Aha Moments!: Baycrest's Asaf and Rosanne Visits JPCI

On December 13, 2018, Dr. Asaf Gilboa and Dr. Rosanne Aleong went to visit us to hear our thoughts regarding the work that we were currently doing which is the Pro-pro Chart, as aforementioned in the past blog. The process would be: Dr. Asaf and Dr. Rosanne would have time to sit in each group separately to help them express their thoughts and insights freely and without restrictions from each other. This would help us screen the information in a direct communication given by each of them without them framing each other's thoughts, for as we later on discovered, the two of them also have conflicts going on and have their own parts/themes they want to highlight. 

We talked to Dr. Asaf Gilboa later after we had talked to Dr. Rosanne. In a short period of time, we found out two things from Dr. Asaf. First, he exhibits that the majority of the students coming into the institution are under the category of raising their hands, estimation of 90% and 10% under tapping shoulders (Refer from the past blogs for the definition of tapping shoulders and raising hands). With this, he also expresses his preference to expand the candidates under tapping shoulders. Secondly, he made clear that between international students(outside Canada) and domestic students (within Canada), he favored hiring domestic students due to the expense and limitations. Taking into consideration that even if UofT limits international students to two, it would still be accompanied by a higher expense they need to sponsor. Thus, leaving him hesitant in hiring international students. 

Unlike Dr. Asaf's limited time in engaging on our team, we spent not just a favorable longer time with Dr. Rosanne than him but as well as insights. Dr. Rosanne left a lot of challenges/questions for us to ponder namely the notion of passion, familiarity, collaboration and the combat of the benefits. Start of the challenge regarding the idea of passion, in a quoted statement she goes, "Which of the candidates between raising hands – the ones who are ready to leave everything behind just to be part of the institution,  and tapping shoulders – who during their journey of study constantly proving how passionate they are in their work, display high degree of passion?". This question leaves us taken aback and out of words and with a realization that before we open our mouth, we need to think more about what our answer should be. For, in the end, it would not only create pressure on the candidates but also to the supervisors especially in the situation of the candidates ready to leave everything behind –  their life before the institution, especially the barriers and risks they will be bringing in the institution if they hire raising hand candidates. In addition, she also challenged us about the notion of familiarity between tapping shoulders and raising hands and how this would affect themselves and RRI. Next, as we have collaboration as one of the benefits in our draft of the Pro-pro Chart, she challenged us to the idea as to how we could leverage existing collaboration and create a new one. Lastly, she left us a piece of advice in which she said that we should be able to think the flip sides of all our benefits and how to combat it.

Everything that Dr. Asaf's information has given to us and Dr. Rosanne's challenges despite having answers beyond our grasp are helpful and insightful. Hopefully, this will guide us in improving our Pro-pro Chart as well as in formulating our recommendations.