Queen’s bridge players head to North American championships
For Queen’s students Leo Chen, Artsci ’09, Lisa Csima, Artsci ’07, Ross Jamieson, Compsci ’07 and Matt Sharp, Artsci ’08, the end of classes doesn’t mean their hard work for the year is over.
The four students have qualified for the North American Collegiate Bridge Team Championships held this July in Nashville, Tenn. Chen, Csima, Jamieson and Sharp won all their qualifying matches against the tournament’s defending champions at the University of Michigan in February.
Csima said the students from Princeton, Stanford and Yale, against whom the four competed, made for a tough competition.
Sharp said they’re confident they’ll stand their ground at their first national event.
“We feel like we belong with the Ivy-Leaguers,” Sharp said.
Csima appreciates how bridge forces players to think.
“People don’t really like to think that much,” she said, explaining how fast-paced gambling games like poker are more popular now because they appeal to peoples’ spontaneous impulses.
Csima said anyone who’s interested should come out to the Queen’s bridge club, which meets in Mac-Corry E230 at 2:30 p.m. every Saturday. New are welcome and no experience is required.
—Allison MacLachlan
Queen’s first in student satisfaction among research-based universities
In the Maclean’s annual survey of student satisfaction, Queen’s ranked first in first-year student satisfaction among research-based universities.
The survey consisted of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), the Canadian Undergraduate Survey Consortium (CUSC) and an additional survey by Maclean’s to assess those universities that didn’t participate in either the NSSE or CUSC. Queen’s only participated in the NSSE.
The NSSE asks students in first and fourth year about their experiences within and outside of the classroom setting.
Fifty-three per cent of first-year students rated their experience as excellent and 38 per cent rated it as good. Satisfaction dropped by 12 per cent among senior students, with 41 per cent rating their overall experience at Queen’s as excellent and 45 per cent rating it as good.
Sixty per cent of first-year students said they would definitely go to Queen’s if they were to start over again, while 45 per cent of fourth-year students said they would definitely come to Queen’s.
Queen’s, along with Western, Waterloo and Guelph, is one of the few research-based universities to receive satisfactory responses from those surveyed. NSSE also created benchmarks to compare the performances of American and Canadian universities in five key areas. Overall, Canadian schools fall behind their American counterparts.
—Lisa Jemison and Florence Li
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