Ms. Meredith Fenton, Director International Baccalaureate, hosted an alumni reception in the Ponderosa Ballrom to celebrate 5 years of the IB program being offered in the Faculty of Education. Many attendees traveled from around the Lower Mainland to attend this event.
Congratulations to Dr. Sam Rocha, assistant professor, Department of Educational Studies, who has been selected as a Carl A. Grant Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Carl A. Grant Scholars Lecture Series is part of an ongoing program created in 1989 to feature scholars of colour in education. Dr. Rocha was selected as an outstanding scholar in higher education and will be giving three talks, including the Carl A. Grant Lecture: The Humanities as Pre-Qualitative Research.
Information about Dr. Rocha’s upcoming lecture can be found here, and additional information about the lecture series can be found here.
Congratulations to Samira Thomas (PhD ’17) as the winner of the 2017/18 Ted T. Aoki Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in Curriculum Studies.
Dr. Thomas won the award for her dissertation entitled “Grief and the Curriculum of Cosmopolitanism” with guidance from her supervisor Dr. William Pinar, Professor.
UBC is proud to launch its new strategic plan: Shaping UBC’s Next Century.
This plan sets out our collective vision and purpose, and our goals and strategies for the years ahead. It will guide our decisions and actions – and create a framework for resource allocation across the university.
Shaping UBC’s Next Century focuses on three themes that we believe are critical to society today: Inclusion, Collaboration and Innovation.
The plan also describes four core areas that continue to define what we do as a public university: People and Places, Research Excellence, Transformative Learning and Local and Global Engagement.
Shaping UBC’s Next Century outlines our ambitions through a series of strategies. Our next steps will be translating these strategies to actions, and creating project plans to guide and align our efforts.
We will continue to seek your input as we move forward. We hope you will continue with us on this journey.
To read the plan, visit strategicplan.ubc.ca
Redirecting to academic.ubc.ca/congress-2019 shortly…
By: Douglas Todd
April 18, 2018
Dr. Marv Westwood, a UBC education professor emeritus, was interviewed for a Vancouver Sun column about the need for Canadian boys to have male teachers as positive role models.
Westwood discussed how a male teacher “validates boys’ experience.”
The article also appeared in the National Post and other Postmedia outlets.
Link to full text.
Story via UBC News.
Congratulations to Dr. Bonny Norton, Department of Language & Literacy Education (LLED), and her community partner Education without Borders for being one of 10 groups to be awarded a grant in the inaugural UBC Community-University Engagement Support (CUES) competition. CUES grants are designed to offset indirect costs incurred by community partners who are collaborating with the University.
Community Partner: Education without Borders (Dr. Cecil Hershler, Chair)
UBC Partner: Dr. Bonny Norton, FRSC, Professor (Faculty of Education)
Additional Partners: Dogwood 25; Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (SHIP)
Award Value: $30,000
The grant will support the development of Indigenous Storybooks, a web-based project led by Haida scholar, Dr. Sara Davidson. The project makes linguistically and culturally appropriate K-12 literacy materials freely available to parents, families, community members and educators in Canada and other global sites. Dr. Norton is the research advisor on the project and the funding will help enhance the umbrella website as well as support a pilot project with the Skidegate Haida Immersion Program (SHIP) on Haida Gwaii. Congratulations!
Prof. Bonny Norton
Sara Davidson
A message from Eric Eich, Vice-Provost and AVP Academic Affairs
The Office of the Provost and Vice-President Academic is pleased to announce that UBC has obtained a one-year institutional membership with the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. The NCFDD is an independent organization dedicated to supporting academics throughout their careers by providing professional development, mentoring, and training opportunities. These programs serve faculty members, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, as well as administrators.
The NCFDD offers workshops and programs on a variety of topics, such as increasing research productivity, dissertation success, and maintaining work-life balance, as well as networking opportunities. The majority of these resources are free of charge.
The membership covers all UBC’s learning sites.
We encourage you to take advantage of these career development resources by creating your own account. Here is how to begin:
As part of UBC’s efforts to support the career growth and aspirations of our faculty, postdocs and graduate students, we hope you will find this service to be useful in the pursuit of your academic goals. In one year’s time we will evaluate the success of this service and decide whether to proceed with an ongoing membership.
By: Matthew Stranach
April 15, 2018
The Conversation mentioned UBC in an article about Indigenization.
UBC offers a course on “Reconciliation through Indigenous education.”
Link to full text.
Story via UBC News.
CIFAR invites the global research community to submit proposals for workshops on the social, ethical, economic, and legal dimensions of artificial intelligence. Open to applicants anywhere in the world, this call will provide up to $80,000 to support short-term collaboration between international, interdisciplinary groups. This collaboration will culminate in a CIFAR-supported publication targeted to non-academic sectors, such as policymakers or NGOs. CIFAR Proposals are welcome on any aspect of the intersection of AI and society, however proposals exploring AI through the following themes are encouraged:
Policy Considerations: As AI technologies continue to accelerate their pace of development, there is considerable debate as to the effects and potential responses across sectors and policy domains. CIFAR seeks workshops that examine a diverse range of policy considerations of AI systems, for example, urban planning, transportation, education skills, work and law.
Global Dynamics of AI: AI technologies are increasingly being developed and deployed across borders and jurisdictions, even as significant regional differences exist. CIFAR seeks workshops that will explore questions about AI on a global scale, as it relates to globalization, trade, development, international relations, culture, competition, inequality and governance.
Discovery and Creation: While prediction and analysis are the primary functions of most AI systems, some AI technologies are creating new works of art, music, science and journalism. CIFAR seeks workshops that will examine questions such as the nature of intelligence, creativity, authorship, art, bias, accountability, transparency and scholarship.
Application Deadline: May 28, 2018
