Join us on April 12^th, between 11:00 am and 2:00 pm, for a symposium to showcase the work of the graduate student researchers involved in the Immersive Technologies (CITech). This symposium is a collaboration between CITech and the Media Studies program, and will be held in the Visualization and Emerging Media Studio (COM 107).

Immersive Technologies (CITech) is a multidisciplinary graduate training program focusing on skills development and collaborative research in design of immersive solutions for various real-world applications from manufacturing to healthcare, to community engagement and education. Researchers to be presented in this symposium include: Bengi Agcal, Amira Ahmed, Mohammad Amin Batouei, Bahman Fakouri, Nasim Hajati, Nelusha Hansamali Nugegoda, Leslie Saca, and Samar Sallam.

See below for a description of each student’s research.

11:00-11:30 Amin Mohammad Batouei is a MASc. student of a mechanical engineering student at UBCO. His academic journey began at the Iran University of Science and Technology with B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, where he discovered a passion for studying composite materials. His undergraduate thesis focused on practical uses of composite materials by utilizing finite element analysis to research “Reinforcing the corroded bottom plate of a storage tank with composite materials.” His research interest is centred on utilizing machine learning to forecast the degree of cure in a composite material that is subjected to an autoclave by analyzing the video of the procedure. He is a member of the Composites Research Network (CRN), working under the supervision of Dr. Abbas Milani.

VEMS features Canada’s highest-resolution, 3D, VR-ready video wall. It is designed for use cases that are impossible elsewhere, such as immersive experiences without VR equipment, scientific simulations with ultra-high resolution, and graphics workstations for computationally intensive tasks. The studio also offers collaboration tools, including video conferencing and recording. Although the user experience is designed to be intuitive, allowing for ease of use even without specialized training, there is currently a gap in the automation of introducing the space and its capabilities. As a result, an app is being developed with the help of Unity to serve as a tutorial, demonstrating the capabilities of the screen and how users can interact with it. The app will help bridge the gap in introducing users to the advanced features of VEMS and enable them to better utilize the studio’s capabilities for their use cases. This will provide a more seamless and efficient experience for users while maximizing the potential of VEMS.

11:30 – 12:00 Nelusha Nugegoda is a self-motivated student pursuing her MSc in Computer Science on Human-Computer Interaction at The University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada. She has extensive experience as a software developer in a reputed Company. She is a current member of the UBCO HCI lab. Her current focus is developing a collaborative application using Augmented Reality to allow professionals to work together on a dedicated task in their remote location.

Nugegoda has collaborated on an application allowing people to play an interactive game to check and practice their garbage-sorting skills by collaborating with their friends and colleagues. When it comes to waste disposal, one of the most important things is to sort the waste into the correct bins to make the recycling process easy and efficient. This immersive game experience allows users to visually remember the correct bins to put the items that they are frequently using in day-to-day life and also the items which were most commonly sorted incorrectly. Users will have the opportunity to collaborate with others to choose the correct bin. They will have three chances to sort all the garbage items incorrectly and complete the task successfully.

12:00 – 12:30 Bengi Agcal is a multimedia artist with computer engineering and psychology backgrounds. She is pursuing her MFA alongside NSERC CREATE in the Immersive Technologies program. Through art and engineering, she aims to engage with the issues of environmental degradation. Her research interests and art practice include speculative fiction, participatory design, 3D rendering, digital sculpting, XR technologies, web computing, immersive technologies, sustainability, climate change, and material recycling.

Virtual reality, as a time-based media and digital technology, can transmit unpredictable and imperceptible sides of changes. Agcal’s project, The 8th continent/Ark Noah’s 2.0, aims to bring together a collaborative art practice in a digital realm to spread and amplify the public’s sentiments and experiences regarding plastic pollution. The experience takes place in an unreal landscape inspired by the Pacific garbage patch, and it replicates the meditative and rewarding process of environmental clean-ups by having the player clear up the space and free the animals victimized by pollution. We hope that this project will enable individuals to share their thoughts and previous exposures to pollution with the general public, thereby opening up a discussion space to drive the necessary changes.

12:30 – 1:00 Amira Ahmed is an Assistant Lecturer at Cairo University, Egypt. Her background lies in Media and Communication studies. She is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Studies program, DAHU theme, at UBCO and a Center of Culture and Technology member. She participates in two academic cohorts: Digital Arts and Humanities at the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and CITECH training program. Her Ph.D. research-creation study investigates the role of immersive and interactive narratives in promoting Global Citizenship Education and countering extremism.

Digital media technologies provide endless possibilities for disseminating and preserving cultural heritage, opening new avenues to creative representations of cultural heritage. This research-creation discusses the design and implementation of an immersive experience where users could navigate the world’s most incredible open-air museum, Luxor city, using a Wireless Game Joystick Controller. Users will look closer at its prominent monuments and learn about ancient Egyptian history and mythology through info spots offering further details on the sites. The primary objective of the project is to examine the effects of immersion and interaction with a high-resolution, 3D, VR-ready video wall (15,360 x 4,320 px) on user experience and experiential learning. Finally, this research aims to advance the understanding of the impact of immersive technologies and interactive 3D multimedia in communicating and promoting digital heritage.

1:00 – 1:30 Bahman Fakouri is a master’s student in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies program, DAHU theme, at UBCO.  He completed his bachelor’s degree in industrial design and holds a master’s degree in illustration. He has worked in the entertainment industry as a 3D modeller, texture artist, and visual development artist. His research interests include data physicalization, storytelling, XR, virtual reality, and data visualization.

Virtual reality can help artists to tell their stories in an immersive environment and illustrate the sophisticated concept of time and place in a way that can be presented to non-scientist audiences. Time After Time (TAT), is a project that will focus on illustrating the impact of a Nechako building on its surroundings before and after its construction on the UBC Okanagan campus. Data required for creating this project is collected from Google Maps, and some Heli shot footage was captured by drone. Using virtual reality, viewers can explore and observe the change process as it happens over time. This will be a unique opportunity for viewers to witness the changes in their environment in a way they may not have been able to experience before.

1:30 – 2:00 Ms. Leslie Saca is a Ph.D. Student in the Electrical Engineering School of Engineering. She is part of the CITech graduate program interested in Extended Reality (XR), User Experience, Wearable Sensors, and Human Technology Interaction. Her background in the Immersive Technologies field started in 2021 while volunteering for a Canadian company, Mantis XR, where she contributed to the technology development efforts and supported their operations to enhance productivity since she found her passion in developing personalized XR experiences based on user feedback collected from wearable sensors embedded in mobile devices.

Immersive technologies create unique experiences by merging the physical world with virtual and simulated reality. Saca’s proposed research aims to develop an interface for users to immerse themselves in an XR experience using their mobile devices. This is achieved using the embedded sensors (gyroscope and accelerometer) in mobile devices to move through and interact with the environment. This interface is a proof-of-concept project that will eventually help pave the way for developing personalized XR experiences displayed on mobile devices.

Join Dr. Anita Girvan for a multi-session reading salon in which members will engage in collegial conversation about the emerging field of black feminist and coalitional ecological thought, built upon ancestral lineages. Dr. Girvan is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Environmental Justice in the department of English and Cultural Studies in FCCS.

The first session will discuss the text, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and will be held on April 14th from 10am to noon in ART 218.

Anyone on campus is invited to join this group who can commit to joining this community and to centering and reading Black feminist and coalitional texts and creative interventions. We are hoping to create community where BIPOC knowledges are held and centered, but all are welcome to learn and foster supportive communities of practice toward liberatory futures for human and larger-than-human kin.

In order to build good relations, the group number will be capped at 20, so please e-mail anita.girvan@ubc.ca ASAP if you are committed to attending. If you really want to join, can commit to three future sessions in the year and reading the texts chosen, but cannot make this session, please e-mail Anita. First priority in the salon will be given to those in attendance this first session.

Dates for following sessions will be determined by the group after the first meet-up.

Each session will focus upon a text or cultural artefacts in the emerging, but long existent, field of Black Feminist Ecological Thought.

Dr. Girvan says: My own spin on this is to call it Black Feminist and Coalitional Ecological Thought. I note that the lineages of Black feminism (eg Combahee River Collective) have always been coalitional in some form or the other – as they seek to connect with communities who have knowledges and experiences that are negatively impacted by exclusionary power – but it may be important to flag this explicitly at a time when divide and conquer politics function to maintain a troubling status quo.

Texts for future sessions will be drawn from the following (and/or participants’ suggestions at first session):

• The Deep – Rivers Solomon
• Chapter 16. “Black Feminist Ecological Thought: A Manifesto” – a chapter
  Chelsea Mikael Frazier in Ecofeminism Abrams and Gruen eds) (2nd Edition)
• World of Wonders -Aimee Nezhukumatathi
• Nia love – New York choreographer film-maker “UnderCurrents” (she performs, dances
  drowning)
• nichola fedman-kiss “Siren III” – Toronto- film and art installation (filmed underwater in
  the Atlantic ocean)
• Aph and Syl Ko. 2017.Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism and Black
• Veganism from Two Sisters. Lantern Publishing
• Octavia Butler or NK Jemison
• Dionne Brand (Map or any others of hers)

Dr. Aisha Ravindran: April 24, 1960 – March 8, 2023

The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies mourns the loss of Dr. Aisha Ravindran, who died from cancer early in the morning of March 8, 2023.

A researcher and teacher of composition, rhetoric, intercultural communication, and literature, Aisha joined our community in 2017. Her first PhD, from Mahatma Gandhi University, 2003, was on the poetry of Muriel Rukeyser. Before her death she was poised to defend a second PhD, through Simon Fraser University, in the area of communication and rhetoric with a particular focus on the needs of International Students.

Before joining UBCO, Aisha held an appointment at George Mason University’s campus in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she achieved the rank of Associate Professor and served as Chair of the Department of General Education (2009-2012). After George Mason’s UAE campus transitioned to become the University of Ras Al Khaimah, she served as Chair of the Department of English (2012-2014). In 2014, she emigrated to Canada, and undertook a new academic focus in her study of educational leadership and professional communication at Simon Fraser University.

Aisha joined the FCCS community as a sessional lecturer in 2017, and spent two years teaching first year English courses for us. In 2019, she applied for an FCCS tenure-track position in the Educational Leadership Stream with the Department of English and Cultural Studies. When the department recommended her for appointment, the Dean and Provost made the decision to appoint her immediately at the rank of Associate Professor of Teaching.

With her characteristic drive, sharp intellect, and generous humor, Aisha went to work with gusto and flare. In the far, far, too brief time we had with her, Aisha worked with her colleagues to create an entirely new academic learning space—even a new program code! – for  students across the campus, with an emphasis on supporting international students. She showed us all how to get things done, winning significant grants to support her educational leadership and program development, teaching new courses, helping to craft the new certification in Professional Writing, and very recently submitting a new proposal to establish a Minor in professional writing through the Communication and Rhetoric Program (CORH). She was only getting started and was taken too soon.

FCCS extends its condolences to Aisha’s students, past and present, to the Department of English and Cultural Studies, her home unit; and, especially, to her surviving partner, Dr. Brendan D’Souza, who teaches biology at UBCO. We walk with Brendan on our shared path of grief.

Celebration of Life Event

We are hosting a Celebration of Life for our dear friend and colleague, Aisha Ravindran.

Join us and light a candle as we remember her time amongst us, her strong and generous spirit, her love for her work, for her students, and for her friends.

Date: Wednesday, March 15
Time: 5:15 to 6:45 p.m.
Location: ADM 026 (University Theatre stage)

Light refreshments will be served.

Donations in memory of Aisha can be made to the BC Cancer Foundation, specifically directed to pancreatic cancer research.

Aisha Ravindran (centre) at the English Course union Masquerade Ball with collogues, February 2023.

Aisha Ravindran at the ISSOTL Conference, UBCO in November 2022 with colleagues

Aisha Ravindran (centre) in her traditional ceremonial clothing from her home region in Kerala with colleagues Karis Shearer (left) and Sherry Breshears

Jannik Eikenaar

Jannik Haruo Eikenaar is a son, nephew, cousin, brother, husband, father, and uncle who lives and works on the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territory of the syilx Okanagan people. He is the child of Dutch and Japanese settlers to this part of the world, and he is strongly committed to principles of inclusive excellence in both his professional and personal lives. As an academic, he is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the School of Engineering, the Bauder Professor (Okanagan) of Experiential Learning and Leadership, and the inaugural Associate Provost (Okanagan) of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Antiracism.

Dr. Eikenaar completed both his Masters of Arts in English and his PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies in our English and Cultural Studies department. We talked to Dr. Eikenaar about his time earning his degrees here at UBCO.

Tell us about the road to earning your UBC degrees.

I grew up in the Okanagan and, like a lot of people who grew up in smaller towns, I couldn’t wait to get out. So that’s what I did when I graduated high school. I went to Montreal, completed my BA and thought I would never come back here. And then my partner and I started thinking about a family and where we would like to be connected, so we came back here. Originally, I considered pursuing a career in K-12 teaching but I quickly changed my focus to academia. I completed both my MA and my PhD here at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

What are the highlights of your UBC experience?

The Okanagan campus is a size that makes it really collegial. I’ve collaborated with people in every Faculty on campus and that’s been tremendously rewarding.

Is there a professor that stands out as someone who made a difference and helped you along the way? 

Drs. Jennifer Gustar and George Grinnell were both pivotal in my degree program. They gave me opportunities, pushed me, and challenged me to think differently. But in addition to that they also modelled how to be a good academic and how to be a good colleague. They’re both tremendously committed to the university as a place. I really value what I learned from them about bringing a positive approach and clearly modelling what you want the academy to be.

What advice would you have for a student who is contemplating currently pursuing their graduate degree at UBCO?

When you’re doing graduate work, it’s a unique opportunity and intellectual exercise. There are elements of risk and vulnerability to this work. I think it’s important to recognize that and try to be conscious of it, and then to embrace it in a way that allows you to manage your work and not feel overwhelmed. Connecting with others is huge, especially in the humanities. Given the nature of humanities scholarship it can be really isolating. Connecting and engaging with others is just so, so important in these fields of study and in doing this kind of work. And it really is shaping you as an academic. My advice is: embrace that vulnerability, take that risk, and connect with others.

Graduate students in our Masters of Arts and Masters of Fine Arts programs are currently organizing a graduate student conference, Critical Relations Symposium, that will be held at UBC Okanagan in April of this year. The organizing is being done by the It’s Lit! Club, founded by a group of masters students excited to bring more conversation and community to the literary community on campus.

It’s Lit! Club at UBCO encourages humanities students to connect, discuss, and expand the study of cultural texts, be they literature, art, music, media, or critical theory. To do this, It’s Lit! holds space for students to share developing research in conference events and community-building events, ultimately contributing to the development of informal and formal publications.

The Critical Relations Symposium is a two-day academic conference hosted on UBC Okanagan campus through the It’s Lit! Club, offering undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to share their research with the wider campus academic community. This year’s theme is encounters, and will take place in-person on April 28th and 29th, 2023. The Critical Relations Symposium is organized by Liam Fraser (MA), Karis Dimas-Lehndorf (MA), Zachary Dewitt (MA), Jessica Beaudin (MA), and Annie Furman (MFA). This event seeks to model the value of academic discussion and collaboration in and across the humanities disciplines, with emphasis and consideration for the expanding role of academic interdisciplinarity.”

Call for Papers

The Critical Relations Symposium is invested in encounters: in thinking across differences, in how we come together (whosoever that ‘we’ may be), and what possibilities or consequences encounters hold. We wonder about interdisciplinarity as both method and subject, and thus welcome submissions from across humanities and fine arts disciplines as individual presenters or panel discussions.

Please submit abstracts, didactic texts, exhibition proposals, panel proposals, and any questions to club.its.lit@gmail.com by March 17, 2023.

Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, submitted in .doc or .docx formats. Individual presentations will be 15-20 minutes, with Q&A periods to follow.

View the full CFP

Patrick Lundeen teaching a drawing class, 2023

The 2021-22 recipient of the FCCS Teaching Excellence and Innovation Award is Patrick Lundeen who received this award on the basis of students support and teaching evaluations. Lundeen teaches in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program, offering courses in two-dimensional art practices, drawing and sculpture.

This award is designed to recognize faculty members for teaching approaches that develop experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, internationalization, undergraduate research and scholarship.

Lundeen’s students say that he is very encouraging to everyone in class, and is always there if anyone needs a hand. He prompts them to dig deeper by asking questions about their ideas, and gives genuine feedback.

Lundeen says that his basic teaching philosophy is that he there to guide students to cultivate their own creativity, interests/ideas and working discipline.  “In many of my classes I am called to teach technical skills – yet I feel that even as I am teaching skills, I am mostly concerned with trying to help students figure out what they have that is interesting to communicate and how to best communicate it.”

This is what being an artist is about – a good artist is a person that has interesting ideas, their ideas work or are relevant within the time in history that they are being presented and they can effectively use a medium to communicate these ideas. He also works to introduce students to the local art community and develop a working discipline which are both necessary elements to continue to make art once they leave school.

Lundeen feels that often as one teaches it can seem that what you are doing goes mostly unnoticed, especially in fine arts which is a slow process where one’s development and growth happens incrementally over time and is not easily quantified through tests scores and other evaluations.

“When I think back to my own studies, sometimes the most important things that I learned from instructors was not obvious at the time,” he says. “It can take years for ideas to sink in and you may not even get the chance to apply what you learned until after you leave school.  At some point, you will be working in your studio, and it will dawn on you – this is what they were talking about.”

When asked why he wanted to teach at a university, Lundeen says that he didn’t set out to enter academia, he simply wanted to be an artist – which he still is – yet teaching has enabled him to obtain the resources he needs to keep making work while earning a living talking about what interests him the most.

“Working at the university nourishes my own creativity and represents an opportunity to give back to the community through helping other artists grow.”

He has a thriving art practice which is evident with a number of recent exhibitions and projects including CHEAP! at the Kelowna Art Gallery, and as the 2022 City of Kelowna Artist in Residence with his project, HAPPY DAY FREE GIFT TRUCK.

“My artworks are an attempt to deal with the horrors of everyday life in a humorous, and hopefully, entertaining way.  I try to create art objects that are surprising and original and that cause a viewer to rethink what they already know,” he says.

He likes to push the envelope of what can be accepted in a gallery space and to make art that tests people and takes them out of their comfort zone.

“My artworks can be loud, overly bright, busy and move. Often they will make a viewer laugh – and feel uncomfortable at the same time.”

Patrick in his HAPPY DAY FREE GIFT TRUCK project

HAPPY DAY FREE GIFT TRUCK

Installation, CHEAP! at the Kelowna Art Gallery

What: Hearts Together
Who: Cool Arts
When: February 6 to 16, 2023; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday
Where: FINA Gallery, CCS Building, UBC’s Okanagan Campus, Kelowna

The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies is please to host the work of artist from Cool Arts Society FINA Gallery from February 6 to 16. Together with art educators during the weekly programs held in the Cool Arts Studio in the RCA, artists worked on the concept HEART, digging into the question – what does HEART mean? Artists discussed their feelings, thoughts, and ideas; then began their step-by-step big picture planning. These pieces are all representations of these collaborative ideas.

Each piece was created with a group of six to eight artists working together. This process encouraged and affected constructive communication and sharing ideas; including skill-building, listening, problem-solving, and planning.  The exhibition includes the work of 40 artists working together on art of all kinds that includes painting and collage.

The concepts that were shared covered a broad variety. Heart symbolism often conjures up a wide range of emotions, from joy to pain, love and devotion to moral courage and physical strength. The shape is securely embedded in western culture. Represented by an anatomically inaccurate shape, the heart is often used to represent the center of emotion, including affection and love, explains Amy Bradshaw, Arts Educator for Cool Arts.

“Cool Arts looks forward to our annual partnership with the FINA Gallery at UBCO where artists get the opportunity to professionally exhibit their art,” says Amy. “Creating these important opportunities in the arts for people with disabilities, neuro-diversabilities, and other exceptionalities aids in broadening connections and creating relationships with other artists on campus and beyond.”

She adds that it is important to have this recognized and well-funded FINA space to share the work done by people in our community who are seriously passionate about art and who want more public opportunities.

This exhibition is organized by Cool Arts Society and supported by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies.

~ Submitted by Amy Bradshaw, Cool Arts Art Educator & Volunteer Coordinator

More on the Cool Arts Studio

The Cool Arts studio is a safe, inclusive art studio that offers programs and artistic mentorship with a variety of professional artists who share their skills and lead classes. Cool Arts is a registered not for profit charitable organization managed by a volunteer Board of Directors and others who share their time in many ways; as classroom assistants, event supports, exhibition installations, and so much more.  Cool Arts relies heavily on sponsorships and donors; we welcome your support. To learn more about how you can get involved with Cool Arts, please visit coolarts.ca.

Shirley at the UofC Law book launch, 2017

Shirley McDonald is a lecturer in the Department of English and Cultural Studies, teaching classes in English with a focus on the teaching of academic writing. Dr. McDonald moved to the Okanagan with her family in 1994, and completed her BA in 1999 at Okanagan university College (now UBCO). She went on to finish her graduate degrees in Alberta, and returned to UBCO in 2008 when she was hired to create the first online course for the English Department. She continues to teach English courses in the department, drawing on her own research to provide students with meaningful topics on which to write.

Dr. McDonald has published articles in a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, ARIEL, Prairie Forum, and several Canadian studies journals. She has an essay in Gary Geddes: Essays on His Works, and two chapters and accompanying material in Farm Workers in Western Canada: Injustices and Activism, co-edited with Bob Barnetson (U of Alberta Press 2016).

Dr. McDonald shared some insights on her research and teaching practices here at UBC Okanagan.

How did you know you wanted to be a professor?

That realization came to me as a surprise when I was in my forties. I had planned to become a professional writer. I’d always been a writer. I won an award for a short story when I was in grade six. Writing was the one discipline that stuck with me over the many years of my assorted studies in liberal arts, fine arts, and music (voice). I dropped out of college to head out on the road with my band, but I kept writing even then, and even moreso as I settled down to raise a family. When my children were all in school, I returned to university. I went to SFU where I had the good fortune of studying poetry with Roy Miki and publishing the essay I wrote for Roy’s course. I still had a long way to go, however, to complete my BA.

The professor who inspired me to join the ranks of academia is John Lent. John is one of my favourite people on the planet. When I met him, I was writing a lot of poetry and a handful of poems earned a spot for me as a literary delegate at the BC Festival of the Arts. Two of the them, “The Turning” and “Pears”, are published in The New Quarterly. I also wrote a short story, “Out of Time”, which earned my spot as a literary delegate a second time. The story is published in Chasing Halley’s Comet: Winners of the Federation of BC Writers’ Festival Competition. John celebrated with me at a launch at Red Dog Books in Vernon. I also wrote a novel, which I workshopped in his fiction class. John’s generous and kind support helped my confidence grow. John encourage me to further my development as a writer and editor, but also as a teacher. To that end, I focused on writing-intensive courses during my doctoral program.

What is your own process in writing?

Like singing, writing is a performance and a prolonged embodied experience. I can be lost for hours in the alternate reality of my imagination. When a story begins to form, my surroundings fade and, as if I were merely a medium, the words seem to will themselves into existence. Later, I edit and restructure and cut and revise. The thing is that writing requires emotional and cognitive energy and lately, because teaching uses up my reserves, I have nothing left for the creative process. I take comfort in believing that I will have that energy again in my retirement and will resume my daily writing practice.

What kind of learning experiences do offer your students?

The creation of academic essays requires research before the writing process begins. Research yields evidence that requires documentation. Many students arrive at university with little awareness of how to or even the need to document that evidence. Thus, I developed a contextual method (models based on course readings) to teach students how to document their sources as they learn to write. Although I designed this practice-based approach for use in the classroom, I have found it to be equally successful in online learning. Teaching online is not the kind of performance that it is in the classroom where I have a presence. Online delivery requires my skills as a course designer to build the learning tools, as a technician to build the platform, then as a teacher and an editor to monitor and lead students through the learning process. The editing part, which takes place during the running of the course, requires hours of intense focus as I respond one by one to students’ exercises and essays, and provide each student with encouragement and with individual attention and guidance according to their writing strengths and weaknesses.

Join us on Wednesdays throughout the term for the Immersive Technologies Seminar Series.

Each week, artists and researchers from the Okanagan School of Engineering and the Faculty of Creative and Critical studies will offer presentations that look at immersive technologies in multidisciplinary and multi modal ways in the  Visualization and Emerging Media Studio (VEMS) here on campus.

Each talk will be held in the VEMS (COM 107) from 1 to 2 pm. Light refreshments will be served.

These talks are free and open to all. Registration is not required. See below for the list of speakers and dates:

Wednesday, January 25

• All the Stars we Cannot See | Dr. Megan Smith, Yujie Gao

Wednesday, February 1

• WaterWays | Dr. Aleksandra Dulic, Dr. Miles Thorogood

Wednesday, February 8

• Expanding Social Realities through Abstract Embodiment | John Desnoyers-Stewart

Wednesday, February 15

• Locus Amoenus: Place of Delight | John Power

Wednesday, March 1

• INTER/her | Camille Baker

Wednesday, March 8 (note time, 12:30-1:30)

• Awful Splendour | Andreas Rutkauskas

Wednesday, March 15 (note time, 12:00-1:00)

• Photorealistic visualization of nanoengineered materials | Kenneth Chau

Wednesday, March 22

• Virtual Reality | Annie Wan

Wednesday, April 12

• IMTC 507 Sympoium | Immersive Technology Design Studio Showcase

The Immersive Technologies Seminar Series is a collaboration between CITech and the Media Studies program, and is organized by NSERC CREATE in Immersive Technologies (CITech), a highly multidisciplinary graduate training program at UBC focusing on skills development and collaborative research to design immersive solutions for various real-world applications. Find out more about CITech.

Nathalie Hager

The 2020-21 recipient of the FCCS Teaching Excellence and Innovation Award is Nathalie Hager. Dr. Hager received this award on the basis of students support and teaching evaluations. She teaches in the Art History and Visual Culture program, offering courses in art and visual cultures of the world, History of the 20th Century Art, contemporary art history, art in Canada and in public art.

This award is designed to recognize faculty members for teaching approaches that develop experiential learning, interdisciplinarity, internationalization, undergraduate research and scholarship.

Hager’s students note that her lectures are engaging, and that she makes art history very interesting and fun to learn about, she presents the content of her classes in a clear and concise manner, she invites her students to offer their own perspective and creativity to projects, and even in the larger classes, students were given individualized treatment and she makes the effort to get to know each of her students.

Dr. Hager says that she believes in offering all students learning freedoms on par with their learning level and abilities. “My students are encouraged in their group or individual projects to research areas of the course that interest them the most, and to blend new learning with personal creativity for an empowering effect.”

She works to engage students by engaging listening and responding to them. “I learn from students how best to offer a transformative learning experience that will share with them my love for art and its history.”

One example of this is a project that Dr. Hager offered her students for bonus marks in 2020. The students in one of her first-year classes were invited to submit a Getty Challenge, to pick a favourite museum artwork, and find three things lying around the house and use them to recreate the artwork. The results were outstanding. The students were able to use what they had learned in the class and be truly creative with this project. View the results here.

She adds that when expectations are made clear and explicit, and when opportunities for practice and feedback are provided often, students gain confidence and take learning risks. “It is imperative to me that students walk away from the classroom and the course not only with a mastery of content but with a positive learning experience.”

In a 4^th year Public Art course, students get an overview of the field of public art and social practice and the role that public art plays in communities. To do this, Nathalie takes the students on a tour of public art in our local community. The images below show site visits to murals painted by visual arts students alongside instructor David Doody; a bee house created as part of the Pollinator Pasture project by creative writing prof, Nancy Holmes; and works around the UBC Okanagan campus that are part of the Public Art Collection.

Art history students visiting the mural site on Pandosay, summer 2022

Art history students doing a tour of public art at UBCO, pictured here with sn̓ilíʔtn (Story Poles) outside of the administration building

Art history students visiting the Pollinator Pasture project at the Grist Mill location near Dilworth mountain