Media releases

• Brock, MTechHub launching manufacturing optimization, data analytics training program

  Monday, July 25, 2022 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 25 July 2022 – R0083 

  After recently signing a Memorandum of Understanding, Brock University and MTechHub Innovations Inc. are teaming up to help employers boost the skills of their workforce in the area of manufacturing optimization and data analytics.

  MTechHub, a Burlington-based organization that supports digital transformation for Canadian manufacturing, has received $203,150 through the Ontario government’s Skills Development Fund to launch a pilot program in partnership with Brock University’s Professional and Continuing Studies department.

  The Manufacturing Optimization and Data Analytics training program will work with members of MTechHub and industry partners to reskill and/or upskill jobs and advance technology adoption in the field.

  “The partnership with MTechHub is another example of how Brock is working strategically with industry to meet the needs of employers and employees by expanding corporate training and professional learning opportunities,” says University Interim President and Vice-Chancellor Lynn Wells. “This partnership demonstrates our commitment to supporting local economic vitality.”

  The program will strengthen the relationship between the University and MTechHub as well as with their industry partners. Both parties see this as an opportunity to support the manufacturing industry as it continues to evolve.

  “This program will help Canadian manufacturers accelerate their adoption of smart factory technology and improve their ability to compete,” says Mark Corker, MTechHub Executive Director.

  The specialized training program is being designed to address skilled labour shortages in deploying Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 technologies, a growing need towards automation and data exchange in technology and processes within the manufacturing industry.

  The advanced manufacturing program will combine online, hands-on and work-integrated learning components that will help participants understand and define the IoT as it relates to data analytics; understand the technology stack of IoT, including sensors, gateways, cloud and data analytics; summarize the types of data captured in the cloud; explore and analyze the data; apply data insights from analyzed data; explain what cybersecurity means; and apply cybersecurity principles.

  “Across southwestern Ontario, employers are struggling to find the skilled digital workers needed to grow their businesses and the economy,” said Monte McNaughton, Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. “That is why our government is investing in innovative training programs like this, which will help workers gain the skills local employers are looking for, so they can launch meaningful careers and earn bigger paycheques in a 21st-century economy.”

  The Manufacturing Optimization and Data Analytics program will be developed in conjunction with Brock over the next several months, with the first cohort of workers set to begin training this fall.

  April-Dawn Blackwell, Brock’s Associate Vice-President, Professional and Continuing Studies, said the program is an opportunity for the University to further develop and expand its customized industry and professional learning solutions in collaboration with industry partners.

  “This pilot program is one example of how Brock’s expertise in training and skills development can support the needs of employers in attaining their goals for optimization in their organization,” she said. “We always welcome ideas for potential partnerships and programming opportunities that support the Professional and Continuing Studies needs in our community.”

  To learn more about how industry focused training and skills development solutions can support your organization’s strategic goals, email [email protected]

  This Employment Ontario project is funded in part by the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University [email protected] or 905-941-6209

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  Categories: Media releases

• Adding femicide to Canada’s Criminal Code first step in long road, says Brock prof

  Friday, July 22, 2022 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY: 22 July 2022 – R0082

  Including femicide in the Criminal Code of Canada is a needed move, but one that must be backed by an action plan for change to begin, says Cristina Santos.

  The Associate Professor in Brock University’s Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures supports the London Police Board’s recent call on the federal government to see Canada legally recognize femicide as gender-specific homicide.

  But she also knows the work doesn’t stop there.

  “We need action points and timelines to implement,” Santos says, “and ways in which to enforce them.”

  According to the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, 48 per cent of solved homicides with a female victim were committed by a spouse or other intimate partner in 2015, the latest year data from Statistics Canada are available. The observatory also indicates Indigenous women and girls are 12 times more likely to be murdered or missing than other women in Canada.

  Even with inclusion in the Criminal Code and an action plan, it doesn’t mean rates of femicide — the killing of females by males because of their gender — will change, says Santos.

  “Several countries in Latin America have incorporated feminicide in their legal codes, yet these crimes continue to rise,” research assistant Sarah Revilla Sanchez (MA ’18) says of the term, which looks more broadly at how violence against women is rooted in ongoing social and political gender inequalities. “Feminicide was incorporated in the Mexican Criminal Code 10 years ago. Today, Mexico is among the countries with the highest gendered killing rates.”

  Through a project funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant, Santos and Revilla Sanchez are currently researching violence against women in the context of the Argentinian disappearances of 1976 to 1983. Their work looks at the psychological impact trauma has on both individuals and society as a whole, and includes the study of both femicide and feminicide.

  “Canada is suffering a national crisis of missing and murdered women and girls, and this is also part of an international crisis of a specific brand of gender-targeted violence and murder,” says Santos. Canada and some Latin American countries, she adds, share common points of colonial past and its legacies of racism and perceptions of the female body as another colonized subject.

  “The racism and gendered violence of colonization has persisted into our modern times and endures in how we talk about power, gender and dominant patriarchal ideologies,” Santos says. “It is a global pandemic that can mark female bodies as ‘disposable’ and less grievable because of their gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality, amongst other factors.”

  Santos points to social movements such as the REDress Project in Canada, Ni Una Menos in Argentina, and Zapatos Rojos in Mexico as forms of testimonial art that seek to raise awareness of femicide and violence against women as well as providing alternative ways to mourn and memorialize murdered and missing women. These types of testimony have the power to challenge the social and political ideologies behind racialized and gendered violence against women, she says.

  “By defining femicide within the Canadian Criminal Code, we hope that it is a step towards reconciling a history of gendered violence and providing a testimony of social injustices by acknowledging historical truths previously overlooked from national discourses.”

  Cristina Santos, Associate Professor in Brock University’s Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, is available for media interviews on the topic.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:

  * Doug Hunt, Communications and Media Relations Specialist, Brock University [email protected] or 905-941-6209 

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  Categories: Media releases