In School

With only 60 seconds left in the final game for the SSAF Championship, the UTS Foundation Girls Basketball Team was down by four points. With 40 seconds to go, Violette Wu (F2/Grade 8) was fouled and scored two points to bring the game to a tie. In the last seconds, Hannah Adair (F1/Grade 7) sunk a three-pointer to win the SSAF Elementary Girls Championship. Congratulations to the girls, Head Coach Melanie Adler ’10, and Assistant Coach Neuton Watson. With their transformational endowment gift, Richard Ingram ’61 and Satoko Shibata have secured the future of the Eureka! Research Institute @ UTS. Launched in 2017, Eureka! explores the forefront of evidence-based research in teaching and learning through research partnerships with the University of Toronto, practitioner research support, and the Eureka! Fellow Program, where participating teachers investigate aspects of education within their own classrooms. A new partnership is being forged with educators in Japan in support of UTS’ strategic goal of global citizenship. UTS extends its heartfelt thanks to Richard and Satoko for this incredible legacy to the future of learning.

Over 100 UTS students and staff rallied at climate action strikes at Queen’s Park held in September and November 2019, in conjunction with millions of activists around the world. The students and staff are part of the new UTS Climate Action Now working group, established in September 2019, which has organized student events such as Meatless Lunch Day, clothing exchanges, and eco-anxiety discussions.

In January, the group rolled out the UTS Climate Pledge to staff and students, a convenient, visual tool that highlights the most effective actions for individuals and families to help address climate change. Climate Action Now has also worked with UTSPA, which made commitments to trial fully vegetarian catering, purchase materials made from sustainable resources, and discuss issues at the Annual General Meeting.

If interested in joining the working group, community members can reach out to captains@utschools.ca.

A team of six UTS students surprised the world with a stunning performance for our country at the International Junior Science Olympiad in Qatar last December. As the first team ever to represent Canada in this competition, Rally Lin (M3/Grade 9), Emily Liu (M4/Grade 10), Alexander Lyakishev (M4/Grade 10), Luckya Xiao (M4/Grade 10), Abe Wine (M4/ Grade 10), and Daniel Yang (M4/Grade 10) showed the world what Canada can do.

The annual competition for students age 15 and under tests their combined skill in biology, chemistry, and physics.

Abe won the top theoretical and the top overall score, against 400 of the best science students in the world. Daniel captured a gold medal, Emily took home a silver, and Alexander and Rally each won a bronze.

Kudos goes out to team leaders for being the impetus behind this winning endeavor: UTS’ Jennifer Pitt-Lainsbury and Maria Niño-Soto, and The Bishop Strachan School’s Andrew Moffat.

This year, UTS welcomed back Cat Criger as Elder-in-Residence, who also holds the role of Indigenous Advisor at the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus. In the 2019–20 school year, Cat and UTS Head of Academics Marc Brims organized various learning opportunities, which included attending Kaha:wi Dance Theatre’s The Mush Hole at Young People’s Theatre. After the performance, students took part in a Q&A session with the director and dancers. At the end of the year, students will write a personalized letter to incoming F1/Grade 7 students, reflecting how their values have developed from the principles of reconciliation. Members of the UTS Speech and Debate Team have once again shown their winning way with words. Competing at the Ontario Junior Provincial Debating Championships in February against more than 100 students, two teams from UTS debated the motion to implement a universal basic income in Ontario. The M3/Grade 9 teams of Rally Lin and Alyssia Li came second, and Tiffany Xian and Maria Xu came fourth, with both teams qualifying for Nationals. Individually, Rally placed third, Alyssia came forth, and Maria finished sixth. UTS was the only school to have two teams ranked in the top five and three members ranked in the top 10.

Peter Ortved ’67, principal at CS&P Architects

Meg Graham ’89, principal at superkül J ust as Peter Ortved ’67 began his career as a young architect in the mid-1970s, the world faced an energy crisis. Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom were among the many countries hit by an oil embargo that led to scarcity, high prices, long lines at gas stations, and a sense of panic in an economy largely dependent on petroleum. Among other tumultuous political and cultural events of the 1960s and 1970s that shaped Peter’s sensibility as a student and young architect, the oil crisis prompted a focus on energysaving measures that we still consider important today. Those decades also saw escalating concerns about pollution, air and water quality, toxic waste disposal, ozone depletion, and global warming.

By the time Meg Graham ’89 graduated from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in the late-1990s, concerns about climate change — and global efforts to mitigate it — had gone mainstream. Of particular note to the life of an architect, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) had been formed, which then developed the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating and certification system still in place today. In addition, the Passivhaus building standard had come into being, considered today to be the most rigorous voluntary energy-based standard in the design and construction industry. Both programs aim to support human and environmental health through better building design and construction. All of this to say that, though they graduated over two decades apart, and our climate crisis has grown significantly since each launched their careers, a parallel thread of activism and ingenuity runs through the careers of these two award-winning professionals. They are equally committed to functional, beautiful and sustainable architecture and design within an urban context. A principal at CS&P Architects for the past 26 years, Peter oversees many educational, civic, and justice projects, with a focus on the creation of sustainable, accessible buildings and communities. “Sustainable design principles have had a huge impact on architecture over the past few

decades,” he says. “In their construction and operation, buildings play a significant role in the health of our environment, so reducing their energy and carbon footprint is a priority. That means using sustainable materials, systems and practices. But there is more to sustainable communities than how we build new structures. What’s our approach to existing buildings? To accessibility? To transportation? To a city’s entire infrastructure?” Meg asks the same questions about planning on a macro level. A principal at superkül, an architecture and design practice that prioritizes sustainability and progressive building technologies, Meg maintains a dual focus on individual projects and larger city issues. “The big question, when it comes to our built environment, is where will we put our effort and resources? We’re in an interesting phase, where architecture and design are examining their roles in light of the climate situation. The challenge of making a sustainable building is different than making a sustainable city, though they are connected. While improving the energy use and thermal performance of buildings, we also need to look at density, affordability, traffic, transit and storm water through a sustainability lens in a city like Toronto. There is built-in inertia because the issues are so large. And there is fear of change.” One of those fears manifests as a resistance to increasing residential density in the city, though additional housing is much needed. Meg would like to see far more four-to-six storey buildings in residential areas along transit routes rather than one or two stories. Sometimes referred to as the “missing middle,” the multi-unit dwellings she has in mind would help to fill a gap in affordable urban living. But the single-family home is the holy grail in Canadian culture, and that mindset requires a lot CS&P Architects of energy to budge. Additionally, as both architects point out, existing buildings far outnumber new builds. Passive House Canada estimates that buildings consume up to 40 percent of global energy use and contribute up to 30 percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. It makes a lot of sense to simultaneously target the performance of new and older buildings as part of a larger effort to resolve our climate crisis. Both Peter and Meg are active in civic service and the shaping of our existing spaces. In addition April Maciborka to teaching design at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Meg is a co-chair of the City of Toronto Design Review Panel and a member of the Harvard

University GSD Alumni Council. Peter has been active on a number of committees within the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and Ontario Association of Architects and has been chair of several organizations, including, most recently, Heritage Toronto. He is also currently working with the City of Toronto on a plan for new uses for Old City Hall and has been retained by the federal government to act as the Professional Advisor for the upcoming architectural design competition for Block 2 on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Perhaps most fittingly, both are members of the Project Steering Committee, overseeing the challenge of applying sustainable design principles and construction practices to the redevelopment of a much older building.

Also a member of the UTS Board of Directors, Meg calls the school rebuild “a remarkable project led by amazing people,” including, of course, lead architect Don Schmitt ’70 of Diamond Schmitt Architects.

“It’s an absolutely transformational moment for UTS with all kinds of challenges, like working on a tight urban site, burying the gym, adding capacity, and designing for student learning,” says Meg. “Sustainable design is not just about energy efficiency or safeguarding the health of our environment. It’s also about natural light, air quality, and human wellness. In this case, it also means supporting the teaching and learning goals of the school.”

There may not be any firms in this city that know more about optimal school design than Peter’s professional home, CS&P. In addition to its many community and civic projects, CS&P has an impressive array of public and independent school clients, including Crescent School, Havergal College and Upper Canada College. It is also a member of the Association for Learning Environments, a non-profit dedicated to improving the spaces where children learn, and as such, has earned several A4LE awards.

“A significant contribution I could make to the Steering Committee was my experience with designing for designing educational facilities to suit visions and curricula,” he says. “Physical spaces impact the learning, development and behaviour of teachers and students. Sustainable design is

A heavy timber structure for the Visitor Centre evokes the feeling of being underneath the petal of a leaf at the David Braley and Nancy Gordon Rock Garden at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, a project of Peter Ortved's firm, CS&P Architects.

What Remains to be Seen, a superkül project in Toronto uses passive ventilation, white exterior and reflective roof membrane to save on energy use. much more than avoiding a negative impact on our environment. It’s also having a positive impact on our lives, which in the case of schools means being a catalyst for learning. Future UTS students are going to interact with their space in new ways, which is an important part of this rebuild.”

Like CS&P, superkül has ongoing educational and civic projects — one client is the University of Toronto, another is the City of Hamilton with its new waterfront development at Pier 8 — as well as stunning residential builds. Founded in 2002 by fellow principal (and Meg’s husband) Andre D’Elia, the firm was recently selected as the 2020 Designer of the Year by Designlines magazine, which noted its “super contemporary and innovative private homes — and cool additions to the city’s public realms.” The shorthand for superkül’s design philosophy is “just enough,” which it is currently applying to, among other projects, prefabricated laneway houses that meet rigorous Passivhaus standards.

The laneway project illustrates how layered sustainability is as a concept. Reduced carbon emissions, lower operating costs, natural light, better air quality, and temperature control — these are all standards of sustainable design and construction. Add urban infill development, green roofs, affordability, bike parking, walkability, and access to transit, and compact homes offer not just functionality and smart infrastructure but also beauty and livability for their inhabitants.

“This city is changing,” says Meg. “It is happening incrementally, but it is happening. And a sustainability perspective will continue to grow. So let’s do design and development exceptionally well. Let’s make thoughtful, efficient, long-lasting buildings with timeless design that feel good to be in. Let’s take into account the environmental impact and the role design plays in our wellbeing.”

“This city is changing. It is happening incrementally, but it is happening.”

Peter knows at a personal level just how much design enhances joy. With his partner Maureen O’Shaughnessy, also a principal at CS&P, he recently built a chalet in the country for when nothing but a restorative dose of nature will do. Made of simple, limited materials — the exterior is only corrugated steel and glass — with an interior layout that maximizes light and airflow while protecting against overheating in the summer, the space is used year-round by his family.

“It’s a place where stresses fall away, where the surroundings are almost therapeutic,” he says. “It’s a quiet retreat to rest and relax. The location is part of that. So is the design, the use of windows and light, the abundance of recycled wood. I love life in the city. But it can be good to get away, too.”

Despite the lure of country living, Peter’s first love remains urban design, and his firm is currently working on its first net-zero energy building, a child care centre for the City of Toronto. He is also interested in the ways in which business spaces are evolving to reflect a more flexible and geographically dispersed workforce. Sustainable design responds to human need, in this case by providing more open and fluid work spaces with less overall square footage, fewer private offices, and more individual choice in physical arrangement. Changes in work culture — such as employees in remote locations — allow individual companies to have smaller footprints, which then permits more density in both new and existing commercial spaces.

Thoughtfully restructured work spaces overlap in many ways with well-designed learning spaces where the needs of the users are built into the surroundings. This is the future of UTS, which Meg and Peter are excited to help shepherd into existence. At the same time, they are each aware that some UTS experiences are timeless.

“I’m guessing many students today will have an experience similar to mine,” says Peter. “I didn’t really appreciate the education I was getting until later in my life. I always knew I had great teachers, but the nature of what I learned became more clear over time. The amount of self-direction handed over to students and the emphasis on learning how to learn was impressive then and continues today. That approach really develops independence and self-confidence.”

Peter recalls a period of time in high school when he wasn’t sure what direction to take in life. He considered medicine, accounting, and the law before deciding that his creativity, talent for art, and knack for taking things apart made architecture the right choice. Meg took a little longer to reach the same conclusion, first attending McGill for general arts and science before visiting a UTS friend studying architecture and having an aha! moment. Like Peter, though, she has a deep appreciation for her time at 371 Bloor Street West.

“I wasn’t at the top of my class,” she says. “But one thing I love about UTS is that I had no sense of any kind of ranking. My main sensation was of class cohesion and connectedness. We were all in the UTS experience together, and I always felt part of a special community of funny, smart, kind people. The school is still this way, and the rebuild won’t change that.”

But it will change the learning experience in new and interesting ways, while improving the energy performance of the building to the equivalent of the LEED Silver standard and providing a visually striking addition to the neighbourhood. In the meantime, these two visionary architects continue to leave their mark on the city through beautiful and sustainable design. ■

Peter Ortved ’67 and Meg Graham ’89 apply their sustainable design expertise to our renewed school at 371 Bloor Street West as members of the Building the Future Project Steering Committee.

When a Powerful Engine of Mobility Breaks Down

BY KAREN SUMNER

In his new book, PAUL TOUGH ’85 pulls the curtain back on the American college system to understand why it helps fewer and fewer young people improve their station in life.

PAUL TOUGH’S TIME at UTS was a confluence of divergent forces, as when two rivers join into one body. One stream delivered a stimulating intellectual atmosphere, innovative teaching, and a high degree of autonomy, all of which generated a lasting sense of kinship with the school. Within the other flowed a deep skepticism of education in general, which Paul expressed in a Grade 12 philosophy paper arguing why he should drop out of high school altogether. The two currents seem to be wildly contrary. But then, high school life can be like that.

“I can see the impact of my time at UTS and also at university more clearly having written my recent book,” says Paul. “Spending six years on college campuses, talking to students and professors, gathering admissions and retention data; all of that has helped clarify my own choices and experiences.”

That recent book is The Years that Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us (2019), which argues that higher education in the United States is less and less a powerful engine for broad social mobility and more and more a system that benefits — and elevates even further — the wealthy, talented, and well-connected. Increasingly viewed as a competitive marketplace, access to college has become more unequal over the past decades — while playing a critical role in how and whether young people succeed.

Paul has always been drawn to the subject of mobility. In Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (2009), he explored the Harlem Children’s Zone, a social project that asks what it takes for poor kids to compete with their middle-class peers. In How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (2013), he outlined the ways in which parenting practices, education methods, and social programs can help children in poverty develop specific personal qualities that improve their chances of success. In his career as a journalist — in publications like The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine — he has written extensively about education, parenting, and poverty.

“The American system of higher education has the potential to be a powerful engine of mobility, able to reliably lift young people from poverty to the middle class, and from the middle class to affluence. But in reality, for many young Americans, it functions as something closer to the opposite: an obstacle to mobility, an instrument that reinforces a rigid social hierarchy and prevents them from moving beyond the circumstances of their birth.”

— Paul Tough, The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us (2019)

And now, in The Years That Matter Most, Paul once more asks what it takes for any of us to alter the conditions of our lives, and make the transition from one social or economic class to another. Combining research with the stories of highachieving young people from low-income families, he illustrates that mobility depends in large part on what happens during a brief period when critical decisions are made about higher education.

One of the ironies of Paul’s life is that his own university choices did not conclude with a degree. He dropped out of two schools, Columbia and McGill, largely dissatisfied with both. He has since described the incongruity of spending six years immersed in campus life gathering data for his book without having fully lived it himself.

“I applied to Columbia because I was always interested in American social issues and culture, and I wanted to live in New York,” he says. “And I liked a few of my classes there. But it didn’t feel more intellectually stimulating than UTS had. It felt kind of flat and my fellow students seemed less excited about learning than I experienced in high school. I didn’t really feel like I belonged there. So, I left after the first semester.”

He immediately launched himself on a solo cycling journey from Atlanta to Halifax and then worked as a bike messenger in Toronto before enrolling at McGill, where a number of his UTS friends were studying. But he still wasn’t excited about his learning. He decided to take a five-month internship at Harper’s in 1988, eventually left McGill, and then stayed about a decade at the magazine as an editor.

“Harper’s was a revelation,” he says. “It felt like my community. The days were filled with discussions about books, ideas, politics — plus we were creating something. I spent most of my time as an editor, but I did get a kind of education about how to be a writer.”

Some of that education came from working with Michael Pollan and Jack Hitt, both prolific writers and editors at Harper’s. Paul co-wrote an article for Esquire in 1990 with Hitt that won a Livingston Award, popularly known as the “Pulitzer for the Young,” as it recognizes journalists under age 35. Pollan and Hitt were mentors who helped shape Paul’s sensibility as a writer while he continued work as an editor.

It wasn’t until his 2001 cover story for The New York Times Magazine called “The Alchemy of Oxycontin” that Paul thought to himself, “I can do this.” He was an editor at the magazine at the time, and continued in that role for eight more years, but began researching and writing his first book. He eventually left editing work when he pitched and sold his second book, and he has made a living as an author and speaker ever since.

The Years that Matter Most grew out of a chapter in that second book focused on higher education. Paul describes the data he uncovered while writing it as “shocking.” Pulling on that thread, he published an article in 2014 called “Who Gets to Graduate?,” which focused on degree completion at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. Though UT is a competitive school that accepts only highachieving students, the short answer to the article’s pointed question is that rich kids graduate, and poor and working-class kids don’t.

Paul reported that the greatest factor that predicts whether a student graduates from an American college is how much money their parents

make: “About a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, while almost 90 percent of freshmen born into families in the top income quartile will go on to finish their degree.” This is not an issue of student ability. Rather, “If you compare college students with the same standardized test scores who come from different family backgrounds, you find that their educational outcomes reflect their parents’ income, not their test score.”

That 2014 article became a chapter in Paul’s new book, which reflects and extends his interest in mobility, opportunity, and equity — with higher education as the setting this time. And if Paul felt shocked by what his earlier research revealed, the reader of The Years That Matter Most may be genuinely stunned by the wider, wilder, and darker story it tells about standardized testing, admissions practices, financial aid, getting into college, staying in, and graduating.

Here are a few details: • While the SAT is practically an institution in the US, research — including the College

Board’s own research — shows that it favours wealthy students, discriminates against low-income students, and predicts freshman GPAs less accurately than high school grades. • Those who get a boost in admissions from the SAT (who score above their high school

GPA) are most likely to be affluent white or

Asian students. • Family income has a huge effect on students’

SAT scores, which universities rely on heavily, and almost no effect on their high school grades. • The colleges that can most easily afford to admit high-achieving low-income students are the ones that admit the fewest. • American colleges collectively give more institutional aid to students of families that earn over $100,000 per year than to those whose families earn less than $20,000 per year. • Maintaining an “elite” status as a college depends as much on admitting rich students as high-scoring students. • Job recruitment on elite college campuses replicates the inequities of admissions processes — top firms base their entry-level hiring decisions not on what students have achieved in college but on the fact of their admission, which reflects their parents’ socio-economic status.

There is much more, of course. The book depicts the changing landscape of American higher education in detailed brush strokes, revealing a picture of growing social closure, not mobility.

While Paul says that The Years that Matter Most is not a policy book, he does have some thoughts about what needs to change to improve the system. Highly selective colleges place too much weight on SAT scores; overly favour legacy students, prepschool athletes, and children of donors; and admit too few first-generation black and Latino students. As a result, their student body is overwhelmingly white and wealthy. At the other end of the spectrum, funding cuts to community colleges and public universities mean fewer options for students looking to raise themselves to a middle-class life.

“I talk to a lot of people at universities who agree about what needs to change,” says Paul. “But those who hold the most power are the least interested in what I have to say. For example, abandoning the SAT and relying on high school grades would make admissions fairer. But it would also mean that wealthy families would receive fewer spots at elite schools. No one wants to give up privilege.”

Yet in a way, that’s exactly what Paul did in walking away from two selective universities — while at the same time heading toward a writing career largely shaped by issues of equity, opportunity, and education.

“I credit UTS with getting me interested in writing, education, and broader social issues,” he says. “Even though I made the case for ditching high school, I saw myself as a bit of a rebel! But the passion for ideas cultivated at that time in my life remains with me.” ■

Paul Tough ’85 at his 2012 book launch at UTS for How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character with the School Captains, Emma Clarke ’13 and Josh Feldman ’13.