Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that the Board of Governors of UBC has approved the appointment of Professor Gino DiLabio as the inaugural Dean of the new Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science for a five-year term, beginning September 1, 2020.

Prof. DiLabio is a well-recognized expert in computational chemistry, physical organic chemistry, and nanoscience. His work has earned him a number of international awards and honours during his career. He joined UBC’s Okanagan campus in 2014 as the head of its Department of Chemistry. During his term as head, the department saw a significant transformation in research activity.

Before joining UBC Okanagan, Prof. DiLabio worked at the National Research Council of Canada’s (NRC) Steacie Institute for Molecular Science and National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT). Prof. DiLabio received his undergraduate and MSc degrees in Chemistry from Carleton University in Ottawa, and his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Clarkson University, USA. Prof. DiLabio has been serving as dean pro tem for the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences since July of 2019.

I hope you will all join me in congratulating Prof. DiLabio on this appointment. I look forward to working with the new Faculty of Science as it begins its journey.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the faculty, students, and staff who participated in this search, and the Search Committee.

Ananya Mukherjee Reed
Provost and Vice-President Academic
UBC Okanagan

The post Prof. Gino DiLabio appointed Dean, Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Dear colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to announce that on July 1, 2020, the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences (IKBSAS) successfully transitioned into two autonomous Faculties:

• The Irving K. Barber Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
• The Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science

The transition marks a major milestone for both UBC Okanagan and IKBSAS, and is a testament to the sizeable growth that we have experienced since our campus’ inception in 2004.

With this significant change comes an exciting opportunity for innovation and excellence in the sciences, as well as arts and social sciences at UBC Okanagan.

The creation of two new Faculties will not only bolster this campus’ commitment to learning and research. They will also expand upon Dr. Irving K. Barber’s contribution to our community with each new Faculty continuing to bear his name and continuing to subscribe to the original founding principles—to create an outstanding learning environment that prepares students to become better citizens of the world; citizens that foster a civil and sustainable society.

As a result of the attentive work done by our colleagues in IKBSAS, our two new Faculties are well-positioned to take advantage of this unique moment. My sincere thanks to everyone who has worked so diligently to ensure this smooth transition, in particular the students, faculty and staff of IKBSAS whose contributions, enthusiasm and patience are critical to the process.

I also want to acknowledge and recognize Dr. Gino DiLabio as he moves into the role of Dean, pro tem of both new Faculties, for his enduring leadership throughout the transition process.

The two decanal searches for the newly formed Faculties are continuing at this time.

Please join me in wishing our two newest Faculties the utmost success.

Sincerely,

Ananya Mukherjee Reed
Provost and Vice-President Academic
UBC Okanagan

The post Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences transition appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Traditional university lectures are likely not an effective way to help post-secondary students acquire problem-solving skills.

In a recent study, researchers at UBC’s Okanagan campus developed a testing system to measure the problem-solving abilities of students in various stages of their undergraduate degrees.

Their data shows that while freshman students see their problem-solving skills increase by nearly 10 per cent in their first semester, students in the majority of disciplines experience little-to-no improvement in all the semesters that follow.

The results, according to UBC’s Andis Klegeris, show that traditional university lectures may not be building the skills students are hoping to acquire and their future employers have come to expect.

“There is strong evidence that different methods of teaching can heavily influence the development of problem-solving skills,” said Klegeris, an associate professor of biology. “It does not appear that the traditional, lecture-style of information delivery is well suited to helping students build those skills.”

As part of the study, Klegeris and fellow UBC researcher Heather Hurren adapted a test used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), so that students could be assessed in 15 minutes.

The test was written by nearly 1,000 students at various stages of their undergraduate degree, with one problem-solving test given at the beginning of school year’s first semester and the other at semester’s end. Problem solving was defined as person’s capacity to use their brain power to resolve a real, cross-disciplinary situation in which a solution was not immediately obvious.

The study concluded that only first-year students saw significant improvements in their problem-solving abilities.

“As problem-solving is becoming an increasingly sought-after skill, it is likely post-secondary institutions will need to adapt their teaching styles to ensure students are able to better participate in a skill-based economy,” says Hurren, who is the manager of academic development at UBC’s Centre for Teaching and Learning in Kelowna. “If they haven’t already, professors will need to move from traditional lectures and expectations of memorization to approaches that see small groups of students actively discover knowledge on their own.”

According to a 2011 study from Statistics Canada, most people see their problem-solving skills plateau in adulthood, with the exception of those who are engaged in careers that specifically require that skill set.

Klegeris and Hurren’s study was recently published online in the journal Higher Education. To find out more, visit: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-016-0082-0

—30—

The post Lecturing likely not effective for developing problem-solving skills in students appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

A UBC professor’s flax research could one day help Canadian farmers grow a car fender.

In a recent study, UBC researcher Michael Deyholos identified the genes responsible for the bane of many Canadian flax farmers’ existence; the fibres in the plant’s stem.

“These findings have allowed us to zero in the genetic profile of the toughest part of this plant and may one day help us engineer some of that toughness out,” says Deyholos, a biology professor at UBC’s Okanagan campus. “With further research, we might one day be able to help farmers make money off a waste material that wreaks havoc on farm equipment and costs hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to deal with.”

As part of his research, Deyholos and his former graduate student at the University of Alberta dissected thousands of the plant’s stem under a microscope in order to identify which genes in the plant’s makeup were responsible for the growth of the stem, and which weren’t.

Due to the length of the Canadian prairie’s growing season, where flax is grown, farmers typically burn the stems, known as flax straw, as opposed to harvesting the material. In many European countries, flax straw is used as an additive in paper, plastics and other advanced materials such as those used in the production of automobiles.

Currently, Canadian flax is used only for the value of its seeds, which can be eaten or broken down into flaxseed oil. Flaxseed oil is used in the manufacturing of paints, linoleum, and as a key element in the manufacturing of packaging materials and plastics.

According to the Flax Council of Canada, Canada is one of the largest flax producers in the world with the nation’s prairie provinces cultivating 816,000 tonnes of the plant in 2014/15 on 1.6 million acres of land.

—30—

The post UBC research aims to help Canadian flax farmers appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

UBC researchers are one step closer to identifying the biological personalities of the world’s greatest wines.

In a recent study, UBC researchers Dan Durall and Mansak (Ben) Tantikachornkiat developed a technique that combines a process to identify the full spectrum of DNA in yeast and bacteria samples with a technique that distinguishes between live and dead micro-organisms.

“Since only live micro-organisms are relevant in the various stages of fermentation as they relate to the senses, this study provides some of the important tools that will be necessary to determine why different types of wine taste and smell as they do,” says Durall, an associate professor of biology at UBC’s Okanagan campus. “While more research needs to be conducted, these findings could also lead to the identification and elimination of micro-organisms that are responsible for spoilage.”

In undertaking the study, the pair used a number of different kinds of yeast and bacteria specimens, including those typically found in wine fermentations.
Key in the development of the new scientific technique was the use of a light-sensitive dye, propidium monoazide, which binds to dead DNA and prevents it from being detected. This allows scientists to identify and focus on the more relevant aspects of a test sample.

“This technique allows us to quickly and accurately monitor in one experiment what previously could have taken multiple experiments and months of trial and error,” says Tantikachornkiat. “This will inevitably make research in this area faster, cheaper and more efficient.

“The next stages of research will focus this technique on different types of wine making methods to see how they change micro-organisms that affect the final wine product.”

The post UBC takes steps toward examining the DNA of the world’s wine regions appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

UBC professor turns to technology to help students learn neuroanatomy

For those who traditionally learned about anatomy outside medical school, figuring out what the human brain looks like inside the skull was largely a textbook exercise.

Diagrams with arrows and text descriptions acted as a roadmap with student absorption largely reliant on memorization. In the age of the Internet and Instagram, it’s a model that educators may need to improve on if they are to meet students’ interactive learning expectations, says UBC Assoc. Prof. Bruce Mathieson.

“My students have been telling me that most of them are visual learners, that they don’t necessarily retain all the information they need from attending lectures and taking notes,” says Mathieson, who teaches biology at UBC Okanagan’s Irving K Barber School of Arts and Sciences. “Technology is a way of life for most of today’s students, and visuals are a huge part of that.”

With visuals in mind, Mathieson has been working on bringing textbook learning to the computer screen. In addition to creating seven videos detailing a dissection of the human brain, he received a $9,750 Curriculum Innovation Award to hire a programmer and create a tool that allows students to virtually navigate the brain on their laptops. Mathieson completed the tool last month, which he refers to as a first step into a more distributed model of learning.

“It’s like a little video game, you can navigate and isolate the various areas of the brain and it’s a way of putting pictures to the parts of the brain anatomy you are learning about,” says Mathieson. “Students are telling me that they are spending a lot more time looking at the material, and I find many of them are getting upwards of 95 percent on their tests.”

For their part, Mathieson’s students say that the interactive learning tools help with their studies.

“The concept of neuroanatomy was one of the more challenging aspects of my education,” said Mathieson’s student Shane Simon. “I found it to be quite an advantage to be able to virtually walk through the material, step-by-step, nucleus by nucleus, in my own way and in my own time.”

“Instead of just memorizing the material from a textbook, this tool allowed me to see real-life structures of the brain and the names associated with them, which is fun,” said fellow student Iman Zahirfar. “Because of the set-up of the tool, I became more curious as to what each structure did and actually ended up studying more as a result.”

Technology is playing an increasingly important role in today’s educational environment, says Michelle Lamberson, UBC’s Director of Flexible Learning and Special Projects.

“With today’s rate of information turnover, memorizing and repeating information is a bit of an outdated model,” says Lamberson. “Faculty can use technology to structure content in innovative ways that encourages students to explore and better own their learning process.

“With Bruce’s approach, he is not only allowing students to see something that is not normally accessible to the eye, he has also provided a rich context for interacting with a complex anatomical structure. These types of environments can provide powerful learning experiences for students.”

At UBC Okanagan, encouraging new and innovative ways for teaching and learning is a priority. This year, the campus unveiled its Aspire Learning and Teaching Fund that provides faculty with up to $50,000 for new and innovative projects.

—30—

The post Interactive learning tools help students map the brain appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

A global-scale collaborative study published this week in the prestigious journal Science shows that plant biodiversity within the world’s grasslands peaks at intermediate levels of productivity, lending support to a long-standing but controversial ecological hypothesis.

Three members of UBC Okanagan’s Institute for Biodiversity, Resilience, and Ecosystem Services (BRAES) — Jason Pither, John Klironomos, and former Biology graduate student David Ensing — are among 62 co-authors on the international study.

The paper quantifies how the number of plant species within the world’s grasslands varies as a function of plant biomass – a measure of ecosystem productivity.

More than 40 years ago, a seminal study hypothesized that diversity should peak at intermediate levels of productivity within herbaceous plant communities, such as grasslands.

If correct, this hypothesis would mean that the world’s grasslands – most of which are already impacted by human activities – could be managed to maintain or enhance biodiversity, itself a driver of ecosystem services upon which humans depend.

“Hundreds of studies have tested the ‘humped-back’ hypothesis, but results have varied widely, engendering vigorous debate in the literature,” says Pither.

The challenge is one of logistics.

“Achieving the geographic and environmental scope necessary to obtain a full picture requires remarkable effort,” says Pither, who led all the statistical analyses for the study and, along with Klironomos and Ensing, provided field data from the Okanagan region.

Enter “HerbDivNet” – an international consortium of researchers, coordinated by lead author Lauchlan Fraser, Professor of Biological Sciences and Canada Research Chair in Community and Ecosystem Ecology at Thompson Rivers University. Fraser enlisted investigators from around the world, including Pither and Klironomos, to help test the hypothesis at a global scale, across an enormous gradient of ecosystem productivity.

This was key, Pither explains, because they were able to show that previous studies, including a high-profile 2011 Science paper that refuted the hypothesis, likely lacked the power and sampling scope to detect and accurately quantify the relationship between biodiversity and the productivity of grasslands.

“Human activities are resulting in unprecedented rates of biodiversity loss,” says Pither, “so it’s crucial that if biodiversity does systematically vary with something manageable, such as productivity, we need to know.”

The HerbDivNet consortium continues to grow, and to collaborate on biodiversity research.

“We anticipate many more publications out of this remarkable collaboration,” Pither notes.

— 30 —

The post Research spanning the globe’s grasslands supports controversial biodiversity hypothesis appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.

Study looks at baby poop. Preferably, your baby’s poop.

The Centre of Microbiome and Inflammatory Disease Research is working on new research that looks to promote the health of babies.

The study will compare the bacteria in baby poop of infants fed either breastmilk or formula, with or without docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

Conducted by Deanna Gibson, assistant professor of biology, and undergraduate student Michael Jay, the UBCO Baby Poop Study is looking for infants from zero to six month who are being breastfed or formula-fed.

The study lasts until solid food is introduced to the baby’s diet and will help uncover the health effects of certain types of bacteria in the gut.

If you are interested in participating in the study, or know of anyone who might be, please contact Michael Jay via email at m.jay@alumni.ubc.ca, or by phone at 778-821-4512.

To find out more, visit the Centre of Microbiome and Inflammatory Disease Research’s Facebook page (facebook.com/Gibsonlab) or watch the Global Okanagan news story (http://globalnews.ca/video/1224158/okanagan-researchers-sample-diaper-debris).

The post Promoting the health of babies appeared first on UBC's Okanagan News.