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Two recent high school graduates, from Victoria and Surrey respectively, have been selected to receive this year’s prestigious Schulich Leadership Scholarship for their undergraduate studies at the University of Victoria. Created in 2011 by entrepreneur and philanthropist Seymour Schulich, the scholarships are awarded annually to 40 students in Canada pursuing undergraduate studies in STEM subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The scholarship for engineering studies is $80,000 and $60,000 for the other areas of study.

History Refugee Committee to sponsor family from Syria     On Sept. 15, the week after President Jamie Cassels wrote to the campus community about the need for a university response to the international refugee crisis, nine colleagues in UVic’s history department decided to proceed in sponsoring a family from Syria.

Pacific research shows that extreme weather patterns—both hot and cold—could mean accelerated erosion in BC. As storm season approaches, BC coastal communities need to prepare for the possibility of extreme flooding and erosion that come with both El Niño and La Niña weather systems, according to new trans-Pacific research published in Nature Geoscience.

Natasha Marshall likes to set goals for herself. Inspired by her mother, who began pursuing post-secondary education while Marshall was a teenager, she realized that through hard work and dedication she could make her dreams come true.

Trudeau Foundation award supports Nancy Turner’s lifelong study of traditional plant use     A long-time champion of Indigenous knowledge, UVic ethnobotanist and ethnoecologist Nancy Turner has devoted her career to understanding and communicating the crucial role that plants play in Indigenous cultures and languages, especially with respect to land use, rights and title. To support this important work the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation has awarded Turner a $225,000 fellowship over the next three years.

On Sept. 15, UVic President Jamie Cassels gave a presentation to the BC Legislature's Committee on Finance and Government Services as part of pre-budget consultations. In his presentation Cassels highlighted six key policy recommendations—including stable research funding, the reintroduction of a provincial graduate scholarship program and restoration of capital funding—as highly important to maintain quality post-secondary education across the province and at UVic.

At UVic, learning extends well beyond the classroom. Through the university’s co-operative education program, students alternate terms in class with paid work terms in positions related to their fields of study.

The internship program offered by the Centre for Asia-Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) at UVic focuses primarily on migrant rights issues across the Asia-Pacific. CAPI has long-standing partners in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Nepal and Bangladesh whose work focuses on migrant rights, refugee rights and trafficking issues.

Longtime residents of Victoria will remember the Maltwood Art Museum on the UVic campus, but may not know much about its namesake, English sculptor Katharine Maltwood and her husband John. In 1964 they left their Tudor-style home in Royal Oak (now the Fireside Grill restaurant) to the university—along with a collection of English furniture, Chinese paintings, Middle Eastern textiles and artifacts collected on their world travels, and an endowment. In the 1970s, the Maltwood museum was unique in North America in its initial Arts and Crafts collecting mandate, with nearly all of the 200 works acquired in the following decade contributing to this focus of the permanent collection.

Surrounded as we are by the Pacific Rim’s temperate rain forest, it’s only natural that the field of forest biology would flourish at UVic. At the program’s roots is Brad Binges, a problem solver with a green thumb, who has helped to nurture and grow forest biology at UVic over the past two and a half decades.  Binges manages the Bev Glover Greenhouse Facility and field research compound for the UVic Centre for Forest Biology. 

In an early preview of the challenges world leaders face when negotiating international agreements on climate change (such as this December’s UN meeting in Paris), two UVic students and a business professor got to embark on an opportunity of a lifetime—travelling to Switzerland to attend the Model United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations. This annual international event is hosted by leading business graduate students and professors across Europe and provides the opportunity for scholars studying climate change to engage in mock climate negotiations. These mock negotiations were an opportunity to engage in debate, to strategize towards fulfilling an assigned country’s interests and, as a collective, to negotiate a best-draft resolution to climate challenges facing the global community.

Many students spend their summers tromping through slash-piles and battling blackflies to replant Canada’s forests. Two UVic engineering undergrads took a different approach: they designed and built a tree-planting robot with the idea of supplementing the humans’ hard work.  “TreeRover” is the brainchild of third-year electrical engineering students Nick Birch and Tyler Rhodes. Through an entrepreneurial co-op work term, they formed their own company—Iota Enterprises—to build their robot prototype in Rhodes’ Saanich backyard.

Do you know an employee who makes UVic a great place to work and learn? Then why not nominate them for one of this year’s President’s Distinguished Service Awards? Any UVic employee or recognized student organization can nominate an individual, grou…

Dr. Marjorie MacDonald (nursing) was presented the 2015 award for Excellence in Advancing Nursing Knowledge and Research by the Association of Registered Nurses of BC. This award recognizes nurses who conduct research with demonstrated practical applications, serve as mentors to beginning researchers, promote the application of research findings into nursing practice, and consistently demonstrate excellence, inclusion and innovation in the nursing profession.

Improving dementia care, stroke recovery and cancer support services are among the goals of eight newly funded projects involving University of Victoria health researchers. Each of the projects is receiving $15,000 from Island Health through its new Collaborative Research Grant Competition, which aims to strengthen ties between the health agency (formerly known as the Vancouver Island Health Authority, or VIHA) and its academic partners. 

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