Editor's Take

New issue of Ryerson University Magazine profiles Ryerson researchers who are advancing knowledge of mental health issues. Psychology professor Janice Kuo hopes to generate new insights on borderline personality disorder and is also studying dialectical behaviour therapy. Photo by James Kachan.

As 2012 kicks off and students and alumni make resolutions to better themselves, Ryerson experts have some advice about maintaining mental health and well-being in Ryerson University Magazine which is now online and in the mail to thousands of alumni.

Dr. Su-Ting Teo, director of student health and wellness, reminds readers that getting enough sleep, being physically active, and engaging with friends and family members will help maintain mental fitness. Psychology professor Janice Kuo touts the value of expressing emotions at the appropriate time and place and Martin Antony, chair of psychology, advises we face our fears.

The expert tips are part of the magazine’s cover story titled Mad World which explores how researchers are advancing knowledge about mental health. With one in five Canadians dealing with some form of mental health challenge in the course of their lives, research and learning about causes, treatment and prevention are increasingly important to society.

For example, the Institute for Stress and Wellbeing Research, in the psychology department, is bringing together expertise to investigate stress from all angles – in the body, within different populations and through the lifespan – all to maximize the positive implications of stress and minimize its negative consequences.

This edition of Ryerson University Magazine also outlines the exciting capital projects underway at the university, including the recently named Peter Gilgan Athletic Centre at the Gardens and the planned Student Learning Centre, Ryerson’s bold presence on Yonge Street. Another feature story tells how the Centre for Urban Energy (CUE) makes a valuable contribution to the growing field of knowledge in sustainability.

The magazine has been mailed to alumni this week and is available online. Readers can also access it via iPhone. It is published twice a year, and an e-newsletter is distributed to alumni four times annually.

If you’re a Ryerson graduate but don’t receive Ryerson University Magazine or the @lumni enewsletter, go to www.ryerson.ca/alumni/stay-in-touch/updateinfo/webform.html to update your contact information or call 1-866-428-8881.

Three new books caught my eye recently, all of them written by Ryerson graduates and worth reading over the winter break or giving as a gift.

Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism’s Grey Zone, is by journalism alumna Michelle Shephard, who covers the national security beat for the Toronto Star. To mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, she compiled stories that take the reader from New York City on 9/11 to Mogadishu, Pakistan, Guantanamo Bay and Yemen. It’s fascinating to go along for the ride with this outstanding reporter on her quest to untangle the threads and threats of terrorism. Along the way, we meet many characters behind the scenes of the daily news – the victims and perpetrators of violence in a confusing world.

Next, I’m looking forward to reading Halton’s Heritage, by John McDonald, who graduated in 1971. The book tells the story of William Halton, the man the county (now Halton Region) was named for back in 1816, and his involvement with the War of 1812 and Upper Canada’s first parliament building, once located at Front and Parliament Street in Toronto.

A lifelong resident of Halton (where I grew up as well), McDonald researched extensively to portray the region’s namesake. Although it is recognized he was not a great statesman, Halton should be recognized for his courageous efforts on behalf of the veterans and their families in Upper Canada after the War of 1812 and his role in the early development of this province, says McDonald. More information is available at haltonsketchespublishing.com

The third book is Chris Turner’s The Leap: How to Survive and Thrive in the Sustainable Economy. Turner, a Ryerson journalism graduate, is a former sustainability columnist for The Globe and Mail and a leading writer and speaker on sustainability and the global cleantech industry. His previous book, The Geography of Hope was a Globe & Mail Best Book of the year and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction, the Alberta Literary Award for Nonfiction and the National Business Book Award.
The latest book, an “engrossing investigation of the globe’s green industrial revolution, is also an astonishing piece of good reporting,” says Andrew Nikiforuk in a Globe & Mail review last month. “It contains the sort of stories that rarely appear in our media any more as Canada increasingly salutes bitumen exports as a sort of totalitarian energy future … he focuses on what is being fixed, renewed or retooled.”

Turner is an inspiration, not only with his positive take on the future in book form, but because he walks the talk, having helped found a grassroots community organization in Calgary that allows the average citizen to take part in activating sustainability in the city. I’m looking forward to getting inspired about a future sustainable world by reading his book (and his blog on Mother Nature Network).

Gary Porter came to Toronto from his home state of Wisconsin, to work in graphics for a printed circuit board company. While here, he had a chance exposure to Ryerson that led him to launch a career in photography and decades later found him accepting a Pulitzer Prize.

In the early 1970s, Porter and his wife rented an apartment in a three-storey house on O’Hara Street where some Ryerson students living on another floor had set up a darkroom in the basement.

“I had always been interested in photography as an amateur, but started taking it more seriously with the darkroom available, doing a lot of street photography,” Porter recalls. Through the students, he heard about a continuing education summer workshop in photography at Ryerson. “When I learned of the Ryerson workshop, I jumped in,” he says.

“At the time the workshop was worth one year’s credits in photography,” he says. “I didn’t actually get a degree from Ryerson, but it is where I got my start, and was a great experience. There were two instructors for the intensive ­- one was Bill Scanlon.”

Porter went on to work in photography for Wisconsin newspapers, landing at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel where he’s worked since 1984. There, he was photographer on a multi-media team that scooped up a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting earlier this year for a complex story called One in a Billion.

Over the course of almost a year, the team told how Milwaukee doctors used DNA science to pinpoint the mysterious disease of a dying four-year-old boy. The 2011 Pulitzer was awarded to Mark Johnson, Kathleen Gallagher, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar and Alison Sherwood for their “lucid examination of an epic effort to use genetic technology to save a four-year-old boy imperiled by a mysterious disease, told with words, graphics, videos and other images.”

Over the years, Porter has won many awards, including being named Wisconsin News Photographer of the Year six times. The Pulitzer Prize of $10,000 was split among the team of five Journal Sentinel staff members.

This week as we observe the 100th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s birth, I cannot help but wonder if he were here today, would McLuhan have a blog, tweet or be on Facebook?

McLuhan was a media guru who coined the phrases “global village” and “the medium is the message” and his sound bites seem tailor-made for twitter, so he most likely would have an online presence.

He not only envisioned the future of mass communication during the 1960s, though, McLuhan also warned that we must be aware that these forms of communication would affect us even more than the content, to the point of transforming us.

That’s probably worth considering, since the Internet, cell phones, Skype calls, web cams and instantaneous shared information ­­have intensified our connections and the speed with which we communicate.

But it’s also fun to compare some of his predictions with what we have now. For example, in a mid-1960s audio clip, McLuhan describes how future research would be done – you’ll get on the phone, describe what you’re looking for and the parameters of your knowledge, and the information would be compiled from books around the world, packaged up and delivered to you. Sounds to me a bit like today’s Google search.

This week, McLuhan’s Legacy, a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading the media guru’s word, is one of several groups hosting numerous events to celebrate his 100th birthday.

As part of the celebration, Sal Greco, Radio and Television Arts ’73, has curated McLuhan’s Media: An Installation, at Ryerson. Visitors can take in more than 80 types of ‘media’ displays, from cave-art to virtual reality, including recorded sound bites of Marshall McLuhan on both radio and telephone and the latest digital technology.

Although McLuhan was a professor at St. Michael’s College at U of T, there was a Ryerson connection, says Greco, now a video post-production trainer at Ryerson’s Rogers Communication Centre.

“Ryerson alumnus Joseph Koenig remembers Dr. Lois Scott‑Thomas’s Journalism and Printing Technology class in 1953 when Marshall McLuhan was a visiting English professor,” says Greco. The great man returned to Ryerson in October of 1971, when Greco was a student, to be interviewed for a television program produced by Professor Donald Gillies of the School of Image Arts (See the video below).  In the spring of 1973, McLuhan was on campus to see an installation in the Experimental Media Lab, curated by Professor Dr. Robert Scott.

“I was motivated to mount this humble tribute to a great Canadian professor, media theorist, writer and visionary by one of world’s foremost experts on Marshall McLuhan, Dr. Liss Jeffrey,” says Greco.

Visit Greco’s media installation Friday, July 22 and Saturday, July 23 from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre, 245 Church Street, in the third-floor Atrium.

Here’s the video interview of McLuhan by Professor Donald Gillies: