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The Great BC ShakeOut happens Oct.15 at exactly 10:15 a.m.—so be ready to DROP, COVER and HOLD ON! 

The second phase of the process to update UVic’s official Campus Plan is nearing completion, with the preparation of a draft plan and public engagement sessions this month. The 2003 Campus Plan is being updated to provide a refreshed vision, guidelines and direction for future campus development, in topics such as building placement and parameters, transportation, and open and natural spaces. It also plays a key role in supporting the university’s academic priorities and commitments to sustainability.

A multi-partner, seven-year, $5.5-million research project, Landscapes of Injustice, announced by UVic on Aug. 27 will culminate in an interactive travelling museum exhibition to tell the story of dispossession of Japanese Canadians.

The UVic United Way campaign committee is pleased to announce that we are three quarters of the way towards our fundraising goal of $269,000. In order to meet our target we still need your support!

A team of UVIc MBA graduates are urging the government to consider an energy retrofit plan for BC homes and buildings, that they say will result in cheaper power bills, less CO2 emissions and more than 1,000 new jobs for the province. The new report—Cheaper Power Bills, More Jobs, Less CO2 : How On-Bill Financing Done Right can be a Quick Win for British Columbia—was released September 29 by the UVic-based Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS). The thesis research—conducted by former UVic Gustavon School of Business MBA students Seref Efe, Inam ur Raheem, Tingting Wan and Carter Williamson—analyzed 30 OBF programs in Canada, the US and the UK.

Most children receive their first sexual information from a source other than their parents or teachers. The main source: the Internet. As children become tethered to electronic devices at a younger and younger age, parents need to have “the talk” earlier and earlier, says Jillian Roberts, child psychologist and associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Victoria. Roberts wanted to write a book to help parents and educators begin conversations with young children in a way that is respectful and culturally sensitive, before they see too much online.

University of Victoria neuroscientist E. Paul Zehr remembers the precise moment when his research career shifted gears and science communications became a major part of his activities as a scholar and academic. “It was a Friday afternoon in 2007 and I was searching Google Scholar for publication information on one of my papers,” he recalls. He was pondering how many people his work actually affected. His most cited paper at the time had about 150 citations. But what if that meant only 150 people had read it? Was that acceptable impact? “For me, the answer was no,” he says. “I decided then and there that I wasn’t satisfied with standard measures of academic productivity and impact and instead wanted to reach larger groups more directly.”

When Sean Cunningham, Carissa Ouellette and Matt Holland started working on their final engineering design project last September, they had no idea that it would become the foundation for a new company, but they knew they were onto something really exciting.  The three electrical engineering students began their joint “3D Stereo Navigation” project, an audio-based GPS mobile application for the visually impaired, and soon discovered that what they were working on had never been done successfully in the academic or commercial world.

Call it learning 360. When writing professor Maureen Bradley teaches digital media for storytellers, her venue is a departure from the typical university lecture hall: no podium, desk seating or front of the classroom. Instead, tables with roller-wheel chairs line the room, with a multi-media teaching island in the centre. Each table serves as a five-student pod, equipped with a 48-inch wireless video screen, audio speakers, laptop plug-ins and writable white board. Bradley displays video or broadcasts audio to any or all dozen screens in the room, or shows individual or group projects to every screen.

Industry partnerships, co-op opportunities and connections with alumni were top-of-mind issues for UVic representatives joining Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps’ “Team Victoria” delegation in late September. The 31-person, multi-stakeholder trade mission to San Francisco included BC Technology Minister Amrik Virk and representatives from UVic, VIATeC, Tourism Victoria and the Greater Victoria Development Agency. “It’s an extremely important geographic area for the industry,” says Alumni Relations Director Terry Cockerline. “And our alumni are doing amazing things down there. We’ve reaffirmed those relationships with our alumni and have begun cultivating new ones.”

Distance education program serves the needs of busy professionals—even those who live close to campus  Asking Andy Stuart about his aspirations as a child, he recalls spending many hours playing with a specific group of Lego blocks while growing up in Gordon Head. “The police station was my favorite.”

Seven months after being named one of eight recipients of the Governor General’s Awards for Visual and Media Arts, Department of Visual Arts professor Sandra Meigs has been announced as the winner of the $50,000 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO for 2015. In addition to the cash award, the prize comes with a solo exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario and a further $10,000 towards a publication on Meigs’ work.

The University of Victoria will present two honorary degrees for outstanding achievements in Indigenous advocacy and public service during fall convocation ceremonies.

This year, a week-long celebration in sunny Ottawa marked the formal conclusion of a six-year nation-wide process. June 2015 brought the unveiling of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work and the issuing of 94 recommende…

Rowan Meredith is a UVic Slavic Studies student who attended the 2014 I-witness field school and is currently immersed in a summer co-op at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum. She sent these "notes from the field" while still in Europe.

Rowan Meredith misses the rain. The Slavic studies major, who graduates from UVic in November with the highest GPA in her faculty, has trudged the empty rail beds of former concentration camps in Central Europe and visited Russia in the throes of Olympic mania—but now she is in Los Angeles for graduate studies and “misses the rain desperately. It never ever rains here. Having grown up on BC’s west coast, it seems bizarre to me. I’m not dealing well without rain.”