Statement about Flooding and Climate Change Events in B.C.
November 18, 2021 – In just a few short weeks we have experienced an unprecedented tornado at UBC, torrential rains, mudslides and flooding that have wreaked untold damage in the Fraser Valley, Pemberton and beyond. Highways and supply lines have been cut. Hectares of foodlands have been inundated by water, mud or completely swept away. Farmers are being told to abandon their animals and save themselves. It is heartbreaking.
Further east, BC farmers are cut off from their critical supply chains into the Lower Mainland, unable to get their products to market whether they be to retailers, restaurants or community farmers markets. As a result, food will perish and farmers will lose important income – an unwelcome impact in a year of cumulative disasters.
Indigenous foodlands have also been irreparably damaged by flooding and landslides which have wiped out traditional sources of food and will have long-term effects on food sources such as salmon-bearing streams.
We are reaching out to farmers and Indigenous communities to offer support and acknowledge their ongoing resilience in the face of very challenging times.
Minister Lana Popham committed to emergency financial support for farmers impacted by the catastrophic events of the past few days. At the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS) and UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems, we applaud this commitment and encourage the government to include farmers whose crops, livestock and market access have been impacted. We hope there is additional support for Indigenous communities, their food systems and infrastructure.
This is climate change in action. These are the more intense and frequent storms that scientists have been warning us about. At CSFS, we are reflecting on how we can do more, and where to pour our energies. We will be sharing reactions to COP26 and ideas from our CSFS Associates and staff. We also want to hear from you. Please send us your thoughts on social media or email us at farm.team@ubc.ca, letting us know if you would like us to post your thoughts publicly.
Rickey Yada
Dean and Professor
UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems
Interim Academic Director, Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm
Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigeneity in LFS
(left) Will Valley, Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (right) Dana-Lyn Mackenzie, Senior Manager of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigeneity
On September 30, LFS joined three other STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) faculties in an Intergenerational March for the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. It was a solemn day of learning and introspection, as well as a visual demonstration of the faculty’s commitment towards equity, diversity, inclusion and Indigeneity (EDI.I).
At the helm of our journey are Dana-Lyn Mackenzie and Will Valley, working towards a more empathetic, inclusive, and just future.
Dana-Lyn Mackenzie is Senior Manager of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Indigeneity, cross-appointed in the faculties of Applied Science and Land and Food Systems. Mackenzie has worked to amplify Indigenous voices and EDI issues for more than eight years.
“During the pandemic, I had time to understand the importance of my community, First Nation, and family,” Mackenzie says.
She brings this sense of community to her work, where she advises on programming, admissions, student affairs, and much more. Her unique position in two faculties opens doors to joint programming, such as the Intergenerational March.
“There’s been a shift in the last few years,” says Will Valley, Associate Professor of Teaching and LFS’s Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. He teaches in the Land, Food and Community (LFC) core series, which integrates the wide array of disciplinary perspectives that fall under food systems education.
Valley explains that in Canada, our dominant food systems are built on a history of racial inequity and settler colonial violence. Yet often, issues of social justice, power, and oppression are absent or under-emphasized in food-related curriculum and pedagogy. However, in 2016 he attended a conference that explicitly and systematically critiqued the “unbearable whiteness” of sustainable agriculture and alternative food systems. This conference jolted him into re-evaluating how he instructed.
Around the same time, Valley received feedback from community partners who worked with students from the LFC series courses. They had concerns that LFS students needed more awareness and preparation around social issues, such as how class, ability, gender, race, and colonialism intersect with food security.
Valley explored how to better support student capacity to engage with these difficult topics through conferences, workshops, and scholarly literature. However, it has been through open collaboration with Mackenzie, and those in other faculties at UBC that allowed Valley to further his understanding of EDI.
Often, dissecting the systems in our society is a painful process. If you benefit from an oppressive system, you must struggle with the cognitive dissonance that what is benefiting you is often at the expense of others. If you are harmed by the system, you must face the harm directly and inspect how it has impacted your life.
“We have to develop the stamina to sit with the discomfort,” Valley instructs. “It starts with having a better understanding of oneself and how we react to open discussions of issues that are typically avoided in STEM classrooms, and then we begin to see how deeply these systems run.”
He likens the learning to using a tool for the first time. In STEM disciplines, students and graduates have likely not had the opportunity to use these tools, since intellectual development takes priority over critical-reflection, affect, and emotion. He says just like using a shovel for the first time, “blisters” are inevitable, but continuous effort builds up callouses that allow students and graduates to develop the stamina to re-examine and re-structure the systems around them.
“Pushback is inevitable, and thoughtful change takes time,” Mackenzie stresses. “That’s why the learning students do now will carry on once they graduate.”
Student Insight: Anisha Sandhu (FNH major)
Anisha Sandhu, Member of the LFS EDI.I Working Group
What do you think of the opportunities to further EDI.I in the faculty?
“Students need to have more opportunities to interact with food system complexities through an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens. I’m very fortunate to have been and be in the positions I’m in. However, that required some digging and extra work outside the responsibilities of my roles. I hope our faculty can work towards integrating more discussions in courses around EDI and how it shows up in the course content. That being said, there is also a need to support faculty members on how to do this. There is a desire from students, staff, and faculty to engage more in EDI learning and initiatives. However, capacity issues create several speed bumps.”
The Yang Lab is in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Our team is focused on the development of innovative analytical technologies and advanced materials to improve the safety, sustainability, and resilience of agricultural and food systems. We apply interdisciplinary approaches from Food Science, Analytical Chemistry, Material Science, and Nanotechnology to address current and emerging challenges in sustainable food production and the agri-food industry. Our current research is focused on three major themes: (1) Nanosensors in food, (2) Nano-enabled agriculture, and (3) Sustainable food packaging. Our ultimate goal is to ensure a safe and adequate food supply through scientific discoveries and engineering innovations to protect the health of people worldwide.
Yang, T.; Duncan, TV. Challenges and Potential Solutions for Nanosensors Intended for Use with Foods. Nature Nanotechnology. 2021, 16, 251–265.
Yang, T.; Paulose, T.; Redan, B.; Duncan, TV. Food and Beverage Ingredients Induce Formation of Silver Nanoparticles in Products Stored within Nanotechnology-Enabled Packaging. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 2021, 13, 1398–1412.
Yang, T.; Qu, Y.; Hickey, ME,; Wang, W.; Zhao, B.; Bi, S.; Zhang, G.; He, L. Mapping of Pesticide Transmission on Biological Tissues by Surface Enhanced Raman Microscopy with Gold Nanoparticle Mirror. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 2019, 11, 44894–44904.
Yang, T.; Doherty, J.; Guo, H.; Zhao, B.; Clark, JM.; Xing, B.; Hou, R.; He, L. Real-Time Monitoring of Pesticide Translocation in Tomato Plants by Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy. Anal. Chem. 2019, 91, 2093−2099.
Yang, T.; Doherty, J.; Zhao, B.; Kinchla, A. J.; Clark, JM.; He, L. Effectiveness of Removal of Pesticide Residues on and in Apples with Commercial and Homemade Washing Agents. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2017, 65, 9744−9752.
Yang, T.; Zhao, B.; Kinchla, A. J.; Clark, JM.; He, L. Investigation of Pesticides Penetration and Persistence on Harvested and Live Basil Leaves using Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Mapping. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2017, 65, 3541−3550.
Yang, T.; Zhao, B.; Hou, R.; Zhang, Z.; Kinchla, A. J.; Clark, JM.; He, L. Evaluation of the Penetration of Multiple Classes of Pesticides in Fresh Produce Using Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Mapping. J. Food Sci. 2016, 81, T2891−T2901.
Yang, T.; Zhang, Z.; Zhao, B.; Hou, R.; Kinchla, A.; Clark, JM.; He, L. Real-Time and in Situ Monitoring of Pesticide Penetration in Edible Leaves by Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering Mapping. Anal. Chem. 2016, 88, 5243−5250.
Yang, T.; Guo, X.; Wang, H.; Fu, S.; wen, Y.; Yang, H. Magnetically Optimized SERS Assay for Rapid Detection of Trace Drug-Related Biomarkers in Saliva and Fingerprints. Biosens. Bioelectron. 2015, 68, 350−357.
Yang, T.; Guo, X.; Wu, Y.; Wang, H.; Fu, S.; Wen, Y.; Yang, H. Facile and Label-Free Detection of Lung Cancer Biomarker in Urine by Magnetically Assisted Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2014, 6, 20985−20993.
Yang, T.; Guo, X.; Wang, H.; Fu, S.; Yu, J.; Wen, Y.; Yang, H. Au Dotted Magnetic Network Nanostructure and Its Application for On-Site Monitoring Femtomolar Level Pesticide. Small 2014, 10, 1325−1331.
Yang, T.; Wang, P.; Guo, H.; He, L. Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy: A Tool for All Classes of Food Contaminants. Reference Module in Food Science. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-100596-5.21090-1
Applied Sciences 2022 Early Career Investigator Award, 2023
U.S. Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Fellowship, 2019
Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Tanner Award for the most-cited paper of 2017 in the Journal of Food Science's Toxicology and Chemical Food Safety section, 2019
Phi Tau Sigma Student Achievement Scholarship, 2018
North America BASF Science Competition Award, 2018
IFT Feeding Tomorrow Scholarship, 2017
American Chemical Society (ACS) Division of Agricultural and Food Chemistry Teranishi Graduate Fellowship, 2017
The Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (lfs-ps-2023.sites.olt.ubc.ca) invites applications for a full-time Lecturer position within the Food, Nutrition and Health Program (Dietetics Program) with an anticipated started date of January 1, 2022. The position is expected to support the students and curriculum delivery of the Master of Nutrition and Dietetics program.
Applicants must have a minimum of a Masters degree in Human Nutrition or related area, and previous experience with post-secondary undergraduate teaching in both in-person and on-line formats. Applicants must be registered with the College of Dietitians of British Columbia, or be eligible for registration. Familiarity with dietetics education is essential. Candidates must be committed to and demonstrate excellence in both the teaching and learning of graduate students, contribute to a student-centered environment that nurtures and challenges students to achieve at high levels, and show commitment to diversity in their teaching practice.
This is a full-time position for an initial term of 3-years, including a probationary first year. Lecturer positions are appointments without review (i.e. non-tenure track) and renewable for successive terms, subject to availability of funds, enrollment, operational needs, and demonstration of excellence in teaching. The successful candidate will be expected to fulfill service duties, as assigned by the Director of Dietetics, and to teach undergraduate and graduate courses. The normal teaching load for the position is 18 credits per year. In the first 6 months, the expectation is the development of two new 3- credit courses in the Program.
Applications must be made through the University of British Columbia’s Human Resources online careers page: https://ubc.wd10.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/ubcfacultyjobs/job/UBC-Vancouver-Campus/Lecturer-in-Dietetics-Education_JR5125-1. Applicants must upload the following documents by December 17, 2021: a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statement of teaching interests and orientation, evidence of teaching abilities and effectiveness (course outlines, student evaluations, sample class assignments, etc.), and a statement of experience working with a diverse student body and contributions or potential contributions to creating/advancing a culture of equity and inclusion. In addition, applicants should arrange to have 3 confidential letters of reference sent by the same deadline via email to melanie.train@ubc.ca with the applicant’s name in the subject line. Enquiries may also be sent to the same e-mail address; please indicate in the subject line: “Lecturer position in Dietetics Education.”
Dietetics is a professional program that meets the accreditation standards for the dietetics profession in Canada, and is the only dietetics program offered in British Columbia. It includes general biological and social sciences courses, as well as specialized dietetics courses like basic and applied human nutrition, food and food systems management, and professional dietetic practice.
Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Metis, Inuit, or Indigenous person. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents of Canada will be given priority.
Making our food fairer: Podcast on the community work taking place to improve access to food and why Canada’s food system is broken.
Tabitha Robin Martens
Listen to Tabitha Robin Martens, Assistant Professor, speak with Melana Roberts, President of Food Secure Canada, about our country’s food systems and how they intersect with culture, colonization, and the lives of BIPOC Canadians on The Conversation’s podcast series, Don’t Call Me Resilient.
“Our food system has been deliberately decimated and food has been used as a means to control us for so long,” Martens says. “And really, food was the means of the colonization of Canada.”
Research on Wagyu-style beef alternatives start at UBC
Nov. 8, 2021 – As Protein Industries Canada and its industry partners invest $7.6 million to produce made-in-Canada meat alternatives, students in Land and Food Systems (LFS) at UBC will have the opportunity to receive advanced training in making plant-based proteins, which are the foundation to these innovative food products.
Left to right: Dr. David Kitts, UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems; Kirk Moir, Winecrush Technologies; Blair Bullus, Wamame Foods; Dr. Anubhav Pratap-Singh, Food and Beverage Innovation Professor at UBC; Bill Greuel, Protein Industries Canada
In the Food Process Engineering Lab
Back row, left to right: Farahnaz Fathordoobady; Dr. Anubhav Pratap-Singh, Food and Beverage Innovation Professor at UBC; Bill Greuel, CEO, Protein Industries Canada; Blair Bullus, President, Wamame Foods; Alberto Baldelli
Front row, l-r: Rocio Silva Zamora, Maryam Shojaei
The Faculty of Land and Food Systems has secured a new research contract with Wamame Foods Inc., as part of a co-investment with Protein Industries Canada, and along with the Saskatchewan Food Industry Development Centre (SFIDC), will conduct research to support the national consortium as it begins to produce and commercialize high-end pork and Wagyu beef alternatives.
UBC and SFIDC will develop food technologies to ensure a high quality product that minimizes processing and nutrient loss, while adhering to sustainable and environmentally friendly practices. In addition, UBC students will use the university’s sensory lab to evaluate texture, taste, and other sensory measures to ensure that the new products are organoleptically acceptable to consumers.
Assistant Professor Anubhav Pratap-Singh will lead the UBC research along with his students in the food process engineering lab. Dr. Pratap-Singh holds the Food and Beverage Innovation Professorship at UBC, and for the past two years, he has worked closely with B.C. companies in developing innovative food and beverage products.
“Demand for plant-based meat alternatives is rising among consumers who are becoming health and environmentally conscious,” says Dr. Pratap-Singh. “In response, the B.C. food industry is leading the world in plant-based food innovations.”
“At UBC, we are listening to these needs for innovation and working with B.C.-based companies to create new product innovations sustainably, and to improve the competitiveness of B.C. products on the world stage.”
Recent projects from Dr. Pratap-Singh’s lab include improving the taste of plant-based protein products; upcycling food by-products into new foods or sustainable packaging; developing encapsulating methods to better deliver nutrients to the body; and, alternative non-thermal processing innovations to ensure food safety and quality.
Protein Industries Canada (PIC) is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization committed to positioning Canada as a global source of high-quality plant-based food and ingredients. Together with industry, Protein Industries Canada has committed more than $377 million to the Canadian plant-protein sector.
As primary funder of this project, PIC will work with consortium partners Wamame Foods (consortium lead), Merit Functional Foods, Wismettac Asian Foods and Winecrush Technologies to source Canadian ingredients and produce non-soy pork and beef alternatives for sale internationally.
Meet Peek-a-Moo, a Data Visualization Tool for Dairy Cattle
Data is at the heart of all research, and there is no shortage of data points at UBC’s Dairy Education and Research Centre (DERC). The researchers at DERC collect a wide range of data from their herd. Each cow wears one or more devices that measure(s) everything from how much they eat and rest, to where they spend their time, and even who else in the herd they hang out with!
Visualizing Years of Data
Throughout the years, the DERC has built an impressive database of information. However, combing through the data is time consuming, and access to the time and skills of a data scientist is often limited. Presented with this issue, the DERC researchers have worked with the Masters of Data Science (MDS) program to create a new tool to better understand the lives and welfare of their dairy cattle.
Introducing, Peek-a-Moo, a data visualization tool that creates a customizable and interactive dashboard to monitor animal welfare among the dairy cows.
This new tool was born from a desire to fully utilize the years of collected data at the dairy and genuine interest from UBC MDS students, who volunteered their time to develop the tool through a three-week hackathon.
Working closely with Dr Borbala Foris, a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems’s Animal Welfare Program, and Sky Sheng, a graduate student in Applied Animal Biology, the seven-student team of data scientists built a dashboard that allowed at-a-glance summaries of cow behaviour.
Peek-a-Moo dashboards can show:
Timelines with every single cow’s behaviour throughout the day along with a “herd average” to detect any abnormal activity
Social networks that display relationships between cows, positive and negative associations as well as the frequency of initiating or receiving competitive interactions
Feed bin graphs that measure dynamic feed distributions across all bins throughout the day
Warning messages for bin malfunction and cows with abnormal level of feed or water intake
See the Peek-a-Moo dashboard in action here:
All of this information can be toggled to select any date range or any selection of cows. Peek-a-Moo allows researchers to monitor the herd without having to watch them in person or via video. The new tool can even be used as part of an alert system, detecting early signs of illness or improvement in the cattle. Its visual nature also means people outside of the industry can easily understand findings and results from the herd.
This example of interdisciplinary collaboration will allow UBC researchers to more efficiently analyze herd behavior. With Peek-a-Moo taking care of data crunching and visualization, the researchers at the DERC have more time to focus on improving the lives of dairy cattle and the people who care for them.
October 21, 2021 – The grain industry and UBC are partnering to find out how genome technologies can help prevent pathogens from taking hold in wheat and barley crops in western Canada.
Gurcharn Singh Brar
Assistant Professor Gurcharn Singh Brar (Land and Food Systems) and Associate Professor Cara Haney (Department of Microbiology and Immunology, and Canada Research Chair in Plant-Microbiome Interactions) are researching the use of portable genome sequencers to manage microbiome-based diseases in wheat and barley.
Specifically, Brar and Haney will work on rapid pathogen identification and genetic pathogen population characterization, identifying new sources of resistance to wheat tan spot and stripe rust from a global gene bank collection. In addition, they will tackle this issue from the angle of identifying disease suppressive soils (soils rich in beneficial microbiomes that produce natural anti-fungal compounds) for cereal production to help in disease management.
Together, Brar and Haney were awarded an NSERC-Alliance grant valued at $1.7 million over four years. Funding from NSERC is valued at $1.1M and the remaining financial support comes from industry partners Saskatchewan Wheat Development Commission (SWDC), Alberta Wheat Commission (AWC), and Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission (SBDC).
In western Canada, there are more than 50,000 wheat and barley growers, generating approximately $7.5 billion annually from the sale of the two crops to other countries. Insect-pests and diseases are significant production problems: an estimated 18% of the potential wheat yield in Canada and Midwestern US is lost to diseases and insect-pests.
This project will focus on the diseases stripe rust and tan spot of wheat, which alone are responsible for 5% of that 18% yield loss.
This is the first time portable genome sequencers and microbiome-based disease management for tan spot and stripe rust of wheat and net blotch of barley have been used in the context of Canadian crop pathology and disease management.
Brar and Haney hope to significantly reduce economic disease-caused loss by developing strategies for disease management that are not only environmentally-friendly but also economical and sustainable.
Assistant Professor of Human Dimensions of Biodiversity Conservation: University of British Columbia
Posted October 20, 2021
The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia is seeking applicants for the position of Assistant Professor (tenure track) in Human Dimensions of Biodiversity Conservation. This will be a joint position in the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) in the Faculty of Science (http://www.ires.ubc.ca) and the Food and Resource Economics Program (FRE) in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems (http://fre.landfood.ubc.ca/). The anticipated start date is July 1, 2022.
This position is part of a cluster hire of five positions (four of which have already been filled) all in the area of restoring and conserving global biodiversity. The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary research and scholarship team at UBC focused on solutions-oriented approaches to biodiversity loss and its connection to sustainability and adaptive capacity for humanity. For further information, see https://biodiversity.ubc.ca/ibios.
We seek an interdisciplinary scholar who uses econometric and other quantitative techniques to investigate human dimensions of biodiversity conservation. For example, research interests may include how individual and institutional actions affect conservation outcomes, or how biodiversity conservation affects aspects of human well-being. Applicants must have a Ph.D. (or be nearing completion) in economics, natural resource management, environmental social science, public policy, or related fields. They should have strong quantitative skills in econometrics and causal data analysis, and one or more of the following areas: integration and analysis of large social or ecological datasets, social and behavioral field experiments, spatial statistics, and other commensurate approaches. We expect successful candidates will show evidence of working in interdisciplinary teams, and we will favour those whose work is grounded in field studies and in systems approaches (i.e., addressing problems and seeking solutions in the context of broader understandings of social and ecological dynamics).
The successful candidate will be expected to (a) develop an independent, externally funded, and internationally recognized research program; (b) contribute to undergraduate and graduate teaching, (including a course in Econometrics at FRE, and a course in data analytics at IRES); (c) contribute to mentoring and academic service across both departments, and the interdisciplinary team at IBios; (c) foster active collaborations in research and teaching across the two departments, and the interdisciplinary team at IBios.
A cover letter (up to 2 pages) that includes the candidate’s current student or employment status, and degree title, date of completion and school name of doctoral program. It should also summarize: the candidate’s research agenda, skills/expertise and goals and how these would advance the research vision of the Biodiversity Solutions Team (https://biodiversity.ubc.ca), interest or experience in conducting collaborative, applied, and interdisciplinary research, and contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion, or other relevant activities.
Curriculum vitae
A statement (up to 2 pages) describing the candidate’s current and proposed research program and showing how their approach can connect to understanding of biodiversity conservation or solutions to biodiversity crises
A statement (up to 1 page) of teaching interests and accomplishments, addressing how the candidate could teach undergraduate and graduate courses in econometrics and causal analysis, and quantitative data analysis for social scientists
A statement (up to 1 page) identifying previous contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion, the ability to work with a culturally diverse student body (with specific examples when possible),and philosophy of and potential future contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion
Up to 3 representative publications, or works in progress
An unofficial transcript or statement of relevant postgraduate courses taken
3 letters of reference
Applicants are asked to complete the following equity survey when they submit their application: (https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0cCtQ9RCaa1jvbU). The survey information will not be used to determine eligibility for employment, but will be collated to provide data that can assist us in understanding the diversity of our applicant pool and identifying potential barriers to the employment of designated equity group members. Participation in the survey is voluntary and confidential.
Review of applications will begin on November 25, 2021 and continue until the position is filled. If you have specific questions about the application process, please contact the Chair of the Selection Committee c/o melanie.train@ubc.ca.
The UBC Vancouver campus is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. The University of British Columbia is a global centre for research and teaching, consistently ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world. The University of British Columbia embraces innovation and challenges to the status quo. UBC is dedicated to ensuring that diversity, equity and inclusion are embedded throughout the university’s academic and work life, recognizing the significant work remains to be accomplished. For example, UBC’s vision is to be a world leader in the implementation of Indigenous people’s human rights and is guided in a mission of reconciliation as articulated and called for by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. It is firmly committed to recruiting Indigenous faculty, students, and staff as outlined in its Indigenous Strategic Plan. As one of the world’s leading universities, The University of British Columbia creates an exceptional learning environment that fosters global citizenship, advances a civil and sustainable society, and supports outstanding research to serve the people of British Columbia, Canada and the world.
The Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) is a problem-focused and curiosity-driven interdisciplinary research institute and graduate program, with interest and expertise in a wide range of topics under the realm of environment and sustainability. Research concentrations at IRES span the natural and social sciences, engineering and public policy fields. Our large graduate program is consistently ranked among the top 15 programs in the world, offering MA, MSc, and PhD degrees. Faculty and students engage in the collaborative study of real world problems that include: ecosystem, human health and resilience; energy, pollution and climate change; land, food, water and waste; emerging technology and development; perceptions, culture, values and behaviour; and environmental governance policy, law and justice. For more information, please visit: http://ires.ubc.ca.
The Food and Resource Economics (FRE) Program uses tools of economic and empirical analysis to examine applied problems in the general area of natural resource and environmental economics (e.g., carbon taxes, conservation and biodiversity, fisheries), commodity markets and trade and food marketing. The FRE Program actively collaborates with other economists at UBC (and also in proximate universities) through a Centre for Food, Resource and Environmental Economics. The Centre facilitates access to a world class and diversified network of expertise in agricultural and environmental economics for our students and researchers. The Program offers a Bachelors in Food and Resource Economics, a professional Masters program in Food and Resource Economics, and supports several research masters and doctoral students through the Integrated Studies in Land and Food Systems graduate degree. For more information, please visit: http://fre.landfood.ubc.ca/.
Equity and diversity are essential to academic excellence. An open and diverse community fosters the inclusion of voices that have been underrepresented or discouraged. We encourage applications from members of groups that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the B.C. Human Rights Code, including sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, racialization, disability, political belief, religion, marital or family status, age, and/or status as a First Nation, Metis, Inuit, or Indigenous person. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents of Canada will be given priority.
National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, Summary and Reflection
On September 30th, our faculty joined the Faculties of Applied Science, Forestry, and Science in an Intergenerational March to commemorate Orange Shirt Day and the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. It was a day filled with learning, as we made space for the First Nations speakers and leaders to share their stories with us.
Thank you to all who came. Here is a video of the event.
To learn more about how UBC will continue to support indigenous communities, see the Indigenous Strategic Plan.
