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Ian McTaggart Cowan archive a living legacy for contemporary research     The launch of a digitization project and a new archive are a providing a powerful combination of resources for ecological researchers, on and off campus. The Ian McTaggart Cowan archive, recently donated by the Cowan family to UVic Special Collections and University Archives, contains materials from McTaggart Cowan’s remarkable 75-year career as one of Canada’s foremost wildlife biologists and conservationists.  

UVic has unveiled a permanent rainbow crosswalk at the busiest pedestrian crossing on campus, to celebrate Pride Week in Victoria and to affirm its support and commitment to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community.

The balancing act of water stewardship Hazy skies, brown grass, forest fires across the province—it’s hard to miss the signs of an unusually dry spring and summer on Vancouver Island and across western Canada. Such dry conditions raise questions: should we conserve water at the expense of UVic’s renowned gardens? Should we water selectively to avoid tinder-dry conditions that could create a fire hazard? And what about the bigger picture of reducing water consumption throughout the year? At UVic, this is the balancing act of water stewardship.

The University of Victoria’s Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) is partnering with the University of Manitoba to develop, install and maintain the cabled estuary observatory component of a new Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO) in Hudson Bay.

Almost a decade ago, XEMŦOLTW̱ Nick Claxton told his family he wanted to revitalize the reef net fishery, a fishing practice unique to the Straits Salish people and banned by the colonial government 100 years ago. His uncle advised: “You can’t just go fishing. You must first build a ceremonial net.” And so began the spiritual, cultural and educational journey that Claxton considers his life’s work. It also became his PhD dissertation in curriculum and instruction at the University of Victoria—a research study designed to revitalize the knowledge, ceremony and practice that was nearly lost.

How do Greater Victoria’s post-secondary institutions work together with municipalities to benefit the region? First, you get everyone in the same room and start the conversation. On June 2, the presidents of Royal Roads University and Camosun College joined UVic President Jamie Cassels in welcoming more than 80 elected municipal officials, city managers and academic leaders from the three post-secondary institutions to an inaugural Catalyst Conversations forum that challenged participants to imagine how they could work together to benefit our region.

Forest fire management will be one of the applications of new technology being developed by University of Victoria’s Centre for Aerospace Research (CfAR) which received new funding from Western Economic Diversification this month.

Every summer for the last 10 years, high above the University of Victoria’s athletic fields, a little family has been going about its daily business, largely unnoticed, except by photographers and curious onlookers willing to kink their necks and squint their eyes.

The moment she walks into her office, Juanita Shorkey can “feel the love.” The room is full of Hello Kitty memorabilia, from money banks to plush toys to candy dishes, and nearly all of the items have been gifts from friends, family members or colleagues—including the tour guides Shorkey coordinates. It doesn’t take long to understand why; Shorkey’s positive energy and enthusiasm for her work is practically contagious.

What will the Holocaust mean to new generations in the 21st century? This summer, the world saw shocking film footage of Edward VIII in 1933 teaching the Nazi salute to the Queen as a young girl in the same year Hitler came to power in Germany, with subsequent international media coverage putting pressure on the royal family to open its archives and also raising important questions about a real risk of losing the educational legacies of the 1940s. As home to the I-witness Holocaust Field School (the first of its kind for undergraduate students at a Canadian university) and the UVic Holocaust Archive, UVic hosted a global gathering early this month to explore Holocaust education as a means to tackle contemporary issues of hatred, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, xenophobia, ethnic conflict and genocide.

It’s what you need to know. The next stage of UVic’s Enhanced Planning Tools program is now ready for managers across UVic’s faculties and administration. Over the past two years, details of the new resources and priorities planning system were rolled out in a series of meetings with faculties and administrative units.  Enhanced planning is the new process UVic has adopted for decision making, budgeting and organizational forecasting for all units, faculties and departments starting in 2015–16. 

Heartbreaking headlines dominate the news around the world in continuing coverage about the predicament of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Americas seeking lives in new countries. What gets less attention are challenges faced by the millions of families caught up in undocumented migration for temporary work, especially those in the Asia-Pacific region. A new study by UVic researchers points to simple solutions that could have great impact.

When UVic student Kimberly Hanton packed her bags for her work term in Australia last month, she carried words of encouragement from the local Indigenous Elders. Hanton recently embarked on the university’s first Indigenous co-op exchange after attending a departure ceremony at First Peoples House in her honour. This unique co-op exchange saw Hanton travel to the University of Newcastle in Australia in August, while UVic will welcome Australian Indigenous student Cristal Walters to campus this fall. 

You need not look far to find the world’s “super predator,” a term used by UVic scientists to describe how human dominance has bred an unrelenting predacious global culture that threatens nature’s balance. Research published in the Aug. 21 edition of the journal Science by a team led by Dr. Chris Darimont, the Hakai-Raincoast professor of geography at the University of Victoria, shows how extreme human predatory behavior is responsible for widespread wildlife extinctions, shrinking fish sizes and disruptions to global food chains. 

An academic leader in global child health and human rights research, who is developing a child rights global monitoring platform that will be tested in New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories and BC, has joined UVic as a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar. Dr. Ziba Vaghri, of the School of Public Health and Social Policy, has more than 15 years of extensive research, international experience, significant awards, and a global network of researchers and practitioners all set on creating a seamless UN-endorsed, rights-based system to measure global child health and development.  Vaghri’s current work plan could position BC and Canada as leaders in global child health and human rights research. For the past eight years, Vaghri worked with a team of experts serving the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN-CRC). They developed a monitoring tool for children younger than nine and led pilot tests in Tanzania, Chile, and will soon do the same in Canada.

The Faculty of Fine Arts mourns the passing of inspirational teacher and invaluable colleague, School of Music professor Eugene Dowling. Following a 2013 diagnosis of prostate cancer, Dowling passed away at his home on June 30 with his family and close friends at hand.