Centre News & Events
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The Winter 2008-09 edition of our newsletter, CSC Developments, is available in PDF format. A quick four pages of news and views from the Centre. Copies are available for free from the Centre, just call (306) 966-8509 or e-mail coop.studies@usask.ca. Issue #2/February 2009, Co-op Strategies, a CSC newsletter produced for the sector.Catch up on other Centre activities and research in the latest Director's Report (November 2009) and Annual Report (2008-09) in PDF format. (Past director's reports are also available. Past annual reports are available as well.) |
Workshops and Conferences on Co-operatives held at the Centre |
Centre Highlights—February 2007
Centre launches newsletter directed at co-op sector
The first issue of a new CSC publication was produced in January of this year. It is planned to be a regular publication, and is directed to the co-op sector. See the inaugural issue of Co-op Strategies.
Centre welcomes Congress guests as the University of Saskatchewan hosts Congress 2007
From 28 May 1 June 2007, three organizations will come together for the first time in a joint conference. The International Co-operative Alliance Committee on Co-operative Research (ICA), the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation (CASC), and the Association for Cooperative Educators (ACE) will together host one unified conference in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. This event will combine the approaches and audiences of the respective organizations and will be held in conjunction with the 2007 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Centre for the Study of Co-operatives is proud to be an active part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and is especially pleased to participate in the Social Economy Theme Day on Thursday, May 31st. See our Congress website at http://www.usaskstudies.coop/socialeconomy/Congress2007.
SSHRC Social Economy grant awarded to Lou Hammond Ketilson
In September 2005 the first annual installment of the $1.754 million grant was received by Dr. Lou Hammond Ketilson. Administered at the Centre for the Study of Co-operatives, this 5-year grant will be directed toward multi-partner research across the Northern Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan region. Please see our http://www.usaskstudies.coop/socialeconomy/
A New Director
The centre is extremely pleased and fortunate to have secured Lou Hammond Ketilson as its director upon the unexpected early departure of Brett Fairbairn at the end of June 2004. A long-time centre associate, Lou had barely recovered from a five-year term as associate dean in the College of Commerce when she was approached about these new responsibilities. Due to her well-honed administrative skills, her familiarity with centre activities and protocols, and her deep knowledge of the co-op sector, the leadership transition has been seamless. Lou was acting director until the board appointed her as the new director in April 2005. Thanks for taking us on, Lou!
Consumer Cooperative Management Association
In June Dr. Brett Fairbairn spoke at the Consumer Cooperative Management Association conference Who's on First: The Value of Values, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here are the PowerPoint files from Dr. Fairbairn's presentations at that meeting:
The Crowd Makes the Ballgame: Stakeholders and Cooperative Success - PowerPoint presentation, June 10, 2005
The Power Play: Linking to Members - PowerPoint presentation, June 11, 2005.
A New Contract
We are thrilled, of course, that our sponsoring organizations have renewed their five-year funding commitment to the centre. Contract partners in the co-op sector include Credit Union Central of Saskatchewan, Federated Co-operatives Ltd., Concentra Financial (formerly Co-operative Trust), and The Co-operators, with other contributions coming from Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and The CUMIS Group. The university matches these contributions with in-kind and monetary support, while Saskatchewan Industry and Resources supplies an additional lump sum each year.
The centre is grateful for the ongoing support and confidence of its sponsors. We know there are great expectations that go along with this and will strive to not only match but exceed past performance in this regard.
Our Twentieth Anniversary!
Concurrent with the renewal of its contract and the appointment of Lou as acting director, the centre also celebrated its twentieth anniversary last fall. Since its inception in 1984, we have grown from a small unit with a grand vision to a model of university outreach and engagement that consistently fulfils the dreams of its original mandate: to offer university courses on co-op theory, principles, structures, and legislation; to undertake original research into co-operatives; to publish co-op research by both centre staff and other scholars; and to maintain a resource centre of co-operative materials that support the centre’s teaching and research functions.
As part of the celebrations, we co-sponsored an exhibition of truly stunning photography by former wheat pool fieldman Everett Baker titled “Picturing a Utopian Reality: A Photographic Insight into the Co-operative Movement in Saskatchewan, 1941–1964,” which was on display 1–31 October 2004 in the Theatre Room at the Diefenbaker Centre. On 14 October, Brett gave a public lecture titled “Everett Baker and the Culture of Co-operation in Saskatchewan” as a complement to the exhibition.
SSHRC Project Update
We are pleased to announce that Karla Radloff, our first SSHRC scholarship recipient, successfully defended her MA thesis on government policy and co-operatives in the Canadian North at the end of August 04. And we have three new scholarship winners under the grant—Jason Heit, Kim Brown, and Monica Juarez Adeler.
Student researchers wrapped up a variety of summer projects during the fall. Jason Heit reviewed and analysed co-op and credit union web sites for cluster four; Angela Wagner compiled community profiles across all clusters; Juanita Bacsu worked on cluster one, helping Cris to create a master survey instrument; and Kim Brown prepared a literature review on issues around board diversity in co-operative organizations.
Data collection and other research activities are ongoing in all clusters, with participants making use of preliminary findings in presentations at conferences and workshops across the country—in July at the International Association for the Economics of Participation meetings in Halifax; at the Rural Sociological Society meetings in Sacramento in August; at the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers conference in Fredericton in October; and at an Aboriginal Women’s Community Economic Development conference in Costa Rica inFebruary.
Allison Muri, with us briefly as project administrator, prepared a wonderfully informative project newsletter, which went out in early July. She also set up a secure weblog site on the Internet, where researchers can post findings, comment on the work of others posted there, and share ideas about the project.
Other Research Update
Work is ongoing with Carol and Cris’s study to establish a National Co-operative Data Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. SSHRC student Angela Wagner has completed a major review of business statistics, which will serve as a complement and comparison to a research paper she completed earlier that examined the current state of co-operative data collection. Angie’s work this past summer resulted in a lengthy document that is awaiting Nora’s attention for editing and production. Merely the first stage in this large project, this document will provide a wealth of information regarding sources for business and industry statistics.
Cris and Lou’s research into diversity on co-op boards and governance bodies resulted in a successful application for U-Step funding for a summer student to help them with the project. Kim Brown, another SSHRC scholarship winner, spent four months on a literature search and review of board diversity in organizational governance structures.
The Seminar Series
The 2004–05 seminar series opened 30 September with a presentation titled “Crown Corporations and Co-operatives as Coping Mechanisms in Regional Economic Development” by Murray Rice from the Department of Geography. A fascinating subject, it generated discussion that lasted almost as long as the presentation. The centre's three interdisciplinary graduate students, Rob Dobrohoczki, Jason Heit, and Monica Juarez Adeler, teamed up for a panel discussion titled "E-Commerce and Community: Dispatches from the Research Front" in mid-December. And Brett Fairbairn gave the first seminar of 2005, reflecting on "A Century of Saskatchewan Co-operatives" in mid-February. 31 March 2005, Tirso Gonzales from the Indigenous Research Center of the Americas, University of California, Davis, will give a presentation titled "Globalization, Indigenous Peoples, and Development." Responsibility for the seminar series has passed from Roger’s capable hands into those of the centre’s interdisciplinary graduate students. Watch for announcements of future presentations on our home page.
The Annual Report
The centre's 2003–04 annual report, including year-end statements, was distributed to sponsors and approximately 250 individuals in November. This was accomplished with the collaboration of Patty and the university's financial staff to prepare year-end statements; the centre's management advisory board to approve them by conference call in October; Nora to draft, edit, lay out, and co-ordinate the printing of the document; and Patty and Karen to deal with labelling and stuffing hundreds of envelopes and shipping them out.
Publications
We have a number of new publications since the last update of this page—Living the Dream: Membership and Marketing in the Co-operative Retailing System, Brett Fairbairn's new book on the recent history of FCL; Brett's, Cohesion, Consumerism, and Co-operatives: Looking ahead for the Co-operative Retailing System, an addition to our booklet series; Centre Scholar Marj Benson's Negotiating Synergies: A Study in Multiparty Conflict Resolution, a new law casebook based on three years of her class in the subject; and Co-operative Membership and Globalization: New Directions in Research and Practice, a volume edited by Brett and Nora Russell based on papers presented in connection with the SSHRC project. We are also happy to announce a reprint of Building a Dream: The Co-operative Retailing System in Western Canada, 1928–1988, Brett's history of the first sixty years of Federated Co-operatives Ltd.
Staff News
Lou Hammond Ketilson accepted the position of acting director at the centre when Brett Fairbairn left unexpectedly to become head of the History Department on campus. The board will be making a decision within the next few months on a more permanent arrangement.
Lorraine Salt joined us in February to take over the management of the Resource Centre and the administration of the SSHRC grant, a position that has been vacant for some time. We are extremely pleased to have the position finally filled and are looking forward to the resumption of the library activities that have been on hold since the departure of Carol Shepstone, such as cataloguing new materials, reference services, and collection development. We are grateful to Patty Scheidl and Karen Neufeldt, who took over most of the responsibility for assisting library patrons over the past year, reshelving books, maintaining the vertical file, and creating temporary catalogue records so that books didn't go astray.
Jason Heit, Kim Brown, and Monica Juarez Adeler continue to work for the centre on a part-time basis as a condition of their scholarships. Zhao Jun, a new interdisciplinary PhD student from China, arrived in January. April Bourgeois is working part time for the centre putting together the "toolkit" for the Saskatchewan First Nations Co-op that Lou has been so heavily involved with over the past several months. And Juanita Bascu, a former summer student, has recently rejoined us to work part time for Cris de Clercy on research for cluster one of the SSHRC project.
Visitors
In late June 04 Brett, Lou, Roger, and Nora met with Rob Greer and Tara Popescue of Western Economic Diversification to discuss the social economy in Saskatchewan, how co-ops fit, and what pointers we could give them about how to define and assess the social economy in this context.
In early August Michael hosted Jenny Grigg, visiting on a Churchill Fellowship from Australia, which is supporting her study of co-operatives in rural communities, exploring why some communities have a strong culture of co-ops as a business structure in their local economy, and what programs and structures are in place to support them. She was travelling across Canada studying co-operative organizations and research centres and has promised us a copy of her final report to the Churchill Fellowship committee.
Also in August, Roger and Lou (with Centre Scholar Rob Norris) hosted a Dutch visitor to the centre. Joop Corijn, consulate general of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, spent a brief visit learning about the nature of the work we do at the centre and the relationship between the university, the centre, and the co-operative sector.
And 22 October Lou met with Wayne Thrasher, Warren Crossman, and Debbie Wilkie, ADM Industry and Resources, for a general meet-and-greet information session.