Hello, all!

This is a new article that I’ve been planning to write for ES Connected. One of my MANY tasks in the Senate and Curriculum Office is to review and implement new curriculum that the University’s Faculties propose and the Senate approves. Once in a while I’ll be sharing what interesting new programs and courses will be available to students in the coming years!

This issue’s new interesting program is the BEST program from the Faculty of Forestry. BEST stands for Forest Bioeconomy Sciences and Technology. Here is what the Faculty’s proposal had to say about it:

The proposed Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Forest Bioeconomy Sciences and Technology (BEST) degree, offered in the Faculty of Forestry, will provide a holistic education focused on the scientific, economic, and policy issues generated by transforming forest and plant based biomass into value-added renewable products and energy that stimulate sustainable development and wise land use. The program will teach methodology and practical skills for the understanding and advancement of technologies, innovative products and processes, economic forces and policy, and land use development that will advance the emergent bioeconomy paradigm.

As UBC is an academic institution that is heavily committed to the causes of sustainably and environmentalism the BEST program could be a part of a new generation of programs that help emphasizes these initiatives and inspire more development in that direction.

Some hightlights of what the program will teach students includes:

  • Understand technologies for characterizing and converting biomass into bioenergy and biofuels
  • Explain the biorefinery concept including resource procurement and transport, biomass pretreatment, and production of fuels, energy, and products
  • Develop tools to design innovative bioproducts with low environmental footprint
  • Compare bioenergy, such as wood pellets, and liquid biofuels to other alternative energy technologies
  • Utilize biotechnology methods from plant growth through biochemical pathways for the transformation of biomass into useful materials
  • Assess the socio-environmental impacts of managed resources used in the bioeconomy
  • Evaluate and project resource consumption and greenhouse gas emission for biorefineries
  • Apply participatory methods and community-based approaches to access and develop renewable enterprises
  • Evaluate the potential role of bioenergy in economies and communities at different spatial scales
  • Build employable business skills in graduates such as critical thinking, project management, and leadership

While a lot of the material covered definitely goes over my head it’s quite interesting that UBC is helping develop and grow the forestry industry in this province, and internationally, on the cutting edge of sustainably and technology.

The BEST program also includes 14 new courses under the BEST course code! While we don’t have the time or space to go over them all I thought I would include one of my favourites, BEST 400: Biomimicry and Biocomposites.

The course description reads as follows:

Introduction to principles of self-assembly, hierarchical structures, biocomposites, and unique adaptive structures.

With the following rationale for the course’s subject matter:

Materials that are lightweight, tough and mechanically resilient are found throughout nature. These materials are created under ambient conditions with reactants that are non-toxic and can be recycled at the end of their life. Adopting these nature-inspired designs and synthesis principles is the foundation of biomimicry. This course will offer students insight into the principles of structure-property relationships to describe the behaviour of natural materials. Students will be provided with the applied chemistry and physics background to discuss technical aspects of material design, natural material life cycles with impact on carbon, silica, and nitrogen fixation, and how natural materials have created solutions for highly interesting properties such as superhydrophobic surfaces, structural colour, and stimuli responsive materials. The course will emphasize how biological diversity in the natural world provides an unparalleled resource to learn design clues for motifs for the efficient partitioning of limited resources to meet unique material functionality.

Now don’t get wrong; I don’t know what half those words mean. That being said it almost sounds like science-fiction!

Well that’s all I wanted to share about the new and upcoming BEST program that students will be able to register for as soon as 2019W. If you have any questions or curiosities about the program feel free to e-mail me at Anthony.grzegorzewski@ubc.ca and I will answer as BEST I can, or lead you to someone who knows better than I do.

Thanks for reading!