Breaking News 

Thirty youth bursaries are available from the B.C. Youth Climate Leadership Alliance for Get Outside! It’s In Our Nature, a three-and-a-half day forum at Royal Roads March 5-8, 2009.The bursaries will cover registration fees as well as travel to and from Victoria, all food, accommodation and transportation as well as participation in a pre-forum youth gathering. Get Outside! It’s In Our Nature is for academics, government, practitioners, researchers and youth who want to learn, share and contribute to developing a strategy and action plan to help young British Columbians get re-connected to the natural world.

Nancy Wilkin is leading the university's new Office of Sustainability, staffed with facilitators Keri Laughlin and Vageli Dadiotis from the Youth Climate Leadership Alliance. The primary role of this office – among other things – is to guide the university’s momentum toward becoming one of Canada’s first truly sustainable campuses. To this end, Wilkin will assist associate vice-president and chief information officer Dr. Steve Grundy in his role to implement five overarching initiatives spelled out in the Sustainability Plan. Wilkin joins RRU after retiring from a 25-year career with the Province of B.C. where she most recently held the position of assistant deputy minister, Environmental Stewardship Division, for the Ministry of Environment.

RRU grad Laura de Jonge of Calgary is featured in a Globe and Mail article about flexible admissions which allows qualified mid-career professionals to pursue a master’s degree with or without a BA. "It's a considerable step better than mature admissions," says Dr. Sherman Waddell, RRU's co-ordinator of prior learning assessment. "Instead of asking how old you are we ask what is it that you know and can do?"

The university lost a valued and long-time employee on Dec. 10 when Alex Smith passed away suddenly of a heart attack.  Many will know Smith because he worked as a gardener at Royal Roads from the late 1970s when it was Royal Roads Military College. His colleagues are planning to install a bench in the Japanese Gardens he so lovingly maintained for more than 30 years.

Dr. Will Low has co-authored an article entitled Te Warewhare: The Impact of The Warehouse on Māori in Kaitaia, Kerikeri and Motueka, looking at the socio-economic impact of “big-box” retail on small town life. Published on-line in the Business Review, the piece investigates how much we really know about the impact on our communities of the rapidly changing retail landscape.

Nancy Arsenault, dean of the Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, has been elected -- along with a representative from the University of Guelph and one from Vancouver Community College --  to serve for a two-year term in one of the education seats on the national board of directors for the Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council. It's the first time western Canada has had two representatives on this body which was established in 1993 to address labour market issues and promote professionalism in the Canadian tourism sector.

Continuing Studies welcomed Robert Bateman back to campus on Dec. 1  for Travelogues and Sketchbooks, one in a series of presentations featuring the artist's rich and wide stories of adventure and his passion to not simply occupy the earth but inhabit it in natural ways. "As always, Bob was an inspiration to those who participated and, of special note this time, was the delight of a father whose son, an RRU grad, had arrived from Alberta and purchased, for his dad's 75th birthday,  two admissions!" says Continuing Studies Director Hilary Leighton. After the talk, Bateman traded stories and a signed poster for a lively conversation with the birthday celebrant. Net proceeds from this event (and the two that came before) contribute to the Robert and Birgit Bateman bursary for Environment and Sustainability grad students now in excess of $3,000. Photo by Birgit Freybe Bateman

Elder Albert Marshall and Dr. Cheryl Bartlett, both from Cape Breton University, were at Royal Roads in December to talk about two "ways of knowing" - the First Nations way and the western science way. They explained how Integrative Science and Two-Eyed Seeing can bring together Indigenous and Western ways and how Two-Eyed Seeing encourages us to learn to see from our one eye with the strengths of the Indigenous traditions, and from our other eye with the strengths of the western science.

Royal Roads University representatives regularly visit communities across Canada to present face-to-face information sessions about the university, its unique learning models, programs offered and application requirements. Members of the team will be Toronto, for example, on January 30. Find out more by emailing infosessions@royalroads.ca


We want to hear from you. Please send your stories, story ideas and notices of upcoming events to InRoads@royalroads.ca