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WelcomeWelcome to the December 2019 issue of issue of Letter from Santa, a regular communication from myself to members of the UBC community. |
Highlights
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Senior Academic AdvisorsI am delighted to announce that Senior Instructor Kathryn Gretsinger, Professor Walter Mérida, Professor of Teaching Karen Ragoonaden, and Professor John Klironomos have been appointed as Senior Faculty Advisors to the President. Kathryn Gretsinger and Walter Mérida are based at UBC Vancouver, with Karen Ragoonaden and John Klironomos based at UBC Okanagan. Each faculty advisor will work on projects that advance our strategic plan. They will advise me on topics and issues that are important to faculty across both campuses, with an overarching goal to bring our UBC community closer together. I look forward to working with this new team of faculty advisors. Please join me in welcoming them to these new roles. |
Shaping UBC’s Next Century Call for proposals: Advancing Education RenewalA new strategic plan “Call for Proposals” has been launched to support UBC’s efforts in the area of education renewal – one of our six priority strategies for the next two years. The Advancing Education Renewal Call for Proposals will allocate up to $1.5 million to projects focusing on one of the following three areas: improvements in teaching effectiveness, program redesign, and strengthening of graduate programs. These education renewal activities will ensure that UBC can continue providing exceptional learning experiences for our students. I encourage all UBC Vancouver faculty, staff and students who are interested in enhancing our activities and innovating with new approaches to attend one of a number of information sessions being held throughout December and January. Full details about the call can be found on the VP Academic website. |
Strategic Cooperation with Osaka UniversityLast month, I signed a Statement of Strategic Cooperation with Professor Shojiro Nishio, the President of Osaka University. The Statement calls upon our two universities to strengthen research collaboration in selected fields related to our mutual strengths in Physics and Medicine. Osaka was one of UBC’s earliest partner institutions in Japan, with the original academic exchange agreement signed in 1984. |
U7+ executive committee electionI was honoured to be elected recently to the international executive steering committee of the U7+ alliance, along with the presidents of other major universities, including Ecole Polytechnique, the London School of Economics, Columbia University and others. The committee will be meeting shortly to start the implementation of the U7+ commitments, which I outlined in a recent blog post. |
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5G Comes to UBCRogers and the University of British Columbia have announced a three-year, multi-million dollar partnership deal to build a real-world 5G Hub on the UBC Vancouver that will be a testbed and blueprint for 5G innovation in Canada. This partnership with Rogers opens exciting research and learning opportunities for our faculty and students in wireless technology. It is a great example of how universities and industry can work together to develop new knowledge and provide our students with the skills that are vital in building the digital economy. Find out more at https://support.ubc.ca/news/rogers-ubc-ink-multi-year-agreement-build-5g-hub-vancouver/ |
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Times Higher Education RankingsUBC continues to do well in international rankings. In the Times Higher Education subject rankings, we placed in the top 100 in all categories:
I am proud of our outstanding faculty, students and staff who have made UBC one of the world’s outstanding universities. |
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UBC Connects, President’s ConcertsOver the past month, I’ve had the honour to host or cohost several events, including two UBC Connects lectures (UBC alumna Ziya Tong and Nobel Prize winner Donna Strickland), a President’s Roundtable on Migration and Integration, a UBC Dialogues marking the 50th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality and two events in the President’s Concerts series. Outreach events such as these align well with our strategic plan, which emphasizes community engagement and dialogue.
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Congratulations to our Grads!Last week we celebrated Fall Congregation. Thousands of students received diplomas in the eight ceremonies held at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the UBC Vancouver campus. I would like to congratulate all the new graduates, and I would also like to thank the staff and volunteers who worked so hard to make Graduation 2019 such an outstanding success. |
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News from the FacultiesArts: A $1 million donation from the Diamond Foundation will expand Jewish studies programming in the classroom and beyond the UBC campus. The funds will help bring in speakers from all over the world, enable students to engage directly with world-renowned visiting scholars, and support academic study and research abroad. • The School of Public Policy and Global Affairs announced its 2020 Lind Initiative: “Thinking While Black,” inviting us to consider Blackness as both a culture and a mode of thinking. This series will meditate on the structures of race in North America and spotlight the seemingly disconnected forms of racial violence that hide in plain sight. The series includes visits from foremost intellectuals including Claudia Rankine, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, Ibram X. Kendi, and Jesmyn Ward. Each of the public events held at UBC Vancouver is free to attend. • The Arts Student Centre has a new home and a new design. The building will serve as a hub for some 14,000 Arts undergraduate students and feature study spots, recreational spaces and an art gallery. It is scheduled for completion in September 2021. Education: The Faculty of Education has unveiled its new strategic plan, Learning Transformed. Learning Transformed. The plan, which was developed by the entire Faculty of Education community, aligns with and supports UBC’s overall strategic plan, UBC’s Next Century, and situates the Faculty’s work within the core areas of people & places, research excellence, transformative learning, and local & global engagement. One of the plan’s most important goals is to support bold and daring teaching, learning, research, and scholarship that challenge barriers to educational access and success, promote quality and socially responsive educational experiences, and contribute to public dialogue. Find out more about the plan at educ.ubc.ca/learningtransformed/. Forestry: The Faculty of Forestry has also officially launched its Strategic Plan 2019-2029. The product of consultations and online surveys, this plan represents a refresh of the previous strategic plan for the Faculty and supports UBC’s strategic plan, Shaping UBC’s Next Century. • The Faculty received special honours at the recent 25th Congress of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) in Curitiba, Brazil. As the global network for forest science cooperation, IUFRO hosts delegates from up to 120 countries at congresses held every five years to advance forest research and scientific understanding so vital to the health of our planet’s forests. The awards presented to UBC faculty and students at this congress included: the IUFRO 2019 Scientific Achievement Award to Dr. Terry Sunderland; the IUFRO Student Award for Excellence to PhD candidate Andrea Vasquez-Fernandez and former Masters student, Khalil Walji; and the Global Competition on Best Practices in Forest Education award to Associate Dean of Asian Strategies and Director of the Asian Forestry and Research Institute, Guanyu Wang on behalf of Asia-Pacific Forestry Education Coordination Mechanism. Dr. Suzanne Simard was selected by the Scientific Committee, the IUFRO Board, and the event’s organizing committee as a keynote speaker of one of the plenary sessions. Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies: GPS has uploaded enrolment numbers for the 2019 Winter session, as well as interim numbers for the 2019 Admissions cycle on the Graduate Education Analysis & Research (GEAR) site. For the first time in the history of UBC, course-base master’s programs (3548) have similar enrolment numbers as doctoral programs (3625). Data shows consistent, considerable growth in course-based master’s enrolment, with an increase of 134% since 2003. Land and Food Systems: New funding from the Ministry of Agriculture will see the Faculty of Land and Food Systems drive scientific innovation for B.C.’s food and beverage industry. The Hon. Lana Popham, Minister of Agriculture, announced Assistant Professor Anubhav Singh as the new Food and Beverage Innovation Professor. He will work with industry and academic partners on applied innovation projects, support the new BC Food Hub Network, and develop academic programming in food and beverage technology. Pharmaceutical Sciences: Dr. Karla Williams, professor in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at UBC and Canada Research Chair in Oncology is researching potential treatments for metastatic breast cancer by studying invadopodia. To read the release, visit https://news.ubc.ca/2019/11/06/ubc-expert-immobilizes-tiny-structures-linked-to-metastatic-breast-cancer/.
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