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Student life

Model UN climate negotiations

The Ring

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.

From campus to incorporated

The Ring

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.

Core values fuel lifelong learning

The Ring

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.”

Viewpoint:2014 Iwitness Field School

The Ring

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.

Humanities grad comes full circle

The Ring

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.”

Exchange makes the world a stage

The Ring

The best way to gauge the impact of your work is always to test it in the field. For Fine Arts undergrad Clare Mathison, that meant getting out of UVic’s Phoenix Theatre and onto the world stage—in Thailand.

Community, contribution & commerce

The Ring

Brina Martens is an aspiring entrepreneur, a trailblazer, a dedicated philanthropist, and a storyteller. She is also one of the Gustavson School’s latest commerce grads, and through the years she’s taken the business school’s pillars to heart: her latest project, ethreeone, is every bit of an international, integrative, innovative and socially responsible business.

Fuel cell-powered studies

The Ring

Co-ops confirm international student’s career choice in engineering When Anaïssia Franca transferred to UVic after the second year of her engineering science program in France, communicating was her biggest challenge. “I had a good understanding of English—but trying to contribute my ideas in group projects when you’re the only woman and there’s a language barrier? That was very hard,” she says.

Co-ops chart path to med school

The Ring

From touring animal shelters in South Africa to analyzing cells from human blood or harvested mouse spleens in Vancouver, Stacey LeDoux’s UVic experiences have been a little different than most. LeDoux graduates this month from UVic, and as she waits to hear back about her med school applications, she’s reflecting on her time as an undergraduate. “UVic not only gave me the opportunity to travel, but to explore my interests, develop my skills, and apply my learning,” she says.

Mapping his own path forward

The Ring

A lifelong love of maps led Michael Branion-Calles to the master’s degree he receives this month in geography. But his path was not straightforward—it started in English. “I began my undergrad degree at UVic in English,” says Branion-Calles, “but once I took an elective geography class I quickly changed my degree path.” He says his appreciation for maps goes back to his childhood and as a kid he always liked maps—an affection that eventually pointed him to the spatial pattern analysis and research (SPAR) lab in the geography department.

A passion for public service

The Ring

Summarizing and reviewing court transcripts for the defence. Analyzing evidence and disclosure from the prosecution to the defence. This might seem like a typical day of work for a law intern, but when you’re doing it at The Hague’s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, it’s anything but normal.

Stó:lō Ethnohistory Field School

The Ring

The only ethnohistory field school in Canada to offer a firsthand learning opportunity involving traditional knowledges of oral history and research of historical documents has been immersing graduate students every second spring since 1998 deep within the Stó:lō community in BC.

Maker Lab and DFL in Visual Arts

The Ring

Update (Oct. 28, 2015): The first Kit for Cultural History was unveiled this month at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The kits will also be presented Nov. 20 at 12:30 p.m. in UVic's David Strong Building (room C116), with physical copies being sent to universities across North America.

Youth in Care award

The Ring

Tuition waivers for up to 15 students each year for those from government care Lilia Zaharieva whispers her question with genuine awe. “They gave how much?” she asks, hearing about the $2-million donation from the Sisters of St. Ann earmarked for the University of Victoria’s Youth in Care award. As a recipient herself, she knows firsthand the life-altering significance of such generosity. “What an amazing gift to give,” she says. “What fantastic help.”

President's Beyond Borders Fund

The Ring

New funding rolled out by President Jamie Cassels has increased support for UVic students to engage in rich and meaningful learning experiences well beyond the campus.

Day in the Life: Shauna Underwood

The Ring

The university’s heart is its students—and Shauna Underwood finds both meaning and joy contributing to their success as an Indigenous student advisor in the Faculty of Human and Social Development (HSD). Underwood sees herself as a traditional person; valuing her Coast Salish culture, she is from the Tsawout Band in W̱SÁNEĆ (Saanich), is a member of the Samish Tribe in Washington, and has traced her roots to the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho. At HSD’s Indigenous Student Support Centre (ISSC), Underwood works within the only faculty-based centre of its kind on campus with a large Indigenous student cohort, faculty and relevant programs. A day in her life is a mix of the routine and the unexpected. “I never know what’s going to come up,” she says—and that’s okay with her.

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