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Miscellaneous See other Miscellaneous Articles Title: Plagiarist resigns as dean, stays on as prof EDMONTON -- The dean of the University of Alberta's medical school has resigned after weathering a week-long firestorm for plagiarizing parts of a speech to graduates. But some students aren't happy Dr. Philip Baker is being allowed to stay on campus as a professor pending further review by the school. "He should be gone," education student Angela Fedorak said Friday after the announcement. "Who's going to have respect for him? Are his students? I don't know. I can't say I would." "I'd probably drop his class," added Hazel Martial, a student in the faculty of native studies. But engineering student James Rodway believes Baker has suffered enough by losing his title. "It's not like he tried to fake a tremendous amount of research, like he stole someone's cure for cancer," said Rodway. "It was a speech." University president Indira Samarasekera said the school has received "hundreds and hundreds" of messages with varying opinions on Baker and the now infamous speech. "People have commented on it and expressed concern and wanted the university to respond, which we are doing." She said staff continue to investigate the matter and Baker could face further punishment. She couldn't say whether the two speeches have been compared yet. Samarasekera said she does not believe the situation has left the school with a black eye. Instead, she said the school's reputation should be measured on how well it has managed the controversy. She said the university's academic provost, Carl Amrhein, met with Baker on Thursday and recommended he resign. Baker agreed it was best for everyone and is taking a four-month administrative leave before he returns in the fall. "This incident, I think, has made it difficult for (Baker) to retain moral authority, and that's why the provost recommended it," Samarasekera said. Baker has admitted he plagiarized parts of the speech that he gave at a convocation banquet last Friday. He said that when he was researching the speech, he was inspired by the text of a convocation address given by Atul Gawande, a surgeon and an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. Students listening to Baker's speech said they quickly found Gawande's words online using their smartphones, and some said they were able to follow along with what Baker was saying. Somewhat surprising to see the knee-jerk reaction of the University to the media's barking dogs and the pointy-headed critics. The anti-plagiarism directive is designed to require students to employ, and thus enhance, their own minds by being original in compositions. Once you're a dean or a prof you've done about all you can to develop a facile mind. When called upon to address an audience you want to sound as interesting as possible, have people follow your every word. You diminish audience attention if you keep quoting someone else.
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#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Jeez, this was dean trying to encourage students. He had a good bet that none of his students in Alberta had heard the original speech at Harvard, but he knew it was a good speech for the occasion. He was trying to inspire his students, not establish himself as a great orator. Compare this to the thousands of teachers who parrot the same lessons year after year, by using the words straight from a textbook. Compare this to a million clergy who recycle someone else's sermon. And why the hell were students allowed to play with their smartphones while the dean was talking?
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