Professor Mary Stewart has now completed the first week of a two-week Fulbright project in Toronto. Working with Acting Dean Mark Jones and Art Fundamentals Coordinator Phillip Woolf from the School of Creative Arts and Animation at Seneca College, she is helping to plan an intensive three-day educational Generator designed to create connections among colleges and universities throughout Ontario. The initial event will then be followed by pedagogical workshops and presentations at the participating institutions during 2014-2015. She ran workshops, gave lectures, and met with faculty and students at four institutions this past week.

At Seneca College, Professor Stewart facilitated a discussion of teaching and learning with fourteen students, followed by a Generator brainstorming session with ten faculty members. As the host institution, Seneca will play a leading role in this teaching and learning initiative.
At Sheridan College, she gave a presentation to over fifty highly engaged faculty and students on connections between creative and critical thinking, followed by a presentation on twenty-first century approaches to Art Fundamentals.
The visit to Ontario College of Art and Design University focused on meeting leaders at various levels and on exploring the multiple buildings and incubator programs of this “university of the imagination.”
The week ended with a tour of George Brown College and a lively brainstorming session with a dozen faculty members. This downtown Toronto college is home of the Institute without Boundaries, a Toronto-based studio that works towards collaborative design action and seeks to achieve social, ecological and economic innovation.
Next week will be devoted to visits in more distant areas in central and eastern Ontario.