UCalgary Across Alberta
Magazine | Fall/Winter 2019 | Dropping In
abridged stories from UToday
illustration by Christina Milloy
On any given day, members of the University of Calgary community can be found far beyond campus. Our students are in every corner of the province, in classrooms and emergency rooms, law offices and businesses, on performance stages, and in the natural environment. Their professors can be found there, too — gathering research, conducting educational outreach and sharing their expertise on a vast range of subjects.
“Our main campuses may be physically located in Calgary and the surrounding area, but the impact of our work is so much broader than that,” explains UCalgary President Ed McCauley. “We apply our research expertise and share knowledge with communities all over Alberta. Whether it’s through formal programs or informal learning agreements, student practicum placements or research projects, our relationships with community partners are strong. It’s through these Alberta connections that help us to identify opportunities for initiatives and programs that allow our province to flourish.”
In this issue’s Dropping In, we highlight a few of the important connections that UCalgary has forged across Alberta.
1. House Call
Last spring, people in Three Hills discussed mental-health issues and cannabis policies with UCalgary researchers and physicians. Dubbed House Call, this outreach program is aimed at smaller Alberta communities where students and doctors-in-training from the Cumming School of Medicine learn their skills. These events feature experts who raise awareness of the connection between research and advances in medicine and health care that’s available to rural Albertans.
2. Edmonton Valley Zoo
When was the last time you were able to interact — read “play” — with animals at a zoo? Redefining the term “immersive environment,” architect and UCalgary professor Marc Boutin, MA’01, and his firm recently redesigned the Children’s Precinct at the Edmonton Valley Zoo. Visitors can now interact, move and play in this boundary-less urban farm that was inspired by Maurice Sendak’s delightful book, Where the Wild Things Are.
3. Future Engineers
After three years of study, UCalgary engineering students can pursue a paid 12- to 16-month work experience. Of the 750 students who found internships last summer, many worked in rural communities such as Clearwater County, where Devin Drozdz found a job with a public works team. Keagan Graham was another engineering student who found employment at the CertainTeed insulation plant in Redcliff.
4. UCalgary Southern Alberta Region Campus
From the 1,000-mile death march from their home in South Sudan to Ethiopia, two “Lost Boys” escaped Africa and eventually made their way to Brooks, where they found work in a meat-packing plant. If that extraordinarily epic journey as 10-year-old boys wasn’t grim enough, their steely determination just got them through another journey — John Manyok and Samuel Mathon graduated this past spring with degrees in social work through UCalgary’s Lethbridge campus.
5. Archaeology Programs
UCalgary has run an archaeological field school at Cluny Fortified Village for the past 13 years. Since its inception, other programs have launched such as the Program for Public Archaeology in 2014, and the Aboriginal Youth Engagement Program that included seven schools this year. UCalgary’s Indigenous Strategy reflects the belief that including traditional Indigenous knowledge and content into UCalgary’s programs will only add to the protection of these sacred sites.
6. A Future in Beef Cattle Medicine
Why launch a veterinary career in the town of Peace River? “Family, mentorship, and the incredible beauty of Peace Country,” is what convinced recent grad, Dr. Erik Burow, DVM’19. For his final practicum, Burow spent a month with “the cow vet of the north,” a.k.a. Dr. Kevin Breker, DVM, who showed him the ropes, having practised in Peace River for nearly 40 years.
7. Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
Bringing education to everyone, everywhere, is the basic goal behind a MOOC. What Dr. Kathryn Schneider, BKin’96, PhD’13, an assistant professor and physiotherapist, didn’t anticipate was how popular a MOOC on sports-related concussions would be. Some 8,500 people registered for the course, including Jeanne Lawrence from the Peace Country. “Most people in Edmonton and Calgary don’t understand what it means to live in northern Alberta. Providing reputable distance education in a flexible manner is very important to those who live remotely,” says Lawrence.
Magazine | Fall/Winter 2019 | Dropping In
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