UBC Reports | Vol. 49 | No. 3 | Mar. 6, 2003

UBC Alumni

Sustainable Writer

Katie Eliot, BA’80
Peter Wall Institute

The university, it turns out, is a great place to study and a great place to work. Witness all the UBC grads who work here.

One of these, Katie Eliot, took her BA in Geography in 1980, then worked as a PR coordinator for Fisheries and Oceans, and, later, for the Urban Transit Authority, which became SkyTrain. She came back to UBC in 1984 to work on Viewpoints magazine for the faculty of Commerce. She moved to the Asian Centre in 1987 where, among other things, she coordinated their newsletter and other publications. She finally settled at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies in 2000. As the Secretary for the Institute, she coordinates academic programs (Visiting Junior Scholars, UBC Distinguished Scholars in Residence), plays host to the visiting international researchers who stay at the Peter Wall residence, and, like most senior administrative staff at UBC, is the key person who keeps her unit from lurching to a grinding halt.

Katie is a member of UBC’s Sustainability Committee, and works on a sub-committee formed to help give back to departments some of the money they saved in energy consumption. UBC saved nearly $4 million in power costs last year due to the committee’s hard work and the high level of sustainability-consciousness it raised on campus, and 2 per cent of that saving, or $75,000, will be ploughed back in to sustainability projects proposed by university units. The committee has received 36 proposals, and is currently reviewing them.

But in her real life, Katie is a writer. She’s published a book of her own poetry and has had work published in many magazines including Canadian Author and Bookman, Scrivener, Taproot and New Quarterly. As a reviewer and critic, she has pieces in World Literature Today, BC Books and other Canadian magazines. Katie was the founding editor of Spokes, the quarterly newsletter of the Canadian Poetry Association in Vancouver, and SPEC’s newsletter, Spectrum. Her scripts have been featured on Ecowatch, a weekly radio show broadcast by CFRO. After returning to UBC, Katie was instrumental in starting the Geography Alumni Association, and also edited Geogramme, its quarterly newsletter. These days she has switched genres and is working on some magazine articles and a historical novel.

If you are a UBC grad working on campus, let us know. We want to keep in touch with you. Call the Alumni Association at 822-3313.