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.

Jan. 31, 2005

• Liu Institute Hosts Canada-Norway Peace Prize Symposium Feb. 3-5
• Future UBC Okanagan Professor Awarded Portugal’s Highest Honour
• English Prof Earns 2004 Distinguished Editor Award
• UBC Students Receive Premier’s Excellence Awards
• Calling Nominees for President’s Service Award
• Faculty of Forestry Hosts International Bio-Diversity Expert
• E-Strategy Update Gets A Facelift

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Liu Institute Hosts Canada-Norway Peace Prize Symposium Feb. 3-5

The Canadian Consortium on Human Security and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Ottawa are bringing together top experts and government officials from February 3-5 to study top human security issues and effective peace-building.

Key speakers include the Hon. Jan Peterson, Norway’s Foreign Minister, and the Hon. Dr. Lloyd Axworthy, President of the University of Winnipeg and Canada’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, who will open the symposium on February 4 at 9:15 a.m. at the Asian Centre Auditorium.

Dr. Stephen Toope, Chair of the U.N. Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and CEO of the Trudeau Foundation, will present the keynote address on February 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Woodward Instructional Resources Centre, Lecture Hall 2.

UBC presenters include Prof. Andrew Mack, speaking on “The Radical Decrease in Human Insecurity,” and Prof. Phillipe Le Billon, who will present “From Intervention to Reconstruction; Challenges in Iraq.”

For a full agenda, visit: http://www.humansecurity.info/Conferences/PeacePrizeSymposium/index.htm.

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Future UBC Okanagan Professor Awarded Portugal’s Highest Honour

Carlos Teixeira, assistant professor of geography at the Okanagan University College and future UBC Okanagan faculty member, has just been awarded one of Portugal's highest honours, the Ordem do Infante D'Henrique, for his academic work on the Portuguese in Canada. The award is analogous to The Order of Canada.

Prof. Teixeira is a relatively new member of the Department of Geography at OUC with teaching and research interests that include urban and social geography, migration processes, community and neighbourhood change, housing, ethnic entrepreneurship, and the social structure of Canadian cities.

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English Prof Earns 2004 Distinguished Editor Award

The Council of Editors of Learned Journals has named UBC English professor Eva-Marie Kröller the Distinguished Editor for 2004. Kröller, a former editor of Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review, is the first editor of a Canadian journal to win the award, which celebrates exceptional achievement in editing, and especially recognizes influence in the journal’s field of scholarship.

The journal Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review has been published by the University of British Columbia for 45 years.

Prof. Kröller specializes in comparative Canadian and European literature, cultural interrelations during the Victorian era and the contemporary period, with an emphasis on questions of cultural semiotics, literary taste, relationships between literature and the arts, and postcolonial theories of comparative literature. She was editor of Canadian Literature from 1995-2003. She served as a juror on The Charles Taylor Prize committee for literary non-fiction from 1999 to 2004.

The Council of Editors of Learned Journals is the major organization dedicated to supporting academic journal publishing in the humanities, with membership of more than 450 editors.

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UBC Students Receive Premier’s Excellence Awards

Seven of the 13 winners of this year’s Premier’s Excellence Awards are now students at UBC. The awards are given out each year to students nominated by high school principals throughout B.C. in recognition of a high level of academic achievement and outstanding service to their communities and schools. This year, 195 graduating students were nominated for the honour. The winners now studying at UBC are:

• Tara Commandeur of Summerland, studying anthropology
• Brittany Ewart of Abbotsford, studying arts
• Florina Feng of Richmond, studying sciences
• Eiston Lo of North Vancouver, studying political science and business
• Lani McPherson of Crescent Valley, studying environmental engineering at UBC and UNBC
• Leslie Sanderson of Quesnel, studying sciences
• Amy Jean Singleton-Polster, of Duncan, studying sciences

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Calling Nominees for President’s Service Award

The President's Service Award for Excellence Committee is seeking nominations for 2005. The deadline for submissions is February 28.

The purpose of the award is to recognize staff and faculty for excellence in personal achievements and outstanding contributions to The University of British Columbiaand consists of a Gold Medal and $5,000 for each recipient.

All UBC employees and students may nominate candidates for this award. Nomination forms have been circulated to all Deans, Department Heads, Directors of Schools, Service Unit Administrators, the Alma Mater Society and the Graduate Student Society. Nominators will be required to provide rationale and background information on the individual nominees. Support letters from other colleagues and students will also be encouraged and received for evaluation.

The Committee on the President's Service Awards for Excellence is made up of representatives from administration, faculty, M&P staff, union staff, and students. For more information visit www.ceremonies.ubc.ca.

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Faculty of Forestry Hosts International Bio-Diversity Expert

Prof. Stuart Pimm, the Doris Duke Chair of Conservation Ecology at the Nicolas School of Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University, and Extraordinary Professor in Conservation Ecology Research Unit at University of Pretoria in South Africa, visits UBC’s Faculty of Forestry on February 8 to deliver the Namkoong Family Lecture Series. Pimm’s topic: “Does the Variety of Life on Earth Have a Future?”

Room 1005, Forest Sciences Centre
424 Main Mall

The Namkoong Family Lecture Series is made possible by the Namkoong Teaching Exchange and Research Endowment, established in 1995 by a gift from the Namkoong family in support of graduate students, teaching exchanges and public lectures.

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E-Strategy Update Gets A Facelift

The news update service of UBC’s e-Strategy unit has had a makeover with the aim of better supporting its goal of enhancing learning, research and community at UBC through leading-edge technology initiatives.

This month’s issue covers topics like: How can your iPod help you do research?; What is blogging all about anyway? and; How can a virtual filing cabinet help students get a job? To see this month's issue or to subscribe, visit http://www.e-strategy.ubc.ca/news.html.

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