Watson, Cicely

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Higher Education

1921-2015

Professor Emeritus, Department of Theory and Policy Studies (retired 1985)

Established Department of Educational Planning (1965-1982)

BA 1943 (McGill); MA (Smith College) 1944; PhD 1949 (Radcliffe College, Harvard)


Senior College and the larger scholarly community lost a major champion with the passing of Dr Cicely Watson, Professor Emerita of Higher Education, on December 17th, 2014. Cicely Watson had been a Founding Fellow of the College, and an active participant until this last year in its activities and councils. Members of Senior College will for the most part have met Cicely only in the final years of a remarkable three decade history of “post-retirement” contributions to the University of Toronto and to the larger scholarly community. (Retirement was a concept that Cicely was prepared to accept only in its technical form.) But the retirement community was the direct recipient of her later energies. Participants in the early years of RALUT will recall her voice, joined with colleagues like Germaine Warkington and Peter Russell, urging that the organization give a significant portion of its attention to fostering opportunity and support in the continuing scholarly lives and interests of its membership. The subsequent emergence of Senior College itself was in no small measure a result of this encouragement. And other members of the retirement community will recall her work with a group of colleagues, including Ursula Franklin, Phyllis Grosskurth, and Blanche van Ginkel, in securing a 2002 settlement with the University that accorded female retirees a more equitable pension settlement. But in other dimensions of these extraordinary three decades, Cicely continued to take an active role in the life of her academic home since 1965, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE); and within that the Higher Education Group. During that time, she dedicated a major portion of her time and energy to helping some dozens of graduate students – who for various reasons had encountered obstacles in the completion of their programs – to bring their theses and degrees to completion. Cicely’s dedication to graduate training and education leaves a testimonial of something in excess of 130 completed doctorates – of consistent rigorous standard. It is perhaps a bit ironic that someone leaving such an extraordinary record should not initially have actually been looking toward an academic career – despite a stellar records of historical study at McGill, Smith and ultimately Harvard, where Cicely received her PhD (in French history) in 1951. By avocation an historian all her life, Cicely was by vocation a planner - and an educational planner whom former premier (and OISE founder) Bill Davis considered Canada’s foremost. Following her study at Harvard, Cicely turned her attention to demography, with a stint as a post-doctoral student and faculty member (Population Investigation Committee) in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics - including a period as stagier at the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) in Paris. All this came to a focus in 1954, when she invited to address the first World Population Conference in Rome, sponsored by UNESCO and WHO. From this point on, Cicely’s focus was to be Research and Development in education – even though, as she noted ironically, she had no formal background in that field of study. Her subsequent work extended from secondary education in Ontario to the CEGEP system in Quebec. On her return to Canada, she was taken on enthusiastically by the then Ontario College of Education (OCE) Department of Educational Research 1963 – and within two years was Full Professor and Head of that unit. That latter year, 1965, saw the establishment OISE – of which Cicely had been a shaping influence - and her appointment to that new institution as Chair of the newly constituted Division of Planning, at the time the Institute’s only female head and Full Professor . (This division, the first such in the world, was later to be absorbed within the Institute’s Higher Education Group – of which Cicely would also subsequently serve as Chair.) Cicely remained a protective advocate of this new Institute which was unique in Canada in its initial focus – though lamenting somewhat, in more recent years, what she felt to be the consequence of its gradual merging with University norms. For her, this meant that its centre of gravity inevitably shifted toward graduate studies, and away from her first love, research and development - or at least the major long-term collaborative R&D initiatives that had been her initial focus. Cicely’s primary commitment to research and development caused her to see a particular form and focus for the academic units she led. She wanted partnerships across the disciplines and between the academic and administrative cultures – both within the University, and in collaboration with agencies provincial, federal and international. Her work brought individuals of a broad range of backgrounds and skills into collaborative training and study, both credit and non-credit, and into contract research teams; and it saw Cicely herself acting as a Consultant to Cabinet within Ontario, and a collaborator with bodies ranging from Statistics Canada and the Science Council of Canada, to UNESCO, on issues related to population. As a mark of her contributions across the world, Cicely in 2010 was honoured by the International Society for Education Planning (ISEP) – an organization in which Cicely had herself served as President and as founding editor of the Society’s journal. Cicely’s citation made particular note of her being responsible for the first doctorate in educational planning. Cicely’s initial academic trajectory – from McGill to Harvard and the LSE – was by no means an inevitability. Her family, living in Montreal’s working class district of Point St Charles, was ready to provide moral support, but had little to offer in the way of financial assistance; and Cicely, during a time of comparatively little public support, was able to chart her way through on scholarships. The importance of this kind of assistance to prospective students sharing similar circumstances to her own, made scholarship support a major theme of her subsequent career. As important as the financial basis, though, was a series of what Cicely labelled “enablers” – mentors, in today’s parlance. She identified individuals who gave her direction at times when her own experience was insufficient; and one in particular – Dr Robert Jackson, Head of the Department of Educational Research on Cicely’s arrival in Toronto, and the one she credits with giving her the start to her unique academic and research career in that unit and, subsequently, OISE. The memory of the impact that these “enablers” had on her own life instilled in Cicely the same commitment and priority. Innumerable students and colleagues will recall the time and devotion she took to fostering and nurturing their careers - as will a number of the Institute’s and University’s administrators, who received similar counsel, as Cicely thought needed! In more recent years, Cicely’s first discipline began to reassert itself, and she became a central participant in the preparations for OISE’s 100th 2007 Anniversary (or, more precisely, the centenary of the University’s Faculty of Education, which in time became part of the present Institute). Cicely had for some time been concerned that the history of the Institute and its predecessors was drifting away; and, as part of OISE’s Anniversary Advisory Committee, and its Publication and Archival Project, she undertook to recapture the story of at least those elements in which she had been directly involved. The characteristically remarkable contribution she made to this undertaking was recognized in 2007 with the presentation of the University’s Arbor Award. Cicely graciously contributed a portion of her research to the Senior College Encyclopedia; and that remains a most appreciated and appropriate memorial. Alexander Gregor http://sce.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/Department_of_Educational_Planning http://sce.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/Ontario_Institute_for_Studies_in_Education_(OISE)

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http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/Deaths.20160104.93369566/BDAStory/BDA/deaths

Cicely Watson, a crusader for educational reform in Ontario An expert in educational planning, Cicely Watson pushed the province to eliminate Grade 13 and played a leading role in the development of Ontario’s college system. She died last month, age 94. Share on Facebook

Reddit this! Cicely Watson, second from right in this 2001 photo, was part of a group of female professors who fought the University of Toronto for back pay and pension adjustments, alleging the university had unjustly benefited from decades of paying women less than men. COLIN MCCONNELL / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Cicely Watson, second from right in this 2001 photo, was part of a group of female professors who fought the University of Toronto for back pay and pension adjustments, alleging the university had unjustly benefited from decades of paying women less than men.

By: Ron Csillag Special to the Star, Published on Sun Jan 10 2016 What was wrong with Grade 13? Everything, pretty much. Students were popping tranquilizers and antidepressants. Anxiety was rampant. It was “a nerve-racking, useless year,” griped one student. “Please do something about it!” Grade 13, another suggested, was “a monster.” This was no statistical blip. More than 80 per cent of the roughly 1,300 Ontario students surveyed in Prof. Cicely Watson’s groundbreaking mid-1960s study lamented that Grade 13 was an overloaded, exam-obsessed pressure cooker. Watson was an early advocate for the grade’s abolition. But she had to wait. It wasn’t until 1984 that Queen’s Park began replacing Grade 13 with the Ontario Academic Credit, a series of courses needed for graduation. The OAC acted as a fifth year of secondary education until it, too, was phased out in 2003. More than a crusader for education reforms, Watson, who died last month in Toronto at age 94, relied on hard data to back her research. She was a pioneer in the field of educational planning, using population projections and demographic models to map and develop systems of education for children and adults and help school boards anticipate enrolment. Watson was prescient in predicting the “baby bust” of the 1970s, when Ontario’s lowered birth rate (owing probably to the new birth control pill) would translate into hundreds fewer classrooms.

The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education building on Bloor St. W., under construction in 1969. When OISE was created in 1965, Cicely Watson was appointed founding chair of its department of educational planning, which had an international influence. FRED ROSS The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education building on Bloor St. W., under construction in 1969. When OISE was created in 1965, Cicely Watson was appointed founding chair of its department of educational planning, which had an international influence.

Watson was also among the founders of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. “In many respects she was the institute’s matriarch,” noted Glen Jones, OISE’s interim dean. When OISE was created in 1965, Watson was appointed founding chair of its department of educational planning, the first academic unit of its kind in the world. “The department was not only important for educating the next generation of planners in Canada; it became a training ground for educational leaders in many parts of the world, especially Africa,” Jones added. “She was a department chair and policy adviser during a time when these roles were almost always assumed by men, and there is little doubt that she was a role model for many aspiring female academics and academic administrators.” Watson also played a leading role in the establishment of Ontario’s college system, writing reports on the need for students who aren’t cut out for university to still go beyond high school. Most colleges were founded between 1965 and 1967 when Bill Davis, then education minister and later the premier, tabled a bill to create a post-secondary educational system different from universities. Today, there are 24 Ontario community colleges that enrol 200,000 full-time and 300,000 part-time students. They boast that 83 per cent of their graduates find work within six months. In an email to the Star, Davis said of Watson: “I benefited greatly from her brilliant talent as Canada’s most prominent scholar in the field of educational planning.” The Montreal-born Watson earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1951. Three years later, she was invited to address the first United Nations-sponsored World Population Conference in Rome. The conference resolved to create more experts in population trends. Not long after that, Watson was hired as a lecturer at the University of Toronto’s department of educational research. In 2001, the university settled a claim brought by Watson and three other female professors who were fighting for back pay and pension adjustments. The women alleged the university had unjustly benefited from decades of paying women less than men. Throughout the difficult legal battle, the “exceedingly tough-minded” Watson illustrated that “it’s possible to be determined but civilized, considerate, well mannered, well spoken and thoughtful,” recalled her co-complainant, the noted scientist and educator Ursula Franklin. While the terms of the settlement were confidential, dozens of retired female professors received enhanced benefits. Watson is survived by three daughters she had with her husband, the late Frank Watson. To mark her 80th birthday, OISE established the Cicely Watson Graduate Scholarship. Jones recalled that just a few months ago, Watson came into his office, closed the door and said, “I am here to tell you a few of the things you should be doing as dean.”