Academic literature on the topic 'University of British Columbia – Alumni and alumnae'

Science One is a full academic year interdisciplinary alternative to the traditional first-year experience in the Faculty of Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Anecdotal reports suggest that alumni/ae of the program do very well in upper-level classes and many become successful graduate and medical students. The high faculty/student ratio makes the program an expensive one, however, and thus we have sought rigorous evidence of the benefits to our students. Our approach has been a value-added one; we have compared high-school and upper-level undergraduate grades for students in all UBC's first-year science programs. We have found a clear signal that there is a large benefit to participating in Science One, and conclude that this arises from a combination of the recruitment of enthusiastic students who are up for a challenge, the Science One admissions process, and taking the program itself. Science One consiste en une année scolaire interdisciplinaire complète qui représente une variante de l’expérience traditionnelle vécue en première année à la Faculté des sciences de l’Université de la Colombie-Britannique (UBC). Des rapports isolés suggèrent que les anciens étudiants du programme obtiennent de très bons résultats dans les cours de niveau supérieur et plusieurs obtiennent leur diplôme avec succès et étudient en médecine. Cependant, le ratio élevé enseignant/étudiant fait en sorte que le programme coûte cher, c’est pourquoi les auteurs ont cherché à obtenir des données probantes sur les avantages qu’il présente pour leurs étudiants. Ils ont employé la méthode de la valeur ajoutée; ont comparé les notes obtenues au secondaire et celles des étudiants de premier cycle inscrits à des cours de niveau supérieur dans tous les programmes scientifiques offerts à l’UBC. Ils ont découvert que la participation à Science One est très bénéfique et ont conclu que cela résulte d’une combinaison entre le recrutement d’étudiants enthousiastes qui souhaitent relever un défi, le processus d’admission à Science One et le fait de suivre le programme.

Autumn is not only a gloriously colourful time of the year, it is a time when a plethora of children’s book related events and awards take place. Just see what is happening in the next few months:IBBY: “Silent Books: Final Destination Lampedusa” travelling exhibit In response to the international refugee crisis that began last year, the Italian arm of the International Board on Books for Young People has launched a travelling picture-book exhibit to support the first children’s library on the island of Lampedusa, Italy where many African and Middle Eastern refugees are landing. After stops in Italy, Mexico, and Austria, the exhibit is currently touring Canada. It premiered in Edmonton at the Stanley A. Milner Library in August. Next are three Vancouver locations: UBC Irving Barber Learning Centre (Oct. 1 to 23), Vancouver Public Library central branch (Oct. 8 to 18), and the Italian Cultural Centre (Oct. 10 to 22). Then the North York Central Library in Toronto from Nov. 2 to Dec 11. Recognizing Lampedusa island’s cultural diversity, the exhibit comprises exclusively wordless picture books from 23 countries, including three from Canada:“Hocus Pocus” by Sylvie Desrosiers & Rémy Simard’s (Kids Can Press), “Ben’s Big Dig” by Daniel Wakeman and Dirk van Stralen’s(Orca Book Publishers)“Ben’s Bunny Trouble” also by Wakeman and van Stralen (Orca Book Publishers). Other books are drawn from an honour list selected by a jury of experts from the 2015 Bologna Children’s Book Fair including Ajubel’s “Robinson Crusoe” (Spain), Ara Jo’s “The Rocket Boy”(Korea), and Madalena Matoso’s “Todos Fazemos Tudo” (Switzerland), among others. The full catalogue can be viewed online.TD Canadian Children’s Book Week.Next year’s TD Canadian Children’s Book Week will take place from May 7-14, 2016. Thirty Canadian children’s authors, illustrators and storytellers will be touring across Canada visiting schools, libraries, bookstores and community centres. Visit the TD Book Week site (www.bookweek.ca) to find out who will be touring in your area and the types of readings and workshops they will be giving. If your school or library is interested in hosting a Book Week visitor, you can apply online starting in mid-October.Shakespeare Selfie CBC Books will once again be running the Shakespeare Selfie writing challenge in April 2016. Shakespeare took selfies all the time but instead of a camera, he used a quill. And instead of calling them "selfies," they were called "soliloquies."The challenge: Write a modern-day soliloquy or monologue by a Shakespearean character based on a prominent news, pop culture or current affairs event from the last year (April 2015-April 2016). It can be in iambic pentameter or modern syntax with a word count from 200 to 400 words. There are two age categories: Grades 7-9 and 10-12. Details at: http://www.cbc.ca/books/2015/10/the-2016-shakespeare-selfie-writing-challenge-for-students.html Awards:The winners of this year’s Canadian Jewish Literary Awards, celebrating Jewish literature and culture in Canada, have been announced. Amongst the nine awards is one for Youth Literature which was awarded to Suri Rosen for “Playing with Matches” (ECW Press). See all the award winners here: http://www.cjlawards.ca/.The Canadian Children's Book Centre administers several awards including the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy and the Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction. This year’s winners will be announced on November 18, 2015. http://www.bookcentre.ca/awardThe Fitzhenry Family Foundation has revealed the winners of its Lane Anderson Awards for the best Canadian science books published in the previous year. Selections are made based on a title’s pertinence to science in today’s world and the author’s ability to relate scientific issues to everyday life. Prolific Halifax kids’ science writer L.E. Carmichael was awarded the YA prize for “Fuzzy Forensics: DNA Fingerprinting Gets Wild” (Ashby-BP Publishing), about using forensic science to fight crimes against animals. Uxbridge, Ontario–based environmental journalist Stephen Leahy received the adult prize for “Your Water Footprint” (Firefly Books), which examines human usage of the valuable natural resource. http://laneandersonaward.ca/The Edmonton Public Library has named Sigmund Brouwer (author and Rock & Roll Literacy Show host) as the winner (by public vote) of Alberta Reader’s Choice Award. Sigmund’s “Thief of Glory” (WaterBrook Press) is about a young boy trying to take care of his family in the aftermath of the 1942 Japanese Imperialist invasion of the Southeast Pacific. The prize awards $10,000 to an Alberta-based author of a work of excellent fiction or narrative non-fiction. http://www.epl.ca/alberta-readers-choiceHarperCollins Canada, the Cooke Agency, and the University of British Columbia have announced the shortlist of the annual HarperCollins Publishers/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction awarded to students and alumni of UBC’s creative writing program, and offers the winner literary representation by the Cooke Agency and a publishing contract with HarperCollins Canada.“Between the Wind and Us” by Iranian-Canadian writer Nazanine Hozar, the story of a young abandoned girl set during the political unrest of 1953–1979 Iran.“Learning to Breathe” by B.C.-based Janice Lynn Mather, a young adult novel about a Caribbean teenager’s struggle to establish herself in a new city and home life.“At The Top of the Wall, Alight” by Sudbury, Ontario, author Natalie Morrill, which follows a Viennese Jew separated from his family during the Second World War. An early version of this novel was previously nominated for the award.Novelist and University of Guelph writing professor, Thomas King, and L.A.-based author, graphic novelist, and musician, Cecil Castellucci, have been named winners of this year’s Sunburst Awards for excellence in Canadian literature of the fantastic. Castellucci won in the YA category for “Tin Star” (Roaring Brook/Raincoast), the first novel in a planned series about a teenager who struggles to survive parent-less in a space station where she is the only human, and which played scene to a brutal assault that haunts her memory. King won in the adult category for his novel “The Back of the Turtle” (HarperCollins Canada), for which he also received a Copper Cylinder Award from the Sunburst Society last week. The book follows a First Nations scientist who finds himself torn after he’s sent to clean up the ecological mess his company has left on the reserve his family grew up on.Be sure to save October 28th on your calendar for the GG book awards announcement. Of course, “GG” stands for Governor-General. The short lists can be viewed here:http://ggbooks.ca/books/. There are categories in both English and French for both children’s text and illustration books.Online ResourcesPodcast: Yegs and Bacon: Episode 22: the full audio from our recent Indigenous Representation in Popular Culture panel. In the audio, you’ll be hearing from (in order of first vocal appearance) Brandon, who introduces the panelists, James Leask, Richard Van Camp, Kelly Mellings, and Patti Laboucane-Benson. Recorded on Monday, September 28th, 2015. http://variantedmonton.com/category/yegs-and-bacon/European Picture Book Collection: The EPBC was designed to help pupils to find out more about their European neighbours through reading the visual narratives of carefully chosen picture books. Here you can find out about how the project began, the theoretical papers that have been presented on European children's literature, and how the materials were initially used in schools. http://www.ncrcl.ac.uk/epbc/EN/index.aspMore next time around,Yours in stories, Gail de VosGail de Vos is an adjunct professor who teaches courses on Canadian children's literature, young adult literature, and comic books & graphic novels at the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) at the University of Alberta. She is the author of nine books on storytelling and folklore. Gail is also a professional storyteller who has taught the storytelling course at SLIS for over two decades.

Those who enter into graduate study bring with them a diverse array of needs and interests. Graduate programmes are called upon to meet these needs and in endeavoring to do so,institutions providing training must look at the increasing diversity of the field. One way to do this is to determine what graduates of professional training do as practicing adult educators. This study was designed to answer some of the questions regarding the impact of a degree for men and women in adult education on their career paths, job mobility, income levels, and so on. In this study, current patterns in career development of adult educators and trends in the field of adult education were profiled by surveying 1960 through 1988 graduates of the Adult Education Programme at the University of British Columbia. The study examined occupational placement of graduates and the factors determining their mobility. As well, the relationship between training and work activities was explored. Further, graduates described their learning needs which were examined in terms of their work activities. The nature and degree of their participation in continuing professional education were examined. In addition, the reasons for initial enrollment in the programme were investigated. One of the major facets of the study was to discover the differences, if any, between men and women in many areas of career development. The following general research questions were pursued: 1) What reasons do graduates give for their participation in the adult education programme? 2) Do men and women share a similar education and occupation profile? 3) In what way has self-assessed occupational prestige changed over time? 4) Do graduates of the five Adult Education Programmes (Diploma, M.Ed., M.Sc., M.A., and Ed.D.) perform different occupational functions in their present work? 5) What factors influence occupational mobility? and 6) Are there relationships between present occupational activities, self-perceived quality of training in specified occupational activities and self-reported need to continue learning in these activities? Respondents (approximately half of all graduates) were typically female (59.2%), age 39 on graduation. She had worked four and a half years in adult education prior to entry in the programme and was motivated to participate in the programme to increase her chances of professional advancement. She took less than three years to complete her degree and has held three jobs since graduation. She works full-time in a position where administration or management is the primary function and considers her opportunities for occupational mobility as average or high. She earns $46,000 per year (1988). In general, respondents cited reasons related to professional advancement as their motivation for participation in the programme. Women and men tended to be similar in their educational and occupational profile, which was unanticipated in examining previous research. However, a significant discrepancy was found in the annual income earned by women and men working in adult education positions. This discrepancy was not evident between men and women working outside of the field. Generally, self-assessed occupational prestige increased over time, though the biggest jump was seen in the period since graduation. Graduates of the five departmental programmes weighed similarly, though not identically, the amount of time spent in fourteen specified occupational activities. Very few occupational, educational, or demographic factors seemed to influence occupational mobility, except age at graduation. There seemed to be a weak relationship between occupational functions performed by graduates at the time of the survey, their assessment of the programme in preparing them to perform these functions, and the self-reported need to continue their education in these specified functions.<br>Education, Faculty of<br>Educational Studies (EDST), Department of<br>Graduate