TA Workshop: Navigating Challenging Classroom Situations February 21

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Have you ever had students ask you for a re-grade? Dealing with lack of engagement in discussions? Conflicts during group projects?

Join our upcoming workshop: Navigating Challenging Classroom Situations, where we will discuss strategies to prepare and respond to challenges that arise during your TAship.

When: Friday, February 21st, 3:30 – 5:00pm

Where: Michael Smith Laboratories 101 (MSL 101)

RSVP: https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_diiIzlF030bDtbg

Snacks provided!

This workshop counts toward the Teaching Fundamentals category of the LFS Advanced TA Skills Letter of Completion. Questions about the certificate? Email Lexis (lexis.ly@ubc.ca) and Steven (sbristow@student.ubc.ca).

E-booking for counselling sessions

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Attention graduate students 

An e-booking function to book counselling appointments is now available.

 

UBC Student Health and Wellbeing – eBooking

 

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I wanted to share our new e-booking function for students, who are now able to book counselling appts online (hooray for entering 2025!)

UBC Student Health and Wellbeing – eBooking

Feel free to keep referring students to reach out, but you can also share this link with them so they can book on their own and I will confirm it as they come through.

Let me know if you have any questions about this!

Have a great weekend,

Nicole

 

Nicole Adoranti  MEd, CCC (she/her)
Embedded Counsellor – Faculty of Forestry & Faculty of Land and Food systems
604-827-1555

nicole.adoranti@ubc.ca

Office location: Forest Sciences | 2722 Main Mall | Vancouver BC | V6T 1Z4 Canada

The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus | Musqueam Traditional Territory

https://forestry.ubc.ca/students/mental-health-wellbeing/

https://www.landfood.ubc.ca/current/undergraduate/wellness-support-and-advising/mental-health-and-wellbeing/

Student Health and Wellbeing, Counselling Services
https://students.ubc.ca/health/counselling-services

https://facultystaff.students.ubc.ca/health-wellbeing/counselling-services

 

Email is not a confidential method of communication and should not be used for the exchange of personal information. If you would like to meet with Nicole, please book an appointment online or call Counselling Services at 604-822-3811 and indicate you are a Forestry or LFS student.

 

Announcing the 2025 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

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We are writing to share an exciting summer opportunity for early-career academics, industry researchers, and artists of all types: the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI).

The idea behind DISI is simple. We bring together promising early-career scholars (graduate students, postdocs, and faculty) for several weeks of serious interdisciplinary exploration. If you are interested in the origins, nature, and future of intelligences—regardless of discipline—please apply!

Our program engages three broad themes:

  • Recognizing intelligences (i.e., the study of biological but non-human minds)
  • Shaping human intelligences (i.e., how development, culture, ideas, technology, etc., shape human capacities)
  • Programming intelligences (i.e., artificial intelligence and its broader implications)

Each year’s DISI has a special thematic focus, which is reflected in additional faculty emphasis and a working group. The 2025 focus is AI and the Natural World; in other words, how AI can inform our understanding of living systems (e.g., animals, plants, ecosystems) and how living systems can inspire new directions in AI. If your work connects with this focus, please let us know! However, most participants will not connect with the annual focus, so please don’t let the topic deter you from applying. We welcome applications from scholars working on any and all aspects of mind, cognition, and intelligence; indeed, they will make up the majority of admitted participants.

To enrich the conversation, we also recruit several “storytellers” (artists, writers, filmmakers, etc.) who participate in the intellectual life of the institute while pursuing related creative projects.

We’re looking for open-minded participants who want to take intellectual risks and break down disciplinary barriers in the spirit of dialogue and discovery. We hope that this creative community will work together to develop new ways of engaging with big questions about mind, cognition, and intelligences. You can read more about DISI—including previous iterations—on our website: https://disi.org.

DISI 2024 will take place in the beautiful seaside setting of St Andrews, Scotland from July 6 to July 27, 2025. During this time, participants will attend lectures, workshops, social events, and salons, building connections with each other and with our world-class faculty. They will also work together on projects of their own devising.

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we will cover most of the cost of participation in the institute (including lodging, breakfasts, and dinners). We ask admitted participants to seek travel funding from their home institutions or employers; a limited number of travel scholarships will be available. Moreover, participants will join our growing network of past faculty and alumni, with lifetime access to dedicated resources (e.g., funding opportunities for future projects and fellowships).

Review of applications will begin on Saturday, March 1 and will continue until all spots are filled. The application can be found at: https://disi.org/apply/.

We would be grateful if you would forward this announcement to any talented folks who might be interested in this opportunity. Thank you for helping us grow our DISI community!

With all our best wishes,

The DISI Admin Team

 

Erica A. Cartmill, DISI Director; Professor of Cognitive Science, Anthropology, and Animal Behavior, Indiana University

Jacob G. Foster, DISI Director; Professor of Cognitive Science and Informatics, Indiana University; External Professor, Santa Fe Institute

Kensy Cooperrider, DISI Associate Director (Content and Outreach); Host of ‘Many Minds’ podcast

Amanda McAlpin-Costa, DISI Associate Director (Administration)

 

*current working location is Apple Valley, CA, USA (PST)*

 

please note my new email address: amcalpi@iu.edu

 

Amanda McAlpin-Costa

Associate Director, Operations

Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

DISI.org

(she/they)

Invitation to lunch (Feb 11), re: Faculty Search – Natural Resource Economics

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Dear LFS and Forestry graduate students,

As part of the University-wide Black Faculty Cohort Hiring Initiative, the Faculties of Forestry and Land and Food Systems are conducting a search for an Assistant Professor in Natural Resource Economics (see Job Ad). Our last two candidates will be interviewed next week. We would like to invite you to lunch with the 3rd candidate, as follows:  

Tuesday, Feb 11, 12:00-1:00pm, MacMillan 350 (Protensia Hadunka)

Please RSVP to lfs.recruiting@ubc.ca and include any dietary restrictions by 4pm on Friday, Feb 7

You are also invited to attend their research and teaching seminars. We would welcome your feedback following the interviews, as per forms below.

 

Protensia Hadunka (Feb 10-11)

Protensia Hadunka is a Ph.D. candidate in Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in Agricultural and Environmental Economics. His research examines the intersection of agricultural markets, climate change, and food security, applying causal inference to address key environmental and economic challenges. He investigates how climate shocks impact agricultural productivity, land use decisions, and deforestation. Hadunka has led extensive field research, designing and managing large-scale, nationally representative surveys in Zambia. He collaborates with policymakers and international organizations, including the International Growth Center (IGC) and the Zambian Presidential Advisory Board, providing policy recommendations on agricultural resilience and market stability.

Teaching Demonstration: Decentralized Policies in Environmental Economics: Exploring Liability, Property Rights, and Market Solutions

February 10th, 11:00am-12:00pm

FSC-2916 (CAWP Caseroom)

Research Talk: Agricultural Production Shocks, Natural Resources, and Welfare

February 11th, 9:30-11:00am

FSC-1222 (2424 Main Mall)

Abstract:

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is home to some of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. One driver may be negative agricultural shocks that lead households to consume natural

resources as a coping mechanism. This paper uses the introduction of a novel agricultural pest to estimate the effect of a negative agricultural shock on charcoal production and deforestation, and to test whether adaptation strategies mitigate this effect. Using four years of primary household panel data from across Zambia I find a positive and significant effect of FAW on charcoal production and deforestation. The estimates indicate that as the FAW intensity increases from 0 to the median level the probability of a farmer producing charcoal by 16%, leading to an increase in deforestation of 13.6%. When methods to mitigate FAW damage are available, farmers are less likely to resort to charcoal production as a coping strategy. Having the ability to reduce the share of maize, diversify the crops produced, use pesticides, or migrate for off-farm employment are associated with a lower propensity to switch to charcoal production in response to FAW. I find that households cut 13 additional trees due to FAW, but this increase is reduced by 4 – 5 trees when coping strategies are implemented.

Feedback Form: https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3WAAv8e4QtmHzqS

 

Yacouba Kassouri (Feb 13-14)

Yacouba Kassouri holds a PhD in Economics and works as a postdoctoral fellow in the Biodiversity Economics group at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) in Leipzig, Germany. His research interests lie in the field of environmental and natural resource economics with a concentration on urban biodiversity conservation and the economic linkages between nature, human, and social welfare. As an applied environmental economist, he is particularly interested in understanding the human-nature nexus using modern econometric methods for causal inference and various non-market valuation techniques. In his current research, he proposes an alternative life satisfaction valuation approach that allows the use of causal inference tool to recover the shadow price for local environmental public goods, and explores potential trade-offs among natural landscape protection and the provision urban open spaces.

Teaching Demonstration: Economics of Timber Harvesting

February 13th, 12:00-1:00pm

McM 258 (2357 Main Mall)

Research Talk: Life satisfaction shadow price for environmental public goods

February 14th, 9:30-11:00am

FSC-1222 (2424 Main Mall)

Abstract:

Unpacking people’s self-rated life satisfaction to price environmental public goods is promising to inform well-being-improving decisions. Yet, previous contributions

yield inconsistent estimates of the income-life satisfaction conversion rate, leading to an overvaluation of non-market environmental goods. This paper develops and implements a new valuation framework for calculating the life satisfaction shadow price for environmental goods in a two-step regression procedure. Using restricted georeferenced longitudinal survey data on life satisfaction, we find that the two-step valuation approach produces smaller shadow prices (with and without instrumenting for income) compared to the individual level valuation (one-step regression). We provide strong empirical evidence that the overvaluation bias reported in the existing life satisfaction literature can be largely explained by the level of valuation rather than the endogeneity of income, as previously exposed in the literature. Exploiting variations in labor demand shocks across industries in a shift-share instrumental variable strategy, we demonstrate that although the instrumental variable approach significantly increases the size of the income coefficient, the resulting shadow prices remain relatively similar to those obtained without instrumenting for income. The valuation framework championed in this study knits together research on the causal linkages between humans and nature with studies on non-market environmental valuation.

Feedback Form: https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4Gf3yrAgP3rAiCa

 

 

Melanie Train

Human Resources Manager-Faculty | Faculty of Land and Food Systems

The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus

248-2357 Main Mall | Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z4

Phone 604-822-3105 | Fax 604-822-6394

Email:  melanie.train@ubc.ca

Office: M/W/F: Remote: T/Th

Invitation to Graduate Students to join the Inaugural Research Mingling event by GSS-UBC

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We are specially inviting your graduate students to the Inaugural Research Mingling event happening next week on February 12th from 4pm to 6pm. at GSS Loft, NEST.

We encourage all graduate students to join this FREE vibrant mingling session even if they do not have a topic to share.

See the flyer above and the sign-up link attached here:

https://www.showpass.com/gss-research-mingling/

Please feel free to share the event with the various graduate student groups in your program.

Thank you.

Warm regards,

Patricia.

 

Patricia Unung (She/Her/Hers)

Vice President University and Academic Affairs

E: vpacademic@gss.ubc.ca