Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops is starting up a new law program with guidance from the University of Calgary. The partnership between the schools will make sure the program gets under way successfully.

Throughout the partnership, the U of C will be licensing their curriculum to TRU and will help them adapt it to their needs, recognizing differences with British Columbia's law.

The Art History department at the University of Calgary has put a hold on admissions for art history majors for the 2009/10 year.

The art history program is under review and no new students will be accepted into the program next year.

"Programs are routinely revised and analyzed by department heads," said music and art communications manager Jenny Conway Fisher. "It's a way of finding out what our niche is, what our expertise is and ensuring that that program is as effective as possible."

The University of Calgary's new Clinical Simulation Learning Centre is paving the way for better practical experience, giving nursing students an opportunity to treat patients effectively with the use of lifelike mannequins.

These mannequins, also known as patient simulators, can blink, breathe, talk and have heart sounds, pulses and body fluids in the same way as humans. Through the voice of an instructor in the control room, patient simulators can verbally respond to questions of nursing students.

The University of Calgary launched a program that enables young women in science and engineering across Alberta to get involved with their field's future generation last week.

Cybermentor.ca is a web-based tool that introduces 11 to 18-year-old girls who have a zeal for science with post-secondary female researchers who have turned that passion into a career. It also gives young women access to information about the range of careers available in the sciences and engineering.

Aspiring filmmakers will now have a program to call their own. The University of Calgary has a newly revamped program that will give budding Spielbergs a degree in film studies.

The program, which was a film minor before, accepted students for their first semester in fall 2008. Once the university decided to get the program up and running, the committee that ran the minor had to figure out which faculty was best to handle the budding program.

First-year engineering students might have found an answer for affordable and efficient housing. For their final project of the semester, they were assigned a seven-week endeavour to sell their version of a new and improved house. Starting Monday, the students featured the projects on the second floor labs of the ICT building on campus, which are open to the public.

"We were asked to innovate a design [that was] low cost and highly efficient," said first-year engineering student Corey Jasinski.

What do ethics, glowing bacteria and revolutionary new software have in common? They were all projects presented by University of Calgary teams at the recent International Genetically Engineered Machines competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The University of Calgary is discussing the possibility of reorganizing four arts-related faculties into one super arts faculty on campus. In a recent memo, president Harvey Weingarten and provost Alan Harrison announced plans to initiate discussion between the faculties of communications and culture, fine arts, humanities and social sciences.

This fall, the University of Calgary became the first university in Canada to offer a four-year graduation guarantee, but only first-year students in the faculties of communication and culture, social sciences, science and humanities were eligible to enrol.

The University of Calgary's faculty of nursing is off to a promising start this month after receiving a $1.1 million donation from the Brenda Strafford Foundation for a centre of excellence in gerontological nursing. The five-year plan to construct the centre aims to enhance the lives of seniors in long-term care facilities while encouraging nursing students to specialize in senior care, or gerontology.