“O Canada” – Part 3

In her third post on this year’s excursion to Canada, Tamara Urach journals the group’s time in Montréal, the final stop on the students’ tour.

Montréal – Excusez-moi, parlez-vous Anglais?

Our third and last stop is probably the most French-infused location of North America – Montréal. We start our program on the day following our arrival on June 2, with our first point on the agenda being a two-hour historical group tour of Vieux-Montréal, where we also witness French-Canadians taking the French way of (love) life very seriously.

Other stops on our city tour lead us to the Stewart Museum and the Pointe-à-Callière Archaeological Museum, as well as the wonderful Château Ramezay, where the tour guides show us not only the artefacts in the museum, but also an awesome garden with plants used for different medicinal purposes. Another garden that some of us decide to visit is the Botanical Garden of Montréal, where the Chinese Garden and Native Garden amaze visitors everyday. Our question about where Mother Earth is (a beautiful living sculpture at the gardens, which is in fact, nowhere to be found), only earns amazed and confused faces.

Nature is also present on the Mont Royal, name giver of Montréal, which is more of a hill rather than a mountain (we might not want to tell the Québécoise). Nevertheless, the Mont Royal is a nice place for a relaxed afternoon, even some squirrels and a racoon begging for food cross our way both up and down the hill. Another highlight on the penultimate day is our group dinner at the Vieux-Port Steakhouse, where we apparently forget about money saving and decide to enjoy an extraordinary meal – French onion soup, steak, salmon fillet and delicious desserts such as crème brûlée and chocolate mousse cake are just some of the meals worth mentioning. After some drinks at a bar, we are all ready to go to sleep and rest before some individual activities on our last day, June 7. Some of us visit the Notre Dame Basilica in Montréal, others decide to make one last shopping trip at the Eaton Centre, before we gather for our trip to the airport at 3 p.m.

After a long flight back to Venice, we safely arrive at the airport and take our bus back to Austria. It’s always nice to come home to your loved ones. Canada and our trip there will for sure stay in our hearts, and suitcases full of souvenirs and minds full of fun memories will always remind us of this extraordinary trip.

Text and photos by Tamara Urach

 

“O Canada” – Part 2

In the second post of a four-part series, student Tamara Urach journals about a recent student excursion to Canada. This week, it’s all about the group’s experiences in Ottawa.

Ottawa – Could you show me the way to the capital?

After spending five nights in Toronto, our trip continued to Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Compared to Toronto, the city is rather small and does not immediately remind us of a typical capital city, but it is charming either way. Our program starts with the Canadian Museum of History on May 31st and continues with the Parliament, the Canadian War Museum and the National Gallery on the following days. One tour that is particuarly exciting is the Canadian War Museum, not only because our tour guide is so knowledgeable, but also because he presents the artefacts and information in a way that could make students whose least favourite topic is history, love history!

Ottawa is also a great place to explore today’s Canada on your own, although it is rather small. One place we visit several times is the Byward Market, where you not only find good food and a variety of different cuisines, but also souvenirs, and the possibility to go out in the evening. Others take the opportunity to marvel at the Rideau Canal and the characteristic “stairs” where the canal is lowered to the same level as the one of the Ottawa River. Although Ottawa is not what most of us had in our minds before arriving in Canada’s capital, it was a lovely city.

Text and photos by Tamara Urach

“O Canada” – Part 1

This semester, 18 students from the University of Klagenfurt took part in René Schallegger’s seminar “The Founding of Canada: Development from Settlement to Nation.” As part of the seminar, the students went on an exciting two-week excursion to Canada to learn more about the country’s history. During this time, they stayed in three different cities, beginning their journey in Toronto, before journeying on to Ottawa and then finishing their stay in Montreal. In the first of a four-part series, Tamara Urach, a student on the teacher’s programme, shares the group’s experiences, starting in Toronto.

Toronto “Forever Yonge”

Venice, Saturday 25th May, 2:35 pm local time. Twenty students and staff members from the University of Klagenfurt are sitting on an airplane ready to take off on a great adventure – a fortnight in Canada. Some of us have already been there, but most of us haven’t and are extremely excited. It takes us roughly nine hours to arrive at Toronto Airport, where it’s 6 pm local time, and we are ready to continue our adventure the next day after some sleep.

Our five-day program in Toronto mainly takes place before midday, and consists of the Royal Ontario Museum, the Fort York Historical Site, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Black Creek Pioneer Village. Two highlights are the tour at the Fort York Historical Site, where we get an insight into the lives of British and Canadian Soldiers fighting the war of 1812, and the tour at the Black Creek Pioneer Village, where the staff (including real life young Robert Baratheon) show us how newspapers were printed, how lanterns and wool were made and how people lived back then. Although these tours are extremely interesting (apart from the one or other dinosaur that refused to tell us about the history of the first nations), some of us also take the chance to get to know today’s Canada and visit some sights in the afternoon after lunch. Shopping tours at the Eaton Centre, visiting the Niagara Falls, the CN tower, Chinatown, the Distillery District, walking along the shores of Lake Ontario, taking a cruise on this very lake and visiting the Toronto Islands are just a few of the locations some of us decide to visit. Toronto is indeed a great mixture of green parks and big city life, so everyone is able to do whatever is most interesting to them.

  

Text by Tamara Urach / Photos by Tamara Urach and Natilly Macartney

All You Need to Know About Coaching – Theory, Research and Practice

Eva-Maria Graf from the English Department will be hosting an event dedicated entirely to coaching and (linguistic) coaching research at the University of Klagenfurt on June 24, 2019

 Coaching Programm

Eva-Maria Graf is a coach, trainer and a professor of applied linguistics. Her research has contributed substantially to establishing German-speaking (linguistic) coaching research (see also: https://www.aau.at/blog/coaching-bedeutet-ein-gespraech-zu-fuehren/). At the event, she will be presenting her recently published book The Pragmatics of Executive Coaching (2019, John Benjamins). It is the first linguistic monograph dedicated to (executive) coaching. Also, she will be giving a first-hand insight into the origins and the developments within the (German-speaking) coaching research field focussing especially on (qualitative) process research.

 

Coaching is a helping professional format which has been gaining influence as an instrument of personal and organisational development not only in business contexts, but also in academic contexts at universities. The research-based and practice-oriented event aims to familiarise researchers, scholars, university employees and students with coaching as a helping format; as a tool that they may themselves utilise for professional or personal development as well as for career, leadership or life choices.

 

Coaching as an object of research is a new, developing (interdisciplinary) field. Researchers from disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, pedagogy, but also economic sciences contribute to it in terms of outcome and process research. Coaching research unites quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods approaches and is characterised by its close ties to practice and practitioners. This is the reason why most of the scholars presenting at the event are also active as coaches and trainers.

 

The goal of “All You Need to Know about Coaching – Theory, Research and Practice” is making participants acquainted with coaching as a booming helping professional format from a variety of academic viewpoints. While presenting its current state of the art, it also aims to build a bridge between research and practice, encouraging an exchange between the two. The day-long event includes talks by national and international experts on a variety of topics and a workshop (see programme). Registrations at coaching [at] aau [dot] at are necessary to take part in the workshop (though it is almost fully booked by now). The event is free of charge and talks may be attended individually and without registration.

 

When: June 24, from 9am to 5pm
Where: Stiftungssaal O.0.01

More information: see programme or: https://www.facebook.com/events/413293986091901/