Sustainability Fellows span a wide range of disciplines and areas of expertise from architecture to poetry, and mechanical engineering to politics. Meet some of the current fellows, and discover how they are pushing the boundaries of sustainability curriculum by learning about their Interdisciplinary Education projects.
Project Year 1
Leonora Angeles
School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), Faculty of Applied Sciences
Dr. Leonora (Nora) C. Angeles is Associate Professor at the School of Community and Regional Planning and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at UBC. She is also faculty research associate at the UBC Centre for Human Settlements where she has been involved in a number of applied research and capacity-building research projects in Brazil, Vietnam, and Southeast Asian countries. Her continuing research and interests are on community and international development studies and social policy, participatory planning and governance, participatory action research, and the politics of transnational feminist networks, women’s movements and agrarian issues, particularly in the Southeast Asian region.
Project Description: As Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Angeles will be working with GRSJ Undergraduate Program Chair Dr. Kim Snowden to strengthen sustainability education at UBC through the integration of intersectional Justice, Equity, Diversity, Decolonization, Inclusion, and Indigenization (JEDDI) lens. They will review and revise all relevant GRSJ undergraduate and graduate courses to integrate sustainability-related learning objectives, readings, pedagogical approaches, assignments and class projects; develop a new GRSJ 309 course on Intersectional Approaches in Thinking Sustainability Through JEDDII; and create a JEDDII Spoke within the UBC Sustainability Hub offering guest lectures and one-on-one faculty and TA support in integrating JEDDII perspectives in Sustainability or Climate Justice oriented courses.
Kai Chan
Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, Faculty of Science
Kai Chan is a sustainability scientist whose work straddles social and natural systems with a focus on values, rewilding, and transformative change. He is a Professor and Canada Research Chair (Rewilding and Social-Ecological Transformation) at UBC. Kai is also a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists (2017), a Coordinating Lead Author of the IPBES Global Assessment, a Lead Editor for the new journal People and Nature, a member of Canada’s Clean16 for 2020, and co-founder of CoSphere (a Community of Small-Planet Heroes).
Project Description: As a Sustainability Fellow, Kai is working with Dr. Shannon Hagerman and Dr. Gail Hochachka to co-design a graduate course on climate engagement, empowering grad students to leverage a nuanced understanding of climate and human systems into bold action to confront the climate crisis. Kai is also revamping an undergraduate course (ENVR 430) to enable undergraduate students to do the same for the climate-and-ecological crisis, while building community for science-based transformative action with over a dozen partner organizations.
Tamara Etmannski
Civil Engineering, Faculty of Applied Sciences
Dr. Tamara Etmannski came to UBC in 2014 after completing her PhD in Environmental Engineering at the University of Oxford. Her dissertation included reverse-engineering off-grid, arsenic-removal water treatment systems located in rural India. She focused on using user-centered design principles and various sustainability metrics including LCA and PAM methodologies. At UBC she is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Civil Engineering and is the Director of the Joint UBC/UNBC Environmental Engineering undergraduate program. Her area of focus is on teaching and educational leadership activities related to ‘engineering impacts’ including topics like: sustainability, engineering leadership, entrepreneurship, life-long learning, ethics, and professionalism. Dr. Etmannski was awarded the prestigious UBC Killam Teaching Award in 2021.
Project Description: As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Potvin is working with Dr. Tamara Etmannski on the design and implementation of modern multidisciplinary engineering economics modules, that will allow students to quantify, assess, and discuss environmental and social costs of engineering projects, and incorporate these considerations in engineering decision making. Modules will include topics such as measuring a project’s impacts on climate change and biodiversity loss; ecological accounting; proxy metrics for social impacts; circular economy approach to costing; cultural capital valuation, and ethical difficulties when viewing or designing engineering projects through a sustainability lens.
Gabriel Potvin
Chemical and Biological Engineering, Faculty of Applied Sciences
Dr. Gabriel Potvin is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the Academic Director of the Academic Essentials orientation program, and sits on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA). Though his technical background is related to the development and mass production of novel microorganisms for the production of therapeutics, feed additives, biofuels, and industrially-relevant enzymes, his more recent areas of scholarship are in engineering education, with a focus on problem-based learning, laboratory instruction, interdisciplinary education, sustainability education, and how these areas can be used to improve the training of engineers. He has won numerous awards, including at the national level, for his teaching and educational leadership, including most recently the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence, awarded by the UBC Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Student Council in 2022, a 2021 UBC Killam Teaching Award, and the 2019 CEEA Ron Britton Engineering Education Vanguard award. He is a steadfast advocate of science and engineering outreach, and encourages engineers to be more involved with the general public and serve as ambassadors to their fields.
Project Description: As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Potvin is working with Dr. Tamara Etmannski on the design and implementation of modern multidisciplinary engineering economics modules, that will allow students to quantify, assess, and discuss environmental and social costs of engineering projects, and incorporate these considerations in engineering decision making. Modules will include topics such as measuring a project’s impacts on climate change and biodiversity loss; ecological accounting; proxy metrics for social impacts; circular economy approach to costing; cultural capital valuation, and ethical difficulties when viewing or designing engineering projects through a sustainability lens.
Shannon Hagerman
Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Forestry
Dr. Shannon Hagerman is Associate Professor, and Associate Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at the Faculty of Forestry. Her research interests, as Principal Investigator of the Social-Ecological Systems Research Group, centre on the science-policy-management interface in the context of adapting conservation and resource management to climate change. Her decades-long work on the emergence and evolution of novel interventions for forests and biodiversity (e.g. assisted migration, new biotechnologies) reveals the contested, value-laden and inescapably social and political dimensions that shape transformative change. Shannon is actively involved in service to broader academic and practitioner communities including through initiatives that seek to better incorporate insights from the social sciences into policy and practice. She teaches human dimensions of conservation, and qualitative research methods and is a proud recipient of the Killam Teaching Prize in 2018, and the Faculty of Forestry Research Award in 2021.
Project Description: As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Hagerman is working with Dr. Kai Chan and Dr. Gail Hochachka to co-design and trial a new 3-credit graduate seminar course as a proof of concept for future course offerings. This transdisciplinary course will unpack some of the systemic socio-political complexities of making progress towards meaningful climate action (despite the longstanding abundance of scientific evidence), and through case studies will explore potential pathways and approaches for engaging diverse constituents (e.g. decision-makers, communities, governments, public) in ways that can support individual and collective action.
Lindsay Rogers
BioChemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine
Dr. Lindsay Rogers is an Assistant Professor of Teaching within the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology department. She received her undergraduate degree from Queen's University and PhD from the University of British Columbia. Her research interests lie in the fields of environmental science and environmental health where biochemical understanding can elucidate complex and often controversial global issues. As a faculty in residence at Emerging Media Lab, Lindsay supports several projects in immersive learning technology. Currently she leads a biomedical visualization project which aims to elucidate complex cellular networks within an interactive 3D space.
Project Description: As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Rogers is working in collaboration with Dr. Scott, Emerging Media Lab and UBC Studios. The team aims to create an interactive map-based platform to engage students in local climate-related content. Prototyping of this platform will be supported by an existing Theatre and Film course and development will be supported by undergraduate students and staff at Emerging Media Lab. This project also aims to create media highlighting local climate research, stories and experiences. Media production will be supported by UBC Studios and parallel a climate education seminar series hosted by the Faculty of Education. This project will support curriculum within UBC courses in the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Science.
Sandra Scott
Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education
Dr. Scott’s work is guided by wonder as inquiry and slow eco pedagogy, learning in and from nature; nature as master teacher, mentor, and guide. Science education is Sandra’s home, and the experiences developing and nurturing relationships, teaching, and learning alongside students and colleagues provide the foundation for all pursuits. Dr. Scott teaches courses in inquiry, science methods, environmental education, research methods, and community science through community field experiences with Ocean Networks Canada. Dr. Scott’s research informs, inspires, and guides her practice with a focus on socio-political and environmental action, intergenerational learning, place as eco pedagogy, ecological memory, and action as pedagogical witnessing through story.
Project Description: Dr. Scott and Dr. Lindsay Rogers will be working as Sustainability Fellows on our project Climate Change Education through Immersive Media: Educating for Sustainability in Multi-Modal Ways with students and instructors from the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Faculty of Medicine and the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy, Faculty of Education and the UBC Emerging Media Lab. In this course experience, students will learn about and take action on climate and nature emergency as they connect with local places through stories of resilience, resolve, and reciprocity.
Kim Snowden
Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality & Social Justice, Faculty of Arts
Dr. Snowden is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice (GRSJ) Undergraduate Program and the Undergraduate Chair and Advisor for GRSJ and Critical Studies in Sexuality (CSIS). Dr. Snowden regularly teaches courses on social media, popular culture, folk and fairy tales, vampires, science fiction and fantasy, social justice storytelling, fandoms, and monsters. This year, Kim will teach a new course on youth movements and social justice with a significant focus on climate justice activism.
Project Description: As Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Snowden will be working with the Director of the Social Justice Institute, Dr. Nora Angeles, to strengthen sustainability education at UBC through the integration of intersectional Justice, Equity, Diversity, Decolonization, Inclusion, and Indigenization (JEDDI) lens. They will review, revise, and develop relevant GRSJ courses to integrate sustainability-related learning objectives, readings, pedagogical approaches, assignments and class projects. They aim to give students the tools to become leaders in social change and sustainability, increase visibility and collaboration in sustainability education across campus, and provide transformative learning opportunities through community-based learning and partnerships.
Project Year 2
Silvia Bartolic
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts
Dr. Bartolic earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and French and a Master of Arts degree in Family Studies from the University of British Columbia (UBC). She then worked as a Researcher in Distance Education and Psychiatry as well as a sessional instructor in Family Studies at UBC. After several rewarding years in these positions, she decided to go back to graduate school to earn a PhD and completed her degree in Human Development and Family Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin, returning once again to UBC to teach as a Sessional Instructor. As of 2019, Dr. Bartolic is an Associate Professor of Teaching, teaching approximately 450 students per year.
As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Bartolic is working with Dr. Kerry Renwick to create a new certificate program on Sustainability and Family. The project aims to build an appreciation of sustainability in the context of human ecology and everyday living that contributes to sustainable practices. The goal is to develop 4 new courses - one that is theory based (sustainability in family), and three that are experiential learning based (sustainability related to food, clothing and resources).
Peter Berman
School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine
Prof. Peter Berman (M.Sc, Ph.D) is a health economist with forty years of experience in research, policy analysis and development, and training and education in global health. He is Professor at the School of Population and Public Health, where he was also Director from 2019-21, and Adjunct Professor in Global Health at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. His current research at UBC focuses on key factors affecting government decision-making in response to public health crises.
Prof. Berman is affliated as Adjunct Professor at the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) in New Delhi, India and as advisor to the China National Health Development Research Center for health care financing and health accounts. He was the founding faculty director of Harvard Chan’s Doctor of Public Health degree. He is the author or editor of five books on global health economics and policy and more than 60 academic papers in his field and numerous other working papers and reports. He has led and/or participated in major field programs in all regions of the developing world. He is co-author of Getting Health Reform Right: A Guide to Improving Performance and Equity (Roberts, et al, Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 2018), co-editor of the Guide to the Production of National Health Accounts (World Bank, World Health Organization, and USAID, 2003), and co-editor of Berman and Khan, Paying for India’s Health Care (Sage, 1993).
As a sustainability fellow, Prof. Berman is collaborating with faculty colleagues Prof. Veena Sriram and Milind Kandlikar to introduce a sustainability perspective into SPPH 481D, a new course on global health systems and policy. This will include new collaborative teaching cases on sustainability with partners in the Philippines and BC which will also be included in teaching internationally.
Rob Kozak
Faculty of Forestry, Dean
Rob Kozak is a Professor and Dean at the UBC Faculty of Forestry. His current research and teaching interests, as part of the Forests and Communities in Transition Lab, revolve around sustainable business management practices and issues and providing business-based solutions to complex problems related to sustainable development, forestry, wood products, and the emerging conservation economy. Currently, his work focuses on the wellbeing of forest-dependent communities, international development and poverty alleviation strategies, forest sector sustainability, and climate-adaptive strategies for forest management. He has published and presented his work widely, and is actively involved in service to the university and the broader academic community. In recognition of his work, he was awarded the International Union of Forest Research Organization’s Scientific Achievement Award in 2014, a Doctor of Agriculture and Forestry honoris causa from the University of Helsinki in 2021, and is a two-time recipient of the Killam Teaching Prize in 2001 and 2014.
As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Kozak is working with Dr. Stephen Sheppard to co-design and test a pilot 3-credit field course as a proof of concept for future course offerings aimed initially at 3rd/4th year students from the Bachelor of Urban Forestry and the Bachelor of Wood Products Processing programs. In this interdisciplinary field course students will work together to help local residents and youth design and install small climate action projects to tackle the climate emergency in their own neighbourhoods.
Ian McKendry
Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts
Long-term research goals have been primarily directed at understanding meteorological phenomena that develop in regions of complex, urbanized terrain. An important applied focus of this work has been the investigation of the role such phenomena (e.g. land sea breezes, slope winds and urban effects) have on the transport and dispersion of pollutants. Although much of this research has been site-specific (e.g. the Lower Fraser Valley, British Columbia) the findings are of general interest. Considerable progress has been made in understanding the processes contributing to, and the three-dimensional distribution of, air pollution in regions of complex terrain. This observational program has provided important information for development, initialization and validation of numerical models designed to forecast air quality and test pollutant abatement strategies. Recently, this research thrust has broadened to consider the impact of long-range transport of burgeoning pollutant emissions and crustal dust from Eurasia to North America. A central part of this work has been the installation of a state-of-the-art lidar facility at UBC in collaboration with Environment Canada.
As Sustainability Fellows, Dr. Ian McKendry and Dr. Roland Stull, are developing a new course proposal: ATSC 413 Forest Fire Weather and Climate. This course, designed for science students, will focus on large-scale synoptic weather as it affects fire behaviour.
Kerry Renwick
Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education
Kerry Renwick's research focuses on health and food literacy as situated practices and social justice in context of K-12 educational settings. Kerry co-ordinates the home economics education program at UBC, a teaching specialization whose content and practice are inherently linked to sustainable food systems.
Kerry’s previous research has included health promoting schools; exploring the relationship between school gardens and mental health in youth; and teachers’ practice in health and food education. She is currently the Principal Investigator on a SSHRC Partnership Development grant focused on global food literacy education. The Food Literacy International Partnership (FLIP) includes Deakin University, Australia; Sweet Briar College, USA; and Gothenburg University, Sweden.
As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Renwick is working with Dr. Silvia Bartolic to create a new certificate program on Sustainability and Family. The project aims to build an appreciation of sustainability in the context of human ecology and everyday living that contributes to sustainable practices. The goal is to develop 4 new courses - one that is theory based (sustainability in family), and three that are experiential learning based (sustainability related to food, clothing and resources).
Stephen Sheppard
Department of Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Forestry
Stephen Sheppard, PhD., ASLA, is an Emeritus Professor in Forest Resources Management at the University of British Columbia, and an expert in landscape and climate change planning, community engagement, and visualization. He was the founding Director of UBC’s Bachelor of Urban Forestry program and directs the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP), an interdisciplinary research group which works with communities on developing climate change and energy solutions. He has over 30 years experience in environmental assessment, aesthetics, landscape planning and public involvement. He has published four books, including Visualizing Climate Change from Earthscan/Routledge. His research interests include engaging citizens in low-carbon resilient communities, sea-level rise planning, heat/energy effects of urban forests, and video games as an educational tool on climate change. He leads UBC’s Research Cluster of Excellence on Cool Tools: Social Mobilization on Climate Change using Digital Tools.
As a Sustainability Fellow, Dr. Sheppard is working with Dr. Rob Kozak to co-design and test a pilot 3-credit field course as a proof of concept for future course offerings aimed initially at 3rd/4th year students from the Bachelor of Urban Forestry and the Bachelor of Wood Products Processing programs. In this interdisciplinary field course students will work together to help local residents and youth design and install small climate action projects to tackle the climate emergency in their own neighbourhoods.
Veena Sriram
School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Faculty of Arts
Veena Sriram is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs (SPPGA) and the School of Population and Public Health (SPPH) at the University of British Columbia. Her research sits at the intersection of global health, social science and public policy, and her interests are in understanding power and politics in health policy processes in low- and middle-income countries. She draws upon theory and methodologies from the social sciences in conducting her research, and has a particular focus on qualitative approaches. Dr. Sriram has conducted extensive research at the national and state level in India, exploring a range of health policy and system questions, including medical specialization, health workforce policy development, the functioning of national health authorities and emergency care systems. She has also contributed to expanding the application of theory and concepts to study power in health policy and systems research.
As a sustainability fellow, Dr. Sriram is collaborating with Professors Peter Berman and Milind Kandlikar to introduce a sustainability perspective into SPPH 481D, a new course on global health systems and policy. This will include new collaborative teaching cases on sustainability with partners in the Philippines and BC which will also be included in teaching internationally.
Roland Stull
Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science
Roland Stull is a Professor of Atmospheric Science. His 20-member Weather Forecast Research Team runs an ensemble of over 50 numerical weather prediction (NWP) realizations every day. NWP research themes include forest-fire weather (fire behavior, smoke forecasts), weather-related disasters (rain storms, floods, avalanches, wind storms), clean-energy meteorology (hydro, wind, solar), transportation weather (mass transit, rail, aviation, shipping), climate downscaling (for anticipating changes in fisheries, forest fires), instrument development, and numerous special projects.
Stull also has extensive experience in atmospheric boundary layers, turbulence, dispersion, and air quality. He is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, and fellow of both the Canadian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society (CMOS) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He is the author of two textbooks: “Practical Meteorology: An Algebra-based Survey of Atmospheric Science” which is free online, and “An Introduction to Boundary Layer Meteorology.” Stull has fun teaching courses at all levels, and is a winner of the Killam teaching prize.
As Sustainability Fellows, Stull (EOAS) and Ian McKendry (GEOG) are developing a new course proposal: ATSC 413 Forest Fire Weather and Climate. This course, designed for science students, will focus on large-scale synoptic weather as it affects fire behaviour.