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Nobel laureate Dr. Carl Wieman, renowned for his leadership in science education, is the latest addition to UBC's Faculty of Science. UBC's Dr. David Dolphin is the winner of the 2006 Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering.

In conjunction with the International 2010 Open Access Week (October Oct. 18-24th,), the BC Research Libraries Group invited G. Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Library Digital Programs and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University, to speak on the Case for Open Data and eScience – Establishing a University Data Management Program at Johns Hopkins. Sayeed Choudhury discussed John Hopkins University (JHU) work developing a university data management program and a service model to support data curation as part of an evolving cyberinfrastructure featuring open, modular components in support of JHU faculty associated with community-wide eScience projects. In addition to developing a technological framework for data conservancy at JHU, they are also developing new roles and relationships between the library and the academic community, most notably through the development of “data scientists” or “data humanists.” Within these developments, Choudhury concluded that institutional repositories is the first step in a longer journey towards data conservation and that for institutional efforts to be successful, they must be integrated into a larger landscape of repositories that serve a distributed and diverse academic community.

Litter, in its simplest form, is trash of any type thrown where it does not belong. This experiment examined the relationship between stand-alone garbage bin placement and littering behavior in large auditoriums. If garbage bins are removed from auditoriums is there a littering problem? The locations of the stand-alone garbage bins were manipulated in three conditions, bins outside, bins inside and a control condition in the form of no bins. Ultimately, this study finds that standalone garbage bins did not have an impact on the quantity of litter left in auditoriums. Marginally significant results indicate that stand-alone garbage cans inside of auditoriums may have a detrimental effect on food scrap removal, and so opens up a wealth of possibility for future research. In addition, the data that was acquired provides comprehensive and practical implications that create a thought-provoking foundation that can be used for additional investigation by UBC Sustainability. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Climate change is one of the greatest contemporary issues facing communities in the Philippines–a country already experiencing the impacts of extreme changes in weather. Planning is uniquely able to provide comprehensive, community-driven responses to this issue. In this project, students executed participatory planning processes around climate change to increase the adaptive capacities of the Municipality of Guiguinto, engaging municipal staff and community leaders in the process. The resulting report contains key recommendations for the municipality that are locally specific, and community-based, with an emphasis on urban development and the existing 7K program. The Municipality of Guiguinto is now actively using the report to do further planning and community engagement, and to prepare their nationally-mandated Local Climate Change Adaptation Plans.

This thesis is an interdisciplinary study based on the interplay between science, technology and society in order to inform the design of knowledge exploration systems. It provides a rationale for the integration of science knowledge, geographic information, with digital libraries to build knowledge and awareness about sustainability. A theoretical reconceptualization of knowledge building is provided that favours interactive engagement with information and argues against a traditional model of science production and communication that is linear and unidirectional. The elements of contextualization, classification and communication form the core of the reconceptualization. Since many information systems entrench the traditional model of science production, the three elements are considered in light of library and information science and geographic information science. The use of geographic information systems is examined to identify how they can be used as part of a social learning model for scientific, social, cultural, and environmental issues to further assist people in connecting to place and sustainability. Empirical data was collected from four case studies. One case study centred on the design and development of a web-based digital library called the Georgia Basin Digital Library, another two case studies focused on the use of part of this digital library with youth, senior and environmental groups in south-western British Columbia. The remaining case study observed a community deliberation to consider how knowledge exploration systems might support deliberation in future processes. The case study research confirms that collaborative research with communities is a fruitful way to engage with sustainability issues. Such collaborations require consideration of institutional arrangements, information collections, relationship building, technology transfer and capacity building.

The paper highlights some of the key concerns across the sectors of school, higher and teacher education. A few potential research themes that can help problematise the issues raised have been identified. An emphasis is laid on the need to build on practice-based repositories of knowledge, curricular framing and pedagogic strategies. Examining the contours of and potential for ESD includes: addressing questions of environmental, social, economic and epistemic justice in school and higher education contexts; exploring linkages between ESD and climate change education, education on sustainable cities and communities and identifying novel methods of wider public engagement and social education.

Over the past few decades, the debates have shifted from whether to how Computer Science (CS) should be introduced into formal education. Given the diverse ways to introduce CS into formal education, and the struggles many countries have faced, considerably more research is required to provide a framework for effective CS curricular reforms. Effectiveness implies implementing a scalable reform and teacher Professional Development (PD) program that promotes teachers' acceptance of the discipline and sustains changes in their practices to affect student learning and perception. This thesis investigated these prerequisites within a mandatory curricular reform project in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland. The project introduces CS as a part of Digital Education in the K-12 curriculum through the collaboration between 4 major institutions in a Research Practice Partnership (RPP). The RPP brought together the main reform stakeholders to conceive, pilot and deploy the CS curriculum and teacher PD program to all 93 schools in the region (130'000 students, 9'000 teachers) within a framework that looks to address existing barriers to affecting sustained changes in teachers' practices. In this thesis we focus on the mandatory primary school Digital Education curricular reform where teachers teach all subjects and are generally less interested in teaching CS than specialised teachers. The thesis examines all phases of the reform, from conception to widespread deployment, with inputs from coordinators, trainers, teachers, students and researchers in order to: - Understand how to effectively co-construct a CS PD program with key stakeholders and propose recommendations to improve the outcomes of RPP initiatives. The findings draw from 3 studies where we interviewed project coordinators, trainers, teachers and researchers. - Validate the effectiveness of the proposed curricular reform framework and PD program in terms of teacher perception, short-term and sustained adoption. The validation relies on 3 studies following 350 pilot grades 1-4 teachers for four years, of which two after their PD program. Additional studies then investigated (i) the factors that influence teachers' decision to teach a given CS pedagogical activity through adoption modelling, and (ii) solutions to improve teachers' acceptance of CS. - Investigate how the reform contributes to equity in terms of student perception and learning in one study involving 4 data collections with approximately 13'500 grades 3-6 student- and 320 teacher respondents. Two of these data collections evaluated student learning using the competent Computational Thinking (CT) test, a CT-concepts test we designed and validated through 3 main studies with data from 2'700 grade 3-6 students. - Validate the effectiveness of our adapted cascade deployment model to spread the PD program to all teachers in the region in our final study. The validation concerns the first of three deployment phases and involves 14 teacher-trainers, 700 grades 1-4 teachers and a comparison with the pilot program's outcomes. To conclude, this thesis contributes to validating longitudinally, at a large scale, and through multiple studies, a framework for the sustainable and scalable implementation of CS curricular reforms and their PD program. This framework provides insight which are useful for all stakeholders involved in CS curricular reforms, and will hopefully increase the likelihood of their reforms succeeding.

The master's thesis project "Future Learning Space" is embedded into the context of the contemporary learning environment at ETH Zurich. The thesis advocates for the preservation and re-use of the Huber Pavilions on ETH Campus Hönggerberg, which coincidentally were being demolished at the same time. While exploring the question “what makes a healthy learning environment?”, the diploma project tests the limits to collaborate with the existing network of stakeholders at ETH, from a student's perspective. The diploma thesis concludes with a 1:1 mock-up, a building site and -permit for the construction of a research object next to the HIL building, allowing students of the following semesters to continue the legacy of the Huber Pavilions and build their own learning environment.

The goal of the UBC Food System Project (UBCFSP) is to improve the overall sustainability of the campus food system. The current food system reflects the imbalance of the global food system, which tends to value economic profitability over environmental health and social well-being. This study focuses on the Barn Coffee Shop which is located at the top of Sustainability Street (SS). Previous sustainability initiatives that have been implemented at the Barn focused on a local food supply, nutrition development and waste management. Many other issues need addressing to increase the overall sustainability of the Barn Coffee Shop. The goal of Group 11 was to investigate other components that would contribute to establishing the Barn as an economic, social and environmental sustainable model on Sustainability Street. Research was conducted that focused on ways of improving the sustainability of the building and surrounding landscape. This was achieved through literature review of previous UBCFSP papers and consultation with numerous collaborators such as UBC Food Services (UBCFS), Sustainability Office (S0), Campus and Community Planning (CCP), Plant Operations (PO) and Landscape Architecture (LARC). Funding and promotion for the project was also created through a fundraising event held in March. Based on the information gathered and the interest expressed by collaborators, it was concluded that actual implementation of the proposals for the building and landscape would be part of a long-term strategy. Short-term goals have been achieved through the initial contact with collaborators and the initiation of a fund dedicated towards future sustainability initiatives at the Barn Coffee Shop. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

Introduction The world today faces significant environmental challenges which have been directly or indirectly due to actions of mankind. A pro-active, environmental-friendly behaviour from individuals, communities and policy-makers to protect and prevent further degradation of environment is an immediate need. Materials & Methods: This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted among second and third year students of a medical college in Tamil Nadu during the period July to August 2016 using a selfadministered questionnaire to assess the individual behaviour and family practices. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Barlett’s test were used to assess sampling adequacy. The responses were expressed as frequencies and percentages. Results: A total of 210 students participated in the study. Individual eco-friendly practices with Likert-type responses were coded for a maximum of 60. Among the total 210 participants, 22.8%, 74.8% and 2.4% achieved high, medium and low scores respectively. The mean score was 35.23 with standard deviation (SD) 6.698. Assessing family practices, for a maximum score of 9, the mean score was 3.7 (SD 1.5). Conclusion: The self-reported behaviour varied between domains. Participants had better practices related to energy-efficiency at home compared to waste reduction, recycling and transport behaviour suggesting the role of other socioeconomic determinants. The relatively poor scores among medical students and their families, a specific population with adequate exposure to environmental education suggest need for more effective measures to inculcate eco-friendly behaviour