UFV Student Research Day 2012

UFV Press Release on Research Day 2013

From: UFV Info
Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:57 AM
To: Anne Russell
Subject: UFV celebrates student research with poster day and awards

March 25, 2013

Media contact: Anne Russell
Cell: 604-798-3709
Office: 604-795-2826
anne.russell@ufv.ca

UFV celebrates student research with poster day and awards

If you wandered past Room B121 on the UFV Abbotsford campus on March 20, you would have seen the normally dark room transformed into a hubbub of chatter and enthusiasm.

The event was Student Research Day, and UFV celebrated the hard work of both students and professors by hosting a series of micro-lectures in the morning and a poster presentation in the afternoon.

The usually open space was crammed full to bursting for most of the afternoon, as close to 30 students and their posters jostled for space and attention amongst a sea of curious visitors.

The research projects spanned disciplines and academic levels, from Communications 155 to 400-level chemistry courses, to a plethora of directed studies ranging from sociology to history to biology and back again.

The students, for the most part completing the last year of their degrees, were able to both rub elbows with other disciplines and eye up the rest of the research community at UFV in a friendly competition.

The 28 project posters competed for seven different awards, which were announced at the end of the day.  Each award included a scholarship amount between $150–200, and the students will be honoured at the annual research awards banquet.

Of the seven available awards, chemistry students took home four prizes and geography students cleaned up the remaining three.

“While it was gratifying to see our students do well, many others were equally deserving,” said David Fenske, UFV’s chemistry department head. “The quality and breadth of research on display was truly impressive.” 

“These instructors’ commitment, passion and professionalism is making a big difference in our students’ lives,” said UFV president Mark Evered, extending a thanks to the faculty who supported and guided the student researches. “I was very impressed and proud of our students.”

A SAMPLER OF PROJECTS:

Shea Wind — Indo-Canadian Studies

White-Canada Forever: A Look Through The Eyes of the Vancouver Daily Province Newspaper 1906–1915

Where some posters were filled with graphs and lengthy text explanations, Shea Wind’s posterboard was instead filled with photocopies of newspaper headlines.

“This is pretty much a representation of what I did for the Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies in the fall semester,” Wind said. “I transcribed articles from the Vancouver Daily Province newspaper, focusing on Indo-Canadian immigration to British Columbia and the racism that arose from that.”

These racist undertones are easy to see in the headlines he’s picked out to include as part of the presentation: The headline “Will Arrest Hindu Who Is Alleged To Have Voted” stares at the viewer in all caps, and suspicion seems to be a prevalent theme.

“There are definitely some stories that shock you, that this could happen in the last 100 years. It shows just how brutal British Columbians could be to outsiders during this time period,” Wind noted.

This project was one he undertook while working for the Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies last fall.

“I loved the whole project,” Wind said.

 -30-

"Tackling Trafficking"

"Tackling Trafficking"-Editorial by UFV student researcher Parveer Ghuman, August 2012

‌