LFS Today Nov 25, 2021 | LFS Intranet 2020

News

Alumna Wins Prestigious Rhodes Scholarship!

Congratulations to Aditi Sriram (BSc GRS 2021), one of 11 Canadians heading to Oxford University next year, and among more than 100 standout scholars from around the world who won a Rhodes Scholarship.

Read the story here.

Listen to her interview on CKNW here (29 min. mark).

LFS United Way Bake Sale 2.0

Feeling a little peckish? Don’t want to get wet from the heavy rain? Don’t fret as we still have some delectable treats left from yesterday’s successful United Way Bake Sale! Come by the Dean’s Office – all by donation (no minimum)! It’s the perfect opportunity to use that pocket change or coins you found in your sofa.

ReachOut – Fall 2021 issue

Thanks to everyone who participated in this fall’s alumni magazine. It’s now online, and will be soon distributed to 10,000+ LFS alumni, government, industry and media via email or post. Our cover this time features Will Valley, Associate Dean of EDI, and Dana-Lyn Mackenzie, Senior Manager of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigeneity in LFS and ApSci. Other stories feature ideas on adapting to climate change, learning to coexist with wildlife (Kristen Walker), new faculty member Tabitha Robin Martens, our new student embedded counsellor Nicole Adoranti, and a student community project with Unique Get Together Society, among other stories!

LFS OER Champions

Congratulations to the 2021 UBC Open Education Resource Champions:

Maja Krzic
Maja Krzic is a key part of the Virtual Soil Science Learning Resources (VSSLR) group and has recently co-edited the open textbook Digging into Canadian Soils: An Introduction to Soil Science which brings together 36 authors from across Canada.

Lindsay Cuff
Lindsay Cuff supports the use of OER and recently received an OER Fund grant to create a Scholarly Communication Open Textbook for Forestry and Land & Food Systems students.

Candice Rideout
Candice Rideout goes above and beyond to engage students with a variety of insightful course content that is free of cost to students and greatly enhances class discussion.

See the full list here.

University Curriculum Development Study – Instructor Input Wanted

From Christine Mishra and Dr. Shoshanah Jacobs
on behalf of the University Curriculum Development Study Team at the University of Guelph

The purpose of this study is to determine what approaches university instructors use to develop and update their course curricula. We are trying to understand the influences, tools and resources, motivations, and barriers that are involved in both the creation and updating of individual course plans. You will be asked about your experiences and the tools you use when developing courses, and any other factors that impact your course development process. This project has been reviewed by the Research Ethics Board for compliance with federal guidelines for research involving human participants (REB# 21-03-023).

Eligibility: Anyone who has taught one or more university level courses in Canada in the last 5 years (2016).

Survey: Please click here to take this 10-15 min anonymous online survey: bit.ly/3vGF6K4

As a thank you for participation, at the end of the survey you can enter your email address to be entered to win a $50 gift certificate to the retailer of your choice (chances of winning are 1 in 20).

For more information, please contact biomlab@uoguelph.ca

Teaching Theory Thursday

Review Sessions
“Conducting a review lesson or two before every exam will give students a better idea of what to expect on the test and make them more confident with that material. Reviewing topics frequently throughout the course will put less pressure on you and students in these major review lessons.”

– Arntsen, 2021, https://busyteacher.org/4012-how-to-teach-review-lessons-success-strategies.html

Brought to you from the Learning Centre

Events

Nov. 26 – Lunch & Learn Series with Maja Krzic

This session will be held on Friday, November 26, 2021 at noon. Maja Krzic (Associate Professor, Applied Biology/Forest and Conservation Sciences) will lead the session this week.

In this session, presented by Maja Krzic as one of the co-editors of the “Digging into Canadian Soils: An Introduction to Soil Science” textbook, you will learn about the main steps of the 3-year project that led to development of this unique, open textbook.

To access the textbook please go to https://openpress.usask.ca/soilscience/

Join Maja as she shares her experience with putting together this open textbook. To register for this session, please visit https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5cscumsqDwrG9OI5NHXco_FeqnmI0pzdWM1

Follow the LFS Learning Centre on Twitter and the Lunch and Learn Series Webpage.

Dec. 1 – Master of Nutrition and Dietetics Prospective Students Info Session

UBC Dietetics welcomes applications for the Master of Nutrition and Dietetics program. We are hosting a virtual info session on Wednesday, December 1 from 4-5 pm to give a brief introduction to the program and answer your questions.

Upon your completion of the registration form, you will receive a Zoom link via email.

Dec. 2 – LFS Scholar Series: Florence Kondylis

Title: Retargeting Agricultural Investments: Evidence from Impact Evaluations at Scale

Abstract: What constraints limit the adoption of productive technologies among smallholder farmers? In her talk, Dr Kondylis will discuss the evidence gathered from large-scale experiments with farmers across a variety of country contexts. Specifically, she will describe how Impact evaluations were leveraged as a policy tool to elicit different constraints to adoption of proven technologies and estimate the effectiveness of interventions in promoting smallholder farmers’ growth.

Biography: Dr. Florence Kondylis is a Senior Economist and Research Program Manager at the Development Impact Evaluation department (DIME) at the World Bank. Dr. Kondylis studied applied math at Paris Dauphine, received a magistère in economics from Paris 1-ENS Ulm-EHESS (aka, Paris School of Economics), a PhD in economics from the University of London, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University. Dr. Kondylis’ main interests are in development, labor, conflict and agricultural economics. Dr. Kondylis founded and lead the Bank’s impact evaluation program in Agricultural Adaptations, which is run in close collaboration with researchers and practitioners across a large number of donor institutions, governments, NGOs, and academic institutions. Dr. Kondylis also co-founded DIME Analytics to help generate and curate more, better data for impact evaluation.

Thursday, December 2
4-5pm
MCLM 160
or
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: 677 8820 6346
Passcode: 758385

Deadlines

Nov. 30 – Excess Staff Vacation Carry-Over Deadline

Depending on your employee group, the general staff vacation carry over maximum for vacation days into the new year is 10 days. Provisions for carrying-over excess vacation time will be reviewed on a case-by-case approach, where a rationale will need to be provided that will include the reasons why you were unable to use up your vacation time, a plan for usage of the excess time and approval by both your supervisor and the Dean’s Office.

The deadline to submit rationales for excess vacation carry-over is November 30, 2021. Any submissions received after this date will not be considered.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact Mona Lee.

Feb. 2 – NACTA 2022 Teaching Award

One of the central purposes of NACTA (North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture) is to recognize those individuals whose efforts represent the very best in agricultural higher education. Each year, NACTA offers many opportunities for outstanding educators to be honored. Submissions are now being accepted for each of the 2022 awards, to be given at the annual meeting in Wooster, Ohio next June.

For information on how to nominate an educator for any of the following awards, please visit their website here. The deadline to submit nominations is February 1, 2022.

Submit a nomination here.