TouchPoints

The School’s First Professor of Teaching To nurse or to teach? Elsie Tan didn’t have to choose between the two. She is a nursing educator, and one of such extraordinary talent that she has achieved the rank of Professor of Teaching – a fairly new rank at UBC. Elsie is only the 25th UBC professor to obtain the rank since it was introduced in 2011, and the very first Professor of Teaching at the School of Nursing. While rising through the ranks, Elsie has demonstrated her passion and commitment to…read more

May 4, 2017 Each year the School of Nursing sends out a call to our friends and colleagues to nominate our alumni and partners for recognition of their achievements in or beneficence to the field of nursing at home and abroad. Our annual Gala is our opportunity to thank and to celebrate with five awards, tasty food and drink, great music, and lively conversation. Shelagh Smith – seen above with other award winners and at right with her family – received the 2017 Donor Partnership Award for her many generous…read more

Challenging Old and Persistent Paradigms Marion Woodward Lecturer 2017: Deborah S. Finnel Attendees at the 2017 Marion Woodward Lecture on October 5 walked away with a threefold message delivered by Dr Deborah Finnell, a researcher, nurse practitioner, and a professor at John’s Hopkins University’s School of Nursing: mental and substance use disorders are brain-based, words matter, the nursing workforce must build capacity to address the needs of these vulnerable populations. The Marion Woodward Lecture, which is supported annually by the Mr and Mrs P.A. Woodward’s Foundation each fall, features a…read more

Driven to Improve The invaluable gifts we have received to further the life and work of the school come from many arenas, including partnerships new and old, students, nursing supporters, faculty, and of course, from our cherished alumni. Our most recent donor is all of those things: a current School of Nursing lecturer, a double alumnus, and a current PhD student with whom we have had a long and outstanding partnership. Meet Chandra Waddington. Chandra began her academic career in 1993, as one of the last graduates of the the…read more

Amazing Alumni – BSN ’92 Born and raised in the City of North Vancouver, Linda graduated with honours from the BSN program at UBC in 1992 and went on to have a stellar career in public health nursing, which included a wide range of activities such as working in schools and community clinics, providing preventative nursing services to the Squamish Nation, being a program coordinator for children, youth and families, and leading the North Shore Physicians Immunization Project for Vancouver Coastal Health. As Linda expressed it, “You have to go…read more

in Rio de Janiero Flying over Rio de Janiero is on many a paraglider’s bucket list, so when expert glider and School of Nursing professor Dr Colleen Varcoe was invited to speak at a Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) conference in Brazil this year, she did not hesitate to accept. In spite of its name, the coordinating office of SVRI, based in South Africa, is not interested only in sexual violence. The conference was open to very broad studies on violence against women. However, in spite of a huge epidemic…read more