Daily
Bulletin

UW grad student wins "top 30" award

Rose Turvey, (right)who is working on her PhD in geography at UW, received the award in recognition of her achievements, including research to address environmental problems in the highly vulnerable nations of the South Pacific.

Canada World Youth is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year by honouring 30 top alumni from the 26,000 people who have participated in exchanges to 60 countries. The goal of Canada World Youth is to enable young people to participate in the development of just, harmonious, and sustainable societies around the globe.

"Through Canada World Youth, I have learned that people from east to west and from north to south can work together in a cooperative way to address the problems that beset the developing world," Turvey told the audience at the awards ceremony.

Turvey first came to Canada from the Philippines as part of a 1974-75 exchange. She returned to the Philippines and worked in the public service before joining the United Nations Development Program in Samoa. In 1994, she came to UW to complete a Master's degree in local economic development. The following year, she started her PhD in geography. In 1997, she returned to the South Pacific to work for the United Nations Office for Project Services and to conduct further fieldwork for her PhD. In 2000, she spent six months at the United Nations University in Tokyo as a PhD Fellow to complete her doctoral thesis on 'Developing an Evaluation Framework for Environmental Management of Small Islands in the South Pacific.'

Turvey is following in the footsteps of her PhD co-supervisor, geography professor Paul Parker, who also participated in the Republic of the Philippines-Canada World Youth exchange program.

Past participants and leaders joined Jacques Hébert, founder of Canada World Youth, former senator, and friend of Pierre Trudeau, at the awards ceremony on Saturday, June 30, at Harbourfront in Toronto.

Prof's thanks to faraway students

"I had been teaching Environmental Economics (Env S 220) since 1979 on campus. When I was asked to provide this course for distance students I did not hesitate at all, but I did say that I would like to do this in a virtual or asynchronous environment where campus and distance students would interact in the same course.

"Campus and distance students are two distinct groups, and this posed some unique pedagogical challenges for me. Time zone differences, working hours and job requirements are some of the more technical challenges. Some of these challenges were addressed by using a different conferencing system, others by redesigning the nature of the assignment. I also introduced learning progress maps (i.e. graphical representations of what the course material is about each week) and I relied heavily on the feedback from the participants in the course.

"Some of you will remember the confusion all of us had working in a conference system. I did not expect such full participation in the discussions and at one point felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of all those great postings. But you took it all in stride, reassured me that this was all fine, and waited patiently for me to 'catch up'.

"Through the conferencing system I feel as if I got to know many of you. One time, when two students did a great presentation, I could 'see' them 'high fiving' each other when they read the feedback from other students and me; at least that is the 'visual image' the tone of their posting conveyed.

"One of the learning experiences for me in working with distance students is their willingness to share their work experience freely with other students. Their accumulated knowledge and their enthusiasm encourage other students to contribute and respond. Feedback provided to other students is often done in-depth and often with the use of examples to highlight comments. When students do not agree with one another, they do so in a courteous manner and usually with humour.

"Broken sound cards, original poor quality of the spoken lectures, computer crashes, difficulties in installing programs and fears of not being able to hand in assignments on time through sometimes unavoidable technical glitches were some of the difficulties we experienced early on. Distance students seemed to take most of it in stride and enjoyed the learning experience of interacting with me as the instructor and with the campus students."

Thursday notes

The Federation of Students used book store invites one and all to check out its new location in the lower mall of the student life centre today, during an open house from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. A ceremonial ribbon-cutting will take place at noon.

Architecture students are mounting a performance of Peter Weiss' 1964 drama Marat/Sade at the open-air theatre of Galt Collegiate in Cambridge tonight and tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. The theatre is adjacent to the site designated as the new home of the school of architecture. Tickets are $10 with proceeds going to the Cancer Hospice in Cambridge. For more information about the production, visit marat-sade.net. Tickets are now on sale in the SLC from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Correction: yesterday's bulletin gave an incorrect name for Linda Nicholson, newly retired from the internal audit department.

Avvey Peters

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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