The Equity Office at the University of British Columbia has won
the federal government’s Vision Award for achievements in employment
equity. In 1996 UBC achieved the following workforce representation
for designated employment equity groups: women, 52 percent; visible
minorities, 21 per cent; persons with disabilities, five per cent;
and aboriginal people, one per cent. From 1990 through 1996, UBC
hired women to fill 37 per cent of new tenure-track faculty positions.
Other recipients of this year’s Vision Award include Microsoft and
General Motors.

• Contact: Sharon Kahn, associate vice-president, Equity,
  604.822.5454

Donors provide new financial aid for students

Donors to the university have provided students with 50 new financial
awards worth an estimated $415,000 this fall. Forty more awards
are expected to be approved by December. That’s welcome news for
students in financial need. More than $19 million is now available
annually for student scholarships, bursaries, prizes, fellowships,
research grants and loans. “The funding available for students at
UBC permits them to devote more time to their studies and less time
to earning an income to support their study,” says Awards and Financial
Aid director Carol Gibson, whose office administers about 14,000
separate awards.

• Contact: Carol Gibson, director, Awards and Financial
  Aid, 604.822.6652

UBC researchers among first to predict El Nino

Using a unique detection method called a neural network model,
a group of UBC climate experts detected the early stages of this
year’s El Niño event and were among the first in the world
to make a correct prediction — the first time El Niño has
been correctly forecast in Canada. The Climate Prediction Group
placed itself in the vanguard of El Niño research when they
trained a computer to recognize the precursor phase of what could
be the biggest El Niño event of the century.

• Contact: Assoc. Prof. William Hsieh, Earth and Ocean
  Sciences Dept., 604.822.2821

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