School not just for the kids

For Maryanne Rayburn, the Third Age Learning at Kwantlen program (TALK) has become a major part of her life these past eight years.

The 79-year-old retired nurse has made it a regular part of her routine and she looks forward to getting the course calendar.

The program, which is coming up to its 10-year anniversary this Saturday, is geared toward people over the age of 50. It offers seminars on a broad range of topics, such as cultural studies, digital photography and biology.

Rayburn, whose favourite course to date was on human genome research, is living proof that growing older doesn’t mean having to disengage.

“I don’t think we can just sit and vegetate, and the courses give me new ideas,” said Rayburn.

Dr. Andrew Sixsmith, director of the gerontology research centre at SFU, is a firm believer that mental stimulation is essential for good quality of life as people age.

“There’s a lot of emphasis on the staying physically active, but staying mentally and socially engaged as we age is extremely important,” said Sixsmith.

Unlike regular courses at Kwantlen, there are no credits, no homework, and the courses only last for two to four sessions at a fraction of the regular course cost. Membership in TALK costs $10 a year and individual seminars are about $20-$30. Money goes towards scholarships for Kwantlen students.

Kwantlen’s Olympic partnership trades parking for student benefits

Kwantlen’s newest Olympic partnership with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympics Winter Games is more than just business.

As the Olympic committee gains extra parking space at all Kwantlen campuses during the Olympics, Kwantlen students will be reaping the benefits as they are exposed to a variety of opportunities.

Mary Jane Stenberg, executive director of external affairs at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has been working on the project with staff for several years, and is excited to get students involved with the Olympics. Working closely with VANOC, Stenberg has seen her Olympic project grow vastly since sponsorship was first suggested.

Details of how the partnership began remain foggy, as the project passed through the hands of Kwantlen’s former vice-president David Ross several years ago.

“The initial [suggestion] was made from VANOC to Kwantlen,” said Stenberg.

As part of the Kwantlen-VANOC sponsorship students will gain direct access to the Vancouver Olympic Games through volunteer positions.

“We have already had recruitments for any kind of volunteer opportunity you can imagine,” said Stenberg. “These have been available to all students at all campuses”.

Volunteer opportunities range from venue-managing to media relations as well as participating in opening and closing ceremonies.

“They are still looking for volunteers,” said Stenberg. “What we ask them [students] to do is go through the VANOC website”

Aside from volunteer opportunities, Kwantlen students will also have the possibility to purchase hard-to-find Olympic event tickets.

As a sponsor for the 2010 Games Kwantlen was allowed to purchase a limited amount of Olympic tickets to sell to their students. Within the next month, students will be able to access a website specially designed for the purchase of tickets. Their names will then be entered in a lottery.

“Student will have five days to come in and purchase the tickets,” said Stenberg, “or we will go to the next name on the list.”

As part of the Olympic Contributor agreement, Kwantlen was also allowed to pick a person to be the torchbearer on the Langley leg of the Olympic torch run.

After students and staff entered an online questionnaire early last year, Kwantlen has announced Suzanne ten Haaf, a business student, will be representing Kwantlen on Feb. 8, on the 102nd day of the Olympic Torch Relay Route.

Students down milk for haunted house tickets

Three Kwantlen students from the Cloverdale campus got more than enough calcium Tuesday in the school’s third milk-drinking competition.

Bryan Barker, Jeremy Johnson and Mike Kloeble each drank a two-litre carton of skim milk, competing for two tickets to the Potter’s House of Horrors in Surrey.

A small crowd of students cheered them on outside the cafeteria as the contest took place during the lunch hour..

Corrections: Old news sparks new views

In a recent Kwantlen Chronicle article the numbers quoted regarding H5N1, avain flu, and WN02, West Nile, were not the most recent.

According to the most recent summary released by the World Health Organization the number of people infected with H5N1, avain flu, is actually 442 confirmed cases as of late September with 262 deaths.

The West Nile Virus has seven confirmed cases in Canada, two in B.C and Alberta and one each for Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario. None of those cases proved fatal and only 20 per cent of people infected will show a mild form of the illness at all.

The Canadian Centre for Disease Control does not exist, the proper source is the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. Hong-Kong, not China, slaughtered the 1 million birds. Roy Wadia, director of communications for the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, said that China didn’t acknowledge the outbreak of H5N1 until much later.

Kwantlen kicks its smoking habit for a day

Kwantlen students made the air a little cleaner on Thursday by putting out cigarettes at the second annual Campus Smoke-Out event.

Promoted by the Kwantlen Wellness Centre, the event was led by Nursing 4141 students at the Surrey and Richmond campuses as part of their practicum experience. Kwantlen was one of nine Lower Mainland post-secondary institutions participating.

“It’s part of our change project,” said fourth-year nursing student Kim Sahota. “We’re working on the smoke-free campus initiative for Kwantlen.”

Booths were lined with anti-smoking pamphlets and awareness information, as well as a demonstration of the difference between a healthy lung and a smoker’s lung.

Smokers were encouraged to keep from lighting up on school grounds for the day. Smoking is prohibited within 7.5 metres of entrances, so nursing students also drew chalk lines leading from buildings to properly illustrate the distance.

The students took donations and collected cigarettes in a jar. For every cigarette, a $1.50 donation went to the BC Lung Association.

“If we can get people to actually empty out their pockets and put their cigarettes in [the jar], that could be a good start to stop them from smoking,” said Dr. Balbir Gurm, a nursing teacher at Kwantlen for 18 years.

“For students, you’ve got up to $500 worth [of smoking cessation products] in your health care package. That’s a great incentive which people don’t know about.”

By midday, the students had collected about 30 cigarettes at Surrey, with a goal of 100. The students at Richmond had a jar filled to the top by the end of the event at 3 p.m.

“I don’t know if it’s because all our health programs are here,” said Gurm, “but [the Surrey campus] seems to be the campus that has the least smokers to start with.”

Kwantlen’s journalism program on the move to social sciences

As of Oct. 9, Kwantlen’s Journalism program will become part of the faculty of social sciences, leaving its long-time home in the faculty of design and communications.

“It’s really an administrative change at this point,” said Beverley Sinclair, coordinator of the journalism program. Students can expect to feel the impact of the change in the fall of 2011, when all the journalism courses will likely be moved on Kwantlen’s Surrey campus.

“The faculty of Design and Communications, which is where we have been, has been fine up until now,” said Sinclair. “We are clearly more suited to be with and aligned with [the faculty of social sciences], it’s just a way better fit.”

Sinclair said the idea to switch faculties was first discussed about a year ago.

The hope is that moving from Richmond to Surrey campus will improve access for journalism students to social science courses and vice versa. The areas of study featured in social sciences are anthropology, Asian studies, criminology, geography, history, political science, psychology and sociology.

“We want to make our third- and fourth-year courses, the academic ones, more widely available to students who can benefit from them,” said Sinclair.

Robert Adamoski, chair of the criminology department, sent an email welcoming the journalism department into his faculty. He echoed Sinclair’s hope that the shift will make programs more accessible for students in both faculties and cited the benefit of different perspectives being shared between students.

“It’s clear to me that this is a dynamic period for journalism as a profession and an academic discipline,” wrote Adamoski in the email. “[The] Kwantlen faculty have a good sense of the opportunities that a carefully considered, leading-edge BA program will offer.”

Sinclair said that changes will be made to the program in order for it to keep up with what’s happening in the journalism profession. More emphasis will be placed on what’s been called new media and on-line publishing, which doesn’t mean that print or photography will be neglected.

“Being able to write and do great photography and images, that will always be the mainstay of the program,” said Sinclair. “How it’s delivered is changing and so we just continue to change in the program as well.”

The program will also continue to develop strong academic journalism and mass communications studies.

Green-thumbed students give back through toil and soil

Taking inspiration from the popular show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” Kwantlen Horticulture students remodeled the yards of a deserving Coquitlam family, the Yules. The students were just one part of the renovations, with a group called the Home Team completely remodeling the inside of the house.

This is the third year that the department has partnered with the Home Team. See the full story in Abby Wiseman’s article, which follows the photos.

By Abby Wiseman

Kwantlen horticulture students got the opportunity to get out of the classroom and put their lessons to practical use last weekend.

While Cornerstone Community Church members were renovating the home of the Yule family in Coquitlam, Kwantlen’s students designed and landscaped the backyard.

This is the third year Kwantlen students have worked with the church and the second time student Alyssa Chuback has been part of the church’s Home Team project.

“Giving back to someone who has given a lot is very rewarding, and it makes you feel good about yourself,” Chuback said.

Stan Kazymerchyk, turfgrass management instructor, feels the project is good for the students, who not only get to put their knowledge to practical use, but also get a rewarding experience, saying the students learn how “to help people, how to be people.”

The 13 students worked for two days to create a yard for the Yule family. Sunday the renovated house and yard was revealed to the family.

Homeowner Brian Yule was overwhelmed by the changes, saying that he was lost for words.

“Thank you all so much. Beautiful people, beautiful people,” Yule said.

Kazymerchyk hopes to continue getting his students involved in The Home Project for years to come.

“It would be tough to turn down,” Kazymerchyk said.

Each year, the church chooses a family in need and carries out a complete home renovation.

Kwantlen instructor fights to open the end-of-life dialogue

He knows about the intimate details better than most people, and that’s why he isn’t going to lie about it.

“ If I had to characterize the relationship, I’d say it’s a very uncomfortable one,” Russel Ogden said about the common ground between suicide and education.

A professor in the department of sociology at Kwantlen Polytechnic University since 2006, Ogden’s academic research and lectures focus on euthanasia and assisted death.

His third-year course, Aspects of Dying and Death, and a fourth-year course, Sociolegal Aspects of Assisted Suicide, both invite students to examine the issues surrounding suicide and assisted death in society.

“We’re all very uncomfortable with these topics,” Ogden said with a deep sigh, “and I think that an education system needs to spend time with the uncomfortable topics. That’s how we get change. It’s only by addressing these uncomfortable topics that can we can improve and advance society. “

Recently, Ogden has had plenty of opportunity to discuss the complex moral and social issues.

On Sept. 22, Metro Vancouver reported that Paul Whitney, chief librarian of the Vancouver Public Library, had banned Exit International, an Australian suicide education and advocacy group, from holding public workshops at the library’s central branch in downtown Vancouver.

According to its website, Exit International is the leading voluntary euthanasia and end of life education and advocacy organization. Dr. Philip Nitschke, author of The Peaceful Pill, a guidebook on methods for ending life if elderly or terminally ill, heads the group.

Whitney told Metro that after police and legal experts informed him that holding the workshops in the library the workshops would violate the Criminal Code, he decided to bar the group’s presentations.

Facing media pressure, Whitney and the library board heard from B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director David Eby at their board meeting Sept. 24.

Eby described the library board as an ally to the cause of free expression, but he reprimanded the board for their hesitation, reminding them of their duty.

“ Because there is significant public demand and significant need for it, and this is a discussion rather than a promotion or an encouragement, we would suggest that the library consider its obligation to the Charter of Free Expression and let this discussion go ahead,” Eby told the executives. “We don’t think that there is any coincidence that the library has in its mandate the mission towards intellectual freedom and the ability to discuss even controversial ideas.”

On the following Monday, Sept. 28, Ogden had a letter to the editor published in the Vancouver Sun that echoed Eby’s opinion.

“Libraries and universities are built on values that promote education, freedom of thought and freedom of speech. When trusted institutions censor talk about suicide, not only do they undermine the core values on which they are built, they diminish our humanity,” he wrote.

Ogden insists that while assisted might be illegal in B.C., there is nothing illegal about Nitchke’s workshops and the advice that it offers to those considering end-of-life options. Furthermore, he said that the library already stocks books similar to literature that Exit International provides, and that providing a social opportunity for people to discuss suicide might change someone’s views.

“I think that they would be doing a much bigger service to people if they let them talk about it in a group,” said Ogden. “Because, if in that context, if you have someone who is anxious or perhaps suicidal, impulsively so, other people in the crowd will recognize that. They might say ‘Are you O.K? Do you want to talk? Feel like going for a coffee afterwards?’ They might make a friend. That might turn them around.”

In the first part of his letter to the editor, Ogden made mention of another Canadian news item, one that hit closer to home for him than a dispute at his public library.

On Sept. 15, the CBC reported that 19-year-old student Michel Gariepy, a student at the University of Ottawa, had jumped to his death from the 15th floor balcony of his residence on the evening of Sept. 12. The news report noted that Gariepy was well liked by those who knew him and regarded as intelligent and “forward thinking.” Ogden’s daughter might have felt the same way, but she never got the chance to meet Gariepy, even though she is in her first year at Ottawa and she lives in the residence once inhabited by Gariepy.

“She’s just left home, she’s gone to Ottawa and she’s 17 years old,” Ogden said of his daughter’s situation, “ and some guy jumps from the 15th floor in her building. Welcome to university, right?”

Frustrated, Ogden describes the events that followed as typical of a post-suicide crisis situation. Police and firefighter units came to assess the scene; the pavement was hosed down; a memorial is erected; and the victim is remembered, by some.

He said that most people, such as his daughter, didn’t know the victim or anything about the circumstances surrounding the death and have no safe place to voice their concern over what has happened or their thoughts about suicide, even in a post –secondary educational setting.

Ogden believes that this lack of opportunity for discussion at a time of crisis is a symptom of a greater ill. He thinks that if there was a more open attitude to discussing suicidal thoughts and mental illness, people would be less likely to reach the point of feeling to take their own live.

“If we really are troubled by suicide, the way that we should address that trouble is by making it a social issue that is worthy of discussion,” Ogden said.

“Suicide is something that is after-the-fact, but when people are contemplating it, we need to be more open to having that discussion. People often think about suicide, but they don’t engage in any self-harming or even suicide attempts, let alone actual suicide. We should be able to talk about how we have these thoughts in a safer place, where we can be confident that expressing these thoughts isn’t going to result in an intervention that is embarrassing, shameful and excessive.”

Ogden said that the “professional” response to suicide deters people from talking about their suicidal thoughts. According Ogden, in the majority of cases, people are hospitalized, scrutinized and viewed as safety risks rather than people in sensitive states of mental health. Knowing this, people choose not to tell their loved ones or community supports.

Though he acknowledges that public education and community services can go a long way towards promoting awareness and discussion of suicide and mental health issues, Ogden thinks that the first step towards changing our attitudes is something simpler.

“It starts with some basic common sense…that is, if we see something that is upsetting us about someone’s behavior, we talk to them about it. That if we’re having difficult thoughts, our own thoughts about self-harm or suicide, that we can express it. You can create all the programs that you want, whether they be courses, institutions, suicide prevention, resources all of that. But really, my call would be…let’s use some common sense and be decent to one another.”

Kwantlen counts heads, expects record enrolment

Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s classes are more crowded this year than ever before, according to a Kwantlen press release.

The 28-year-old institution’s previous record of 17,000 students is about to be shattered, with 14,677 students enroled in courses beginning on or before Sept. 18. Trades programs starting in October, November and December are expected to put the number of students well over the previous record.

Enrolment in university studies, which do not include qualifying studies, trades or technology programs, is 10 per cent higher than last year. All program areas have seen an enrolment increase of five to 10 per cent. There are 11 per cent more course enrolments from students new to Kwantlen than there were last year. The largest growth is in the arts and business programs.

The press release attributed the growth to Kwantlen’s new university status, a new Bachelor of Arts with a Major in English and Bachelor of Science in Integrated Pest Management programs, and changes to the registration system.

Ron Maggiore, Kwantlen’s executive director of strategic enrolment management, said university status creates “greater interest, more applications and more excitement. University status adds value to a Kwantlen diploma or degree without question.”

The increase could only mean good things, he said. More students produces more revenue for the school, and “more tuition allows for the creativity to do more things.”

Maggiore said he isn’t surprised by the enrolment increase, referring to a relationship between post-secondary education attendance and the economy. When the economy is strong, enrolment tends to drop; when it sours, enrolment climbs.

The enrolment increase is not limited to Kwantlen, though the institution has the highest recorded enrolment increase of all schools in B.C.

A recent announcement from Simon Fraser Institute declared a record enrolment of 28,275 students this year, a seven per cent increase from last year.

Most of SFU’s increase is in international students, up 33 per cent from last year, transfer students and a doubling of students in faculty of health and environment.

“There seems to be a trend and increase of post-secondary students,” said Mehran Kiai, SFU’s director of enrolment services. “It’s too early to say if it’s because of the economy or other reasons.”

Kiai believes an improved admissions process and growing reputation are contributing factors to the record enrolment.

Craig MacBride, public affairs officer for the B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development, was unable to confirm whether there is a trend in post-secondary education enrolment increases but suggested that one may become apparent when final data is collected this November.

“Historically, anytime it’s a recession [enrolment] goes up in universities. I suspect there is a trend,” said MacBride.

Campuses puts focus on fitness and recreation

New fitness and recreation classes are springing up across Kwantlen campuses this year as part of an initiative to get more students physically fit.

Faculty and the Kwantlen Student Association are trying to get the word out about yoga, belly dancing and hip-hop classes beginning this fall, while they brainstorm ideas for intramural sports, other classes and clubs.

Classes already introduced are hatha yoga (a gentle posture and breathing exercise class), power yoga (a cardio- and strength-intensive exercise class), belly dancing and hip-hop dancing.

Hatha yoga was offered last year and saw a moderate response from students. But small registration numbers are complicating the introduction of the new classes. Though hatha yoga and power yoga had enough registration to start as scheduled in September, the dance classes were delayed for several weeks.

Recreation coordinator John Stewart said getting students interested has been difficult, something he attributes to the lack of awareness about recreation opportunities at Kwantlen.

“You have to build a reputation, and once you get that, you get people coming to you to look for recreation programs. It’ll take some time.”

The classes, coming intramurals and clubs are being pushed by the faculty and the KSA to promote mind-and-body health.

“If they’re healthy and they’re exercising, their mind is healthy and they’ll do better in school,” Stewart said. “It’s really important to keep yourself active. You think better and you think more clearly.”

Elmo Lara, a KSA coordinator for the Student Health Improvement Program, is trying to raise awareness about a new running club that is being formed. He works to develop programs that will help students understand the connection between fitness and study success.

“If they’re not physically fit, their brain won’t be working as it should,” he said.

When asked about the relevance of the dance and yoga classes to Kwantlen students, Stewart laughed and said “they were just trying to offer something different. With the hip-hop, they were really trying to focus on something students might be interested in because it’s typically a younger style of [dance].”

The classes also reflect a gender discrepancy, which Stewart attributed to registration. Females register more frequently than males, he said, but intramural sports are generally male-driven.

Stewart is organizing several recreation classes and intramurals for introduction next semester. Ideas so far include a boot camp, kettlebells and a morning yoga session. Suggestions are welcome; contact John Stewart at (604) 599-2307.

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