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Continuing Studies

50th Anniversary Deans' Lecture Series

Research is reshaping the way we live and think. Meet UVic researchers and learn about their research interests. Find out what’s new and shape your understanding of the world around you.

In celebration of the University of Victoria’s 50th Anniversary we are pleased to bring you an expanded 50th Anniversary Deans’ Lecture Series for 2012/2013 which includes evening lectures at the Legacy Art Gallery. The series is presented in partnership with the Greater Victoria Public Library, the 50th Anniversary Organizational Team, the Division of Continuing Studies and the Faculties of Education, Engineering, Fine Arts, Graduate Studies, Humanities, Law, Science and Social Sciences.

Daytime Lectures are held at the Greater Victoria Public Library, Central Branch, 735 Broughton Street. Parking is available underground and you are welcome to bring a bag lunch. Evening Lectures are held at the UVic Legacy Art Gallery, 630 Yates Street. Parking is available in nearby lots. No food or drink is allowed in the gallery.

Admission to the lectures is free, but please call 250-472-4747 to register so we can guarantee you a seat. Online Registration is available for the Evening Lectures held at the Legacy Art Gallery

Online registration is not available for some of these lectures. If you are unable to attend a lecture for which you have registered please let us know so that we can offer a seat to someone else.

UVic and Uvic Library

Daytime Lectures

Greater Victoria Public Library, Central Branch, Broughton Street

What’s New in Engineering?

The Search for Franklin’s Lost Vessels: The 2012 HMS Erebus and HMS Terror Expedition

Date: Friday, January 18, 12:30-1:45 pm, Central Library, Broughton Street
Speaker: Colin Bradley, PhD, PEng, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Course Code: ASDS281 2013S E01

Due to the importance of Sir John Franklin’s 1845 voyage to Canada’s history of Arctic navigation and exploration, the two lost ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, are designated together as a national historic site of Canada (the only such “undiscovered” national historic site). Locating these shipwrecks offers unprecedented information on the search for the Northwest Passage and the exploration of Canada’s North.

In the summer of 2012, the Parks Canada-led search for the Franklin vessels enlisted the University of Victoria’s Ocean Technology Laboratory. The Faculty of Engineering team employed an autonomous underwater vehicle, equipped with bathymetric side-scan sonar, to map the ocean floor at depths that are unsafe for divers. The high resolution acoustic imagery is being used to detect and identify artifacts of archaeological significance.

This presentation will describe the preparation and execution of the 2012 Arctic mission, with a particular emphasis on the technology currently being used to map the seafloor and hunt for the wrecks. The Ocean Technology Laboratory has been developing underwater technologies and engaged in a wide spectrum of UVic-led projects since 2003.

Colin Bradley is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria. Professor Bradley gained a BASc in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia; a MSc from Herriot-Watt University in Electrical and Electronic Engineering: and a PhD from the University of Victoria in Mechanical Engineering. Currently, he is the Director of the Adaptive Optics Laboratory with a research focus on the development of advanced optical instrumentation for astronomy. A recent area of emphasis is the development of a multi-object adaptive optics system for the Subaru Observatory, located in Hawaii. Professor Bradley also established the Ocean Technology Laboratory in 2002. This initiative has included the development of the Ocean Technology Test Bed (a sea floor laboratory located in Saanich Inlet) and, most recently, the application and development of autonomous underwater vehicle technology to underwater archeology. In particular, the Ocean Technology Laboratory has participated in two field missions to the Arctic to hunt for the remains of the Franklin Expedition.


What’s New in Social Sciences?

Financial Crises and Economic Crises

Date: Friday, February 1, 12:30-1:45 pm, Central Library, Broughton Street
Speaker: Paul Schure, PhD, Department of Economics
Course Code: ASDS240 2013S E02

Some financial crises culminate in economic crises whereas others appear to have no impact on the real economy. In this talk Dr Paul Schure will address why the 2007-08 financial crisis turned out to have a very serious impact on the global economy. Dr Schure will also briefly go into the current European sovereign debt crisis and particularly the question of how it is possible that the woes of a small country like Greece can have such enormous impact on the stability of the European financial sector, and why Canada should care.

Paul Schure is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Victoria. Before joining UVic in 2000, Paul spent one year as a postdoctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and 4 months as a consultant at the European Investment Bank (1998). He has held visiting positions at the Robert Schuman Centre of the European University Institute (2002 and 2005), the University of Bonn (2003), Utrecht University (2008), and the University of Amsterdam (2009). Paul works on financial intermediation, industrial organisation, and European integration. His work has appeared in various international economics and finance journals.


What’s New in Humanities?

The Chinese Propaganda Poster Project: Preserving a Lost Future

Date: Friday, February 8, 12:30-1:45 pm, Central Library, Broughton Street
Speaker: Richard King, PhD, Department of Pacific and Asian Studies
Course Code: ASDS259 2013S E01

From the 1950s to the 1980s, posters were an important medium for the state to communicate its messages to the Chinese people, promising a new and better society that would be achieved with enlightened leadership and concerted effort. To preserve these compelling images of a future that never happened as the posters themselves deteriorate, the Department of Pacific and Asian Studies and the UVic Library are digitizing a collection that captures the Chinese nation at a time of turmoil and transformation.

Richard King is professor of Chinese studies at the University of Victoria. He writes about, and translates, modern Chinese literature, and also studies and teaches Chinese film and Asian popular culture. He collected posters as a student in Beijing and Shanghai in the mid-1970s, and has added to the collection on subsequent visits to China.


What’s New in Social Sciences?

Environmental Change in the Western Arctic: Understanding Impacts and Adapting to a Warmer World

Date: Friday, February 22, 12:30-1:45 pm, Central Library, Broughton Street
Speaker: Trevor Lantz, PhD, School of Environmental Studies
Course Code: ASDS240 2013S E01

Trevor Lantz is a terrestrial ecologist who works at a variety of scales to understand environmental change in northern ecosystems. Members of his lab combine detailed field investigations of vegetation and microenvironment with broad-scale change detection and spatial pattern analysis. By combining field investigations and regional mapping, his research program seeks to link knowledge of key processes with data on landscape-level variation in critical drivers. Current research projects in the western Arctic focus on permafrost degradation, storm surges, shrub encroachment, catastrophic lake drainage, and anthropogenic disturbance.


What’s New in Education?

Reducing Our Leisure Deficit

Date: Friday, March 22, 12:30-1:45 pm, Central Library, Broughton Street
Speaker: John Meldrum, PhD, School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education
Course Code: ASDS280 2013S E01

Canadians have access to more free time than ever and yet as a society we face a serious leisure deficit. This talk will address our individual and collective leisure deficit and will discuss current leisure research that impacts health, happiness and community engagement. Practical suggestions for how to address our individual and societal leisure deficit will also be examined.

John is a faculty member in the School of Exercise Science, Physical and Health Education at the University of Victoria. He received a PhD from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the University of Manitoba. John has published and presented on leisure management and marketing both nationally and internationally and is the coauthor of the textbook “Leisure Service Management.” John has worked with numerous leisure service organizations across Canada. Prior to returning to academia, John worked in a number of roles for the Manitoba government including senior policy advisor to the Premier’s office, Cabinet Secretary for Economic Development and CEO of the Economic, Innovation and Technology Council. He also was the first president and CEO of the University of Manitoba’s SMARTpark project. John lives in Victoria with his partner Mary and their 2 boys JP and Cam. John spends his leisure time golfing, cycling and getting back to playing tennis


What’s New in Fine Arts?

Site as Content: Contemporary Approaches to Visual Art and Place

Date: Friday, April 5, 12:30-1:45 pm, Central Library, Broughton Street
Speaker: Jennifer Stillwell, MFA, Department of Visual Arts
Course Code: ASDS267 2013S E01

In this talk the speaker will explore select histories, strategies and interpretations of site-specific art work. Consideration will be given to the traditional white-walled gallery, alternative exhibition spaces and outdoor locations.

Jennifer Stillwell is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts. Her work focuses on experimental approaches to sculpture, video and installation. In 2000, she received an MFA with highest distinction from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has since exhibited widely. She has created large-scale solo installations at the Darling Foundry (Montreal) and at Triple Candie (New York). Other solo exhibitions include YYZ Artists’ Outlet (Toronto) and a survey show at the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art (Winnipeg). In the past few years she has been a part of group exhibitions in Canada, the United States and Europe including at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Oakville Galleries, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Biennale Nationale de Sculpture Contemporaine in Quebec and Loop-Raum Für Aktuelle Kunst in Berlin. Jennifer was a regional finalist for the preeminent Sobey Art Award in 2006, she has received a Major Arts Grant from the Manitoba Arts Council and production grants from the Canada Council for the Arts. She is currently commissioned to produce a large-scale outdoor sculpture for the City of Winnipeg.


What’s New in Law?

The Murderous Imagination: Colonial Collisions and the Genres of Justice

Date: Friday, April 12, 12:30-1:45 pm, Central Library, Broughton Street
Speaker: Rebecca Johnson, LLM, SJD, Faculty of Law
Course Code: ASDS255 2013S E01

This talk will focus on the high profile 1958 trial of Kikkik, an Inuit woman charged with murder. What can be learned about justice and Canadian histories of the north by exploring four different genres in which this story has been told? We will compare the trial transcript; Farley Mowatt’s book The Desperate People; a trio of Inuit sculptures (carved in 1959) on display in the Yellowknife courthouse; and a documentary film made 50 years after the event by one of Kikkik’s own daughters.

In her life before law, Rebecca Johnson studied Music. But she was seduced by the siren song of law, and began her legal studies at the University of Alberta. She was called to the Bar in Calgary before spending a year at the Supreme Court as a law clerk to Madame Justice L’Heureux-Dubé. She completed her Master and Doctorate of Law at the University of Michigan, where she was able to explore her interest in US and Canadian approaches to constitutional equality issues. She spent five years teaching in the Faculty of Law at the University of New Brunswick before moving to the University of Victoria in 2001. She has taught in the areas of constitutional law, criminal law, feminist advocacy, and legal theory. One of her favourite courses is one which uses film (mostly films about murderous women) as a way of getting at issues of gender, justice and judgment in law and in popular culture.


Evening Lectures

Legacy Art Gallery, 630 Yates Street (corner of Yates and Broad)

What’s New in Fine Arts?

The Biography of the Elizabeth Yeend Duer Collection

This lecture has been postponed and will be offered in the Fall of 2013 at the Greater Victoria Public Library. Please check back in August 2013 for further information.

Speaker: Carolyn Butler-Palmer, PhD, Williams Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest, Department of History in Art
Course Code: ASDS267 2013S E02

Carolyn Butler-Palmer occupies the Williams Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest in Art History at the University of Victoria. Professor Butler-Palmer has recently been a scholar in residence at the Georgia O’Keeffe Research Center and was awarded a University of Pittsburgh Mellon Fellowship. Her current program of research focuses on cross-cultural relations as they pertain to the idea of the Pacific Northwest. She is currently working on a book Cosmographic Cosmopolitanism: The Life and Aesthetics of David Neel. In addition, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern and contemporary arts of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska.


What’s New in Graduate Studies?

Confidence Clinic by Colleen Clement

Register Online

Date: Wednesday, February 20, 7 to 8:30 pm, Legacy Gallery, Yates Street
Speaker: Colleen Clement, PhD Candidate, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Course Code: ASDS279 2013S E02

To better prepare our youth with the skills of compassion and understanding needed in our world of ever-increasing cross-cultural encounters, we must engage the mind, body, and heart together as opposed to relying solely on the intellect for answers. The Confidence Clinic will provide a hands-on demonstration of how tools found in the performing arts offer a means for total embodiment of knowledge and awareness. In a fun, encouraging atmosphere, participants will experience how even the simplest of drama techniques can spark effective problem solving.

Colleen earned an MA from Eastern Michigan University in Drama and Theater for the Young and is currently here on the west coast pursuing a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Victoria and serving as the Director of Communications for the Graduate Student Society Board. Her experience includes producing the Grammy-nominated lullaby album Dream Songs, conducting private vocal coaching, and teaching Stage Presence classes and Confidence Clinics to help people increase self-esteem on and off stage. She developed an improvisation program to help bridge social communication gaps that commonly occur in schools and communities with increasing multilingual populations.


What’s New in Law?

One Hundred Years of Advocating for Justice: Litigating the Calder Case

Register Online

Date: Wednesday, March 20, 7 to 8:30 pm, Legacy Gallery, Yates Street
Speaker: Hamar Foster, QC, Faculty of Law
Course Code: ASDS255 2013S E02

Using video clips, photographs and other visual aids, Professor Foster will outline and discuss the legal and historical context of the Calder case, decided by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1973. Although the case began in the 1960s, its roots reach back as far as the 1870s, and it is one of the main reasons that Canada developed a comprehensive land claims process.

Hamar Foster, QC, has undergraduate degrees in Philosophy (Queen’s) and Law (UBC) and graduate degrees in History (Sussex) and Law (Auckland). He clerked for the Chief Justice of British Columbia and practiced law in Vancouver with Prowse, Williamson and Foster before joining the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria in 1978. Over the years he has taught Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Trial and Appellate Advocacy, Legal History, Evidence, Aboriginal Law, and Property. In 2002 he taught Criminal Law in the Inuit law program in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Most of his research and writing has focused on the legal history of British Columbia; the legal history of aboriginal/non-aboriginal relations in western and northern Canada; and comparative Canadian/US Criminal Law. He is the author of approximately seventy articles on these topics and has co-edited a number of books, one of which is Let Right Be Done: Aboriginal Title, the Calder Case, and the Future of Indigenous Rights (2007). The most recent edited collections are The Grand Experiment: Law and Legal Culture in British Settler Societies (2008) and a special issue of BC Studies on the BC Court of Appeal (2009). The most recent article is “One Good Thing: Law, Elevator Etiquette and Aboriginal Rights Litigation in Canada” (2010), 37 The Advocates’ Quarterly at 66-86.

He has been married to Katherine Cook since 1984 and has two daughters. He is also an enthusiastic member of the Victoria City Rowing Club and has a weathered old sailboat he does not use enough. For further details see http://law.uvic.ca/faculty_staff/faculty_directory/foster.php


What’s New in Education?

Education—There is an App for That

Register Online

Date: Wednesday, April 10, 7 to 8:30 pm, Legacy Gallery, Yates Street
Speaker: Tim Pelton, PhD, Department of Curriculum and Instruction and Leslee Francis-Pelton, PhD, Chair, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Course Code: ASDS280 2013S E02

Tablets, ebooks and apps—what are they bringing to the classroom that isn’t already there? How will these new tools help children learn? How can teachers, parents and others use them to support 21st century learning?

Dr Tim Pelton and Dr Leslee Francis-Pelton are faculty members in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the Faculty of Education. Tim teaches courses on mathematics pedagogy for pre-service teachers at the elementary and middle school levels. His focus is on helping children to make sense of mathematics and on examining new technologies with respect to their potential to support learning in mathematics and science. Leslee teaches courses on mathematics pedagogy for pre-service teachers at the elementary, middle and secondary levels. Her focus is on promoting problem solving and hands-on activities in the mathematics classroom. She currently serves as chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.


Admission to the lectures is free, but please call 250-472-4747 to register so we can guarantee you a seat. Online Registration is available for the Evening Lectures held at the Legacy Art Gallery