SCWIST Newsletter April 20, 2019 ☔🌈🌺🌹🍀

Dr. Jerilynn Prior: Pioneering research in women’s health

Dr. Jerilynn Prior has spent her career studying women’s menstrual cycles, menopause, and osteoporosis. A true pioneer in the field, she founded and leads the world’s first and only women’s research and outreach centre focussing on ovulation and menstruation, and how they influence women’s health beyond fertility.

In this in-depth interview, she reflects on her journey from an isolated fishing village in Alaska to internationally recognized women’s health researcher, and the revolutionary act of listening to women. Read more.

Our Communications Team is expanding across Canada!
Communication leads, writers, event curators and photographers wanted!

Interested? Send us a cover letter, resume and writing sample.

SCWIST Director Vienna Lam vying for
RBC Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award

SCWIST is proud to announce that Vienna Chichi Lam, Board Member and Director for Youth Outreach, has been chosen as one of the Top 75 Canadian Immigrants. She is now a finalist for the Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award, nominated for her community service, leadership and academic accomplishments. Part of the selection process is an online voting system. Let's support Vienna with our votes! If she wins, she will donate her cash prize to SCWIST. Vote here.

Read Vienna's biography.

Space with coffee: Kate Howells on her passion for science
by Alison Knill, SCWIST Communications Intern

Excerpt: Creating and publishing a book is a big undertaking and was a learning experience for Kate. Her publishers gave her artistic freedom to choose what she wanted to write about and how. She’d already had experience talking about her space expertise with friends. After talking about the topic so much, she found how to write about the topic in a way that felt natural to her. Read more.

Assistant/Associate Professor(s) in Silviculture
Department of Forest Resources Management
Faculty of Forestry, The University of British Columbia

Applications are invited for two tenure-track positions in the Department of Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia Vancouver campus.

These new faculty hires will continue to develop, and expand, forest management and operations leadership at UBC through focusing on provincial, national and international silviculture teaching and research. The Faculty is seeking to meet the diverse needs of the government and industry in a rapidly changing forest sector. We are responding to the growing importance of silviculture in the management and conservation of forests worldwide. More info here.

People Making Successful Careers and Careers Making Successful.

Algonquin College is a National Capital Region Top Employer. We are hiring faculty to make a difference by teaching in technology programs, including:

Click here to view the full list of open opportunities and apply.

The SCWIST website redesign project had a good start with over 20 volunteers who enthusiastically participated in a hackathon over two Saturday afternoons. On the first day, teams competed to design a landing page promoting membership sign-ups and renewals, while taking into consideration earlier discussions on organizational and website goals, target audience, and messaging. On the second day, Glorie Averbach & Betty Hasker from MyCeo.Ca facilitated a session on "Branding," followed by group work identifying guidelines for digital communications strategy, photo archiving, content management and website information architecture. SCWIST thanks all volunteers, and Radical I/O Technology for encouraging their employees to join the workshop under the company's paid volunteer hours program. More photos of the event here.

Family day, Monday 18 February, was a sunny, tech-filled day in Prince George. We had a display at the TechUp Showcase hosted by the fantastic folks at Exploration Place. Over 1,200 people came through the doors to enjoy free Family Day admission offered by ExPlace. At our booth, I had direct interactions with at least 285 kids and adults, what a super day! The theme of our display focused on insects as bio-inspiration for robotics projects developed by engineers.

Some of the highlights included meeting a young girl who loves science. Her mom went on to tell me that they named their daughter Reasa, because they wanted to encourage her to use reason and to be inquisitive throughout her life. Another girl that visited our table was enthralled by the ‘Hex Bugs’ that were on display as an example of insect-inspired robots. She knew all about these toy robots, she had one at home, and she shared an astounding wealth of information and knowledge about them.

At the table next to our ms infinity table was a teacher and two of her students from Ecole Lac des Bois in Prince George. These grade 3-4 students were impressive – they spent the entire day, 10 am – 4 pm, explaining their tech projects to visitors; these two girls had programmed their names into BBC Microbits and also designed and 3-D printed their own bubble wands, which they had on display for people to try out – they worked very well, there were soap bubbles everywhere, adding to the festive feel in the ExPlace atrium. It was uplifting to see how excited these girls were about their projects and the delight they showed in sharing their enthusiasm with other children attending the event.

Exploration Place continues to be an incredibly valuable outreach and youth engagement partner for SCWIST and ms infinity in northern BC. We’re very fortunate to have a connection with such a wonderful facility and its innovative, dedicated, and fun staff. We look forward to working with them for many more STEAM events into the future. Lynn Westcott, Northern BC Youth Engagement Coordinator for SCWIST’s ms infinity program