Mountain High - aq November 2004


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Prestigious Invitation

Wendy Strachan, director
of SFU’s Centre for Writing-
Intensive Learning.

Photo by Carol Thorbes

We’re the first Canadian university invited to participate in Cornell University’s writing for the disciplines consortium. A maximum of 10 universities and colleges annually are invited to collectively study discipline-based approaches to teaching writing and to using writing to enhance learning. SFU’s invitation comes because of the Centre for Writing-Intensive Learning, which is positioned to help implement the university’s new writing requirements.

e-shopping expert

Illustration by Rod Filbrandt

An international SFU study shows online shoppers from different parts of the world respond differently to web-site design. Dianne Cyr, professor in the faculty of business and the school of interactive arts and technology, finds the Japanese like bright colours and warm images, Germans prefer darker colours and consider bright colours and animation unprofessional, and Americans want less detailed product information.

Facing up to email

Illustration by Rod Filbrandt

Computer scientist Steve DiPaola is trying to make computers more human. He and his colleagues are developing a program that will allow email users to create a computer-generated likeness that will speak using the user’s voice and convey expressions that coincide with the message. DiPaola says that soon – maybe within a year – we’ll be able to send emails this new way.

India Agreements/Chinese Campus
President Michael Stevenson inks memoranda of understanding with three key Indian universities – Punjab University in Chandigarh, Jawaharial Nehru University in New Delhi, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in Chennai. SFU also announces plans to open a satellite campus in China to serve both Chinese and Canadian students. Students will spend two to three years in China and then finish their studies at the Burnaby campus.

Dirty Laundry Spins Success

Business student Erika Glandon and partner Teresa Findlay have the hottest T-shirt line around: their hand-stitched Dirty Laundry shirts adorn actress Halle Berry and other glitterati. The pair have been interviewed by everyone from the New York Times to the Village Voice and are looking at both shoe and linen lines.
<www.dirtylaundrytees.com>

Photo courtesy Erika Glandon

Alarmed!
Engineering science students Matt Brown, Hani Mehrpouyan, and Chris Mitchell have invented a device to stop your laptop from being stolen. If you step away from your laptop and someone moves it, the palm-held end of the theft-prevention device lets you know so you can either disarm the siren or rescue the computer.

Illustration by Rod Filbrandt

Silicon Star

Photo by Carol Thorbes

Mike Thewalt will analyze the spectrum of light emitted by synthetically manipulated silicon.
.
.

Physicist Mike Thewalt wins a prestigious 2004 Killam research fellowship, a Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) Medal of Achievement, and a CAP Brockhouse Medal to go with last year’s five-year grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Thewalt is redefining the limits of semiconductor spectroscopy, using isototopically pure silicon. The research is expected to set revolutionary new standards for semiconductor spectroscopy.

Info Specialists

Photo by Diane Luckow

Left to right: Avin Wadhwani , Vishal Raniga, Masud Chand, and Majid Ghorbani.

MBA students Masud Chand, Avin Wadhwani , Majid Ghorbani, and Vishal Raniga take top honours in the first ever graduate-level case competition sponsored by the Chief Information Officers Association of B.C. The specialist MBA team beat out seven others.

Surrey Site
SFU will open a new permanent Surrey campus in September next year in Central City, an award-winning complex at 102 Avenue near the Surrey Central SkyTrain station. The university is expected to eventually take over 322,000 square feet to accommodate more than 2,500 students by 2010. There are about 800 graduate and undergraduate students at the current temporary Surrey site in the Central City Mall. <www.surrey.sfu.ca/>.

Very Special Collections
The library’s special collections department adds material from a number of literary lights. New this year are the papers and B.C. book collection of Alan Twigg, founder of BC BookWorld, along with papers of poet and writer Norm Sibum, literary and architectural writer Lisa Robertson, and Caroline Adderson, twice-winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Hanging Out

Detail from wide-ranging mural of British Columbia’s history including representation
of First Nations’ art.
.

Restauration expert
painstakingly works on the mural .

Overlooking the academic quadrangle are Chief Maquinna, Captain James Cook, Emily Carr, and others. All are in Charles Comfort’s huge mural B.C. Pageant, which once hung in the Toronto-Dominion Bank at Granville and Pender in Vancouver. The $600,000 mural takes its new place at SFU after more than a year of cleaning and restoration.

Photos courtesy SFU Media and Public Relations

On the Red Planet

Photo by Marianne Meadahl

Andrew Blaber and his environmental physiology unit could soon have a new role in furthering space exploration.

The kinesiology department’s environmental physiology unit can now attain the atmospheric pressure found on Mars. It’s the only Canadian university to house such a facility, which will allow for testing Mars suits and related hardware. Andrew Blaber and his team in the Aerospace Physiology Laboratory are currently looking at the effects of long periods of weightlessness on human physiology in astronauts returning from space.
<http://fas.sfu.ca/kin/profiles/blaber.shtml>

Bear Mother and Dog Fish Woman

Photo by Carol Thorbes

Allan and Faigie Waisman donate two Bill Reid plaster busts to the university. The busts are several feet tall and are of the Haida mythical creatures Bear Mother and Dog Fish Woman. Reid made the moulds as part of his Jade Canoe sculpture that sits at the entrance to Vancouver’s International Airport. SFU’s pieces are on the 3,000 level of the academic quadrangle in front of the Robert Brown hall.

Soccer Score

Illustration by Rod Filbrandt

A world-class soccer training facility at SFU will be home to the Vancouver Whitecaps and the national soccer teams. The $4-million permanent training camp will include two artificial turf fields with light and fencing, and future plans call for two additional fields, a clubhouse, coaches’ offices, and change rooms. Whitecaps owner Greg Kerfoot is donating the money for the facility.

Science and Technology

Photo by Carol Thorbes

The ceremonial first shovel is lifted for the new $23-million science and technology complex. It will accommodate an additional 500 full-time students and will help the university play a pivotal role in rebuilding the leading-edge, high-technology sector in B.C.

We're Tops (Again)
For the sixth time in eight years the Clan wins the United States Sports Academy Directors’ Cup, emblematic of the top university athletics program in the NAIA. Championships are won in women’s and men’s swimming and diving and in women’s cross-country. SFU is the runner-up in women’s indoor track and field and softball and places in the top 10 at the NAIA National Championships in men’s cross-country, men’s indoor track and field, men’s and women’s soccer, and men’s wrestling.

Archaeology at Sea

James Delgado stands in front of the shipwrecked Peter Iredale.
The underwater archaeologist is author or editor of 30 books.

Archaeology PhD candidate James Delgado (see aq, April ’04) is awarded the 2003 Naval History Author of the Year award by the U.S. Naval Institute. Delgado is recognized for “his significant contribution to uncovering the great historic secrets of the sea.” Delgado is also director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and co-host of National Geographic TV’s The Sea Hunters.

Photo by Darryl Leniuk/
Courtesy Vancouver Maritime Museum

Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s (Almost) 40
Yes, SFU will be 40 in 2005. Plans are already well underway for a series of events to celebrate the occasion. Tim Kelley will co-ordinate activities, with the support of Moyna Gick, who has worked as
executive assistant to several SFU presidents.

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