Giovanna LoCascio: Grace under pressure

When graduate students in the Department of Psychology find themselves in a tight spot, they know who to talk to -- the woman affectionately known as Gio, the unflappable graduate program secretary and unofficial den mother to dozens of master's and PhD students.

Giovanna LoCascio has earned a reputation in her department for grace under pressure and for being terrifically well organized. The co-winner of this year's staff excellence award from the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, LoCascio is her department's not-so-secret weapon.

She responds to hundreds of requests each year from prospective students about her department's graduate programs and processes the 250 applications received for those programs.

When a student is accepted, she can expect to receive a phone call from LoCascio to give her the news and to answer questions. LoCascio organizes orientation sessions and non-academic advising for the newcomers when they arrive at McGill. She administers their financial support, telling them which fellowships to apply for (half of the department's graduate students have external funding -- a tribute to her efforts).

She takes care of assigning TAs to courses, winning praise from both professors and students for her unerring sense of who's right for what job. She also handles the arrangements for thesis submissions and oral defences. She sits on the department's teaching awards committee, maintains graduate students' records and oversees the course evaluation process for graduate seminars.

And that's all just part of her job -- she doubles as the secretary to the chair of the department, professor Anthony Marley.

Marley says she shines in that role as well, ensuring that urgent matters are brought to his attention quickly, while also guarding his time so that he can meet his teaching and research obligations.

Departmental chairs come and go, Marley says, but when a department is really lucky, "people like Giovanna stay."

LoCascio says there is a simple reason why she has decided to stay put in the department for the past 22 years. "It's a special place. The faculty, the students, the support staff -- we're like a team. Everybody works well together. In some places, you see this attitude -- 'she's just a secretary' -- I've never come across that here. People genuinely respect one another."

LoCascio began working at McGill in 1973 as a receptionist in the Faculty of Music. It was supposed to be a temporary gig, but she wound up staying and transferred to psychology in 1976. "I thought there was more of a chance for me to move up the ladder." She toyed with the idea of quitting and doing a degree in counselling, but abandoned the notion once she got married and had a couple of kids.

Of course, she has become a counselor of sorts, much to her satisfaction. And, given her academic interests, she's probably in an ideal department.

"We have professors doing all sorts of research here and I keep my ears open. I pick up things."

From the perspective of graduate students, LoCascio stands out as a friendly guide through the maze of policies, forms, questionnaires and other paperwork they have to contend with. "She always goes the extra mile for graduate students, no matter what they need," says David Aboussafy, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology.

LoCascio says her motivation is simple. "I want to make things as painless as I can for them."

The students trust her and when they relay concerns or problems involving the department, LoCascio diplomatically passes the message on to the appropriate administrators and professors. When LoCascio brings an issue up, people take heed.

"When you come to her with a problem, she makes you feel as if she has all the time in the world for you -- and yet she does a million things," says Rhonda Amsel, the associate dean of students and a lecturer in the department. "She really cares about the people around her."

Daniel McCabe

Is your sweet tooth looking for a good time? Have we got a place for you.

It's called Sucré Bleu! and it stocks the kind of yummies that you just can't find at your local depanneur.

Managed by a pair of McGill students, the brightly decorated store opened this summer on St. Denis Street.

"I always wanted to have my own candy store, ever since I was a little kid," explains Mark Devitt, a philosophy and English literature student who seems to have a healthy set of teeth despite his passion for sugary delights. "It was never a matter of 'if,' it was always a question of 'when.'

He hooked up with Andrew Tischler, a political science student interested in starting a small business, and the idea for Sucré Bleu! began to take shape.

"We'll often have people wander in here, spot something, and say, 'I haven't seen this stuff since I was a kid.' That's exactly what we want this place to be about," explains Tischler, pointing to canisters filled with liquorice, chewy wax, chocolate cigarettes and jawbreakers. "This is a store where you can find the kind of candy you grew up loving."

Like PEZ, for instance. Sweet pills that come in dispensers outfitted with the heads of popular cartoon and pop culture characters (Darth Vader, Bugs Bunny and Asterix, for instance), PEZ has spawned a thriving subculture of PEZ collectors, web sites, newsletters and conventions. Devitt has amassed about 800 PEZ dispensers since he became a collector two years ago and his store is suitably well stocked, PEZ-wise.

So far, whoppers (chocolate-covered malt treats), coke bottles (chewy cola-flavoured candy) and marshmallow bananas and strawberries are among the big sellers.

Now that the store is up and running, Devitt and Tischler are hoping to find some good part-time help so that they can devote part of their energies to their school work. Tischler mentions that he read somewhere that Quebecers are among the biggest sugar consumers on the planet. With a statistic like that on their side, there is no way that the sweet-natured duo can't succeed.

Sucré Bleu!, 1701 St. Denis

Today's robots are weird, kludgy things. But then, 20 years ago, people bought computers that were also awkward to use. That's the sort of change we're looking for in the robot industry. I don't think it will happen in the next two years, but in the next five or 10 years, certainly.


Computer science professor Gregory Dudek, speaking to The New York Times. Dudek predicts that in the not-too-distant future, microrobots will be a regular part of households, washing floors and devouring dust and bugs while we sleep.

They sometimes fudge the truth. They can play fast and loose with the rules.

Are we talking about used car salesmen? Politicians?

Nope. According to a new study by an American research team, we're describing business school deans.

Academics from Cornell University and the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, collaborated on the study that surveyed 291 business school deans, mostly from the U.S., Canada and Mexico, on ethical matters. The deans, who responded anonymously, were asked how they would deal with a variety of "what if" scenarios. Their replies were often surprising.

Forty-eight per cent of the deans said they would admit a clearly unqualified student into their faculties if that student's family had made a $1 million donation. Thirty-seven per cent of the deans said they would help a donor get an improper tax deduction by altering the date of a $500,000 gift to their school.

Tammy Hunt, a UNCW management and marketing professor and one of the authors of the study, says her team decided to look into the behaviour of deans "because they serve as ethical leaders -- they set the tone for their schools."

Hunt says the deans adhered to much stricter ethical standards when they dealt with academic matters -- the hiring of new professors, for instance, than when they dealt with a fundraising situation. "That was the biggest grey area. In terms of raising funds to build up their schools, deans are under intense pressure." If letting in one mediocre student means that $1 million can be spent on making the school a better place for all students, "some deans justified it on the basis that it was for the greater good."

For 20 per cent of the deans, personal greed, rather than the financial well-being of their faculties, would be enough to lead them astray. One in five deans said they would accept a $500,000 bequest mistakenly willed to them personally instead of to their schools.

Hunt says she was troubled by some of the results her team uncovered. "We already require students to do a lot of training in ethical conduct. I would like to see deans and academics receive a similar type of training. We're often confronted with difficult things to deal with and I think we could be better prepared for them."

I think the euro will be a disaster. Because nobody knows yet how it will work. We don't know how the central bank will function. When you do something for the first time, the rules should be very clear and they are not.


Management professor Reuven Brenner, the subject of a recent cover story in Forbes Global Business & Finance. Among the topics Brenner addressed in the article was Europe's impending move to a common currency.