UBC News Digest

The UBC News Digest is a weekly summary of news stories about UBC people, research, learning, community, and internationalization initiatives. News Digest past issues are also available on-line.

June 20, 2002

• UBC Architecture Prof. gets Governor General Medal for unique school design
• UBC researchers share in $11.7 million CIHR funding
• UBC student teachers use laptops to connect students' imaginations with computers
• Medicine appoints new Associate Dean, Research

UBC Architecture Prof. gets Governor General Medal for unique school design

School of Architecture Assoc. Prof. Patricia Patkau has received the Governor General Medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Canadian Council for the Arts for her work on Strawberry Vale School in Saanich, B.C.

Governor General of Canada Adrienne Clarkson presented Patkau with her medal at a ceremony at Rideau Hall on May 23.

Patkau and her husband John have designed major campus buildings for Houston and Philadelphia and are currently supervising the construction of their competition-winning Bibliotheque Nationale du Quebec, near Montreal's UQAM.

The Patkaus work was the subject of a recent feature article in the Vancouver Sun (Sat 27 April 2002). It described Strawberry Vale as "a bold rethinking of how light, vista and nature might inspire students and teachers." The school, set beside a grove of rare oaks and offering views of the Saanich Peninsula, has classrooms built around small courtyards and a complex variety of spaces for teaching, learning and group activities.

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UBC researchers share in $11.7 million CIHR funding

UBC Researchers have received the lion's share of $11.7 million in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) to train health research in B.C. Health Minister Anne McLellan and CIHR president Alan Bernstein made the funding announcement on June 10. The funds are part of an $88 million large-scale CIHR strategic training initiative in health research that will bring together groups of accomplished health mentors and educators to answer important questions in health and disease.

Researchers from B.C. universities and affiliated research centres and hospitals will receive an average of $300,000 per year for a total of $11.7 million in funding. UBC researchers and projects funded by the initiative are:

• Dr. Stephen W. Chung, and his research group, who will study transplantation
• Dr. Charles J. Frankish, who will establish a community partnership research
• Dr. Michael F. McDonald, who will establish a group to study the ethics of health policy and research
• Dr. Kay Teschke, who will lead a group from UBC to bridge public health, engineering and policy research
• Dr. Steven R. Vincent, who will study neurobiology and behaviour

Other B.C. recipients included Dr. Steven Jones from the UBC-affiliated B.C. Cancer Research Centre who, along with Dr. Michael J. Smith from SFU, will lead a collaborative study of bioinformatics. Dr. Francis Lau, from UVic, will lead a group venture in health informatics.

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UBC student teachers use laptops to connect students' imaginations with computers

When UBC student teachers headed into Lower Mainland-area elementary schools to do their classroom training last month, they reversed a long-standing tradition by bringing apples to their students.

In the first project of its kind in Canada, the 36 teachers-in-training from the Faculty of Education's Fine Arts and new Media in Education (FAME) group have been toting sleek, new Macintosh Apple iBook computers with wireless capabilities to their practicum classrooms.

The goal of the initiative is to explore how teachers and students can imaginatively integrate technology into teaching and learning into all school subjects. With help from FAME teachers, students from Grades 1 to 7 at the eight Vancouver-area schools involved in the pilot are now using laptops to connect to the Internet, and to create various projects such as high tech slide shows on ancient Greece, websites on Japanese culture and society, experience science with Harry Potter in a virtual Hogwarts lab - all using digital graphics, audio, animation, and video.

"This project is not about learning to push a mouse -- with laptops the possibilities are endless," says the project's leader Assoc. Prof. Peter Gouzouasis.

"Teachers and students are learning to work in new and different ways in the classroom. With portable computer stations, pods of three or four kids can discover, explore, present, and express a variety of information. And because they don't have to move to a computer lab to use the technology, their work is seamlessly integrated in familiar classroom contexts.

"For their lessons, each FAME teacher has the use of a laptop purchased by the Education Faculty. It connects them to the Internet and frees them from their desks to use multimedia in any setting.

In addition, Apple Canada has loaned 20 laptops to support the project, and the North Vancouver School District has loaned 12 laptops and wireless network equipment for the project, and is providing technical support.

During their school visits, UBC students are also acting as technology mentors to teachers who aren't familiar with new technologies and how they can be used in lessons. The laptop pilot is the keystone of 19 projects that UBC's Education Faculty has undertaken in the last year to explore new ways of using technology to transform teaching and learning.

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Medicine appoints new Associate Dean, Research

Dr. Alison Buchan has been appointed Associate Dean, Research of the Faculty of Medicine effective March 1, 2002 for an initial three-year term through to June 30, 2005.

Dr. Buchan's research is focussed on human cell biology with a special interest in the regulation of endocrine cells and neurons. A new direction in this work is to determine the effect of the gastric pathogen, Helicobacter pylori, on antral epithelial cell function.

In her new role, Dr. Buchan take responsibility for overall management of the Faculty of Medicine's Point Grey campus based research activities. She will also be responsible for the grant management process, the research database management and communication, and will take a major leadership role in regard to planning for the new Life Sciences Centre on the Point Grey Campus.

She succeeds Dr. Joanne Emerman.

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