Trent establishes Canada's first
doctoral program in Native Studies

Trent will admit the first cohort of students to Canada's inaugural doctoral program in Native Studies in September 1999.

Dean Paul Healy announced the program's approval to Trent Senate at its Sept. 22 meeting, noting that Trent's will be just the second Native Studies PhD program in all of North America. The other is at the University of Arizona.

The program underwent a year-long rigorous academic review by Trent and the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies. The latter involved two-day site visits to Trent by three nationally recognized experts: Dr. Richard Preston, Department of Anthropology at McMaster, Dr. Michael Asch, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, and Dr. Jay H. Strauss, Department of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona.

The consultants agreed that there is a significant need for such a program, Healy said, and that Trent with its long-established reputation for Native Studies is a logical place for it to be located. The consultants also said the department had the focus and resources and an excellent milieu for this distinctive doctoral program. A significant emphasis in the new program will be on aboriginal knowledge.

"Trent views the new PhD program — only its second PhD offering after Watershed Ecosystems — as a significant new educational initiative that will be of benefit to aboriginal and non-aboriginal persons across Canada," said Healy. Trent conferred its first three PhDs in Watershed Ecosystems at the 1998 convocation.

Don McCaskill, a Native Studies professor and a previous department chair, serves as the first graduate program director for a term extending to June 30, 2001.

"What makes the PhD program so unique is that is was designed by a committee composed not only of academics and aboriginal community people, but also traditional aboriginal community people," said McCaskill. "One of the central tasks of the newly-established curriculum development committee will be to incorporate traditional aboriginal knowledge with academic scholarship." During the second year of the three-year program, students will be required to do a practicum field placement, working for an aboriginal organization or in an aboriginal community.

Trent introduced Canada's first Native Studies program in 1969. Starting in 1978, Trent was also the first Canadian University to offer an honours year in Native Studies.

Degrees for Trent's PhD program in Native Studies could first be conferred in 2002.