Showing 4086 results

The first reference to the Department of Pediatrics in the Dalhousie University calendars is in 1943-1944, where Dr. G.B. Wiswell is identified as the Head of the Department. In previous calendars (since 1911), Pediatrics is listed as a subdivision of courses offered by the Faculty of Medicine, but there was no indication that it was organized as a department.

The Department of Pediatrics currently has 16 specialty clinical divisions and two clinical services: Allergy, Cardiology, Developmental Pediatrics, Endocrinology, Gastroenterology and Nutrition, General Pediatric Medicine, Hematology/ Oncology, Immunology, Infectious Diseases, IWK Community Pediatrics, Medical Genetics, Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine, Nephrology, Neurology, Respirology, Rheumatology, Suspected Trauma and Abuse Response Team (START), Pediatric Palliative Care, Atlantic Research Centre, and Perinatal Epidemiology Research Unit.

The first reference to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Dalhousie University calendars is in 1923-1924, where Dr. H.B. Atlee is identified as the Head of the Department. In previous calendars, Obstetrics and Gynaecology is listed as a subdivision of courses offered by the Faculty of Medicine, but there was no indication that it was organized as a department. Obstetrics first appears as a series of lectures offered by the Faculty of Medicine in 1868, with William J. Almon and Alexander G. Hattie lecturing.

The Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology currently has seven divisions: Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Gynaecology-Oncology, Maternal Fetal Medicine, Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, Perinatal Epidemiology Research, and Uro-Gynaecology. The department is located in the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia and various Nova Scotia Health Authority sites throughout the province.

The first reference to the Department of Medicine in the Dalhousie University calendars is in 1933-1934, where Dr. K.A. MacKenzie is identified as the Head of the Department under "Medicine" and "Clinical Medicine." In previous calendars (since 1870), a medical teaching program was referenced, but there was no indication that it was organized as a department. In 1933, the undergraduate teaching program was at the Victoria General Hospital and interns received medical training there and at the Camp Hill Hospital and the Halifax Infirmary. After Dr. MacKenzie retired in 1945, he was succeeded by Dr. C.W. Holland (1945-1952), and then by a committee consisting of Dr. Charles W. Beckwith, Dr. Robert M. MacDonald, and Dr. Lea C. Stevens (1952-1956). In 1956, Dr. Robert Clark Dickson was appointed Head of the Department and stayed in this position until his retirement in 1974.

The Department of Medicine currently consists of 15 divisions: Cardiology, Clinical Dermatology and Cutaneous Science, Digestive Care and Endoscopy, Endocrinology and Metabolism, General Internal Medicine, Geriatric Medicine, Hematology, Infectious Diseases, Medical Oncology, Nephrology, Neurology, Palliative Medicine, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Resiprology, and Rheumatology.

Dalhousie Medical School is an internationally-recognized faculty in undergraduate, postgraduate and continuing medical education. The only medical school in the Maritime provinces, it is closely affiliated with the provincial healthcare systems in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and is affiliated with over one hundred teaching sites, including nine teaching hospitals.

The Dalhousie College Act, ratified in 1863, stipulated the establishment of a medical faculty; with the support of the premier and the provincially-funded Halifax Hospital, the Faculty of Medicine opened in 1868, half a century after the university's founding, and the fifth medical school in Canada, preceded by McGill (1842), Queens (1854), Laval (1823) and Toronto (1843).

The initial class of 14 students was taught by a volunteer faculty of Halifax physicians under the leadership of Dr. Alexander P. Reid. Primary subjects only were offered, and students transferred to McGill, Harvard or New York to complete their training; by 1870 a full program was available and in 1872 the first class graduated from Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine. In 1873 financial difficulties forced the school’s closure and two years later the independent Halifax Medical College was formed, with Dr. Reid as president. After an ambiguous affiliation with the college, in 1889 Dalhousie’s Faculty of Medicine was re-established, with the Halifax Medical College remaining as the teaching body while the Faculty of Medicine took over the role of examining body.

With the support of the Carnegie Foundation, the medical school was reorganized; in 1911 the Halifax Medical School was fully reintegrated into the university, with a full-time pre-clinical teaching staff and strict entrance requirements. In the early 1920s further grants from the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations enabled the construction of the Dalhousie Public Health Clinic and the Medical Sciences Building, as well as the expansion of the Pathology Institute. In 1925 the school obtained an A1 accreditation from the American Medical Association.

Financial challenges throughout the 1930s and 1940s were alleviated by contributions from the provincial governments of Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, and during this period the faculty established the first continuing medical education program in Canada. In 1967 the Sir Charles Tupper Medical Building was completed, housing the W.K. Kellogg Health Sciences Library, several medical science faculties, and facilities for teaching and research.

The School of Public Administration was established on 1 July 1975, the same date as the new Faculty of Administrative Studies opened. However, the public administration tradition at Dalhousie goes back to 1936, when it became the first university in Canada to offer classes in public policy and public management. Between 1938-1949 the Faculty of Graduate Studies awarded 13 Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees to students through Dalhousie's Institute of Public Affairs. This graduate program fell dormant after 1951 and, in an effort to revive a degree course in public administration, in 1969 three programs were launched designed to meet the needs of practising and prospective civil servants, including the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program. These were administered by the Department of Political Science, with decisions and structures shared with the Department of Commerce.

The school continues to provide foundational training in all aspects of public management and policy making to foster the development of future public sector leaders. Its Master of Public Administration (MPA) and Master of Public Administration – Management (MPA/M) programs are accredited by the Canadian Association of Programs in Public Administration (CAPPA).

The School for Information Management was established in 1969 as the School of Library Service, and it awarded its first Master of Library Service (MLS) degrees in May 1971. Originally administered by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the school became affiliated with the Faculty of Administrative Studies in 1975, which became the Faculty of Management Studies in 1984, and later simply the Faculty of Management.

Between 1979-1985 the library services curriculum was subject to ongoing revision, and in 1987 the school was renamed the School of Library and Information Studies. In 2005 it changed names again and became the School of Information Management, moving out of its longtime home on the third floor of the Killam Library to new digs in the Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building. It continued to offer a Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) degree, which in 2019 became a Master of Information (MI). In 2008 the school launched a graduate program for mid-career professionals leading to a Master of Information Management (MIM). The school has been continuously accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) since 1971.

Between 1891-1902 the Dalhousie calendars sporadically listed a two-year course in “Subjects Bearing on Commerce,” along with the suggestion that it be supplemented by practical training at a business college during summer vacations. Commerce then disappeared from the Dalhousie curriculum for two decades, until the university received a gift of $60,000 to endow a chair in business studies. Bishop Carleton Hunt was appointed the first William Black Professor of Commerce in 1921 and courses were offered leading to a Bachelor of Commerce degree. Following several years of staffing challenges, in 1930 James MacDonald replaced Hunt and was appointed the inaugural head of a Department of Commerce.

The School of Business Administration replaced the Department of Commerce on 1 July 1976, a year after the establishment of the Faculty of Administrative Studies, which was an initiative designed to bring together business and public administration under one umbrella, and also included the schools of library services and social work. The BCom became a four-year program and a Centre for International Business Studies was created. In 2012 the school was renamed the Rowe School of Business after Kenneth C. Rowe in recognition of his business leadership and his transformative gift to Dalhousie’s business program. The school is among the five percent of business schools around the world accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

The Maritime School of Social Work was incorporated in April 1941 as an independent school in response to a long recognized need for professionally educated social workers in the region. In the early years classes were taught by a cadre of volunteers drawn from various related professions under the supervision of the school’s first director, Samuel Henry Prince. Professor of Sociology at Dalhousie and the University of King’s College, Prince created the school’s official emblem—a lighthouse emanating rays of light—a symbol of what he called “the epitome of the two-fold character of all social service: prevention and rescue.”

In 1944 Phyllis Burns became the school’s first full-time employee; she was appointed as Assistant Director and Registrar and was responsible for teaching classes in child and family welfare. In 1949 Lawrence T. Hancock was appointed as the first regular Director of the School, a position he held until 1973. It was during his tenure that the school amalgamated with Dalhousie University in 1969 and received accreditation in both Canada and the United States.

Initially falling under the auspices of the Faculty of Administration, the Maritime School of Social Work is currently one of eight schools and a college grouped within the university's Faculty of Health. The political, social, cultural and economic conditions of the region continue to give direction to the school's teaching; specifically, its degree and certificate programs were designed to meet the needs of the region's Mi'kmaq population. It has maintained an affirmative action admissions program since the mid-1970s and makes special efforts to accommodate the diversity of its student population.

In the early 1980s the school added a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree program, while the Masters program (MSW) was reorganized into a one-year course of study for BSW graduates. With the advent of the BSW program, an off-site program was developed to reach students in Sydney, Saint John and Charlottetown. Since 2001 the school has offered distance delivery to students across Canada via the Internet. It also provides a continuing education program for practising professions, including workshops and certificate courses in the practice of social work.

In 1958 a committee appointed by the Faculty of Medicine submitted a report to Senate outlining the benefits of establishing a course in physiotherapy and occupational therapy at Dalhousie. Subsequently, the Maritime provincial health departments approved of the idea in principle, but saw no urgency in establishing a program, especially given the lack of space and funding in place. Later they determined that separate courses in physiotherapy and occupational therapy were preferable to a combined program.

When the School of Physiotherapy did open in 1963 with a two-year diploma program, it had two full-time faculty members and fifteen students, whose classes were held in the gymnasium of Camp Hill Hospital and in borrowed Medical School classrooms in the Forrest Building. In 1976 the program expanded to offer a BSc Physiotherapy, and the diploma program was terminated at the end of the 1976-77 academic year. In 1984 the Forrest Building was completely refurbished to accommodate the School of Physiotherapy and other Health Professions programs.

In 2010 certification standards began to require a master degree in physiotherapy; accordingly, the BSc program was phased out with the last class being admitted in 2004. The MSc Physiotherapy introduced in 1995 was a research-based programme designed for licensed physiotherapists. In 2006 the MSc Physiotherapy entry to practice program was introduced as a full-time course offered over a continuous 26-month period.

Dalhousie's School of Nursing was opened in 1949 in response to the need for post-graduate education for hospital-trained registered nurses as well as nurse educators and administrators across the Maritimes. A Red Cross-sponsored course in public health nursing for graduate nurses was initiated in 1920 (after the Halifax Explosion), but applicants and university support had waned by the middle of the decade. However, the Registered Nurses Association of Nova Scotia (RNANS) persisted in their attempts to persuade Dalhousie to establish a nursing program. They gained the support of the Dean of Medicine, H.C. Grant, and in 1946 the Senate endorsed the plan, but it wasn't until the federal health grant program came into being in 1948 that Dalhousie agreed to provide a course leading to a BSc in nursing in coordination with the hospitals, which would continue to provide clinical training.

Initially the school offered an entry level nursing degree, postgraduate certificates in public health, and nursing education and administration programs for nurses holding a diploma from a hospital-based program. In 1961 the School of Nursing and the College of Pharmacy were both folded into the new Faculty of Health Sciences. In response to a Royal Commission on Health Services in the early sixties, the School developed an Outpost Nursing program, designed to train nurses to work in remote areas, primarily in northern Canadian Aboriginal communities where they were no resident physicians.

A Masters program was established in the mid-seventies as diploma programs were beginning to be phased out and the program began a restructuring process. Currently the School offers a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BScN), a Masters of Nursing (MN), a Masters of Science in Nursing (MScN) and a Doctor of Nursing (PhD). Students can receive their degree at either the Halifax or Yarmouth site. The School has also teamed up with the Nunavut Arctic College, allowing residents of Nunavut to enrol in a BScN and receive their degree from Dal.

The School of Health and Human Performance was established in 1966 as the School of Physical Education in response to the need for PE teachers in Nova Scotia. The program was situated in the Faculty of Health Professions and the first class graduated with their Bachelor of Physical Education in 1970. A Health Education major and a Human Movement option were introduced in the early 1970s; in 1977 a Bachelor of Recreation program began and the first student with a BSc (Health Education) graduated. After Dalplex was completed in 1979, the School moved to Stairs House and a year later Athletics and Recreational Services separated from the School of Physical Education.

In 1984 a five-year Bachelor of Physical Education/Bachelor of Education integrated program started, and in 1986 a BSc (Kinesiology) was created. The graduate programs expanded to include three separate degrees: MA (Health Education), MSc (Kinesiology), and MA (Leisure Studies).

When teacher training was dropped at Dalhousie in 1993, the school was renamed the School of Health and Human Performance. By 2004 the BSc (Health Education) was renamed BSc (Health Promotion), a new stream in Research and Policy was introduced, the Community Health Promotion stream was strengthened, and an Honours degree in Health Promotion began.

The Faculty of Dentistry is the only dental school east of Montreal and educates over three-quarters of dentists practising in Atlantic Canada. Dalhousie created the faculty in 1908 in affiliation with the recently established Maritime Dental College for the purpose of examining candidates and conferring the degree of Doctor of Dental Surgery. Dalhousie also provided lecture and clinical facilities in what is now known as the Forrest Building; in 1912 Dalhousie also assumed responsibility for instruction, and the four students who graduated that year did so as the first class in the Faculty of Dentistry. Teaching continued to be carried out by part-time dental practitioners; with the exception of a brief period in the late forties, until 1953 there was only one full-time faculty member, J. Stanley Bagnall, who himself had graduated from Dalhousie in 1921.

The introduction of government grants as well as private donations and gifts from the Kellogg Foundation enabled the dental school to expand dramatically throughout the 1950s, including the number of full-time faculty, the creation of a school of dental hygiene, and the building of the current Dentistry Building at the corner of Robie Street and University Avenue. By 1967 there were 15 full-time academic staff and 31 part-time faculty members, supported by 20 administrative and technical personnel.

In 1969 the faculty, which, since its beginnings, had operated as a single administrative department, established four departments: Oral Biology; Oral Medicine and Surgery; Restorative Dentistry; and Paediatric and Community Dentistry, with independent department heads or chairs. Today the faculty comprises the School of Dental Hygiene and the departments of Dental Clinical Sciences, Applied Oral Sciences and Oral and Maxillofacial Sciences, each made up of its own internal divisions.

In 1975 the newly formed Dalhousie Women’s Organization proposed the establishment of a women’s studies program. It was 1982 before such a program was approved by Senate, and it was further delayed by the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Council (MPHEC), as similar courses were already being offered at Mount Saint Vincent and Saint Mary’s universities. Women's studies classes were first offered at Dalhousie in 1988, with Susan Sherwin as program coordinator and only three enrolled students. Judith Fingard took over as program coordinator in 1989 and introduced classes in science, political science and economics.

By 1992 Dalhousie had an active Women’s Studies Student Society, and the program was gaining attention through its lecture and seminar series. The program was not without detractors, particularly in the wake of the École Polytechnique massacre in 1989, and exams were written with security personnel present after some faculty received death threats.

In 2005, the program adopted a new name in an effort to be more inclusive, and officially became the Gender and Women’s Studies program.

Dalhousie's Department of Theatre developed out of the Dalhousie Drama Workshop, which was formed in 1963 by then recently appointed Professor of English John Ripley, who offered it as an adjunct to his English 9 (History of Drama) class. The following year, Susan Vallance was hired as an instructor, working jointly for the Education and the English departments and teaching Child Drama, the first credit course in any performance-based class. In 1965 theatre historian Lionel Lawrence came to Dalhousie, and in 1966 four credit courses in theatre were offered in the newly established Drama Division within the Department of English. In 1967/1968 a BA in Drama and Theatre was offered, and in 1968 the Senate agreed to separate the study of drama from the Department of English, and Alan Andrews left alongside to serve as the inaugural chair of the new Department of Theatre.

In its first few years, the department's offerings were largely theoretical and not designed to train students for the professional theatre, but with the 1971 opening of the Dalhousie Arts Centre, the capacity for offering practical instruction changed. The new building included a designated wing for theatre studies that housed the James Dunn Theatre, two teaching/performance studios, and costume and set workshops. In the 1973/1974 university calendar, the department description emphasized the nature of theatre as a performing art and offered its first degree credit classes in acting. The department began to develop collaborative relationships with local theatres, including Neptune, and teaching faculty included Canada Council Artists-in Residence such as Fred Allen and Nancey Pankiw (1974) and Robert Doyle (1977).

In 1975 the department began to offer a BA Honours degree in three streams—general, acting and scenography—and by 1976 all theatre students were expected to be involved regularly in either acting or in other areas of production work. With the support of Robert Doyle, in 1976 the department launched a three-year diploma program in Costumes Studies, which in 2005 started to be offered as a four-year Honours BA in Theatre (Costume Studies).

The Department of Theatre, along with the Department of Music, became a program within the Fountain School of Performing Arts in 2014.

The Spanish Department was established in 1973 and in 2010 its name and teaching mandate expanded to include Latin American Studies.

As early as 1843, the Dalhousie Board of Governors hired a professor of modern languages—French, Italian and Spanish. However, the newly appointed Lorenzo Lacoste met an untimely death shortly before Dalhousie College itself floundered and shut down. When the college reopened in 1863, only French and German were offered under the heading of modern languages. Spanish 1 first appears as a course in the 1921/22 university calendar, although a lecturer in Spanish was hired the year before. It remained a singular course for some time: Spanish 2 was added in 1928/29 and Spanish 3 in 1932/34. Around 1930 the university calendars started to group Spanish along with German and French—and later Russian—under the Department of Modern Languages, which in 1957/58 became the Department of Romance Languages, a department not recognized officially by Senate until 1970. Soon after that a proposal to organize Spanish as an independent department was passed by Senate and the Department of Spanish is first listed in the 1973/74 calendar.

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology was established in October 1966 after hiving off from the Department of Economics and Sociology. The creation of an independent department was the initiative of sociology professor John Graham, with the support of H.B.S. Cooke, Dean of Arts and Science. The department grew rapidly from 1969-1972, with an increase in teaching staff from six to 22.

It was renamed Sociology and Social Anthropology in December 1977 following a departmental review that articulated the divergences and tensions between the sociologists and anthropologists in terms of disciplinary interests and resource allocation. The change in name from anthropology to social anthropology was seen as an affirmation of the department’s intellectual coherence and unity. The department continues to draw on the strengths of both disciplines—sociology and social anthropology—by recognizing their distinct intellectual and methodological heritages, while emphasizing how they complement each other.

The 1863 appointment of James Ross to the newly created Chair of Ethics and Political Economy marks the early beginnings of the teaching of politics at Dalhousie University. While funding for the chair ended with Ross’s death in 1886, in 1891 George Munro established a Chair in History and Political Economy, which was held by John Forrest, who taught two political economy classes a year until his retirement in 1911. Over the following decade there were no politics classes offered, although constitutional history and economics were taught by series of associate professors of history and political economy.

The study of contemporary political science at Dalhousie began in 1921 with a $60,000 endowment made by the parents of a former Dal student killed in action at Vimy Ridge during World War One. In addition to funding the Eric Dennis Memorial Professorship of Government and Political Science, Senator Dennis gifted $1000 to start a library collection and another $2020 to fund an annual series of Eric Dennis Special Lectures.

Henry Frazer Munro was the first appointed Eric Dennis Memorial Professor, and the 1921-1922 University Calendar lists six courses under the heading of Government and Political Science. In 1926 Government was dropped from the department's name and in 1927 Robert Alexander MacKay became the second Eric Dennis Memorial Professor. He remained the only professor in the department until he left in 1948, although Lothar Richter, who founded the Institute of Public Affairs, served as an occasional Special Lecturer. James Aitchison was hired in 1949, and political science largely remained a department of one until the 1960s; Aitchison was named its first head in 1964.

The Department of Music had its origins in an affiliation between the Halifax Conservatory and Dalhousie dating back to 1889. The Conservatory offered a licentiate diploma and a Bachelor in Music degree, as did the Maritime Academy of Music, founded in 1934. The association with Dalhousie continued after the two music schools amalgamated in 1954 as the Maritime Conservatory of Music and, from 1949 until the mid 1960s, elective music appreciation classes and ensemble groups at Dalhousie were organized by Harold Hamer.

The Dalhousie Department of Music was established in 1968 and began offering practical instruction and theory: instrumental lessons and voice coaching were expanded in 1975 under the leadership of Peter Fletcher. While the initial aim of the department was to produce students of a high practical ability, by the late 1970s the department's mandate was to train prospective professional musicians, performers, composers and critics. The 1971 opening of the Dalhousie Arts Centre greatly enhanced teaching and performance capacity, as the new building offered performance halls, practice rooms and a piano lab. Imported instructors were replaced with both part-time and full-time faculty, and the department sponsored both professional and community ensembles such as the Dalhousie Chorale, the Dalhousie Opera Workshop and Musica Antiqua.

Beginning in 1977 the department offered four-year Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Music Education degrees and a five-year integrated degree program. Further academic programs included a pre-baccalaureate foundational studies program and a B Mus curriculum in organ and church music in collaboration with the Atlantic School of Theology and the community churches of the RCCO. Other programs were offered in collaboration with Henson College and the Department of Theatre.

In 2014 the Department of Music became a program in the Fountain School of Performing Arts.