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Archives for May 2016

Authorized! with Dave Harper

May 19, 2016 by dgrace Leave a Comment

Dave Harper is an Instructor in the Ecological Restoration Program who has returned to BCIT after years of working in the field, writing reports for municipal districts about habitat restoration. He talked to us about how events in his life brought him to this path, and what he likes best about being back on campus:

Seymour Restoration
Photo by Chris Kimmel

When we moved into a suburb of Trail when I was 12, I taught myself how to fly-fish on the Columbia River. Fishing has been a part of my life ever since. Years later when I moved to Vancouver, I learned of the deteriorating state of not only the local fishery but the environment in general. Having grown up in Trail, a largely resource extraction driven economy (where caring for the environment was a mere afterthought) I found learning of the environmental deterioration disturbing. I was taking computer programming at Kwantlen College, but by chance took an Environmental Science course to fulfill a student loan requirement, and my career path started to change. Then a friend took me fishing, which we were able to do while he was being paid to survey for Harlequin Ducks in the Skagit River valley. Between the environmental course and the type of work available, my career path suddenly took a different route.

I enrolled at BCIT and graduated from the Fish, Wildlife and Recreation diploma program (co-op option), and completed an advanced diploma in Renewable Resource Management. Through the co-op aspect, I worked with Ducks Unlimited one summer, as a park ranger with the Fraser Valley Regional District the next, and finally with the BC Conservation Foundation (BCCF) working on the Greater Georgia Basin Steelhead Recovery Program. I had found my niche.

After a couple years I managed my first stream habitat restoration project and soon learned that adaptive management and contingency planning are paramount to conducting this work. I had been working for several years for BCCF when I returned to BCIT to take the Environmental Engineering degree program (I am months away from completing this degree).

Still at BCCF and starting to look for work, Ken Ashley, director of the Rivers Institute and instructor in the Ecological Restoration (ER) degree program invited me to demonstrate to his class the log and rock drilling used to improve freshwater habitat conditions for fish. I was subsequently offered a job at BCIT, half-time as an Assistant Instructor in the ER program and half-time in the Rivers Institute. I was excited but a tad apprehensive.

After three years at BCIT, I can honestly say that I will retire here. I work alongside some of the most passionate, skilled and dedicated colleagues in the quest to train the next generation of environmental stewards. Through my role as project manager in the Rivers Institute, I still write proposals, manage projects, work with industry, government and NGOs, and am able to employ current and past students in conducting valuable habitat restoration projects. Through grant writing and partnering with outside organizations, I have led or co-led the successful completion of more than a million dollars in habitat restoration, largely the estuaries along the North Shore of Burrard Inlet.

At the Seymour River estuary we installed and anchored more than 170 trees to boulders while modifying the substrate to improve the quantity and quality of available habitat by mimicking natural processes. Through the work just completed at the Lynn Creek estuary, 35 past and present students were hired for the aquatic and riparian habitat improvements, providing real-world, meaningful, hands-on learning.

And his advice for future graduates? Protect the planet, it is the only one we have. This does not require a massive alteration to your lifestyle but merely making good choices were applicable and available as consumers. The saying that many hands make light work applies here. More and more people choosing a more ‘green’ direction will ensure the world persists. This will become increasingly more important as the state of life-enabling systems on Earth continue to weaken.

A list of Dave’s publications can be found at the Rivers Institute.

Filed Under: Authorized!, Staff

Peer Tutor Tuesdays with Clark Friesen

May 17, 2016 by Sandra Matsuba Leave a Comment

Name:       Clark Friesen

Program:  Mechanical Engineering Technology

What attracted you to becoming a Peer tutor? 

Being able to contribute to the academic success of those around me brings me great joy. Plus it’s a great resume item.

How has tutoring helped you?

Teaching others’ in the classes I took last year has helped to reinforce the concepts I’ve already learned and has made me aware of any gaps in my knowledge.

If you could give one piece of advice to a BCIT student what would it be?

Get consistent sleep and exercise and make time in your schedule to have some fun.

What would your dream job be when you leave BCIT?

Being self-employed, doing freelance/contract based engineering work. I can’t stand the idea of being constrained to working hours someone else sets for me for the rest of my life.

If you had a free day, how would you spend it?

In the mountains.

We wish Clark all the best in pursuing his dream job!

Filed Under: Peers

Peer Tutor Tuesdays with Regina Lara Yunes

May 10, 2016 by Sandra Matsuba Leave a Comment

Regina Lara Yunes

Name:       Regina Lara Yunes

Program:  Accounting Diploma

What attracted you to becoming a Peer tutor?

I wanted to help students succeed and reassure them that even though it feels impossible, it’s not.

How has tutoring helped you?

It has allowed me to see how everyone learns differently and has helped me not forget things I previously learned.

If you could give one piece of advice to a BCIT student what would it be?

Take it one day, one week at a time, but do not procrastinate.

What would your dream job be when you leave BCIT?

A Public Accountant in an accounting firm.

If you had a free day, how would you spend it?

Watching movies and playing sports.

You can find Regina on Wednesdays’ between 2:30-4:30 and Thursdays’ between 5:30-7:30 at the Learning Commons.

Filed Under: Peers

Authorized! with Curt Shelton

May 5, 2016 by dgrace 1 Comment

Curt Shelton

BCIT Counsellor Curt Shelton co-wrote, with Bruce Alexander, SFU Professor,  A History of Psychology in Western Civilization, published by Cambridge
University Press in 2014. We asked Curt to tell us about it, and this is what he had to say:

A History of Psychology in Western Civilization is based on 30 years of my co-author, Bruce Alexander’s, lectures for his History of Psychology course, a perennial favourite with third- and fourth-year students, at SFU. It’s not a “names-and-dates” history textbook. Instead, it introduces the big ideas of such classic scholars as Plato, Marcus Aurelius, St Augustine, John Locke, and Charles Darwin about what we are as human beings, who we are as individuals, and how to reach optimal happiness. Students often find the ideas in the book challenging but will also say that they were some of the most interesting and memorable ones for them in their post-secondary years. Many students especially like the chapter on Marcus Aurelius, learning, for example, that mindfulness – so popular for a host of things right now – was an integral part of a commonly held way of life in Western civilization some 2,000 years ago. In fact, in a side-by-side reading of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and the contemporary mindfulness sage John Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are it’s easy to get confused about which of those books you’re actually reading at the moment. Even though the West has now re-imported mindfulness from the East, it turns out that it is not a solely Buddhist or Eastern invention. (The reason why it was lost for so long from the Western world is found in the chapter on St Augustine.)

And yes, it is valuable for students – in fact it’s important for all of us – to become familiar with more than just the “official” twenty-first-century Western ways of viewing and living the “big ideas”. Time and again history has shown us that having only a single approach to living life, a single political-economic system, a single way of forming valid knowledge does not stand the continuing battery of trials our ever-changing world throws at it. As Darwin saw, it is because of – not despite – its variations that a species survives and becomes more fit for its environment. Uniformity in any aspect is doomed in the long run. Knowledge of the diverse cache of intellectual wealth from Western, Eastern, and all other traditions can only enrich us and our world.

You can check out A History of Psychology in Western Civilization from BCIT Library.

 

Filed Under: Authorized!, Books

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