Students bubbling for business practicum idea

Students at the Richmond campus no longer have to trek to Lansdowne Mall to get their bubble tea fix.

Fourth-year business students Patrick Wong, 23, Seulki Kim and Stephanie Sun, both 25, launched their own bubble tea stand in the rotunda of the Richmond campus in mid-February.

The three-person team was taking part in a project for a practicum class, and planned to run their small business until March 26. “We’ve been through so many years of education,” said Wong. “So, we are trying to put everything that we learned today to try to apply it to a mini-business.”

Wong, Kim and Sun said that they first had to go through several business launch presentations and get approval from their instructors. “We’ve gone through all the health inspections. The inspector came and looked at the sealing, drinks and the fridge,” said Wong.

The students got ingredients and supplies through connections with a vendor at the Richmond Public Market and were offering several popular flavours of the pre-made and sealed beverage, with prices starting at $4.

While bubble tea cafes have become common throughout the Lower Mainland, the first stores only started showing up in the early 2000s Vancouver. The beverage originated in Taiwan, and is distinguished by large tapioca balls, which are mixed with either hot or cold tea.

“Bubble” refers to the way the tapioca is cooked, since they balloon into chewy balls after being boiled. The tapioca is called “pearls” after the cooking process. The pearls are tasteless and colourless until they are soaked in a brown-sugar-and-water solution. Vendors usually offer two types: milk tea and fruit-flavoured tea.

There are also choices between natural tea and fruits or the sweeter, powder-flavoured slush drinks. Wong and his team are offering powdered taro and original flavours as well as a natural mango flavour.

Traditionally, students in Asia consume bubble tea during breaks and after school as a snack or dessert. Half way around the world, students at the Richmond campus will have the opportunity to do the same.

Winner wasn’t expecting multiple scholarships

Although she is just celebrating her 23rd birthday next month, Kristen Lambke, Kwantlen student and scholarship winner, has already changed career directions.

Lambke won four scholarships totalling $5,250 at Kwantlen’s 20th Annual Scholarship and Awards ceremony for her work in the Environmental Protection Program.

Lambke applied for Kwantlen scholarships in general but did not expect the awards she won, which included the Doctor Barry Leech memorial scholarship, the Eclipse Environmental Leader scholarship and scholarships from B.C. Hydro and the HSBC Bank of Canada.

She said she was excited and that it was nice to have her hard work at school rewarded.

It may have been scholarships that helped Lambke join the Environmental Protection program in the first place.

Before joining the program, Lambke was a drafter designing industrial buildings, a job, she said, that involved taking care of the needs of the clients in the industry rather than the protecting the environment or using sustainable practices.

“I wanted to have a career where I could, you know, protect the environment rather than destroy it, so I switched over.”

She had scholarships from the architectural Ddrafting program at the University of the Fraser Valley, something she said pushed her to go back to school.

“It was something just like, okay, I gotta do this.”

Pam Macdonald, who instructed Lambke in her two first-year introduction to biology classes and a second-year ecology course, said Lambke was a strong but quiet student from the beginning, whose work, from small quizzes to long papers, was nearly perfect.

“I’ve had a lot of good students over the years and I think she is right at the top of those,” said Macdonald.

Although Lambke’s work was consistently good throughout the program, she did improve in other ways.

“I think that she gained a greater sense of self-confidence and recognition of what her potential is over her time here,” said Macdonald.

Macdonald described Lambke as calm, cheerful and modest, qualities, she said, that are shared by Lambke’s boyfriend, Jason Beattie, who Macdonald also instructs.

Lambke and Beattie met at their Langley high school, and began dating shortly after.

Although her disappointed parents weren’t invited to the award ceremony, Beattie, who also won a scholarship, was able to attend with Lambke.

“He was happy for me, a little jealous because he wants to get lots of scholarships, too. He’s a really good student as well, but he’s happy.”

Lambke is currently in her second work practicum, with the B.C. Ministry of Environment, doing incident inspections and samplings

She said she plans on finishing her degree, something she said Macdonald has pushed her to do, and has applied at UBC and UNBC. She will use the money from the scholarships to pay for tuition.

“I think she’ll go a long way in her education, I hope, and in whatever career she chooses,” said Macdonald.

Lambke said she is not sure if she’s figured out what she wants to do for a career, but
said she would like to incorporate her background of construction and design with her new knowledge of the environment to work towards sustainable building and development.

If Lambke could instantaneously change anything about the environment, she said it would be to change people’s minds about it so they would respect it more.

“It takes a lot to change minds, but it will happen eventually.”

Cloverdale hosting Skills Canada competition

Kwantlen’s Cloverdale campus is set to host the regional Skills Canada competition on March 7, where over 200 students will compete from the Richmond, Langley, Surrey and Delta school districts.

The competition allows high school students to explore interests in trades and technology fields in over 15 categories. Some categories that will be featured are carpentry, fashion design and robotics.

Students will be given details of the task in their event when they arrive at he Cloverdale campus March 7. For example, students participating in the fashion design category know ahead of time that they have to make a skirt in six hours, but they get the specific directions on the day, explained Nancy Toth, consultant for career programs for the Richmond school district, who is organizing the event.

“Half of the students don’t usually finish,” she added, illustrating the difficulty of the challenges. “It’s usually very intense.”

Some of the competitors attend Kwantlen, through a program that allows high school students to take classes at Kwantlen and receive credit from Kwantlen and credit from their high school, she said.

As a result of that program, there are many high school students on-campus at Kwantlen, taking part in programs such as automotive, carpentry and welding, she added.

This is the first time Kwantlen has offered to host the event, and Toth thinks it’s a good fit.

“I think it really highlights the profile of Kwantlen. It will bring a lot of families and students to the campus who have never been there before, and it’s a beautiful campus. To highlight these programs, many of which are taught at this campus, is good promotion.”

The day begins at 9 a.m. and competition deadline is at 4 p.m., followed by a medal presentation ceremony at 5 p.m.

Those who win gold medals will qualify to compete at the provincial level in the 15^th Annual BC Skills Competition, which will take place on April 22 at the Tradex, Trade and Exhibition Centre in Abbotsford.

Outstanding grad achieves success while raising eight children

Kwantlen President David Atkinson presented Parry with the award at the annual convocation ceremony on Feb. 16 for her work in the Bachelor of Applied Psychology Honours program. Three days later, in an almost deserted Richmond campus cafeteria, Parry spoke about what drew her to psychology.

“I was in business for about 20 years, and I was pretty good at it, but one of the things that I found, that I really loved about business, was working with people,” she said. Parry was a regional trainer at Jenny Craig, training counsellors and sales staff. She left and started her own training company, but missed the hands-on work.

“As a manager, I found my staff kept coming to me saying things like, ‘Can you help me with this’, or they would tell me their life’s problems, and I would listen and give them advice, and then I sat back and thought, ‘Well, you know, if I’m going to give them all this advice, I should probably make sure the advice I’m giving them is good, that I’m not sending them down the wrong path’.”

Parry enrolled in Kwantlen and took a few psychology courses out of general interest. After the second course she decided to become a full-time student. She had found her life’s passion. “I absolutely loved it.”

Richmond was close to home for her, but what really endeared her were the instructors.

“They didn’t just read what was in the textbooks and send you away. They inspired,” she said.

Parry had studied business at SFU, and while she admits that it has wonderful professors, she felt removed from them, and disliked the large class sizes and lecture hall environment. “I was literally able to just sponge the information out of their brains and put what I wanted into mine & mdash; it was amazing.”

In the third year, Parry specialized in child and developmental psychology. Her ultimate goal is a PhD in clinical psychology, then research on foster children for the Ministry of Children and Families.

This is where her family life comes into play. In addition to being a full-time student, President of the Kwantlen Psychological Society and working for the ministry, Parry was also raising eight children at home.

She and her husband have five children together, as well as three full-time foster children and two respite children who live with the family occasionally.

How does she do it?

“I have the most amazing partner in the world, who pitches in and enables me to do what I do.” The younger kids have daycare, so she works her schedule around them. “We’re partners, so there are days when I cover him and there are days when he covers me. I try and schedule things so that most of my busy-ness is when the kids are in school and daycare.”

Parry has advice for student who are parents.

“We’re really good at taking care of everybody else, and as parents we’re not so good at taking care of ourselves, and I think that in the long run that can end up impacting the care that you’re able to give to your kids and your studies as well because you simply burn out.”

She said young parents should know their limits, and try to find a balance between their needs and their children’s needs.

Parry is modest about her own accomplishments.

“Yes, I know I have decent grades and I work very hard for them, but I don’t see what I do as anything special. What I do is just, what I do,” she said. “Of course I’m a mom — so? Whether you have one or you have eight really doesn’t make that big a difference. It’s just a bigger grocery bill.”

Langley cupcake sales aids heart fund

KSA’s Langley campus representative, Jennifer Campbell, embraced Valentine’s day and made 600 cupcakes in 10 hours for a fundraiser.

“We wanted to do something for Valentine’s day and then we decided to make it a fundraiser for a charity,” she said.

All of the money raised will go to the Heart and Stroke Foundation and it will be matched by Kwantlen. The cupcakes were sold for a minimum donation of $1.

By Wednesday afternoon Campbell had raised about $175. She said that they still had “tons of cupcakes” left and if they don’t sell all of them by Friday they will probably give them to local homeless shelters.

Love, hate on V-day

Rows of free cupcakes and stacks of brownies were plentiful at Kwanlen’s “Love and Hate V-day.”

Reena Bali, 22, the Richmond campus director as of April 1, organized the event held on Feb.12 in the rotunda of the Richmond campus.

The sugar-laden event launched the 30-hour famine, which Bali will be organizing for the first time.

Bali said they chose to have the cupcakes, which were topped with a swirl of icing, pastel confetti and a jelly hearts, because they are very “valentine-y.” As for the two-bite brownies, “everyone loves brownies,” she said.

Although “free” signs sat beside the treats, those satisfying their sweet tooth could make a donation to World Vision.

World Vision is the organization behind the 30-hour famine.

Bali remembers doing the famine in high school. “I’m pretty sure a lot of students had a lot of fun times doing it in high school so I said why not do it here, its for a good cause.”

She said she is in the process of asking Kwantlen to hold the 30-hour famine sleepover at the school, in either the rotunda or the KSA lounge. If not, the famine will be held at one of Richmond’s community centers

Famine participants will drink juice and water, play games and raise money for 30 hours, according to Bali.

She said she doesn’t know how many people will participate, but the number isn’t that important.

“Even if we have 15 people signed up, I’m still going to go for it, because 15 is better than zero.”

Valentine’s Day cards, addressed to B.C. university and college students from the KSA, were also on hand at Love and Hate V-Day.

“I’m thinking of you this Valentine’s Day as I search for a committed partner to ensure my education is affordable and of high-quality,” wrote the KSA in the red folded cards.

As for the love and hate inspired name, Bali said she was just trying to cover all of the bases in naming of the event so no one would be offended, which she said “happens.”

Green Wednesday fish farm doc a great, educational experience

Farming the Seas offers a lot of information in very little time, but makes an important claim: Aquaculture is dangerous is so many ways.

Farming the Seas, a 55-minute documentary shown at the latest Green Wednesday at the Langley campus, that begins in B.C. and then takes the viewer to Norway, Scotland, China and Thailand, where they have seen the disastrous affects of aquaculture.

Aquaculture began with good intentions as a solution to overfishing, which caused the salmon population to drop.

At first fish-farming seemed like a brilliant idea. Millions of salmon are raised besides other sea-life, but within a caged net that floats in the sea. One aboriginal in the film referred to them as “floating hotels” for salmon.

But one of the greatest problems with fish-farming is disease. The fish get sockeye disease (a viral infection) and sea lice, which spread quickly throughout the population trapped within the net.

Farming the Seas shows numerous clips of millions of fish being thrown away, because of these diseases.

Since these fish grow in the same waters as wild salmon, these diseases affect other wildlife as well. In B.C and Washington alone, nearly 1 million salmon have escaped from their farm, spreading the disease throughout the ocean.

This problem does not just affect the fish population, it affects what we eat. The treatment for these diseases is antibiotics, which contain pesticides that are fed orally.

The audience gasped when it saw a one-year-old farmed salmon compared to a one-year-old wild salmon. The farmed salmon was triple the size of wild salmon, because of the hormones the fish are given to make them grow faster, therefore making it on the fish market quicker.

This mass-production not only affects the livelihood of fishermen, but other marine life, such as whales, turtles, bears and seals who depend on them for food. As the wild salmon’s population continues to decline, this means little food for the animals higher on the food chain.

Farming the Seas spares us the horror of other documentaries when they show us a cute cub who’s starving. Thankfully, in this film, viewers are shown clips of a bear snacking on wild salmon, and seals dancing in the ocean while clouds of fish disperse in unison, creating a miraculous vision.

Other issues addressed in the film include the extinction of blue fin tuna and the repercussions of farming shrimp.

Farming the Seas is an information overload, Bbut information that we should be loaded up with. Experts such as David Suzuki, Sylvia A. Eerie and UBC professors are featured throughout the documentary.

And the documentary is not just about doom. It shows solutions to the problem, that as a society we need to address.

Since there is so much information to process in less than an hour, it made a huge difference to be watching Farming the Seas with people who wanted to converse about the issues.

Green Wednesday’s at Kwantlen’s Langley campus is about education. The room was packed with people who watch the weekly films to gain knowledge. But what separates this from sitting on a cozy couch at home or surfing the internet, is that these people want to talk about it.

At the end of the documentary, Shauna MacKinnon, a campaigner for Living Ocean Society, was there for a Q&A. People raised their hand to ask questions that were not addressed in the film, or to get more understanding about what the film brought up and the positive and negative advances in the fishing industry since the film was made in 2004.

Not everyone’s idea of fun is watching a documentary called Farming the Seas, jam-packed with information about aquaculture, then diving into a deep discussion concerning what kind of fish you consume. But if it is, you’re going to have a blast.

Community-based club brings service, socializing to Kwantlen

In a quiet room at Kwantlen’s Langley campus, on the fourth Thursday of January, a group off Rotaractors meet to brainstorm ways to help people less fortunate then themselves.

Rotaract Club, a youngsters version of the Rotary Club, meets twice a month to mimic their older, more experienced mentors.

Dave Zenko is the president of Langley’s Rotaract Club, as well as a graduate from Kwantlen’s business program.

He has a full-time job and a passion for Rotary. But to qualify to be part of the tight-knit Rotary family, you must be a prominent business person in the community, so Zenko started Langley’s Rotaract club for anyone between the ages of 18 and 30.

There are two types of Rotaract Clubs. One is a community-based club, which is what Zenko is in. The other is a college-based club. Zenko says the Langley Rotaract Club elected to be a community-based club because it has the capacity to run all year and has fewer restrictions on membership than the college-based club has.

Similar to the Rotary Club, the Rotaract Club isn’t all business and good deeds. Its members like to have some fun, too.

One of the two meetings each month is devoted to a social event, where members get together for theme nights, potlucks and parties.

Zenko says that each year the Rotaract Club, which has branches in most communities, has one international project and one community project that they work on throughout the year.

This year, the Langley Rotaract Club’s international project is to raise money to send 110 wheelchairs – a shipping container full – to developing countries. The club need to raise $116,500 for the project.

Zenko said that this project is especially close to him, “because it gives so much joy to the people in need.”

It is hoped fundraiser for this event will be held at the Fox and the Fiddle in Langley in the near future.

Get ready to sweat

Bootcamp is a scary term. Visions of an army sergeant yelling in my face flash through my mind. My muscles burn at the mere thought of the intensity it suggests.

Last week on the Surrey campus, fitness trainer Emily Taylor put on a free bootcamp session for those interested in signing up for a six-week program. My prediction about intensity was dead on, but the army sergeant turned out to be a peppy fitness trainer who is motivating, not terrifying.

The work-out began with a few laps, followed by lunges up and down the length of the gym. Ten minutes in and I was already sweating.

About halfway through the work-out, I revisited an old feeling from my cross-country running days back in Grade 7. The I-can’t-go-on-I’m-going-to-die feeling. Sweat was dripping from my forehead, and I’m pretty sure I was a bright shade of pink that is unnatural. But Taylor pushed us on.

I particularly enjoyed some of the new exercises that she introduced. One was a partner exercise in which we used an extremely stretchy plastic rope. Partners both go inside the rope, facing the same direction, approximately three feet from one another. The person in the back does a squat, and holds the rope behind them taught, grounding the person in front. The person in front then takes two large steps forward, touches the ground, jumps up in the air, then takes two steps back and repeats. Switch positions. Hard to imagine? Just as hard to do.

We also did intervals at various stations, a minute at each. They included step intervals, jump rope and more. And for abs, I found a new fun workout that a friend and I could do at home – without the horrible exercise that is the crunch. The exercise involved both partners lying on their backs, feet facing one another and linking those feet. With a weighted ball in one person’s hand, in unison, both partners sit up, pass the ball to the other person, and go back down to the floor. Crunches with a friendly twist.

The workout ended with lunges across the gym, and doing “monkey jumps” at each side. Monkey jumps require you to hold a weighted ball. With feet shoulder-length apart, you squat and, keeping your arms locked straight, swing your “monkey-arms” up jump and repeat. My legs were burning and almost buckled nearing the end of the exercise.

Aafter some wind-down stretches, it was over and I was thankful, yet felt surprisingly rejuvenated and energetic. I learned a few new exercises and was pushed harder than I ever would have pushed myself on my own.

I was expecting to only recommend this class to those who can handle high-intensity workouts. As it turns out, Taylor is perceptive to the needs of each person in the class, and it is safe to say that anyone could take this class, regardless of fitness level.

But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy.

• • •

Those who want to sign up; contact Taylor at (604) 599-2307 or email her at emily.taylor@kwantlen.ca. You can also visit the program website for more info.

Prices are to be announced and the classes don’t officially begin until next week. They will take place on Tuesday and Thursday, from 4:30-5:30 p.m., in the gym on the Surrey campus.

Relax and rejuvenate on campus: A first-hand look

Room 1820 on the Richmond campus was transformed into a sanctuary Tuesday morning, just as it will be every Tuesday and Thursday for the rest of the semester.

It was the first day of the yoga classes, put on every semester for students and faculty by Kwantlen’s fitness program, at the Richmond, Surrey and Langley campuses.

Yoga is said to make one more aware of their body, mind and environment and I was skeptical.

I arrived to see tables and chairs in the small class stacked near the back of the room and about 10 participants beginning to set up mats and stretch.

This was my first yoga class and I felt awkward. It was obvious that those around me were veterans, but as we began, the instructor, Emily, went through all of the moves so even the rookies among of us could understand.

As the music began I became more aware of my breathing, of my body positioning and the sound of the instructor’s voice grew soothing. The lights were dimmed, and eventually shut off to create a wholesome ambience. As the instructor spoke of letting our muscles completely relax, and to feel the energy we were bringing into our bodies, I felt myself doing so. The initial nervousness floating away as my focus shifted to my body and my breath.

Emily provided much instruction on breathing. She asked us to breath as if we were filling our entire stomach and mid-structure with air, and to push it outwards. When exhaling, we were to tighten the abdominal muscles and pull our midsection in. This breathing was practiced throughout the session, regardless of the pose.

We went through a variety of different positions, such as downward facing dog, in which one has their hands flat on the mat, and toes curled under, making an arch with the torso and legs. In this position we are instructed to completely relax our shoulders and neck muscles, to let it all go. Regardless of the pose, we were instructed to completely relax certain muscles, breath consciously and deeply, and to focus on energies on our surroundings and ourselves.

I noticed myself more relaxed, more grounded and more alert. My energy level was up, but my anxiety level was down. During the rest of my day, it was almost as if I had re-set. It seems that the class I had been critical of turned out to do what it claimed to.

These classes can offer excellent relaxation sessions that are sure to help release the stresses that school can bring.

For pricing and times on your campus, visit the yoga website.

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