Canada Day 2004 Celebration in Texas
Canada
Day 2004 was celebrated in grand style in College Station, Texas on July
1. This "Happy Birthday, Canada" event was hosted by Chuck and Lorraine
Eden Hermann. Lorraine is a Canadian citizen and a professor of management
at Texas A&M University. Chuck Hermann is Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the Bush School.
The Hermann residence was beautifully decorated outside and inside with Canadian flags and decorations that were awash with red color. Guests were treated to Canadian hors d'oeuvres (tourtiere pies, fiddleheads, nanaimo bars, cupcakes with Canadian flags on top, and a variety of other goodies) and Canadian cheer while being introduced to a number of far north name brands such as Moosehead, Glacia, Molsons, Seagrams, Labatts and Ganongs Chocolates.
Games occupied the guests while Canadian music played in the background. The games were designed to educate the happy
group about far north geography; names of provinces and new territories;
and descriptions of movers and shakers that helped to mold the country.
The evening was concluded by everyone singing Oh, Canada, the Canadian national
anthem. Lorraine then reminded the guests that the "Mounties always get their
man (and woman) in the True North strong and free…" Photos by Claudia
Orum.
Canada Business Day
Each Fall semester Mays Business School conducts an annual Canadian Business Day for its students and faculty. Executives currently working for Canadian multinational firms active in the Southwest are invited to the Texas A&M University campus to address international business classes and to meet with students representing various international organizations. In past years, these Canadian business leaders have spoken to between 300 and 500 graduate and undergraduate business students each year. An annual luncheon is held for faculty, students and guests, and gifts of friendship are extended to our Canadian speakers and visitors.
Canadian Resources Center
This Center, established in 1993, is managed by the TAMU CIBER. The Center regularly receives working papers and research studies from Canada's leading business research schools and is building a collection of Canadian accounting, management, marketing, law, and taxation books. The resource center also has access to the Canadian data banks compiled by Standard and Poors' Corporation and Cambridge University. Both the Center and the Canadian Business Studies Program continue to maintain close links to several important organizations that provide a flow of information on Canadian issues, including the U.S. Association for Canadian Studies, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, the Southwest Association for Canadian Studies, and the Canadian Accounting Association. The Canadian Resources Center assists the TAMU Sterling C. Evans Library by expanding its collection of Canadian publications, which has reached approximately 20,000 Canadian items.
Canadian Related Courses
In recent years, the Canadian-related content of courses offered in Mays has increased significantly, thanks to the growing interest of our faculty and students. The TAMU Canadian Studies Program has also benefited significantly from the assistance of the Canadian Government through its consulates and embassies which has provided support for a growing collection of Canadian-published books, journals, and data sources, most of these held in TAMU's main campus libraries the Sterling C. Evans Library and the R. C. Barclay Reference & Retailing Resources Center, which is adjacent to the Wehner Building, housing Mays.
In addition, several new courses have appeared recently, offered principally at the graduate level and aimed directly at Canadian and North American issues. One prominent example is Dr.Lorraine Eden's Regional Integration in the Americas, a graduate course first offered in Spring 1997, and is now cross-listed among the course offerings of the the George Bush School of Public Service & Government, which opened formal classroom studies in Fall 1997. See both Dr. Eden's book list on Regional Integration in North America and her compiled World Wide Web Sites on NAFTA. Dr. Eden's course is one of only a handful of graduate course offerings available in the United States that contain in-depth international economic, political, business and cultural content on the North American regional integration process. In the spring of 1998, Texas A&M University became, perhaps, the first university to coordinate a Graduate Seminar on NAFTA bilaterally over long-distance video teleconferencing. The course was taught simultaneously at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada; Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo in Mexico City, and students had the opportunity to interact with each other, three professors and various invited speakers on a weekly basis during the spring semester.
Dr. Eden received a new annual award for the "Most Innovative Use of Videoconferencing on the Trans-Texas Videoconference Network" during the third annual TTVN Users’ Conference at Texas A&M August 19-21, 1998. This award was for NAFTAweb which was integrated into Regional Integration in the Americas, a course offered as a trilateral graduate seminar with universities in Canada and Mexico, through long-distance video teleconferencing. This was the first such course on regional integration offered in the Western Hemisphere. Students in the three countries were linked via video teleconferencing, the world wide web, and the Internet. More >>>>