Geography Faculty News - 2010

Faculty

Dr. Brian Menounos travelled to Ottawa (November 23-25) to participate in meetings with several MPs. These meetings are part of the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) Scientists on the Hill campaign. The objective of this campaign is to encourage the Government, and members of the opposition parties to support science on climate change, extreme weather, and air pollution.

Dr. Zoë Meletis attended the workshop "Fostering Sustainable Behaviour (with Dr. McKenzie-Mohr) on November 22-23 in Prince George as part of the UNBC Green Team that includes faculty members, staff, undergraduate and graduate students.

Congratulations to Dr. Brian Menounos, Dr. Garry Clarke (UBC), and Dr. Dan Moore (UBC) who received a $100,000 grant from the Canadian Foundation from Climate and Atmospheric Sciences for their proposal, "Western Canadian Cryospheric Network: Modelling hydrological impacts of deglaciation" in Fall 2010.

Dr. Phil Owens and Dr. Ellen Petticrew will be attending the International Symposium on Sediment Dynamics for a Changing Future, Warsaw, Poland, June 14 - 18. Dr. Ellen Petticrew and graduate student Sam Albers, MSc (Biology) attended the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography Annual Meeting in Santa Fe, NM June 6 - 11. Several of our folk presented at the Prairie Summit joint meeting of Canadian geographers, cartographers, remote sensors and geomorphologists at the University of Regina, 1-5 June. These included Dr. Sarah de Leeuw (Northern Medical Program) and NRES graduate students/researchers Jennifer Herkes, Alex Martin, Laura Ryser and Chelan Zirul. Dr. Catherine Nolin delivered the Suzanne Mackenzie Memorial Lecture entitled Geography That Breaks Your Heart: Feminist Geography from/to the Peripheries. Dr. Neil Hanlon and Dr. Roger Wheate were part of a panel of editors discussing publishing issues for young faculty. Dr. Phil Owens is attending the European Geosciences Union annual conference in Vienna, May 3-7, which is attended by about 10,000 scientists. He organizing and chaired two sessions and presented two posters. Dr. Brian Menounos gave a talk about geoscience education at UNBC at the Minerals North conference in Prince George, BC in late April.

AAG Conference, Washington, DC - April 2010

Several UNBC geographers travelled to the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference in Washington, DC from April 13-18. We presented the following papers:

Dr. Sarah de Leeuw (Assist. Prof, NMP, with Jessica Place), Waiting for a Saint: Understanding the Annual Rose Prince Pilgrimage as a Geography of Response.

Sarah also served as a panellist on A Deeper Sense of Place: New Geographies of Indigenous-Academic Collaboration panel

Dr. Kate Hrinkevich (PhD NRES), Historical mountain pine beetle outbreak dynamics in north-central BC

Dr. Alex Martin (PhD NRES), Confronting a Changing Economic Landscape: The Challenge Facing Forest-Dependent Communities in British Columbia's Northern Interior

Dr. Zoe Meletis (Assist. Prof, GEOG) Dealing with post-dissertation gender guilt: An exploration exercise in searching for gender in the data

Dr. Catherine Nolin (Assoc Prof, GEOG), Anisa Zehtab-Martin, and Dr. Greg Halseth, Hidden Avenue(s) of (Im)migration: Transnational Experiences of Mail-Order Brides in Northern BC

Congratulations to John Pomeroy (U. of Saskatchewan), Dr. Brian Menounos, Ron Stewart (U.of Manitoba), and E. Johnson (U. of Calgary) received an $80,000 grant from the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) for their proposal entitled Western Water Security: Threats from Climate Change and Extreme Weather.

Dr. Roger Wheate delivered the keynote presentation at the University of Calgary Geography Department's Annual Conference on March 12, 2010. Dr. Wheate's talk was entitled "The Power of Geography, the Magic of the North."

Dr. Zoe Meletis

We are excited to announce the faculty appointment of Dr. Zoe Meletis as an Assistant Professor in the Geography program. Dr. Meletis joined us in the Winter 2010 semester and is teaching GEOG303/ORTM433 Recreational Geography (Tourism, Recreation, & Geography) and ENVS309 Women and Environmental Studies. Dr. Meletis's new office is located in the New Lab Building, Rm. 8-244.