UBC This Week

The 2010 UBC Community United Way Campaign won the United Way Quantum Leap Giving Award.  This award is presented to an organization and its employees who dramatically increased their giving to United Way over the previous year.   

In 2010, UBC’s goal was to raise $600,000.  It surpassed that goal and raised $694,584.87. In addition to this award, UBC was nominated for the Quantum Leap Donor Award which is presented to an organization that achieves an extraordinary increase in employee participation in its campaign.

The success of the 2010 UBC Community United Way Campaign is the result of the hard work and generosity of UBC staff, faculty, emeriti and students. UBC’s United Way Campaign is thankful to everyone who participated in this achievement.

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Six students, faculty and alumni from the UBC Creative Writing Program have made the CBC Literary Awards finalists. One of Canada’s most competitive and prestigious awards to writers, the awards receive approximately 5,000 entries each year.  Of this year’s long and short-listed titles, writers associated with UBC Creative Writing make up 27 per cent of the non-fiction titles (seven of 26), 12 per cent of the poetry titles (three of 24) and 26 per cent of the fiction titles (nine of 35).   

In the short story category, Meredith Hambrock has been selected for her work, All the Girls Love Jesus, a story about two teenage girls who go to Catholic school and have a crush on Jesus, the quarterback of the football team.  Hambrock is currently pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at UBC. 

Other shortlisted UBC candidates include Gina Leola Woolsey for her nonfiction work, “My Best Friend”,   Sonnet L’Abbe for her poetry, “Permanent Resident’s Test,” Teri Armitage for her creative nonfiction piece, “Mr. Taylor’s Birthday Suit,” Brian Brett for his poetry, “To Your Scattered Bodies Go,” and Zoe Stikeman for her short story, “Before Didgey Asks Her To Marry Him.” 

Winners of the CBC Literary Awards are determined by a peer review process. This year, two awards will be presented in the categories of creative nonfiction, poetry and the short story; first prize is $6,000 and second prize is $4,000. CBC’s Shelagh Rogers will announce the names of the winners on March 24 on CBC Radio One’s Q.

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UBC Graduate School of Journalism director Mary Lynn Young will take on the portfolio of Associate Dean, Communications and Strategy, in the Faculty of Arts, effective July 1, 2011.  She will succeed Kathryn Harrison, who will complete her term at the end of June, having served and represented the Faculty of Arts on a wide variety of initiatives over the past three years.

Young joined the faculty of the UBC Graduate School of Journalism in January 2000 and was appointed as director July 2008.

Her list of awards includes the Rufus Z. Smith Award for the best article published in the American Review of Canadian Studies in 2006. The article, “Cross-Border Crime Stories: American Media, Canadian Law, and Murder in the Internet Age,” appeared in the autumn issue. She received a Freedom Forum teaching fellowship for journalism educators at the University of Indiana in 2000 and a UBC Killam teaching award in 2003.

She has worked as an editor, national business columnist and senior crime reporter at major daily newspapers including The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, The Hamilton Spectator and The Houston Post. Most recently she was a national business columnist writing about British Columbia at The Globe and Mail from 2003 to 2006.

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Ka Wai Cheung, clinical assistant professor in the Dept. of Emergency Medicine, and Noah Silverberg, clinical instructor in the Dept. of Medicine, have won Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute’s 2011 Mentored Clinician Scientist Awards.

Cheung, who is an attending physician in the Vancouver General Hospital Emergency Department, won for her project, “Emergency Department Tobacco Cessation Counselling: Implementation and Evaluation of a Community-Based Program.” Her mentor is Jeff Brubacher, assistant professor in the Dept. of Emergency Medicine and a member of the hospital’s Emergency Department.

Silverberg, who is a psychologist in the Acquired Brain Injury Program at G.F. Strong Rehabilitation Centre and a member of the UBC Divisions of Neurology and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, won for her project, “A randomized controlled trial of self-management for persistent post-concussion syndrome.” His mentor is Grant Iverson, professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry.

For more info, visit http://www.med.ubc.ca/about_us/Awards_and_Honours/Awards_and_honours_–_March_2011.htm#mentored_clinicians

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UBC School of Population and Public Health faculty members represented three of the four research milestones that were recently awarded Population and Public Health Research Milestone awards by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research-Institute of Population and Public Health and the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA). The inaugural awards recognize research milestones that have significantly contributed to the public’s health in Canada and globally. 
 
Prof. Morris Barer, Prof. Clyde Hertzman, Centre for Health Services and Policy Research faculty member Robert Evans and their colleagues were recognized for their book, Why Are Some People Healthy and Others Not? The Determinants of Health of Populations. Assoc. Prof. Jerry Spiegel, Prof. Annalee Yassi and their colleagues were recognized for their Ecosystem Approaches to Health project. SPPH associate members, Drs. Evan Wood and Thomas Kerr were recognized for developing Canada’s Research Base for Harm Reduction and Health Equity Approaches to HIV Prevention and Control.
 
The award winners were announced at the CPHA Public Health Expo in Ottawa in January. For more details on these projects and the awards, visit http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/42882.html.

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Ten researchers from UBC’s Faculty of Applied Science recently received funding for their projects through the province’s Natural Resources and Applied Sciences Endowment, which builds research and development, advanced training, technology transfer and commercialization capacity in British Columbia.

Faculty include: Septimiu Salcudean, Shuo Tang, Alireza Nojeh, Vincent Wong, Boris Stoeber and Victor Leung (Electrical and Computer Engineering); Xiaotao Bi  and Kevin Smith (Chemical and Biological Engineering); Donald Mavinic (Civil Engineering) and Anoush Poursartip (Materials Engineering). To read about their research projects, visit: www.engineering.ubc.ca/news/2011/mar9.html

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The Institute of Asian Research (IAR) announces Prof. Earl Drake as their new honorary professor.  He will be completing a biography of a Javanese princess circa 1274 to 1350 and working with graduate students and faculty on a number of Asia-focused projects.    He officially joined UBC on Feb. 1, 2011.  

Drake has been a major figure in Canada-Asia relations  for forty years, serving as Canada’s Ambassador to China (1987-90), Indonesia (1982-83), assistant deputy minister for Asia Pacific in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, and Vice-President of Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).  

He also served as Canadian representative in the governing councils of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris and World Bank in Washington.   He later directed the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development while at Simon Fraser University.  Currently he is a Vice Chairman of the Canada-China Business Council and a director of Silvercorp Metals Inc., China’s leading silver producer. 

To read more on his autobiography A Stubble-Jumper in Striped Pants: Memoirs of a Prairie Diplomat, vsit http://www.amazon.com/Stubble-Jumper-Striped-Pants-Memoirs-Diplomat/dp/0802044646/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1298574591&sr=8-1

To read his memo Comparing Tahrir Square Demonstrations of 2011 and Tiananmen Protests of 1989 visit  http://www.asiapacificmemo.ca/comparing-tahrir-square-and-tiananmen-square

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The Faculty of Applied Science announces its Alumni Achievement Award 2011 winners.

• UBC Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award—Eric Newell
• UBC Engineering Community Service Award—Paul Geyer
• UBC Engineering Young Alumnus Award—Robin Farnworth
• UBC Engineering Future Alumnus Award—Lin Watt and Ska-Hiish Manuel
• UBC Engineering Outstanding Emeriti Faculty Award—Norman Epstein

The winner of the McEwen Family Teacher Award will also be presented. This is a first time award created to highlight the contributions high-school teachers make to students and communities through their mentorship.  The award celebrates those who go above and beyond teaching the curriculum to ensure their students succeed academically and personally.

The awards will be given at the annual Engineering Excellence Celebration 2011 on March 18, 6 to 9 p.m. at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Hotel

For more info, visit www.engineering.ubc.ca/news/2011/mar7.html

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Dimas Yusuf, a second-year UBC medical student, is this year’s recipient of UBC Library’s Innovative Dissemination of Research Award. Yusuf’s submission Transcription Factor Encylopedia (TFe), is a wiki-based software system that houses more than 800 articles about TF genes. This special class of genes is critical to learning how to use embryonic stem cells for the treatment of human disease. 

This online gene encyclopedia encourages experts to create short summaries of the known information about each TF, and will benefit doctors, scientists, clinicians and those who work in life sciences. Yusuf’s work is sponsored by Prof. Wyeth Wasserman from the Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics.

Yusuf will be formally recognized at the Celebrate Research Week Awards reception on March 10, 2011. 

UBC Library’s Innovative Dissemination of Research Award honours UBC faculty, staff and students who expand the boundaries of research through the creative use of new tools and technologies.

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Four UBC students have submitted a video to the TD Go Green Challenge. The video outlines their plan to help extend the growing season at the UBC Farm and supply more local produce to campus year-round. Their vision includes expanding hoop house production, improving crop storage facilities at the UBC Farm, and delivering produce to campus via a new fleet of cargo bikes and a hybrid electric vehicle. 

To support the students and the farm, view the video and vote for the project at http://www.tdgogreenchallenge.com/video/id/48/playid/48. Contest closes March 11.

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Faisal Devji is a University Reader in Modern South Asian History at the University of Oxford.  He will be presenting a free lecture titled “The Meaning of Global Jihad” as part of the Lifelong Learning Series put on by UBC’s Continuing Studies. 

Devji has held faculty positions at the New School in New York, Yale University and the University of Chicago, from which he also received his PhD in Intellectual History. Devji is the author of two books, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (2005), and The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (2009). He is currently writing a book on the emergence of Muslim politics and the founding of Pakistan.

Date: March 12
Time: 7 – 9 p.m.
Place: UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson St., Vancouver
Info: Register: http://cstudies.ubc.ca/community/courses.html

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The Institute of Asian Research (IAR) invites the community to subscribe to the Asia Pacific Memo (APM) series. Twice-weekly, APM publishes short text memos or video interviews.

• Mar 1: Thailand’s Red-Shirts: One Year Later, by Nelson Rand, journalist in Bangkok
• Mar 3: East Asia’s Population Crisis, by Terence Roehrig, U.S. Naval War College
• Mar 8: Fully Ordained Nuns in Theravada Buddhism, by Jim Placzek, Honorary Research Associate, IAR

To read the memos, visit http://www.asiapacificmemo.ca/

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The School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture will host David Owen and his talk Why Manhattan is the Greenest City in North America. With experience in the New York area, he is a staff writer of The New Yorker and an author of Green Metropolis. The presentation is co-hosted with the Global Civic Policy Society.

Date: March 17
Time: 8 p.m.
Place: Playhouse Theatre, Hamilton and Dunsmuir, Vancouver
Info: Tickets $10 www.sala.ubc.ca

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On UBC CiTR Radio’s Prof Talk with host Farha Khan, Asst. Prof. Mauricio Drelichman from the Dept. of Economics will discuss economic history as a field of study as well as his research on the economic history of early modern Spain. 

Every second Tuesday, Prof Talk on 101.9FM features interviews with professors from a variety of disciplines.

Date:  March 15
Time:  3 p.m.
Info: Live programming: http://citr.ca
Podcasts: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Citr–ProfTalk
Show schedule: http://ubcproftalk.blogspot.com

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Louis Freedberg, senior reporter and co-founder of California Watch at the Center for Investigative Reporting, will join Dave Beers, sessional instructor at the UBC Graduate School of Journalism and editor of The Tyee, in a conversation titled “New Ways of Educating the Public about Education.”

Freedberg will address: What can educators do to matter more in the public conversation mediated by journalists? Can non-profit internet media fill the void left by hollowing out of corporate media content? What lessons from California might apply in BC, whose schools also face struggles over resources and serve a diverse student population? Is digital media improving or harming public engagement in politics and policy? 

California Watch, a new arm of the Centre for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, is a non-profit that creates in-depth coverage and shares it to be published by multi-ethnic media around the state. Freedberg created Youth News in Oakland, California, covered the revolution in South Africa, and worked as a lead reporter and editorial writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Date:    March 16
Time:    5 – 7 p.m.
Place:   Multipurpose Room, Liu Institute for Global Issues, 6476 NW Marine Dr
Info:     Dr. Michelle Stack, Dept. of Educational Studies,  604-822-9101, michelle.stack@ubc.ca

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