar, and an information group meeting that reviewed an online course project in Political Science, the logistics of which will have direct application to our own work in the area of online education.
Roger Herman
Roger, last year's Education Program Development Officer, has succumbed to the enticements of his research and become a full-time interdisciplinary graduate student at the Centre. Research for his thesis will examine how the dual function of co-operative organizations (i.e., their social and economic nature) creates unique challenges for co-op managers.
Roger's activities since the last director's report include working with the co-ordinating group for the annual Association of Co-operative Educators (ACE) Institute, which was held in Saskatoon at the end of April. Roger and Murray led a pre-institute workshop examining how the content and delivery of co-operative education is changing, and how groups will need to collaborate more than ever to develop collective education strategies.
Along with several others from the Centre, Roger attended the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation conference in Ottawa in May. And he and Rocky were the Centre's representatives at the annual Co-op Classic Golf Tournament, which raises funds for the Co-operative Development Foundation.
Roger was responsible for hosting the Chinese delegation that came to the Centre in September. See details in Centre Overview.
He has recently attended two conferences on behalf of the Centre. The first, titled Rural Health Research Consortium, and sponsored by the university's Centre for Agricultural Medicine, was convened to plan interdisciplinary research initiatives on rural health issues. The meeting aimed to develop projects that would be eligible for funding from the newly formed Canadian Institute for Health Research. Centre personnel brainstormed with Roger prior to the conference to come up with a number of topics. The second conference, sponsored by the universities of Regina and Saskatchewan and titled Building Capacity for PLAR in Saskatchewan, examined the feasibility of implementing the concept of Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) at the university level. PLAR is a broad-based approach to acknowledging and assessing all aspects of an individual's qualifications and experience, as opposed to the more narrow assessments based on academic qualifications alone. As the Centre pursues initiatives around management development training, Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition will be of particular importance.
With Rocky's assistance, Roger continues to co-ordinate our in-house discussion group, providing timely topics for the edification of Centre staff, and coercing each of us in turn to bring dessert, which seems to keep attendance near perfect. He and Rocky are also responsible for co-ordinating the Centre's monthly Seminar Series (see details above in Centre Overview).
Following up on a meeting in Ottawa at the end of January, which explored opportunities for collaboration in the area of co-operative education, Roger and Murray continue to work on the development of a network of Canadian co-operative educators. Roger also continues his work on a proposal for a Graduate Management Program for co-operative managers.
Rochelle Smith
Rocky has presented papers at three conferences since the last director's report—"Feminist Theory, Women, and Co-operatives" at the Association of Co-operative Educators Institute in Saskatoon in April; and "Co-operatives in Transition: Implications of the Principle-Agent Problem" at both the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation conference in Ottawa in May and the International Co-operative Alliance Congress in Québec City in August. The "Principal-Agent" paper has been shortlisted for inclusion in the ICA Congress Proceedings. And her paper titled "Deposit Insurance in Saskatchewan: The Role and Significance of the Credit Union Deposit Guarantee Corporation" will be published as a Centre occasional paper as soon as Nora can turn her attention to it.
Rocky completed two phases of her PhD comprehensives in early October. The first was a take-home examination, which was followed by a timed sit-down exam. Totally drained, she then absconded to Hawaii to investigate the possibilities for co-op development in the chocolate-covered macadamia nut and fruity drink industries. When exhaustive research and diligent sampling over an intense two-week period turned up not the slightest interest, she returned to the Centre and is now preparing for the final onslaught—The Oral Exam.
Rocky, along with Roger, continues to be responsible for the organization of the Centre's Seminar Series and to co-ordinate our in-house discussion group. She is also on the Community Clinic's board of directors and is a member of its Political and Social Action Committee.
Marianne Taillon
Marianne began a year's maternity leave in late October, after spending a frantic few weeks tying up loose ends in an attempt to leave a clean slate for her replacement, Jo Anne Ellis. She spent her last week helping Jo Anne with the transition and left fully confident that everything would be well looked after in her absence, though we are expecting regular visits once she has adjusted to being a new mother again.
Jo Anne Ellis
Jo Anne has replaced Marianne as office manager for the year she is on maternity leave. With eleven years experience on campus, Jo Anne had no difficulty picking up the reigns and quickly made herself at home. Office routine never skipped a beat. She came to us following nine years in the office of Postgraduate Medical Education and prior to that, two years in the College of Home Economics. Since she began work in mid-October, Jo Anne has been busy familiarizing herself with our office routine and the needs of faculty and staff, and going through files and other material to learn about the activities of the Centre and its background.
Karen Neufeldt
Karen works for the Centre on a half-time basis, providing support in general office duties to Marianne and now her replacement, Jo Anne, our new librarian, Carol, and other faculty and staff as required. She is also responsible for running the office when Jo Anne has an EDO or is otherwise away. Apart from her regular office duties the past few months, Karen has been kept busy updating the Centre mailing list and preparing mailings for two separate newsletters and the annual report. She has been busy as usual in the main office helping Marianne with cash reports, forms and other paperwork, photocopying, the invoicing and mailing of publication orders, filing, and other duties. She is responsible on an on-going basis for the invoicing of xerox, phone, and fax bills, and for mailing and faxing the notices and invitations for the Centre Seminar Series. She spent a lot of time working in the Resource Centre during the six weeks we were without a librarian, and now provides on-going help to Carol with library work: pockets, cards, and spine labels on new books. Karen also works half-time in the College of Dentistry.
Andrea Harris
Though living in Vancouver, Andrea does contract work with the Centre on an on-going basis. She is presently winding up a project with Murray titled "Machinery Co-operatives: New Models for Saskatchewan," funded by the Agriculture Development Fund. The project focusses on an examination of a type of farm machinery co-op in Québec called CUMA, and the possibility of adapting this model to Saskatchewan agriculture. The research will be published in a series of three Centre booklets. The first has been edited and is awaiting Nora's attention for layout, proofreading, and production. And a seminar/workshop is planned around the study's findings for those interested in learning more.
Peter Sprague
Peter is currently finishing coursework for his interdisciplinary MA. He continues to consult in the areas of ownership/worker restructuring, worker co-operatives, and forestry business planning and market development. He is also involved in the wood-processing industry, providing consulting services in areas such as new technology, funding, worker buyout options, and new product development.
Jodi Crewe
Jodi is working on a contract supervised by Brett, preparing a research paper on the history of the Co-operative College of Canada, which was based in Saskatoon from 1955-1987, though it had a membership that included co-op organizations from across Canada. The legacy of this co-op adult education centre is intricately woven into the recent history of the co-op movement in Saskatchewan. We intend to publish the research as an occasional paper, which will serve as the basis for a more comprehensive history.
Jodi also works for the Saskatoon Child Hunger and Education Program facilitating a community gardening project for low-income families in core neighbourhoods. And she belongs to the Prairie Institute for Human Ecology, which has been active in education about ecological living practices and the construction of appropriate structures for the prairies.