Guelph The Portico Magazine, Summer 2009

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SUMMER 2009

Getting into the game PUBLICATIONS MAIL 40064673

RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO: THE PORTICO MAGAZINE, UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH, GUELPH, ON N1G 2W1

UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS

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ALUMNI

HEALTH & DENTAL INSURANCE

A quick lesson in getting your coverage to pay for itself.

For only dollars a day, the Alumni Health & Dental Insurance covers a wide range of medical bills not covered by your provincial health plan. Your premiums may even be tax deductible if you’re self-employed or a small business owner. Plus with guaranteed acceptance plans, you could get approved on the same day!

Speak to a licensed agent at 1-866-842-5757.

What will life teach you?

Underwritten by:

manulife.com/guelph/health The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company Premium is for a 40-year-old adult on Base Health & Dental Plan. Tax deduction assumes 40% marginal rate.

Table is for illustrative purposes only and is not meant to be representative of every situation. You should seek the advice of a professional to determine your eligibility for tax deductions.

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contents the portico • Summer 2009

3 — president’s page • grad news — 28 • passages — 37

in and a ro u n d the university

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of G launches a new master’s degree in public health and reports on research that documents the danger of BPA in baby bottles, how captivity shortens the life of elephants and why jealousy rages on Facebook. Students travel to Washington, England and Tanzania to make their voices heard.

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—8 — cover story

GIVE STUDENT ATHLETES A SPORTING CHANCE After decades of playing at a disadvantage, U of G varsity teams now have the go-ahead to offer athletic scholarships to new recruits. It’s a positive note in the sour financial symphony facing U of G.

These varsity Gryphons are among U of G’s first athletic scholarship recipients.

Photos by Kyle Rodriguez; Photo illustration by Paul Watson

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U of G grad student tells how her research uncovered a new Kenyan invention and how a scholarship donation made it possible.

Alumni Affairs and Development prepares for Alumni Weekend June 19 and 20, and the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management gets ready to celebrate its 40th birthday.

— 13 —

THE OTHER U OF G The University of Guelph has played a small but important role in the development of its African cousin, the University of Ghana.

— 20 — on the cover

alumni matters

BUSINESS IS BETTER THAN AID

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A Guelph grad who went to Africa in a development role has turned to entrepreneurship and discovered a whole new way to belong and make a difference.

— 23 —

RESTORING A GEM Who knew that hidden in the ceiling of Macdonald Institute was a shimmering architectural gem?

ALUMNI NEWSLETTERS SEE PAGE 18

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OUR PLAN IS TO WALK ALL OVER WESTERN Homecoming 2009

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Summer 2009 • Volume 41 Issue 2

• Date — Sept. 26 • Game time — 2 p.m.

• Family fun — All day www.alumni.uoguelph.ca

Editor Mary Dickieson Director Charles Cunningham Art Direction Peter Enneson Design Inc. Contributors Barbara Chance, BA ’74 Barry Gunn Lori Bona Hunt Wendy Jespersen Rebecca Kendall, BA ’99 Teresa Pitman SPARK Program Writers Andrew Vowles, B.Sc. ’84 Advertising Inquiries Scott Anderson 519-827-9169

Make another educated choice...

Bring your colleagues home Do you have a conference or meeting in the near future? Your alma mater is the ideal location.

We look forward to welcoming you back!

Our beautiful 850 acre campus is known for its tree-lined walkways and magnificent architecture. This picturesque scenery is the perfect location for conferences or meetings of any size.

Everything you need is all housed on one campus: • Accommodations • Meeting Facilities • Audio Visual • Catering • Printing Services • Registration Services (off-site available)

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Direct all other correspondence to: Communications and Public Affairs University of Guelph Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1 E-mail m.dickieson@exec.uoguelph.ca www.uoguelph.ca/theportico/ The Portico magazine is published three times a year by Communications and Public Affairs at the University of Guelph. Its mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promote pride and commitment within the University community. All material is copyright 2009. Ideas and opinions expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the ideas or opinions of the University or the editors.

Publications Mail Agreement # 40064673 Printed in Canada — ISSN 1714-8731 To update your alumni record, contact: Alumni Affairs and Development Phone 519-824-4120, Ext. 56550 Fax 519-822-2670 E-mail alumnirecords@uoguelph.ca

For more information, visit our web site: www.conferences.uoguelph.ca or contact us directly: /EXL] 2EL[IKELFS[ Tel: 519-824-4120 ext. 52353 E-mail: OREL[IKE@hrs.uoguelph.ca

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GUELPH MATTERS — MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE t h a s b e e n s a i d that timing is everything, and this old adage is certainly ringing true for individuals and organizations all over the world, including the University of Guelph.

We’re in the midst of one of the most turbulent economic periods in recent history. Like most sectors in Canada, universities have been severely affected by the global financial challenges.At U of G, we are better prepared to weather this storm because of our multi-year planning process and the effort made to integrate financial planning with academic goals and physical resources.

Yet, the complexity and size of our projected shortfall are unprecedented, largely the result of the continuing decline in both global financial markets and economic growth.

Many of the decisions that we’re making, whether they affect investments, academic programs or staffing levels, are prompted by the current state of our financial affairs.We have established a new website at www.uoguelph.ca/ president/budget to keep the University community apprised of the budget challenges we face and how we are dealing with them. I invite you to visit our site to monitor the University’s situation in the months ahead.

One of the most challenging things about navigating through difficult times is that you must always wear a pair of figurative bifocals: staying focused on the present while keeping an eye on the future. Indeed, we’ve had to make some difficult choices in the past several months to ensure the University’s ongoing fiscal sustainability and set the institution on a course for long-term recovery.

Among other things, we will not offer some of our endowed scholarships and bursaries this fall as a result of significant diminishing investment returns. Since May 2008, U of G has seen a $39-million decrease in the market values of its endowments. Many other universities in Canada and North America are in a similar situation and have already taken this step.

Only 17 per cent of the University’s scholarships and bursaries are supported by endowments, so the vast majority of our student assistance — 83 per cent — is not affected by this decision. Nevertheless, there are some 600-plus endowed scholarships that are “under water,” which means there is no investment funding left and the capital is in danger of encroachment. It is absolutely essential that we protect the long-term viability of these endowment funds.

While prudent, the decision comes with great regret

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the president’s page

PHOTO BY ROSS DAVIDSON-PILON

because we know these awards are extremely important to the students who receive them. In tough economic times, even a modest scholarship can literally and figuratively change a student’s life.You’ll hear that sentiment again from some of our student athletes who are featured in this issue of The Portico.Their coaches and the Guelph alumni who have endowed athletic scholarships provide the longer view.

These donors know that one of the wisest investments a person can make is to strengthen the things that will sustain us in the years to come.And the ideas, inventions and discoveries that will transform our future lie in the minds of today’s students and those still too young to enrol at the University of Guelph. Helping them tap into that potential through the knowledge and experiences that university brings is paramount.

Now is the right time to adjust our bifocals to ensure that whatever we do to weather these tough economic times, we must always look to the University’s long-standing commitments to give our students the best possible education, build our research base, strengthen our partnerships, open our doors to the world and create opportunities for lifelong learning. By building on these strengths, we will emerge a stronger, more efficient university.

Alastair Summerlee President

Summer 2009 3

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in around

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Public health master’s degree gets nod new Guelph-flavoured master of public health (MPH) program will draw on U of G research strengths, including expertise in epidemiology and infectious diseases, to help keep people healthy in Ontario, Canada and abroad.The new two-year degree program was approved by U of G’s Senate in 2008 and received approval early this year from the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies.

As one of 20 new graduate programs in public health being established at institutions across Canada, Guelph’s new offering is the only one in Ontario available through a veterinary school.

Whereas other MPH programs focus on policy or human health, students in the Ontario Veterinary College program will learn about epidemiology; environmental public health; infectious diseases; and zoonotic, food-borne and water-borne diseases.

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LIVING LIBRARY BREAKS DOWN BARRIERS ntario’s first living library was held March 5 and 6 at the University of Guelph. On those two days, the “books” checked out by participants were human beings, including a person living with a physical disability, a gay man, a Muslim woman, a cancer survivor and the victim of a violent crime.

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Julia Chapman

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Andrew Papadopoulos

This was only the second time such an event had been held in Canada.The concept started in Denmark in 2000, with the goal of breaking down barriers between different groups of people.That’s why the “books” in a living library tend to be members of groups that frequently face prejudice, stereotyping or social exclusion.

“It creates a forum for constructive conversations on contentious issues,” says Julia Chapman, who was editor of The Ontarion when she brought the event to Guelph.“We need to step up and realize that different opinions exist, different beliefs exist and we should be respectful of this.”

An English and biology major, Chapman volunteered as an Ontarion writer for three years before accepting the position of news editor. She plans to pursue a master’s degree in journalism.

Prof. Andrew Papadopoulos, Population Medicine, is the program’s co-ordinator.A former public health professional with the City of Toronto, he now belongs to the University’s Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses.

Papadopoulos says it’s important to connect animal and human health to ensure food and water safety and to help prevent and control diseases such as bird flu and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). He says his experience during the 2002/03 SARS outbreak “showed us that the health system had good trained people on the ground, but we needed to step back to look at the system. The public health system needs people to think at a global level.”

Papadopoulos expects that 60 per cent of the program’s students will be recent Guelph grads.

Hillier honoured by CME On behalf of the College of Management and Economics, U of G president Alastair Summerlee presented retired Canadian general and chief of defence staff Rick Hillier with the Lincoln Alexander Outstanding Leader Award Jan. 13. Hillier was honoured for his exceptional abilities as a communicator and for improving the image and sustainability of the Forces.

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university

FACEBOOK JEALOUSY

new study by University of Guelph researchers finds that Facebook creates jealousy and suspicion in romantic and sexual relationships. The study, which appeared in the journal CyberPsychology and Behavior, is the first to provide evidence of a link between Facebook use and jealousy.

“Facebook gives people access to information about their partner that may otherwise not be accessible,” says Amy Muise, who conducted the study with Emily Christofides. Both are PhD students in the Department of Psychology working with Prof. Serge Desmarais.

Muise and Christofides surveyed 308 Facebook users, all university students between the ages of 17 and 24. At the time of the survey, about half were in a serious relationship. Nearly 75 per cent said they had previous romantic or sexual partners as “friends” on Facebook, and close to 80 per cent reported that their partner also had previous partners as “friends.”

In addition to verifying an explicit link between jealousy and Facebook use, the study found that the more time people spend online, the more suspicious they become. Most study participants knew that reading personal information on Facebook increased feelings of jealousy, but they said the social networking website is simply too hard to resist, especially the temptation to monitor their partner’s page.

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live longer than those in captivity in European zoos, according to new research by an international team of scientists led by Guelph animal science professor Georgia Mason. Since the study was published Dec. 12 in Science, the world’s leading journal of scientific research, Mason has been quoted in more than 1,000 major newspapers, magazines and broadcast news reports around the world.

The findings could mark the end of a long-standing debate about the physical and mental well-being of zoo elephants, and may also bring about improvements in how these animals are kept.

“This is the first animal welfare paper to get into Science,” says Mason, who holds the Canada Research Chair in Animal Welfare and is an associated faculty member in U of G’s Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare.

“These kinds of questions often gen-

erate more heat than light, and our research shows what can be found out by analysing objective data.We hope it provides a model for tackling similar issues with other species.”

Using data on more than 4,500 elephants, the researchers found evidence that zoos cause shortened adult life spans in both African and Asian elephants. In the most endangered species (Asian), calf death rates were also elevated. For this species, the researchers found that being born into a zoo (rather than being imported from the wild), being moved between zoos and the possible loss of their mother all put animals at particular risk.

The authors recommend screening all zoo elephants to identify individuals that might be in trouble. Until these animals’ problems can be solved, they also call for an end to the importation of elephants from their native countries and for minimization of inter-zoo transfers.They also suggest that elephant breeding be restricted to zoos that exhibit no harmful effects in their captive-born animals.

ILLUSTRATION BY AMANDA DUFFY

emale elephant s living in pro-

F tected populations in Africa and Asia

PHOTO BY MARTIN SCHWALBE

Study of European zoos raises concerns about elephant health

Summer 2009 5

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in & around the university Get rid of BPA

Andrea Edginton

s a mom, Andrea Edginton, B.Sc. ’99 and PhD ’04, says it was an easy choice.

Her son was about 12 months old when she pitched his feeding bottles last year and bought new ones, following Health Canada’s announcement of plans to ban plastic bottles containing the chemical bisphenol A (BPA).

Recalling her decision, she says: “The alternatives are there, so why not use them?”

But as a scientist who studies how the body gets rid of substances, she had lingering questions. What exactly was the problem with BPA in newborns and youngsters?

Edginton is a faculty member at the University of Waterloo’s pharmacy school. But figuring out BPA led her back to Guelph’s Department of Environmental Biology, where she had studied environmental toxicology for her undergraduate degree and explored the impact of herbicides on frogs for her PhD. Here she joined forces with Prof. Len Ritter,

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who studies human health aspects of toxicology, and together they discovered that “mom’s instincts” had been correct. They found that, compared with adults, newborns and infants may have up to 11 times as much BPA in their bodies. The chemical has been linked to cancer and reproductive and behavioural problems.

Their study appeared late last year in Environmental Health Perspectives, published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the United States. The paper, listing Edginton as senior author, supports Ottawa’s move to ban the substance in plastic baby bottles and suggests the industry look for replacement products.

“I would advise a pregnant woman to try to reduce or entirely eliminate her exposure to bisphenol A,” says Ritter, who is executive director of the Canadian Network of Toxicology Centres based at U of G. BPA is found in many everyday products,

PHOTOS BY LAUREN WALLACE AND MARTIN SCHWALBE

Guelph students go where it’s happening • David Lawless, a first-year biochemistry student at U of G, was one of three young Canadians selected to represent the country at an international gathering of young leaders and activists held in England in January. More than 40 countries were represented at the annual Road to Davos Conference sponsored by the British Council.

• Daniele Magditsch, a third-year environmental biology student, attended the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama with a group of outstanding university students from around the world as part of the University Presidential Inauguration Conference. She was chosen because of her leadership skills and her attendance at the 2004 Global Young Leaders Conference when she was a high school student in Brampton, Ont. • Business students Jaclyn Bell, Graeme Close, Joshua Nasielski, Michelle Siman and Marc Tytus raised $10,000 for the national “5 Days for the Homeless” fundraiser.They slept outside and relied on donated meals from March 16 to 20.

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U of G students Normand Doan, Lauren Wallace, Richard Gilbert and Taryn Guldborg, along with Wallace’s aunt Cathy Wallace, reached the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania Dec. 23, an effort aimed at raising money to fight HIV/AIDS and boosting awareness of the disease.

The team raised more than $14,000 that will go to Guelph’s Masai Project to build an AIDS clinic in Lesotho. From left: Doan, Cathy and Lauren Wallace, Gilbert and Guldborg.

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including baby bottles, liquid formula containers and food cans, as well as reusable water bottles. The substance can leach from containers and be ingested.

Reports have suggested that exposure to BPA can interfere with the normal working of hormones in people and animals. Studies have linked BPA exposure to cancer, early onset of female sexual maturity, male fertility problems, impaired learning and behavioural problems.

Edginton’s interest in toxicokinetics — how a substance gets into the body and what happens to it there — began during her Guelph studies and continued in a previous position with the systems biology group at Bayer Technology Services in Germany. Her current research looks at what happens to a chemical inside a living organism. In particular, she examines how the physiology of children affects the

pharmacokinetics of drugs and how this information can be used to optimize drug therapies.

The BPA results reported by Edginton and Ritter have been confirmed by another Environmental Health Perspectives study published last year that used human subjects. It found that BPA levels in children were 10 times higher than in adults.

“It was exactly what we had predicted,” says Ritter. “Governments need to move quickly to reduce or eliminate exposure as much as possible, especially in sensitive populations. And industry needs to develop alternatives. The target, especially in sensitive populations, is zero.”

Health Canada is currently writing regulations to ban polycarbonate baby bottles containing BPA. Canada is the first country to move to ban the substance in these containers.

Homicide expert goes international

icy in Criminal Justice by the federal government. She will receive $100,000 a year for five years to examine the effectiveness of violence prevention initiatives, specifically those targeted at domestic violence.

ociology professor Myrna Dawson made headlines in Australia recently when she gave a keynote address and presented research papers at the first International Conference on Homicide.

Dawson was interviewed about major initiatives that have occurred in Canada over the past three decades targeting intimate-partner violence and homicide, as well as the changing criminal justice response to these crimes.

She is a member of the Ontario Domestic Violence Death Review Committee, which assists in reviewing deaths that occur as a result of domestic violence and in making recommendations to prevent such deaths in the future. Several states in Australia are considering such initiatives.

Dawson was recently named the Canada Research Chair in Public Pol-

NOTEWORTHY

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PHOTO BY MARTIN SCHWALBE

Myrna Dawson

• U of G chancellor Pamela Wallin is one of Canada’s newest senators, appointed in December by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She will continue her role at the University along with her new Senate duties.

• During convocation ceremonies Feb. 17 and 18, honorary degrees were presented to U of G chancellor emeritus and former Ontario lieutenant-governor Lincoln Alexander, hydrogeologist Frank Rovers, aboriginal advocate Mary Simon and agriculturist Jack Wilkinson.

Guelph lawyer and former Board of Governors member Robin-Lee Norris, BA ’80, was named an Honorary Fellow of the University.

• Psychology professor Boyer Winters, who was featured in the last issue of The Portico, has received a $315,922 research grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

He is working to understand memory at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels to learn how and why these mechanisms break down.

• Dave Scott-Thomas, B.Sc. ’88, head coach of cross-country and track and field at U of G, was named Male Newsmaker of the Year by the Guelph Mercury. He was recognized both for his awardwinning coaching at the University and for forming the Speed River Track and Field Club.

• Guelph MPP Liz Sandals announced Feb. 27 that the Ontario government will invest $3.62 million at U of G over the next three years to provide support for 231 new graduate students in high-demand sectors such as engineering and environmental studies.

• The Ontario Universities’ Application Centre reported that applications for fall 2009 are up 4.6 per cent at U of G and 17 per cent at the University of Guelph-Humber — the highest overall increase in the province.

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It’s Time to Give Students a Sporting Chance We were losing potential athletes to schools that could offer them financial assistance

Gryphon athletes and scholarship donors appear in photos by Kyle Rodriguez

Photo Illustration by Paul Watson

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By Lori Bona Hunt ric Vanderwey is a long way from home, but at least the weather in Ontario this winter made him feel as though he’d never left Manitoba.“Minus 25 is cold no matter where you are,” the six-foot, five-inch outside hitter for the Gryphon men’s volleyball team says with a grin.

Today is one of those chilly days, and it’s the team’s last practice before heading to the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) quarter finals.Vanderwey is warming up with Ryan Killeen, another outside hitter who nearly matches him in height but whose shaggy blond locks are a stark contrast to the Winnipeg native’s close-cropped dark brown hair.

Vanderwey, a second-year physical sciences student, joined the Gryphons in 2007 as one of the most heavily recruited volleyball players in the country.A top-ranked high school player, he led his team to a top-four finish in Manitoba and was a provincial All-Star.

Killeen, a rookie and a bachelor of commerce student, isn’t so far from his home. He came to Guelph from just down the road in Oakville. He, too, was a highly sought-after athlete after playing at St. Ignatius of Loyola Secondary School and for the Mountain Athletic Club Team, whose entire starting lineup was pursued by Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) teams.

Also on the court today is the person who helped bring the pair to Guelph in more ways than one: assistant coach Larry Pearson. Both Vanderwey and Killeen were recruited by Pearson and head coach Cal Wigston.

The young athletes were swayed to pick U of G after being offered athletic scholarships that recognize both athletic and academic excellence.Those scholarships were made possible because of Pearson.

A Guelph graduate, former varsity athlete and retired automotive execu-

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tive, Pearson gave U of G $1.1 million in the spring of 2007 to fund scholarships and enhance athletic facilities. It was the largest single donation ever made to the Department of Athletics and among the largest individual donations received by the University.

Pearson, who played volleyball for the Gryphons until graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1972, was inspired to make the gift for many reasons, including a desire to recognize the important role sports played in his life.

And as a coach, he knew first-hand that scholarships are vital to recruitment and that U of G was sadly lagging in this area.“We were certainly losing potential better athletes to schools that could offer them scholarships,” he says.

It was a complex problem with multiple causes. For starters, Ontario, which is home to more CIS schools than any other province, limits scholarships to $3,500 a year (about half the tuition for a typical year). Most provinces are not as restrictive, so other schools, especially those in Western and Atlantic Canada, tend to be more aggressive (and successful) when it comes to wooing athletes with scholarships.

In addition, Ontario didn’t allow entering students to receive athletic scholarships until 2007, even though such awards were available to entering students in other provinces for many years.

Ontario also has more stringent academic standards for its athletes. Entering students must have an 80-per-cent average to qualify, and all students must maintain a 70-per-cent average once in university — five per cent higher than in the rest of Canada.

And to top it off, U of G didn’t offer scholarships to any student athletes — entering or continuing — until 2006.

“When I joined U of G in 2004, we were one of only two universities that didn’t have athletic scholarships,” says Tom Kendall, director of the Department of Athletics. It was a “philosophical decision” made by University leaders at the time, he says.

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That combination of factors meant Guelph was far behind other universities in both resources and recruitment, and it was something Kendall set out to change. He came to U of G with more than 35 years of experience in athletics management, coaching, recruiting, teaching and chairing university departments in three countries. Most recently, he had been director of athletics and recreation at St. Francis Xavier University, which has a reputation for being among the most forceful universities when it comes to flexing the scholarship muscle.

“It took me about two years at Guelph to convince people that we simply couldn’t compete recruitment-wise if we didn’t have scholarships,” says Kendall. Because of the University’s financial restraints, he knew the bulk of scholarship dollars would have to come from the outside, primarily alumni with a connection to Gryphon athletics.

One of the first key relationships he developed was with Pearson, who had been an avid supporter of U of G, financially and otherwise, for many years.

“It was clear athletics needed a boost,” says Pearson.“We needed to do a better job of recruiting and a better job of finding ways to get the athletes we were losing to other schools.”

Academically, Guelph could hold its own in the recruitment game, he says.“We had a track record of being a good institution with a good menu of courses and curriculum.”

What it didn’t have was scholarships. “I wanted to help find a way to take volleyball to the next level. I thought if we could offer the students some money, we could be equally in the running.”

It worked.The scholarships attracted star players like Vanderwey, who received one of the inaugural Pearson scholarships, and Killeen and even led to U of G being pursued by high-level players.

“We’re starting to receive calls and emails and having kids who are interested in playing for us show up at the gym,” says Pearson.“That’s probably the best feedback we can get — we’re on the other side of the window now.”

In 2008, the men’s volleyball team came third at the OUA championships after making its first playoff appearance since 2003/2004.This year, the team made it to the semi-finals, losing to McMaster, the

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defending champion.

Men’s volleyball isn’t the only sport benefiting from U of G’s expanding scholarship program. Less than three years after the first athletic scholarships were created, the University has 10 named awards.This academic year, 53 athletes received some form of financial support thanks to proceeds from an athletics endowment. Scholarships range from $750 to $3,500 a year.

It’s a good start, but more needs to be done, says Kendall. U of G has some 30 varsity sports and more than 660 student athletes, so 53 financial awards amount to only about eight per cent of student athletes.

It’s simply not enough, he says.

“The demands on student athletes today are huge. Between training, practices and games and carrying a full class load and doing well in school, there’s no time to get a part-time job. And there’s a huge difference in the cost of an education today than in the past.”

Look at the schedule of figure skater Sandra McCubbin, for example. In addition to eight hours a week on the ice, the secondyear biological sciences student spends at least 10 hours a week in the gym to maintain her fitness level and the better part of every weekend at competitions during the skating season. Plus she’s taking five courses in a high-demand program.

“I don’t have time to fit much else in,” says McCubbin, who grew up in Barrie, Ont., and was a member of the Canadian Junior National Synchronized Skating Team.

Luckily, she has a scholarship, albeit not one specifically for athletics. She holds U of G’s most prestigious entrance award, a President’s Scholarship. It requires recipients to excel academically (they must maintain an 80-per-cent average) and hold leadership positions on campus and in the community. She is involved in numerous environmental initiatives in addition to her sport.

“I can’t imagine going to school, skating, training and having to work,” says McCubbin. “I feel extremely fortunate about the scholarship I received, and I don’t take it for granted. If I didn’t have it, working to afford school would have to be the priority, and I would have to give up skating for sure.”

Second-year human kinetics major Allison Leslie also knows first-hand the time squeeze involved in being a student athlete.

An internationally ranked wrestler, she spends two hours a day at practice during the season, which runs from September to March, plus additional hours running and training in the gym. During the summer, she trains for the world championships, which are usually held in August.

Last year, Leslie qualified for the World Junior Championships in Turkey after winning the Canadian Junior Wrestling Championships. She also captured a silver medal at the OUA championships in the women’s junior 67-kilogram weight class and finished fourth at the CIS tournament.This year, she won an OUA gold medal and came fifth at CIS. “There isn’t much of a break — it’s pretty much a 12-month sport,” says Leslie, who also juggles four courses a semester.

In her rookie year, she had two scholarships: $1,500 from the Department of Athletics and the Bob McLeod Scholarship, a $750 award given to a national champion who has excelled both academically and in wrestling. She didn’t need a scholarship this year because she was “carded,” which means she received direct financial support from the Ontario Athletes Assistance Program because of her excellent performance at national and international levels.

But having scholarships in her rookie year was crucial, says Leslie, who hails from Fergus, Ont. Not only did it help financially, but it also made her feel that U of G was recognizing her talent and ability.

“I was being recruited by other schools and was even offered scholarships worth more money, but the fact that Guelph also offered me something helped affirm my choice. I know I couldn’t have made a better decision. This is the best club in the country with the best coaches. I know I will have more success here than anywhere else.”

Kendall says building up Guelph’s scholarship repertoire will lead to more students with multiple choices and offers coming to U of G, students like Leslie and football Gryphon James Savoie.

Regarded as the top defensive back in the country when he was playing for his Niagara Falls, Ont., high school, Savoie could have gone anywhere.“I was being recruited by every university in the country,” says the second-year student.“It came down to the program and the scholarship.”

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The program is landscape architecture, a perfect fit for Savoie, who is the son of a carpenter and likes to work with both his mind and his hands.The scholarship is the William Weber Football Award, created by the noted 1950s Gryphon quarterback.

Savoie says the financial assistance is helpful, but he also likes the scholarship’s accompanying academic requirements and the connection it gives him to Weber.“I’m a student athlete but a student first,” he says, adding that he spends just as much time on his schoolwork as he does on his sport. During the football season, that amounts to about 35 hours a week with practices, games and workouts.

“I love the fact that I have to keep a certain grade average to keep the scholarship.

I not only want to get good grades, but I also want to get a good job, and the scholarship is a huge incentive for me to keep on top of school.”

Savoie wrote Weber a thank-you letter when he first received the scholarship and had an opportunity to meet him in person in 2008 when Weber’s team was inducted into the Gryphon Hall of Fame (Weber was inducted individually in 2003).

“Getting to meet Bill was really great,” says Savoie. “I’m so thankful to him; he helped me make one of the best decisions in my life coming to Guelph. I’ve never doubted it and I’ve never looked back.”

He adds that Weber’s connection to Gryphon football makes the scholarship especially meaningful.“He lived the student athlete life, and his knowing how difficult it can be makes it even more special. The scholarship is like he’s saying: ‘I know, I’ve been there and I want to help you out.’”

That’s exactly what Weber, a Chicago veterinarian, had in mind when he established the award.“I learned a long time ago that you have to have a lot of good people around you all pulling on the rope in the same direction,” he says. “Football helped me develop a winning attitude and taught me about teamwork, and I’ve carried it through my entire life. Everything I do now I do from a team perspective, whether it involves family or my practice.”

Weber, who graduated from the Ontario Veterinary College in 1959, says lessons learned on the Gryphon football field came courtesy of his coaches, people like Chuck Belchamber,Tom Mooney and Jay Fry.

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The demands on student athletes today are huge

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GRYPHON STANDINGS 2008 / 09

FOOTBALL Defeated in OUA quarterfinals

last 13 years ■ Men — defeated in OUA quarter-finals

ACADEMIC ALL-CANADIANS ■ Brae Anne McArthur (track and field), CIS Desjardins Top 8 Academic All-Canadian recipient

GOLF ■ Women — 7th at OUA championships ■ Men — 4th at OUA championships

SOCCER ■ Women —missed OUA playoffs ■ Men — defeated in OUA West quarter-finals

HOCKEY ■ Women — silver at OUA championships ■ Individual — Tamara Bell named OUA Rookie of the Year, Dayna Kanis wins Marion Hillard Award as outstanding student athlete.

SWIMMING ■ Women — 4th at OUA championships, 9th at CIS ■ Men — 5th at OUA championships, 9th at CIS ■ Individual — Chantique Payne, CIS silver medal in 50-metre butterfly

LACROSSE ■ Women — missed OUA playoffs ■ Men — gold at Canadian championships

TRACK & FIELD ■ Women — gold at 2009 OUA championships, silver at CIS finals ■ Men — silver at 2009 OUA championships, bronze at CIS finals ■ Individual — Lindsay Carson named CIS Female Track Athlete of the Year, Kyle Boorsma named OUA track events MVP, Rob Jackson receives CIS Student Athlete Community Service Award

BASEBALL Missed OUA playoffs BASKETBALL ■ Women — defeated in OUA quarter-final game ■ Individual — Samantha Russell named OUA West Rookie of the Year ■ Men — defeated in OUA playoffs CROSS-COUNTRY Historically — 13 national titles ■ Women — gold at OAU (5th consecutive) and CIS championships (4th consecutive) ■ Men — gold at OAU (4th consecutive) and CIS championships ■ Individual — Matt Brunsting, CIS crosscountry athlete of the year FIELD HOCKEY OAU silver medallists, 4th in CIS tournament.

Gryphons lead OUA schools with five athletes receiving Quest for Gold ■ Individual — Jessalyn Walkey joins national team FIGURE SKATING Gold at 2008 / 09 OUA championships — first title since 1993 / 94

12 The Portico

NORDIC SKIING ■ Women — 4th at Nordic OUA championships ■ Men — 3rd at OUA championships Overall best season ever ROWING ■ Women — Kerith Gordon and Samantha Fairle earn bronze at OUA championships, Julia Bruzzese advances to Canadian rowing championships in single skulls ■ Men — Jakub Kwiecinski advances to Canadian rowing championships in single skulls RUGBY ■ Women — gold at OUA tournament, bronze at CIS; eight OUA titles in

VOLLEYBALL ■ Women — missed OUA playoffs ■ Men — 5th in OUA standings ■ Individual — Gabe Degroot named OUA Libero of the Year WRESTLING ■ Women — 4th at OUA championships ■ Men — 3rd at OUA championships

“Chuck would always tell me:‘You have to keep in shape on the athletic field to keep in shape in the classroom.’ And Jay would say:‘Weber, you have to want it.You have to have a goal and you have to want it.’There is no doubt they influenced my life.”

The academic rigours of Guelph’s veterinary program also had a positive effect, says Weber.“I had good study habits; I was very focused. I always knew I wanted to be a vet, even though my mother wanted me to go to McMaster and study theology.”

He also wanted to play football, but he almost didn’t get the chance. On his first day of practice, he was pulled off the field and sent to see the principal of OVC, who said the rigours of the veterinary program made it impossible to be both an OVC student and an athlete.“I had to convince them I could be a good student and play football. It was an arduous beginning, but it didn’t deter me.”

Weber went on to lead his team to the Ontario-Quebec Athletic Association title in both 1955 and 1958.

Pearson shares Weber’s sentiments about the student-athlete experience.“I was lucky to be involved in many sports and to be part of some successful teams. I’ve certainly enjoyed what that does for you as a person.”

Pearson, who lost his son Jason, an avid athlete, in a 2001 automobile accident, says he has gained much from the young people he coaches and supports at U of G. “Of course, they can’t take Jason’s place, but helping them was something I really felt was important for me to do. I have the good fortune of being able to help financially, and there’s no question that the kids are very appreciative of the help, as are their parents.”

Indeed,Vanderwey says the scholarship made all the difference for him. “I really thought I’d stay out west, where they have more money to give because there are fewer universities and fewer sports. I never even thought of Guelph. But then I met Cal and Larry, heard I could get a scholarship and came here for a visit. I ended up really liking it.”

So today, some 40 years after he first donned a Gryphon uniform, Pearson bumps the ball around with Vanderwey and Killeen, preparing them for their playoff game.

Both players say it’s “kind of cool” knowing who their benefactor is, but they insist it has no bearing on the court.“He’s just one of the guys,” says Killeen. ■

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THE OTHER

U OF G

Story by Mary Dickieson Photos by Patrick Brown Egue

of G is justifiably proud of its high-calibre academic programs, its excellent teaching staff and the remarkable cultural exposure it offers to students. Known for its expertise in agriculture, science and the humanities, the university has undergone unprecedented growth in recent years.

The residential campus sits on top of a hill overlooking the city, and U of G graduates never fail to mention how beautiful the campus is and often refer to the university’s distinctive architecture and generous green spaces.

This may sound like the University of Guelph, but the palm trees and red clay rooftops tell a different story.This U of G is located 8,700 kilometres east of Guelph and is 40 degrees closer to the equator.This is the University of Ghana in West Africa.

U

The University of Ghana campus shares important qualities with its Canadian cousin.

It also shares part of its history and several dozen graduates.

This magazine will reach 56 Guelph alumni living in Ghana. Most of them com-

pleted their undergraduate degree at the University of Ghana before coming to Canada for graduate work. About a dozen Guelph alumni are faculty members at the University of Ghana, teaching primarily in agricultural and home science departments.

And among the other Guelph graduates are scientists who work for Ghana’s ministry of agriculture, elected officials in the country’s parliament and development experts working for one of several international NGOs operating in the country.

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There’s a little bit of Guelph in Ghana Kwado Asenso-Okyere, M.Sc. ’76, was one of those young Ghanaian students who came to Canada as part of the GhanaGuelph Project. After earning his Guelph degree in agricultural economics, he went back to teach agribusiness management at the University of Ghana.

“Most of the people who were trained at Guelph took up faculty positions and later leadership roles at the University of Ghana,” says Asenso-Okyere. He later earned a PhD at the University of MissouriColumbia, became a full professor at the University of Ghana in 1997 and ultimately served as vice-chancellor from 2002 to 2004. Now a division director for the International Food Policy Research Institute, he oversees the International Service for National Agricultural Research, which aims to improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers in the developing world by strengthening agricultural research and innovation systems.

Asenso-Okyere points to advances within the University of Ghana’s Department of Home Science during his tenure there and says the department “could not have moved on without the faculty who were trained at Guelph.”

Still teaching in that department are Docea Fianu, M.Sc. ’74; Clara Opare-Obisaw, M.Sc. ’74; Laetitia Hevi-Yiboe, M.Sc. ’75; and Nabilla Williams, M.Sc.’74.

14 The Portico

From north to south The University of Ghana story begins in 1948. It was the first university established in Ghana and remains the largest and most recognized. Ghana was still a British colony at the time, so the University College of the Gold Coast, as it was called then, reported to Britain’s education ministry and awarded degrees through the University of London. A change in name and full university status came in 1961, four years after the country gained its independence.

The Canadian government supported the independence of Commonwealth countries in Africa, and when Ghana gained its independence in 1957, it also became the first country on the continent to receive aid from Canada. That assistance focused on Ghana’s food security and agriculture, the development of its fledgling democracy, and public health improvements through water and sanitation.

Because of its historical expertise in agriculture, the University of Guelph became one of the first universities in Canada to take on the challenge of — and, as it turned out, reap huge benefits from — international development work in Ghana. A few small

government contracts in the 1960s led to a seven-year project administered by the Canadian International Development Agency that involved faculty and student exchanges between the universities of Ghana and Guelph from 1970 to 1978.

The Ghana-Guelph Project was a partnership from the beginning — not a donor/recipient relationship — and that is generally considered to be the No. 1 reason for the program’s success and its lasting impact on both institutions.

Ghanaian Henry Akano, who earned an MA at Guelph in 2005, wrote a case study of the Ghana-Guelph Project in which he noted the program’s emphasis on extension work and training in home science, agriculture and veterinary medicine. Retired OAC professor Jim Shute, who directed the Ghana-Guelph Project from beginning to end, said at least 120 Canadians and Ghanaians participated and produced an impressive amount of scholarship related to Ghana’s agricultural and rural development. Akano said the Ghana-Guelph Project is still widely cited as a success story in interuniversity partnerships.

Canada’s high commissioner to the Republic of Ghana agrees. Darren Schemmer visited the University of Guelph in February to talk to students about career opportunities with Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, but he also praised the West African country where he has lived for the past two years.

The Ghana-Guelph Project was among Canada’s first aid investments in Ghana, he said.Today, Canadian citizens invest $70 million a year as aid in Ghana’s growing democracy, and Canadian businesses have invested more than $1 billion, mostly in the mining sector.As a result, trade with Ghana is growing rapidly, and the country is now Canada’s second largest market in sub-Saharan Africa.

In turn, Ghana is a country working hard to improve the standard of living for its citizens and has many successes to celebrate, said Schemmer. By the end of this year, the country will meet three of the UN’s millennium goals for developing countries: 100per-cent participation in primary education, equal access for boys and girls in primary and secondary education, and a 50-per-cent reduction in the number of people living on less than $1 a day (based on 1990 levels).

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Schemmer said 52 per cent of Ghana’s people were considered poor in 1990; today the figure is 26 per cent.

PHOTO COURTESY STELLA AMOA, UNIVERSITY OF GHANA

From south to north Dorothy Odartey-Wellington heard about the Guelph-Ghana Project when she was completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Ghana in the late 1980s. She was studying French and Spanish, not home science, so it didn’t occur to her then that she would one day help maintain the relationship between these two U of Gs. But here she is today, a faculty member in Guelph’s School of Languages and Literatures. Five floors up from her office in the MacKinnon Building is the Department of Economics and the office of Prof. James Amegashie. He also earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Ghana and was just arriving on the Accra campus as Odartey-Wellington left to pursue graduate work in Canada.

They both grew up in the Accra region, attended a public secondary school and headed to the University of Ghana because it was “the” place to be if you were interested in law, medicine, business administration, engineering, linguistics or economics. And like most Ghanaian scholars, they knew they would leave the country to pursue graduate studies. For most serious students then, as now, the destinations of choice were the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.

Odartey-Wellington’s interest in language and linguistics brought her to Canada primarily because McGill University offered funding for her graduate work. She came to the University of Guelph in 1997 to teach Spanish and has since been recognized by the College of Arts for excellence in teaching.

“One driving force behind how I teach is the need to communicate well,” she says.

“I don’t want students to take my class just to get a credit. I want them to take whatever they get from the class and apply it in some way that is meaningful to their life outside the classroom.”

Odartey-Wellington says her teaching style draws heavily on her research on contemporary Spanish literature, female Spanish writers and the Afro-Hispanic literature of Equatorial Guinea. In 2008, she published a book that examines the work of six contemporary novelists in Spain’s Generation X

A Guelph alumni gathering at the University of Ghana included the following faculty, from left: zoologist Daniel Attuquayefio; home scientists Laetitia Hevi-Yiboe, Clara Opare-Obisaw and Docea Fianu; and soil scientist Kofi Laryea.

group of writers.

Amegashie left Ghana for the London School of Economics, where he earned a graduate diploma in 1994, followed by a master’s degree at Queen’s University and a PhD at Simon Fraser University. He came to Guelph in 2002, drawn by the prospect of working with other faculty interested in his area of microeconomics.

His research in this field has drawn considerable attention from the media.

Amegashie applies game and contest theory to everything from boxing contracts and collective bargaining to immigration policy, the treatment of superstars and the effects of popularity voting on American Idol. In a different vein, a paper he recently submitted for publication examines why some forms of discrimination are more tolerated than others.

Growing pains When asked to describe their undergraduate alma mater, both Amegashie and Odartey-Wellington mention Ghana’s distinctive campus. Its white stucco buildings, red rooftops and proliferation of outdoor sculptures enhance a tropical climate that

demands courtyards lined with palm trees and wide porches to provide shade.

“I’ve never seen a university in North America that is as architecturally cohesive as the University of Ghana,” says Amegashie.

His memories date to a time when the Ghana campus housed only 3,000 students.

Today, the university has an enrolment of 30,000. Like Canadians, more and more Ghanaians are looking to attend post-secondary education because they see the career advantages of a university degree. Ghana has also restructured its secondary school system, resulting in an Ontario-like double cohort of university applicants.The 11,700 first-year students admitted to the University of Ghana in 2008 represented an 80-per-cent increase over the 2007 figure of 6,500.

Despite its high student numbers, the University of Ghana continues to post impressive results year after year, says alumnus Effah Douglas. He and Jonathan Okyere Ntoni spent the fall 2008 semester in Guelph through an exchange program sponsored by Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada.

“The University of Ghana continues to turn out many prominent citizens serving

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Studying in Ghana a privilege University of Guelph graduate Ian Wagg, B.Sc. ’04, says it’s interesting to see how people respond to his CV when they note he has a master’s degree in public health from a school in the developing world.

When he finished his undergraduate degree in biomedical sciences, Wagg won a Commonwealth scholarship to study at the University of Ghana School of Public Health (SPH). He says the eight-month program was time well spent because it brought him into contact with some of Ghana’s top researchers and gave him a unique perspective as the only Westerner in his class.

“It was a privilege to work with some of the top minds in Africa,” he says. “Prof. Fred Binka, who is now director of the SPH, was featured in Newsweek magazine last year for his efforts in health promotion in developing countries. I have never met anyone (even through medical school here in Canada) with more heart and energy than him.

My classmates in Ghana were also wonderful. They are all contributing so much in a system that can be very challenging to say the least.”

Wagg spent the last four months of his stay in Ghana at the Navrongo Health Research Centre, which conducts research into antimalarial bednets. He has since completed four years of medical school at the University of Toronto and will begin a residency in rural family medicine this summer.

To advance his interest in tropical infectious diseases, Wagg says: “I hope to work in South Africa during a portion of my residency training.”

16 The Portico

best about working here. After leaving Ghana, she completed a second undergraduate degree at the University of Western Ontario, then came to Guelph specifically to do a master’s with Prof. Heather Keller in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition.

“I have a keen interest in geriatric nutrition, and Dr. Keller is an expert and wellrenowned in that area,” says Atta-Konadu, who plans to work in the field of public health.

the nation in various capacities,” he says.

“The current president and his vice are both alumni of the university.”

Ghanaian students have also experienced big changes in the way their post-secondary education is funded. When OdarteyWellington entered university in 1984, everything from tuition to food was free to those who passed the national admission examination. During Amegashie’s time, students had to pay only for their food.Today, they pay for tuition, accommodation and meals, just as Canadian students do.

Henry and Rosemond Anim-Somuah, both graduates of the University of Ghana, came to Guelph almost two years ago with their three children. He is completing a PhD program in agricultural economics; she’s enrolled in a PhD program in rural studies.

Besides the weather, they say the biggest difference between the two universities is the access Guelph students have to much larger library resources.

Edwoba Atta-Konadu, a master’s student in applied human nutrition, says the openness of Guelph professors is what she likes

International exchanges Ghanaians rarely come to Guelph as undergraduate students, despite a long-standing exchange program between the two universities.

Bilateral exchange agreements, where students pay tuition and fees to their home university, don’t necessarily translate into airplane tickets, says Lynne Mitchell, Guelph’s director of international programs. She says Canadian students can better afford to study abroad — and living in Ghana, for instance, is considerably cheaper than living in Canada — so there’s generally a waiting list of Guelph students hoping a Ghanaian undergraduate will come here and trigger the exchange.

It has been two years since Mary Choy, BA ’08, spent a semester at the University of Ghana. A year earlier, Guelph welcomed Adwoa Fosua Boakye-Appiah, whose undergraduate semester in Canada was funded by the Commonwealth Universities Study Abroad Consortium. This network of 75 universities works to increase international study opportunities for their students.

Funding is a problem even for graduate students, says Odartey-Wellington, who is trying to encourage more students from Ghana’s Modern Languages Department to spend a semester studying at Guelph. She has appealed to alumni of the department to donate to an edowment fund that will provide funding for the Ghana-to-Guelph portion of a student exchange. She hopes funding will be in place to bring at least one Ghanaian student to Guelph for the fall 2009 semester. In turn, students from Guelph’s Department of Languages and Literatures will have the opportunity to study in Ghana.

The University of Ghana’s student body of 30,000 will hardly notice the absence of one student spending a semester in Canada, but the exchange will make a significant difference to language students on both campuses.

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Odartey-Wellington recalls her own student experience when she went on an exchange to Cuba. It gave her an opportunity to experience a new culture and lifestyle, and she wants her own students to reap those benefits.

“I’ve seen the tremendous changes that students go through when they travel, learn a new language, deal with a different culture and develop long-term relationships,” she says.

PHOTO BY MARTIN SCHWALBE

Partnership grows Echoes of the Ghana-Guelph Project continue with faculty and graduate student exchanges between the two U of Gs and with other Ghanaian universities who send researchers and students to Guelph. One example is scientist Joseph Berchie, who recently completed a six-month research term in the laboratory of Guelph plant agriculture professor Manish Raizada.

Berchie earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Ghana in 1986, followed by studies at the University of Nottingham.An agronomist and plant physiologist working on plant-breeding technologies, he is a researcher at the Crop Research Institute in Kumasi, Ghana, as well as a PhD candidate at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

He came to Guelph to conduct a controlled-environment study as part of his doctoral research on the Bambara groundnut, a nutritious and drought-tolerant legume that is indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa but became underutilized after European colonization. He hopes to revive the groundnut’s popularity with African farmers as they face increased water shortages.

Several Ghanaians have travelled to Guelph as part of a $1-million CIDA project designed to enhance Ghana’s capacity to undertake agribusiness development in a way that reduces poverty and promotes gender and social equality.

Guelph professor Spencer Henson in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics (FARE) heads the project. He says agriculture is a central component of Ghana’s economy, especially for people living in rural areas. “The failure rate of new agribusiness enterprises remains high, especially among those operated by women, and there is a significant impact on the ability of people to work their way out of poverty.”

Ghanaians who work and study at the University of Guelph form a vibrant welcoming committee for their countrymen. Showing their patriotism on Ghana’s March 6 independence day are, front row, from left: Joseph Berchie, Sylvester Ayambila and Edward Asiedu. Back row: Rosemond Anim-Somuah, Prosper Koto, Prof.

Dorothy Odartey-Wellington, Prof. James Amegashie and Henry Anim-Somuah.

He is working closely with private and public institutions to help them avoid the pitfalls of poor co-ordination and failure to adapt programs to local needs, especially the needs of women in rural areas.

Ghanaian graduate students working with Henson and other FARE faculty include PhD candidate Henry Anim-Somuah and M.Sc. students Prosper Koto and Edward Asiedu. John Jatoe completed a PhD in 2008 and returned to Ghana to work as a lecturer in agricultural economics at the University of Ghana. His wife, Eunice, remains in Guelph to complete a master’s degree in capacity development and extension.

In the Department of Environmental Biology, Prof. Andy Gordon and research associate Naresh Thevathasan are midway through a $3-million multi-year CIDA project to teach sustainable agroforestry practices. Increasing degradation of the natural resource base relied on by rural communities is a major contributor to a persistently low quality of life in central and northern Ghana, says Thevathasan.

Through APERL (Agroforestry Practices

to Enhance Resource-Poor Livelihoods), the Guelph team is helping local agencies hire and train community members, technicians and faculty in agroforestry research and technologies.

Andrea Ellis Nsiah, B.Sc. ’07, volunteered with APERL, and while working in Ghana at the KNUST campus in Sunyani, she met a Ghanaian student who is now her husband.

He is still in Ghana, but Ellis Nsiah returned to Guelph last fall to begin a graduate program in rural planning and development.The second year of her master’s program will take her back to Ghana to do field work in agroforestry, and she says her husband hopes to pursue graduate work in Canada Their longterm settlement plans are undecided.

Two of the most recent recruits to APERL are Samuel Boadi and Stephen Ashie, who arrived in Guelph in March for a six-month faculty exchange.While he’s new to the campus, Boadi says he knew about Guelph from his uncle Peter Donkor who earned a diploma in agriculture in 1980. Donkor is currently working with KNUST. ■

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Ghana was the beginning Speaking at the University of Guelph in February, Canada’s high commissioner to the Republic of Ghana, Darren Schemmer, said Ghana is “Africa for beginners” in the eyes of many Canadian businesses and NGOs that use the country as a base for their operations throughout Africa. His comment could also apply to the University of Guelph.

Guelph faculty and graduate students went first to Ghana under contract with the Canadian International Development Agency, and then to almost every other African country to share expertise and develop partnerships in education. U of G now has exchange agreements with two institutions in Africa, and our faculty and students pursue research and philanthropic activities across the continent.

Currently, U of G is participating in the development of a new university in Botswana. Scheduled to open next year, the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) will fill the country’s need for greater access to tertiary education and address an acute shortage of scientists. While BIUST will also offer programs in the liberal arts and business, approximately 60 per cent of its academic programs will be science-based.

In concert with several other Canadian universities, Guelph administrators, faculty, staff and even alumni have been involved in the design of the BIUST core operations (academic, organizational and human resources) as well as branding and marketing strategies for the new institution. The overall project is being co-ordinated by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada in partnership with World University Service of Canada.

It’s an investment for the future for both countries. Speaking at an education fair in Gaborone, Botswana’s minister of education, Jacob Nkate, said his country will continue to send students to Canada for graduate studies.

“No country can isolate itself from other countries and still expect to develop. To this end, we will continue to send students to Canada, particularly at the master’s and PhD level,” he said.

1

Botswana

2

Ghana

Graduate student Lisa Westerhoff, BA ’06, is studying the effects of climate change on food and financial security, water supply and illness in the small community of Mimkyemfre in southeastern Ghana.

3

Kenya

Violence following the December 2007 election in Kenya forced Florence Mutua to delay fieldwork for her PhD research aimed at improving animal husbandry practices and marketing strategies for pig farmers near Kakamega.

4

Zimbabwe

5

Ghana

Plant agriculture professor Mary Ruth McDonald says the Ghanaian village of Karni is producing more and better-quality vegetables since adopting sustainable production practices.

8

Zimbabwe

Research by Prof. Julie Cairnie, English and Theatre Studies, looks at the attitudes of poor British citizens who moved to southern Africa in the early 1900s to improve their own station by taking advantage of Africa’s indigenous people.

9

Comoros Islands

Several years ago, Prof. Charles Goubau at U of G’s Campus d’Alfred helped to open a horticultural school in Comoro. Today, Prof. Harry Cummings, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, is organizing a Canadian research group that will work with the International Crops Research Institute for the SemiArid Tropics to help eradicate poverty in African and South Asian rural villages.

10

South Africa

14

Kenya

A group of 13 Guelph students paid their own travel expenses, raised money to buy building materials and will provide the labour to build a classroom addition at Bukati Primary School in Busia, Kenya. The school serves 1,500 families. About 250 of its 700 students have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS. 12

South African-born Nadia Marques and three of her Gryphon teammates represented Canada in women’s field hockey at the 2008 Federation of International Sports Universities (FISU) Games in Johannesburg, South Africa. The FISU Games are the second largest multi-sport games in the world after the Olympics.

Nigeria

Prof. Helen Hambly, Environmental Design and Rural Development, has joined the international advisory group for the $4.2-million African Rural Radio Research Initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It supports capacity building for information technologies and participatory media in five African nations.

11

Pathobiology professor Dale Smith, DVM ’80 and D.V.Sc. ’84, taught at the University of Zimbabwe for two years in the late 1980s and, since joining the Ontario Veterinary College in 1990, has returned to Zimbabwe twice to teach big-game immobilization techniques to wildlife managers.

6

4

Congo

Carolyn Peach Brown is an expert on community-based natural resource management — specifically the African cherry grown on Mount Cameroon in Africa — and a post-doctoral fellow in U of G’s Global Environmental Change Group. Her research focuses on institutional arrangements for climate change adaptation in the Congo Basin.

5

3 7

Geography professor Alice Hovorka says 85 per cent of the low-income people in southern African cities don’t have stable sources of affordable nutrient-rich foods. Her research on urban food security in Botswana is part of a project supported by the Canadian International Development Agency.

13

18 The Portico

2

South Africa

Veterinary technician Laura Kiemele was recently awarded the OVC Pet Trust Award of Excellence, which includes a $500 prize that she used to buy supplies for her upcoming contract in Soweto, South Africa. She’ll work for six months with Community Led Animal Welfare, the first animal welfare group to work in Soweto.

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Nigeria

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After seeing the educational system deteriorate in his native Nigeria, Guelph history professor Femi Kolapo created a corporation that seeks donations of computers, books and sports equipment to send to African schools.

He also developed an online journal to address the need for systematic research on education and recreation in Africa.

9

Uganda

22

For her graduate work in rural studies, Jennifer Ball, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’05, is collecting and interpreting the narratives of female peace builders in Uganda.

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Tanzania

Twenty years ago, Prof. Peter van Straaten, Land Resource Science, travelled to Tanzania to search for local mineral resources that could be used to improve soil productivity. His “rocks for crops” project now involves farmers in East Afria, South America and Asia.

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South Africa

A U of G project designed to support an AIDS clinic in Lesotho, South Africa, won a 2008 Global Best Award presented by the International Partnership Network in co-operation with the Conference Board of Canada.

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Cameroon

Guelph faculty in rural development created a diploma program in tropical agriculture for Cameroon’s University of Dschang almost 15 years ago. Today, there are three streams of study for farmers, who take the programs by distance education, and five Cameroon universities have adopted the Dschang model to develop their own distance-learning programs.

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Tanzania

Adam Lewandowski, B.Sc. ’09, is a friend to Africa. A varsity athlete, he initiated a drive that has sent 1,400 pairs of running shoes to school children in Kenya. After a volunteer experience in Tanzania, he raised more than $5,100 to send a Tanzanian student to university. And this summer, he’s working with Students Without Borders in Botswana, where he will train locals in sport and health education. Lewandowski also won a prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship to study medicine at Oxford University this fall.

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Ghana

Graduate student Joy Sammy, B.Sc. ’97, is studying the impact of community-based ecotourism on traditional value-based conservation methods in Ghana. Her case study involves the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary.

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Ghanaian grad students Cynthia, M.Sc. ’07, and Frank Arku, PhD ’08, looked at the cultural effects of microfinance projects in Ghana, specifically the impact on gender roles. Their paper “More Money, New Household Cultural Dynamics: Women in Microfinance in Ghana” was published online in the April 2009 issue of the journal Development in Practice.

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Malawi

Food scientist Don Mercer, Kemptville Campus, was one of five U of G staff who spent their 2008 vacation as international volunteers with Leave for Change, a program created by the World University Service of Canada. He travelled to Malawi to present workshops on food production, processing and safety.

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Ghana

Sudan

Denig Kuir fled the civil wars of southern Sudan when he was just 13. Tamirat Tsigie was a university student forced to leave Ethiopia because he took part in student demonstrations against the government. Both are now studying at U of G through the World University Service of Canada student refugee program.

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Rwanda

A PhD candidate in plant agriculture, Monica Parker spent six years working in agriculture in Rwanda. She was a technical assistant to the Ministry of Agriculture, developing passion fruit as a viable crop, then had a private-sector job on a flower export farm.

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Morocco

With project funding from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Chris Kinsley and Anna Crolla of the Ontario Rural Wastewater Centre have installed a “built wetland system” in Morocco to study waste-water treatment and reuse applications in an arid climate.

Botswana

DVM students Adrienne Weatherston, Melissa Knowles and Charlotte Friendship will break ground this summer as U of G’s first Global Vets team to work in Botswana.

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Prof. Manish Raizada, Plant Agriculture, asks his students to search the world for cheap prize-worthy ideas and tools that could be used to help poor people in developing countries. In the first year, he personally spent $1,000 to buy large plastic storage bags to protect crops grown in Ghana.

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Ghana

18

10

Malawi

For her master’s degree in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Heather Alexander, BA ’07, focuses on humanitarian organizations in Malawi that stereotype Africans while raising donations to support poverty-reduction work.

Read the full stories at www.uoguelph.ca/ theportico.

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BUSINESS IS BETTER THAN AID “If you put yourself in the same boat as all the other business people, you begin to understand life here at a much deeper level.”

By Barry Gunn 20 The Portico

Even though she had spent 12 years working in East Africa with various non-governmental organizations, it wasn’t until she launched a new business that Anja Oussoren, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’93 and M.Sc. ’96, began to truly understand her adopted home and the complexity of the challenges facing the region.

“When you are working for a foreign organization, you can’t quite get into the ‘knitting’ of things because you’re still a foreigner,” says Oussoren, who started Ivory Consult Ltd. in Nairobi in 2006.“But I’ve noticed since risking everything to start my own business that if you put yourself in the same boat as all the other business people, you begin to understand life here at a much deeper level.

“Gone is the dependence on a monthly paycheque from a foreign source. You’re completely dependent on the country itself, so you begin to view and interact with the community in a completely different way.

As much as that has been difficult from time to time, it’s a very beautiful thing.”

Oussoren’s path to a life and career in Africa has been anything but direct.A carefree early childhood on a dairy farm in the Netherlands taught her some early lessons

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FAR LEFT: The region of Bamba began its water quest in 1997 with the goal of creating a water supply within two kilometres of every household. Here, Oussoren helps the people of Bamba dig one of four water catchment dams. During the region’s brief rainy season, surface water runoff is collected and stored for future use.

CENTRE: Although the Bamba dams provide a more convenient water supply, Oussoren says the quality of the water needs improvement. In this photo, she and a friend, Hannah, are looking at organisms they can see in the water collected from the dam pond.

LEFT: Oussoren and her business partner, Clive Wafukho, inspect an under-the-counter water treatment system and run a sample through the company’s on-site water-testing lab.

about the importance of community and agriculture, lessons that carried over when she moved with her family to Canada at age 11. Her family continued farming near Omemee in Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes region between Peterborough and Lindsay.

After high school, she completed undergraduate and graduate degrees at U of G. But although her parents still live here, she says she never really felt at home in Canada.

“I had known since high school that I wanted to work overseas in some capacity in agricultural development,” says Oussoren, who travelled in Latin America and the Caribbean for coursework and with mission groups during her undergraduate years.“But Africa was never on my radar.”

That changed after graduation when she applied for a position in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) with the Mennonite Central Committee.When an outbreak of the Ebola virus scuppered that plan, she accepted a placement as an agricultural development worker with the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee in Tanzania.

“At the time, I had no idea where that was.”

Over the next two years, Oussoren was involved in working with farmers to help them do their own on-farm research, digging shallow wells and community organizing. At the same time, she was completing a master’s degree in ethnobotany through U of G and the International Centre for Research and Agroforestry (now known as the World Agroforestry Centre). Her research focused on the vital role of so-called “Cinderella trees” — indigenous tree species that have been overlooked by researchers and international markets focused on cereals, grains and other cash crops.

One example is Mkwaju, an undomesticated tree found in East African woodlands stretching from Tanzania to Malawi. It is highly valued by locals for its tasty fruit, as timber and for use in medicinal products.

It was during her second year in Tanzania that Oussoren first thought she might be in Africa for the long haul.

“I ended up loving it so much. I gained so much appreciation of the people and learned so much from them: how they tackle life and how they’re grateful for life itself, their resiliency in facing so many challenges, their creativity and their entrepreneurial skills,

and their ability to laugh and enjoy life.Those are a few of the hallmarks of people here.”

It was also during those years and the decade afterward in Kenya, when she worked with various NGOs and local institutions on capacity-building initiatives, that she quickly learned “there is no way we can talk about agriculture and community development without talking about water.”

It’s easy to take water for granted in a place like Canada, where most people have seemingly limitless access to a safe, clean supply at the turn of a tap. In Kenya, where 80 per cent of the land is semi-arid or arid, water is the key to a healthy population and sustainable economy.

But after years of working with NGOs, Oussoren began to believe a change of tack was needed to navigate the many challenges to Kenya’s economic and social development.

In her view, there are distinct differences between the “aid approach” to development and the business approach.

“I think it’s only through an economically sustainable model that we can actually begin to make a dent in putting Africa on the world map — where it has always belonged — as an equal, respected, dignified and contribut-

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TOP: Oussoren inspects one of 15 water tanks built in Kisayani, part of a gravity-fed water system that includes 53 kilometres of piped water. The man with her lives in the community and is an agricultural trainer serving on the water project management board.

BOTTOM: Peninah, left, is cancerfree thanks to medical aid secured

by Oussoren, who met the woman while working in her village on a gravity-fed water scheme. Read Peninah’s story and more about Oussoren’s life in Africa at www.uoguelph.ca/theportico.

ing player.And, in fact, as a leader in world affairs. It has to have an economic foundation and make economic sense.Aid never makes economic sense — it skews economics.

“There have been many times over the past 15 years that I’ve thought the best thing

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for Africa would be for all non-governmental and aid agencies to just pack up and leave.The aid industry has created a massive sense of dependency that is extremely crippling, to the extent that many people have internalized the sense that, without aid, we can’t move forward.

“I have seen the other side of East Africa, and there is so much here. The human resource potential is huge, and the natural resource potential is massive.There is so much that could be accomplished. I know withdrawing aid would create a lot of upheaval and suffering, and the issues are very complex.

But in the long run,Africa would come out better off than continuing to depend on aid on and on and on.That just needs to stop.”

In 2006, wanting to break away from the constraints of the NGO environment, Oussoren launched Ivory Consult Ltd. with Kenyan businessman Clive Wafukho. The company works with rural and urban communities, local governments and private businesses to develop “water solutions” customized to their needs.The company founders are social entrepreneurs whose philosophy stresses business fundamentals that uphold people’s dignity and their right to choose.

“Business provides a whole new platform for doing good,” says Oussoren.

Ivory Consult has clients in eight African countries, including Kenya. It’s divided into a consulting unit — working with communities on water management issues and designing and constructing water reticulation schemes, for example — and a water treatment unit that designs, installs and services water purification and treatment systems for households, office buildings, institutions such as schools and hospitals, communities and private industries. The company also handles large water projects for governments and NGOs. Oussoren adds that working with water in Kenya presents many unique opportunities. In urban areas, aging infrastructure means piped water is of dubious quality at best. Ivory Consult’s integrated systems use technologies such as reverse osmosis, carbon filtration and ultraviolet light to filter out and eliminate microbiological, physical and chemical contaminants.

In rural areas, up to 20 per cent of the new boreholes drilled each year to supply water are unused or underused because of mineral contamination. High concentrations

of fluoride are of particular concern in Kenya, as are heavy metals and pollutants from industry and, in some cases, agricultural runoff. Ivory Consult supplies the expertise and the equipment to deal with such contaminants.

As with launching any business anywhere, Oussoren has experienced birthing pains. But after three years of what she calls “intense and purposeful efforts to build a strong foundation,” the company is beginning to take off, and she’s hopeful about the future. She’s also inspired by being able to serve society through a socially responsible business model while making an impact on public policy and development.

Her optimism prevails despite the fact that she has witnessed some of the darkest periods of recent African history.

“These periods testify to the ongoing struggle by Africans to have equal opportunities to make an identity and life for themselves — opportunities that have been forcefully stolen, looted and murdered for by the rest of the world over the past 500 years.”

Oussoren describes a chilling scene from 1994 when she was taking in the view one day from a hilltop in northeastern Tanzania.

She looked down at what she thought were crocodiles floating lazily in the river below, but they were actually corpses drifting down from Rwanda. She also recalls a meeting four years later in Rwanda with a teenage girl scarred physically and emotionally by the carnage.

In 1997, Oussoren attended several sessions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where South Africans of all races struggled to ease the collective suffering caused by Rwanda’s brutal apartheid regime.

She is hopeful despite the uneasy peace that holds now in Kenya following a period of political unrest that peaked in late 2007 and early 2008. At that time, fierce protests left hundreds of people dead following disputed elections that returned President Mwai Kibaki to power. In all her years in Africa, it was the first time Oussoren feared for her own safety and that of her two daughters. She kept an emergency kit with the most important travel and other documents ready for a quick escape if needed.

“If I were alone, I wouldn’t do that, but I cannot sacrifice my daughters on the altar of my ideals,” she says.“I am at home in Kenya.

This is where I am supposed to be.” ■

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An architectural gem uncovered

By Andrew Vowles acdonald Institute is more than a century old, but the red-brick campus landmark still holds a surprise or two. Just ask Wilfred Ferwerda, project manager in Physical Resources. One day last year, he got a call from the contractor renovating MINS 300, the classroom at the top of the building’s central staircase.

Before they could refurbish the space, workers had to remove a decades-old drop ceiling. And that’s when Ferwerda got this call:“Wilf, you might want to come down because we’ve discovered a skylight embedded in the ceiling.”

He couldn’t believe what he saw. Directly overhead in the middle of the room was a fiveby nine-foot rectangle of stained-glass panels sporting a bright yellow floral design.The piece had lain forgotten above that drop ceiling, probably since before the Second World War. From above, the glass had also been covered over during a long-ago roof repair.

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The discovery sent Ferwerda back to his office to hunt down the original drawings for Macdonald Institute, built in 1903. No skylight showed up on the horizontal view.

But on another drawing showing the third floor from above, a rather cryptic “ceiling light” was dotted in above the space labelled as an auditorium.

What would the project team do with its find?

By the time the refurbished classroom opened last fall, the skylight had become an architectural centrepiece. Guests at a dedication ceremony admired the 100-seat space, its freshly painted yellow wainscotting and window trim, and its suspended ceiling islands holding audiovisual equipment and lighting.

But what caught many eyes was that bit of building heritage directly overhead.The window had been cleaned up, and lighting installed above it. Flip a wall switch, and the window emits a warm buttery glow.

“I was happy we were able to incorporate it into the project,” says Ferwerda, who has led extensive refurbishment of the building’s facade, portico entrance and central stairwell.“Everybody likes it.”

“Everybody” includes Frances Stretton, B.H.Sc. ’56. Retired in 1989 after 31 years of teaching high school home economics in Toronto, Stretton gave the largest individual donation towards the classroom renovation.

Referring to the newly renamed Frances M. Stretton Classroom, she says:“It’s beautiful.

The window is like a buried treasure.”

She spent plenty of time in MINS 300 during the early 1950s, learning about art and architectural history and the history of furniture.

“We used that space all the years I was there, and I don’t remember that window ever being exposed.We had a wonderful art director and we had amazing classes up there.” ■

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Alumni Achievements

u of guelph

Events

alumni

alumna & student

Allison Gratz

Multiplying the fruit h e n s h e wa s in Kenya to do research for her master’s degree in capacity development and extension, Allison Gratz, B.Sc. ’03, met a group of women who had developed “an amazing clay and brick stove” that reduced the amount of time they had to spend preparing food. Gratz was the first person to document their invention in an academic study.

Meeting these Kenyan women was an unexpected find, made possible because Gratz had received financial support from several of the U of G’s

PHOTO COURTESY ALLISON GRATZ

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24 The Portico

graduate scholarship funds. At a University-wide awards program Feb. 2, Gratz was able to meet some of her benefactors, sponsors of the Julie May (Goode) Whittaker Graduate Travel Scholarship and the TD Bank Financial Group OGS Fund. In fact, Gratz spoke at the awards ceremony on behalf of all Guelph students who received financial awards in the past year.

“I am just one student,” she said.

“Look around the room at all the bright young faces you see.As sponsors, you’ve really made a great investment, one many students like myself would

really struggle without.To my fellow award recipients, let’s be good stewards of what we have been given and go on to multiply the fruits of it.”

There’s no doubt that Gratz will multiply the fruits of her Guelph education. In fact, that’s the reason for the master’s program she’s taking in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development. Capacity development and extension is focused on preparing students to work with rural/remote and small communities in Canada and around the world, to help those communities realize their own resources and use them to develop sustainable economies.

In her Kenyan research, Gratz was looking for factors that affected the use of fuel-efficient stoves in rural areas in an effort to encourage the adoption of new technologies. It was a bonus to discover a group of women who had designed and built a stove that not only cooked three foods at once and kept them warm afterwards — thus freeing up a woman’s time during her day — but also served as a chick brooder and egg incubator.

“All of this was done with minimal, if any, outside influence,” she says. “I don’t even know if these women were literate.”

Gratz, who earned her undergraduate degree in plant biology, says she chose to continue her studies at Guelph because of the University’s reputation as a centre of excellence for both international development and environmental studies, two areas she is personally and academically interested in.”

One last word for those who sponsor scholarships: “Thank you for enabling us to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to our studies and research, and for partnering with us to transform this world for the better.”

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Networking

matters

Guelph’s time is now

PHOTO BY GRANT MARTIN

The University of Guelph is fortunate to have an engaged family of alumni who care deeply about the future of their alma mater.

There is a varying level of commitment within our alumni base — we owe tremendous thanks to those who are very involved and encourage those who haven’t been active to get behind their university. Whether you decide to make financial contributions, volunteer, act as an ambassador or help us deliver the U of G message, we’re calling on all alumni to join us.

As each graduate knows, the University excels in many areas that address the root problems of current global challenges.

Guelph is uniquely poised to be a world leader in food, water, animals, the environment and public health. We are indeed emerging as a strong leader in the most important areas of life.

It was a celebration t t h e a n n ua l Universitywide awards ceremony, president Alastair Summerlee welcomed 240 students, their families and the sponsors of more than 60 prestigious U of G awards, including 18 new awards.

The event recognizes supporters who have contributed to the University-wide awards program and brings students and donors together, often for the first time. It also enables U of G to celebrate non-college-specific awards, as well as new awards within individual colleges.

“The University of Guelph is grate-

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ful for its generous donors, without whom so much of the student awards program would not be a reality,” said Summerlee.

Some donors give to the University’s general scholarship fund; others specify their gifts to support a particular academic program or area of personal interest. Endowed scholarships ensure that future Guelph students will be supported by the investment proceeds from the donor’s original gift.

To learn more about giving to U of G scholarships, visit www.alumni. uoguelph.ca.

PHOTO BY ROSS DAVIDSON-PILON

University of Guelph president Alastair Summerlee gets a lift from recipients of the President’s and Chancellor’s Scholarhips. From left: Stephynie Sargent, Evan Bell, Isdin Oke, Duncan Parviainen, Nicole Markwick, Lindsay Morris, Jeannette Goode, Kerith Gordon and Nadine Frost. Lydia Frost is kneeling in front.

As key stakeholders of the institution, alumni can feel proud that their university is stepping forward in a bold way to make important world-changing and life-improving discoveries. The University of Guelph’s time is now.

Now. It matters.

Joanne Shoveller Vice-President (Alumni Affairs and Development)

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alumni matters former players, coaches and friends. Everyone enjoyed a pre-game reception and then cheered on the Gryphon women’s team as it battled Western. A slideshow featuring Libranni and athletics photos brought back basketball memories for the former team members.

So you think you can salsa?

In front: Erna Witherspoon, left, and Ann Smith, both BSA ’52. In back: Anne Pennock and Shirley Allen, both B.H.Sc. ’58.

Basketball players reunite

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women’s basketball alumni family day held Jan. 10 brought together

u e l p h g r a d s proved they could dance at a February young alumni event in Toronto. More than 80 alumni enjoyed hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, then joined the salsa lessons at Ba Ba Luu, a dance club in the heart of Yorkville.

If you’ve got an idea for a young alumni event in your city, contact Mary-Anne Moroz at mamoroz@uogueph.ca or search for “University of Guelph Alumni” on Facebook.

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ALUMNI WEEKEND — JUNE 19 A A time for you, a time for Guelph

Greetings!

This year’s Alumni Weekend theme is “A Time for You, a Time for Guelph.” Most, if not all, of us have fond memories of the time spent at our alma mater, and we look forward to Alumni Weekend as a time to reconnect with friends and other alumni. It will be my honour to welcome you personally to campus for Alumni Weekend 2009 — a time to rekindle memories and visit the places on campus that mean so much to us. I look forward to seeing everyone in June.

William P. Weber, DVM ’59 Honorary Chair

26 The Portico

FRIDAY EVENING • Alumni-in-Action welcome tent • Star Party in the physics observatory

SATURDAY MORNING • OVC AA welcome breakfast and annual general meeting • Mac Institute restoration celebration • Mac-FACS-FRAN AA annual general meeting • Campus walking tours • HK/HB AA breakfast and annual general meeting • CBS AA breakfast and annual general meeting

SATURDAY NOON • President’s Lunch celebrating the class of 1959 • Neal Stoskopf, BSA ’57 and MSA ’58, will be named Alumnus of Honour • Alumni Volunteer Award will be presented to Mary Lynn McPherson, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’80

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COMING EVENTS June 22 • Gryphon Golf Classic to raise funds for U of G athletics, Cutten Club, contact Joe Varamo at jvaramo@uoguelph.ca for details.

Sept. 10 • First day of classes. Check the U of G homepage for fall events and lectures: www.uoguelph.ca.

Sept. 11 • OAC Alumni Association golf tournament, Victoria Park East Golf Club in Guelph, details at www.alumni.uoguelph.ca.

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to attend one or all of the weekend events.

Visit www.alumni.uoguelph.ca/htm40 to register.

Friday • Golf at the Cutten Club, all day Mix and Mingle at PJ’s, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday • Pancake breakfast, 9 a.m.

• HAFA/HTM annual meeting, 10:30 a.m.

• Iron Chef luncheon, 11:30 a.m. • Gryphon football, 2 p.m. • Delta Guelph reception, 6 p.m. • Gala dinner, 7 p.m.

• Speaker Simon Cooper, president of the Ritz Carleton Hotel.

Sunday • Delta Guelph brunch, 10 a.m. to noon • Golf at the Cutten Club, all day.

Sept. 26 • Homecoming, Gryphons vs.Western Mustangs at 2 p.m., Alumni Stadium. • To plan a class reunion during Homecoming, contact Mary-Anne Moroz at mamoroz@uoguelph.ca.

Nov. 19 to 22 • Fair November Craft

Sept. 25 to 27 • HTM 40th anniversary.

The School of Hospitality and Tourism Management invites all HAFA/HTM grads

Sale, University Centre.

June 18 and 19, 2010 • We’ll help you plan a class reunion for Alumni Weekend 2010, contact Helen McCairley at hmccairl@uoguelph.ca.

Alumni answer the call ith economic news dominating the headlines, it’s easy to focus on the doom and gloom. But this gives us all the more reason to celebrate the great philanthropic stories that continue to unfold as dedicated Guelph alumni give back, showing tremendous generosity to the University.

Macdonald Institute holds a special place in the hearts of many Guelph grads, so it’s not surprising that alumni have been rallying to support its six-year restoration project. Many alumni came forward with donations to fund the final stage of the project, including an outstanding leadership gift from Janice Pearson Taylor, B.A.Sc. ’85. She says she fondly remembers her student days at Macdonald Institute and believed the

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9 AND 20

SATURDAY AFTERNOON • President’s House tours • Faculty of Environmental Sciences open house • UGAA annual general meeting • Macdonald Stewart Art Centre tour • Treasures of the library archives • FES 10th-anniversary celebrations

SATURDAY EVENING • Alumni Dinner celebrating the class of 1984 • Lost in the ’80s pub night Events sell out quickly, so register early to avoid disappointment.

Details at www.alumni.uoguelph.ca.

restoration project was important.

The University of Guelph Alumni Association pays tribute to Taylor and all graduates who share her feelings. It is impressive to see this outpouring of support for University projects.

Indeed, the culture of philanthropy among our alumni body is important, and the support for U of G initiatives during an economic downturn has been inspirational. Thank you to all of our alumni who continue to support the University.Your generosity makes a difference.

Linda Hruska B.Sc.(Agr.) ’85, M.Agr. ’88 President, UGAA

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Careers • Families • Life Experiences • M

university of guelph

grad

PHOTO COURTESY KILAKITU CLOTHING

Andrew Kimani, left, and Bart Sullivan

t m ay n o t b e a global fashion mecca, but Nairobi, Kenya, is the birthplace of a unique clothing company that blends the western style of Canada with the vibrant and colourful energy of Africa. Co-founded by Bart Sullivan, BA ’02, and Kenyan Andrew Kimani, Kilakitu Clothing blends culture and style while helping to support the local community.

Kilakitu is known for its line of classic men’s cowboy shirts, throwbacks to the 1970s Stetson shirts that were once in high demand in North America and around the world and can still be found in many wardrobes today.

Sullivan picked up his Stetson at a second-hand shop in Berlin, en route to Kenya, where he moved in 2008.

One day he realized that his creamcoloured shirt was showing the effects of daily commuting in rough and gritty Nairobi, so he asked Kimani, a tailor, to re-create the shirt in darker colours.

Kimani used fabrics found in the sec-

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PHOTO BY ROSS DAVIDSON-PILON

great grad ideas

Cowboy shirts connect two worlds

28 The Portico

ond-hand clothing markets of Nairobi — clothing that people in Canada and other wealthy countries have discarded.

Amazed by the result, Sullivan thought there might be a market for this type of shirt, and Kilakitu Clothing was born.

Their first batch of 58 shirts was offered online and nearly sold out in the first week. Sullivan says he’s now working to manage the growing demand and plans to expand the company into other African nations.

“The beauty of the ‘Kenyan Cowboy’ shirt is that it’s a blend of two worlds,” he says.“It has the western form of the cowboy shirt mixed with the expressiveness of African colour preferences. My tailors are the ones who pick the colours and patterns. It was funny at first because I was picking all these subtle and comparatively drab combinations until one day I let them pick.

They were outrageous! At first it was a bit overwhelming for me: pink, orange and lime green cowboy shirts? But I’ve

come to realize that this is part of the beauty of the collaboration.”

Sullivan was raised in Guelph, where he organized concerts and demonstrations and hosted various radio shows on CFRU. He travelled to Mexico, Barbados and Malaysia before enrolling at U of G, where he completed an individual studies BA that combined computing science and rural extension studies.

His introduction to Kenya occurred in 2002 after he accepted an internship with the African Virtual University, a World Bank organization providing subSaharan Africa with satellite-based distance education at the university level.

He draws on his radio background and experience in rural extension studies in his current job with Farm Radio International, an Ottawa-based NGO. Specifically, he is helping the African Farm Radio Research Initiative explore the role that radio can play in improving access to relevant and useful information for African farmers.

“I see my place in the world as a connector,” he says. “I love meeting new people, learning what they’re up to and then connecting them to other people I know. I’ve recently discovered that it’s something I’ve done all my life through music, social movements and now through a clothing company based in East Africa.”

Sullivan has high hopes for the expansion of Kilakitu Clothing and would like to create Kilakitu Records to facilitate collaborative music projects between African and western musicians, in much the same fashion as his clothing line.

To learn more about Kilakitu Clothing, go to www.kilakituclothing.com.

By Rebecca Kendall

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Memories

news

1940

PHOTO COURTESY AMANDA FLANAGAN

Hope — in Swahili and English manda Flanagan, B.A.Sc. ’06, wrote in her blog that when she was a little girl, she liked to watch World Vision programs on television.

She said the images made her sad and happy at the same time.

Now Amanda is taking similar photos herself and posting them on the website for a non-profit organization she established in Kenya after a work experience there in 2006/2007.The Tumaini Community Development Centre is named after the Swahili word for hope, and it reflects Flanagan’s hope for her projects in Kenya.

The centre has a school for 120 orphans and vulnerable children, a fish farming project, a tailoring school for youths who couldn’t complete secondary school because of a lack of funds, and an emergency-care sponsorship program.

After completing that first work placement, Flanagan returned to her Georgian Bay home in Gore Bay, Ont., for a few weeks before heading to

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Nicaragua for six months as the community nutritionist for an Oxfam project. She says she loved that experience, too, but knew she’d left her heart behind in Africa and had to figure out how she could return to Kenya.

The opportunity came through her U of G friend Evelyn Duffy, B.A.Sc. ’06. Duffy knew of an opening at the airline where she worked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia — close enough for Flanagan to travel to Kenya during vacation times.That reference later turned into a job for Duffy herself. She is now sponsorship co-ordinator for the Tumaini Community Development Centre.

Flanagan plans to continue her projects in Kenya while completing a master’s degree in public health for developing countries from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, England.

To read more about Flanagan’s success stories and the Tumaini centre, visit The Portico online at www.uoguelph .ca/theportico.

■ Ivan Stinson, BSA ’49, lives in Guelph, where he’s getting ready for the 60th anniversary of the Class of 1949 at this year’s Alumni Weekend, which runs June 19 and 20. He reminds us that Class of ’49 members have been generous donors to the University.Their signature projects have included installing the clock on Johnston Hall, restoring the portico for which this magazine is named, funding the water garden next to the Rutherford Conservatory and providing four annual scholarships of $2,500.

1950 Noreen Broadwell, DHE ’54, sent an update and a compliment for The Portico, which she describes as “very interesting reading.” During her oneyear program at Macdonald Institute, she met her late husband, Chuck, BSA ’54.“It was the most informative and most romantic year of my life,” she says. They were married for close to 53 years. Broadwell also earned a BA from the University of Western Ontario in 1994 and received the Kiwanis Fellow Award for her work in the community.

■ Bud Ings, DVM ’52, of Montague, P.E.I., has published a book called Mud, Sweat and Tears in which he shares his experiences of growing up on a farm and running a veterinary clinic, as well as his sabbatical from veterinary medicine to enter politics. Ings spent eight years in the Alex Campbell government, then returned to veterinary work in 1980.“I missed the people and the animals,” he says. Acorn Press launched the book in November 2008, and all proceeds are going to the P.E.I. Humane Society.

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PHOTO COURTESY TERISA TURNER

Women take action

Leigh Brownhill, left, Ruth Wangari wa Thung’u and Prof. Terisa Turner in Kenya.

eigh Brownhill, MA ’95, is a writer, editor and researcher focused on social movements, feminism and the political economies of food and energy, globally and especially in Africa.

She has taught in Kenya, where she conducted research on the social history of women for a PhD in international development.

She has published several articles with sociology professor Terisa Turner, including an award-winning nine-page comic strip called Nakedness and Power, which features women’s naked political protests in Kenya in 1992 and in Nigeria in 2002.The cartoon was first published in World War Three Illustrated in 2004 and was chosen to appear in the inaugural edition of Best American Comics 2006, published by Boston-based Houghton Mifflin.

It focuses on a 2002 revolt against petroleum pollution led by nearly 600 Nigerian women who staged mass protests against the petroleum industry using the “curse of nakedness” as their weapon.

The curse refers to a cultural belief held by many Africans that purposefully exposing female genitalia to men who have caused anger results in the men’s “social death.” “No one will cook for them, marry them, enter into any kind of contract with them or buy anything from them,” says Turner, who notes that every statement in the comic is 100-per-cent accurate.

She says the format of a comic strip enabled the two researchers to explain the struggle of these African women and the issues of survival they face in a way that’s easy for a wide and diverse audience to understand.To view the comic strip, visit Brownhill’s website at http://lbrownhill.com.

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1970 Peter Adrian,ADA ’70, lives in Rozelle, Australia. Last August, he retired from his job as an environmental planner with the New South Wales Department of Planning and travelled to England, Europe and the United States with his wife

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30 The Portico

to visit family and friends.When they returned home in the winter,Adrian went back to working for the department part time.“We’re looking forward to getting to Guelph on our next trip to Canada,” he says.

■ Laverne Arthur, ADA ’72, opened an independent med-

ical practice in Lakefield, Ont., in March 2008 in association with the Chemung Region Family Health Organization.

Being a family physician is his third career. After graduating from U of G, he farmed full time for 15 years, then he and his wife, Anne, became high school teachers.The new doctor has five children, two of whom attended U of G. ■ Michael Brown, MA ’71, is a retired pastor and a professional dive instructor who lives from November to May in Aruba and the rest of the time in Muskoka. His website is www.arubawindsong.com.

■ Elizabeth “Liz” (Davis) Cunningham, B.A.Sc. ’78, has retired from 30 years of fulltime employment to stay at home with her children, Sean, 9, and Erin, 14. She also volunteers in the community and is a part-time student.

■ Jim Fischer, B.Sc. ’76 and M.Sc. ’92, and his wife, Donna, of Walkerton, Ont., recently retired after 30 years as dairy producers. In 2005, Jim received a B.Ed. degree at Lakehead University and is now an occasional teacher with the Bruce-Grey Catholic District School Board.

They have two children: Lindsay, B.A.Sc. ’02, and Aaron, ADA ’03. Lindsay went on to earn a B.Ed. degree from Nipissing University and is a core French teacher in Mildmay, Ont. Her husband, Jeff Brigden, BA ’02, is a cost accountant with Gay Lea Foods Co-operative in Teeswater. Aaron is apprenticing as an automotive technician in Lacombe,Alta. Jim and Donna are continuing with Fischer Lind Farms Ltd., growing hay, wheat, soybeans, corn and seedling conifers. They also operate Edge-of-Algonquin, an FSC-certified forest near Algonquin Park, and last year estab-

lished Westwind Woods B&B in a log home on their farm.

■ Dennis Fitzpatrick, B.Sc. ’75 and M.Sc. ’78, is vice-president (research) at the University of Lethbridge.When U of G’s women’s rugby team was in Lethbridge last fall for the national championships,“it was an occasion for celebration,” says Fitzpatrick, who cheered his own team to a gold medal and the Gryphons to bronze. He also had a reunion dinner with U of G animal science professor Jim Atkinson, PhD ’78, a longtime Gryphon rugby coach.

■ Patricia Foster, B.A.Sc ’72, and Michael Fitzgerald,ADA ’69, were married April 12, 2008, in Fergus, Ont., with several Guelph graduates in attendance.

They are both recently retired and are enjoying their home in Guelph and their cottage in the Haliburton Highlands.

■ Raja Hadawi, B.Sc. ’75, worked with various federal departments for 33 years in environmental protection and environmental engineering before retiring to pursue other goals. But it wasn’t long before he was offered and accepted a position as a contract administrator with SNC-Lavalin Consulting in Edmonton, Alta., to oversee the construction of two large oil-pumping stations near Fort McMurray.

■ Bobby Hannah, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’71, was one of three honourees to receive a special award of distinction from ACTRA (Alliance of Canadian Cinema,Television and Radio Artists) for lifetime achievement in stunt work. Presented Feb. 19, the award celebrated his long career and significant contributions to the film industry.

■ Donna Hilditch, B.A.Sc. ’79, has worked for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services for 30 years

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B.Sc. ’79, is a secondary school teacher at Waitakere College in New Zealand. She and her husband, Steve, have three children — Philip, Charlotte and Genevieve — and a small livestock block where she has bred some Hanoverian horses.

■ Linda Manning, BA ’75, lives and writes in Cobourg, Ont., where she recently taught an eight-week course in creative writing.Two of her children’s plays, Marcie Saves the Circus and What Do You Do With a Dinosaur?, have been listed by the Playwrights Guild of Canada in a new online catalogue called Scripted for Schools.

■ Patricia Nuttall, B.Sc. ’78, moved to England more than 20 years ago and is a patient services manager at the BMI Bath Clinic. She says she’d love to hear from wildlife biology students who graduated around 1978. Her e-mail is nuttallpatricia@yahoo.com.

■ Sandra Richards, B.A.Sc. ’79, is a secondary school teacher in Port Hope, Ont., teaching hospitality and tourism and social science.

■ Constance Roy, B.Sc. ’76, is a nurse in Powell River, B.C., and welcomes e-mail from other grads at nmconstance@net scape.net.

■ Margaret Sadler, BA ’71, and her husband, Marcus Busch, have returned to Alberta after their third year-long sabbatical of volunteer service.They spent 1992/1993 in northern Japan, 2000/2001 in Mauritania and 2007/2008 in Cambodia.The second and third sabbaticals were with the Lutheran World Federation Department for World Service.“It’s a great way to learn more about the world,” says Sadler. “We can’t recommend it highly enough. Why isn’t everyone doing this?”

■ Paul Valeriote, BA ’73, is

Sing-along messages

PHOTO BY STAN BEHAL

and is currently at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ont. ■ Barbara (Dyer) James, BA ’75, is an indoor air quality specialist and a provincial judge of sailing in Quebec. She has been judging since 1995 and qualified as a national-level judge in 2008. She also competes three times a week in inter-club racing and led her team to the women’s nationals in October.

■ Ric Jordan, BA ’75, is manager of U of G’s Arboretum and is serving a three-year term on the University’s Board of Governors.

■ Suffian Kargbo, M.Sc. ’79, was featured in a three-part interview published in Sierra Leone’s online Patriotic Vanguard on Jan. 7 and 20 and Feb. 17.

The article is about his political career as a member of parliament for his home district of Tonkolili.

He was first elected in 1982 after a distinguished career that included serving as Sierra Leone’s first national soil scientist to work at the Land Resources Surveying Project (later the Land and Water Development Division) and as director general in the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Forestry.

Kargbo told Patriotic Vanguard that he always enjoyed his chosen profession but never intended to be a politician.Thirty years later, he still represents his constituency, now called #64, as chair of the parliament’s agriculture and food security committee.

In the Vanguard feature, Kargbo talks about his political philosophy and his role in Sierra Leone’s last war, the sugar scandal of 1987 and the Green Revolution. Read the whole series at www.thepatrioticvanguard.com.

■ Vickie (Bennett) Lawson,

11:04 AM

ouise Kent, BA ’02, is a singer-songwriter and motivational speaker who has spoken to more than 100,000 people since becoming a Free the Children ambassador in 2004. She has a passion for mentorship, a degree in international development and first-hand experience of living conditions in disadvantaged communities in Guyana, China and India.

Now she’s taken on a new challenge as executive director and a performer for Me to We Music, the socially conscious music label of Canada’s Free the Children enterprise. She performed for 8,000 youth at last October’s National Me to We Day in Toronto and launched her debut album, The Small Things, in November. In addition, she produced a YouTube music video that jumped to No. 1 in the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands and Brazil.

Through her music and her speaking tours, Kent is encouraging ethical living and social responsibility while helping to fund the organization’s development initiatives. www.metowe.com/music.

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director of sales for Guardian Mobility, based in Ottawa. He has held more than 35 different jobs since graduation and encourages others to embrace change in their lives. He is president of his local Rotary Club and a member of the board of directors of the Centre for the Arts in Elora, Ont.

■ Arlene Wilcock, B.A.Sc. ’75, is a competition law officer with the Competition Bureau of Canada in Hamilton, Ont. She says she’s proud that her daughter, Angela Musico, B.A.Sc. ’07, followed her to Guelph. Musico completed a dietetic internship with Hamilton Health Sciences last August

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and is now a registered dietitian in the renal clinic at London Health Sciences.

■ Barbara William, MA ’73, recently published A Gentlewoman in Upper Canada, a new and expanded edition of the classic work Journals, Letters and Art of Anne Langton, which was first published posthumously in 1950.William’s book, published by the University of Toronto Press, is illustrated with works

by Langton and contextualizes her life and work in light of current scholarship.

1980 Eleanor (Holt) and Phil Anwender, both B.Sc.(Agr.) ’83, live near Sebringville, Ont., and celebrated 25 years of marriage in September 2008.They have a daughter, Kirsten, and a son, Robert, who is studying agricultural business at U of G.

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Mike Bachner, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’84, is an agribusiness recruiter and managing partner in AgCall Human Resources in St. Marys, Ont. He was formerly with Bestard Agricultural Placements.

■ John Bailey, B.Sc. ’80, is an environmental consultant with the Golden Horn Office of Science and Technology in Whitehorse, Yukon. After thinking about it for 25 years, he went back to school and earned a PhD in biology at the University of Western Ontario in 2008.

He was hooded at convocation by his brother, Bob, B.Sc. ’80 and M.Sc. ’82, a professor at Western. Two of their sisters were in the academic procession: Kathryn Bailey, B.Sc. ’73, and Martha, who attended Guelph in the late 1970s before going to law school. Another sibling, Peter Bailey, BA ’76, was unable to attend. John has ■

three daughters: Olive,Alice and Martha. Old friends can reach him at jbaile7@uwo.ca.

■ Odette Barr, B.Sc. ’82, spent 10 years in the High Arctic as a teacher, vice-principal and principal in small Inuit schools. In 1999, she moved back to the Maritimes for a graduate degree at the University of Prince Edward Island and is now a course developer and distance facilitator with the New Brunswick Department of Education. She’s also building a new home on the coast.

■ Doug Beswick, B.Sc. ’88, worked for Shur-Gain Feeds in Ontario for 17 years before joining Tandell Research Ltd. as a research chemist working on soap and detergent products. His 16-year-old son is now considering university applications, and “Guelph is definitely on his short list,” says Beswick.“I enjoy

The Portico very much and read about other grads with great interest. I am the editor of a chemical newsletter myself, and this relates to my strengths and studies achieved at U of G.” ■ Sandra Couch, BA ’84 and MA ’87, owns and operates the Cambridge Book Nook in Cambridge, Ont.After 18 years in corporate affairs and the corporate planning office at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc., she bought the bookstore and expanded it to include rare books, used books, journals, oldworld pens and inks and other items. In 2008, the shop was named best used-book store in Cambridge. She also offers writing and editing services through the store and was a writer at U of G before joining Toyota.

■ Susan (Thatcher) Dimma, B.A.Sc ’83, lives in Guelph and recently graduated from Liaison

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Sustainable Recruitment

Culinary School in the personal chef program. Although she says she has “retired” from the childcare field, her new busines does include cooking camps and classes for kids. “I am looking forward to my exciting adventure in the culinary field and my new business, Garnishes Personal Chef Services,” she says.

■ Patrick Dowds, BA ’88, has been a teacher with the Halton Catholic District School Board for 20 years and is currently teaching Grade 4 in Oakville, Ont. He was married in August 2008, and he and his wife are expecting a baby in June.

■ Carol Hochu, B.A.Sc. ’81, was appointed executive director of Ontario Electronic Stewardship in December 2008. Her role is to help lead implementation of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Program Plan under the Waste

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Diversion Act.With more than 20 years of experience in the not-for-profit sector, she has served as president of both the Ontario Stone, Sand and Gravel Association and the Confectionery Manufacturers Association of Canada. In 2004, she was appointed to a provincial task force that developed recommendations on how Ontario could most effectively establish a permanent Golden Horseshoe greenbelt. Since June 2005, she has served on the Ontario Biodiversity Council. She holds an MBA from York University and is a certified association executive.

■ Janice Huntingford, DVM ’84, opened the Essex Animal Hospital in Essex, Ont., in December 2007. She describes it as “southwestern Ontario’s first canine rehabilitation centre complete with saltwater pool

and underwater treadmill.”

■ Harry Jennings, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’81, lives in Williams Lake, B.C., where he’s a team leader in ecosystem restoration for the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range. For the last year and a half, he’s been working in a new field called ecosystem restoration, concentrating on the degraded and threatened native temperate grassland ecosystems of the B.C. Interior.

■ Barbara Johnson, B.Sc. ’86, is director of advancement for the Sisters of St. Francis in Lewiston, N.Y., where she lives with her husband, Kevin. She says she has “the joy and pleasure of living and working along the lower Niagara River.”

■ David Kangaloo, B.Sc. ’82, earned a veterinary degree from the University of Liverpool in 1989. He is a senior veterinary officer with the Ministry of

Agriculture in Trinidad and Tobago. He has two daughters, Dana and Farrah.

■ Todd Lefebure, BA ’82 and M.Sc. ’85, is a builder in Chemainus, B.C., who says he “works to golf.” His goal is to build “an off-the-grid small-carbon-footprint home.”

■ Gwynneth Lloyd, B.Sc. ’97, and Gavin Bee are the proud first-time parents of Lucas Edward Lloyd-Bee, who was born Nov. 27 at Guelph General Hospital.

■ Colleen Mercer Clarke, MLA ’87, recently moved to Waterloo, Ont., after living on the east coast for 30 years. A landscape architect and ecologist, she is completing an interdisciplinary PhD in coastal studies from Dalhousie University.

■ Scott McLeod, B.Comm. ’86, lives in the Vancouver area, where he has started two busi-

www.recruitguelph.ca Hire Guelph Students, Co-op Students and Alumni

Co-operative Education & Career Services 519-824-4120 ext. 52323 recruit@uoguelph.ca

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Scott McLeod

nesses: Fleetman Consulting Inc. (fleetmanconsulting.com) and Fabulous Flower Beds (fabulousflowerbeds.com). He has a seven-year-old daughter, Sarah.

■ Catherine Milne, BLA ’83, owns and operates Farmgate Gardens north of Belleville, Ont., with her husband, John Gibson. Now in its 21st season, the garden centre was again nominated for business of the year in 2008.They have three children: Catherine,Alexandrea and Nicholas.

■ Edward “Ted” Norton, BA ’80, is associate director of regulatory economic studies for Bell Canada. He has worked for the company since graduation and has lived in Ottawa since 1992. He and his wife, Linda, have two children, Ben and Lindsay. Lindsay, who just finished her first year at U of G, is the 10th family member (including uncles, aunts and cousins) to attend Guelph.

■ Melanie (Hammond) Prosser, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’89, has been named director of program services for REACH (Regional Equine and Agricultural Centre of Huron), which is being built in Clinton, Ont. REACH will work in partnership with U of G, OAC, Equine Guelph and the Kemptville and Ridgetown campuses to provide equine and agricultural education in a stateof-the-art facility. Prosser was previously manager of program development for equine pro-

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grams in the University’s Office of Open Learning.

■ Frank Reddon, BA ’88, had his first book accepted into the library of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Sonic Boom:The Impact of Led Zeppelin.Volume 1 — Break & Enter has been enjoying critical acclaim around the world and is the first in a series of three planned for publication.

Reddon says he was inspired to write the book by U of G music professor Howard Spring.

■ Elizabeth Schuyler, ADA ’85, works for the Port Dover Maple Leaf, a newspaper in Port Dover, Ont. She and her husband have two daughters, aged 13 and 10. She says she always checks her copy of The Portico for news of 1984 and 1985 grads and “can’t believe it’s been so long since I was at U of G. Great memories, great friends.”

■ Cathy Scissons, B.Sc. ’88, owns and operates NovaKennel Dog and Cat Boarding in Parry Sound, Ont. “Even after 12 years, I still love my job (most days, anyway),” she says.

■ Adam Socha, M.Sc. ’86, is a research officer with Health Canada in Toronto. He is on assignment with a new substances assessment and control bureau from his home position with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. He is helping to establish a network for researchers investigating pharmaceuticals and personal-care products in the Canadian environment.

■ Kelly Summers, B.Sc. ’86, and Shannon (Seney) Mifflin, B.Sc. ’98, run a research and service lab together at the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ont. Summers developed the Screening Lab for Immune Disorders in 2005 and hired Mifflin in 2006 as manager of the facility.The lab provides immunological cellular

assay services and immunology consultation for investigators in medical and scientific professions. If you’re interested in their work, e-mail them at ksummers@uwo.ca or shannon.mifflin@sjhc.london.on.ca.

■ Kim Taylor, M.Sc. ’85, handles Internet sales of custommade martial arts equipment for www.sdksupplies.com. He sits on the board of directors of the Canadian Kendo Federation and was recently promoted to seventh-degree black belt in iaido and fifth degree in jodo.

■ Helen Yeomans, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’82, is an artist and teacher at Nova Scotia Community College in Halifax, where she teaches adults returning to school for a high school diploma.“It’s the toughest work I’ve ever done, but the rewards are worth it,” she says.“I love contributing and positively affecting people’s lives.”

1990 Chris Adams, B.Sc. ’97, lives in Barrie, Ont., where in 2000 he co-founded an Internet startup company called Hot Banana Software that provides customers with Internet marketing solutions. In 2006, he sold the business to Lyris Inc., which operates out of San Francisco, Calif. He now serves as director of user experience.

■ Imtiyaz Ahmed, BA ’97, is leaving Canada to advance a career in Islamic investments with the largest Islamic bank in Saudi Arabia.

■ Erika Almasi-Klausz, B.Sc.’ 94, is natural areas project co-ordinator for the City of Calgary. She completed a master’s degree in wildlife biology in 1997 focusing on the reintroduction of the swift fox on the Canadian prairies. She has two children, Izabella, 10, and Adam, 7, and has lived in Calgary since ■

2001. She writes to say:“U of G still rules!”

■ Scot Bolton, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’95, is a financial adviser in Tillsonburg, Ont., with Good Redden Klosler Wealth Management.

He and Bridget (Fearon), B.Sc.(H.K.) ’95, have been married for 11 years and have two daughters: Madelyn, 7, and Charlotte, 5. “As a family, we keep busy with golf and skiing and being involved in our community,” says Scot.

■ Glen Cochrane, B.Sc. ’92, graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, in 1996. He has been practising for 12 years. He was certified as an independent medical examiner by the American Board of Independent Medical Examiners in 2004 and was designated as a certified impairment ratings specialist by the American Academy of Expert Medical Evaluators in 2006. He was recently accepted into the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and entered the academy in March.

Janneke Dekker

Janneke Dekker, B.Sc.(Eng.) ’98, married Tyler Nicholls in September 2008 in Sudbury, Ont. She is director of facilities management at Cambrian College.

■ Ivy Drafor, B.Sc. ’92 and M.Sc. ’94, is a senior lecturer in agricultural economics at Ghana’s Methodist University College. She is also one of the first recipients of a new fellow■

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and a post-doctoral fellowship in Chicago before joining the Guelph faculty in 2003. He has garnered a series of research awards from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society, as well as a Premier’s Research Excellence Award and the Dr. Maureen Andrew Award for the top-rated new investigator in Ontario. Pyle has presented his research at conferences in New Zealand,Australia, Italy, the United States and across Canada, most recently at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions, which is the world’s largest cardiovascular medicine conference. He lives in Hamilton with his wife, Frances, and their son, Kepler, 5, and their daughter, Radley, 3.

■ Ian Quist, B.Sc.(H.K.) ’95, has been practising chiropractic medicine in Lion’s Head, Ont., for eight years and received the Family Practice Award of Excellence in both 2006 and 2007. He and his wife,Amanda, have two children: Ethan, 5, and Annik, 4.

■ Joy Sammy, B.Sc. ’97, is expanding on her undergraduate degree in wildlife biology by doing graduate research on the impact of community-based ecotourism on traditional value-based conservation methods in Ghana. Her case study involves the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary.

■ Kerri Schoedel, B.Sc. ’98, was recently promoted to the position of scientific director of clinical pharmacology for Kendle International’s earlystage unit in Toronto. She’s an authority on psychopharmacology and the assessment of drug abuse liability. In 2004, she joined DecisionLine, formerly Ventana Clinical Research Corporation and now part of Kendle, as a research scientist.

Helping the UN find its way

PHOTO COURTESY MARK PHILLIPS

ship from the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development Program, which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. Sixty female scientists were chosen from more than 900 candidates in nine African countries to receive the inaugural awards.Winners were chosen on the basis of their potential to contribute to the lives of smallholder farmers and rural women.

■ Blair Fleming, BA ’99, is an enterprise software project manager for Sidler Ltd. and lives in Mississauga, Ont. He and Jennifer Legare, BA ’01, had a daughter, Addison Scarlett, in 2008. Says Dad:“She already has her RESP with hopes of being another U of G grad.”

■ Erin Mackie, BA ’93, and her husband, Phil Jones, have been living in Beijing, China, since August 2007. She was part of the CBC/Radio-Canada production team for the Olympic Games and is now manager of logistics and volunteers for the China Bookworm International Literary Festival.

She can be reached via Facebook or at erinmackie@yahoo.com.

■ John Nickolaou, B.Comm. ’99, lives in Athens, Greece, where he’s a gas station inspector and manager for Hellenic Petroleum.

■ Sean Nilsson, B.Comm. ’98, uses his marketing degree at IMAX Corporation in Toronto and in his music career. He released his debut CD, Field Recordings From the City, under the band moniker Sheltered in Sound.The CD has been receiving play on CBC Radio Two and is available on iTunes and at www.shelteredinsound.com.

■ Glen Pyle, B.Sc.(H.K.) ’95, is an associate professor in U of G’s Department of Biomedical Sciences. He completed a PhD at the University of Tennessee

2:49 PM

ark Phillips BA ’90, is a professional logistician who spent half of last year working for the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission (UNMIS) in Sudan. Hired under a civilian contract as chief of the general supply unit, he managed warehouse and distribution operations for the entire mission and provided direction to hundreds of staff at the logistics base in El Obeid, as well as staff located at six UNMIS regional distribution points.

The largest project he co-ordinated was a complete physical inventory at the UNMIS logistics base.“We located, counted and verified 90 per cent of the asset and expendable items from the four commodity warehouse units,” which included more than 1,200 sea containers used for storage.“Some of these items had never been inventoried before,” he says.

“Two highlights of my tour were: having the opportunity to work and share ideas with local Sudanese and international staff from all over the world as we helped restore peace in one of the world’s poorest and currently most war-torn countries; and having small, often barefoot, Sudanese children wave to me as I travelled to and from work in my UN vehicle.This always brought a smile to my face and made me proud to be a Canadian with a unique opportunity to make a difference.”

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Heather (Coulter) Stevens, B.A.Sc. ’91 and M.Sc. ’98, is a professor in the School of Business at George Brown College in Toronto. She recently coauthored a textbook, Understanding Management, First Canadian Edition, for the post-secondary education market. It was published by Nelson Education. She lives in Toronto with her children — David, 11, and Lauren, 8 — and can be reached at hstevens @georgebrown.ca.

■ Joleen Thomas, BA ’99, and ■

Stuart Humphries, R.Dip. ’96, welcomed another daughter,Violet Belle, to their family on April 8, 2008.

■ Stephen and Lee-Ann (Thorne) Turley, both ADA ’92, will celebrate their 13th wedding anniversary in October.They have three children: Eric, 10, Joshua, 8, and Grace, 1.

Stephen works for the City of Kitchener, Ont., in the cemeteries division and is a volunteer firefighter with the Drayton Fire Department.They’d like to hear

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from old friends at stephenrturley@hotmail.com.

■ Aaron Vanderwal, BA ’99, and Dawn Bowdish, B.Sc. ’00, recently returned to Canada after three years in England.

Both held positions at the University of Oxford. Vanderwal designed information systems for a malaria genetics program funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. Bowdish completed post-doctoral training in pathology and held a fellowship at Linacre College. She has now joined McMaster University as an assistant professor of pathology and molecular medicine, cross-appointed to the Institute for Infectious Disease Research.

■ Carol Walberg, BA ’96, wrote to tell us that she is retired and living in Port Elgin, Ont., and that her brother, James Walberg, DVM ’73, is a pathologist at the Animal Medical Center in New York.

2000 ■ Schammim Arthur, M.Sc. ’02, completed his master’s degree in animal science “under the supervision of the fantastic Dr. Jim Atkinson,” then began doing medical microbiology and immunology research at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain. He returned to Canada in 2005 to begin a PhD in immunology at Queen’s University and recently defended his thesis. He’s now headed for a post-doctoral fellowship in cardiovascular immunology in Boston.“I can’t wait to find out what comes next,” he says.

■ Andrea Bennett, BA ’07, is a communications specialist with the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre in Guelph.

■ Elaine (Cullen) Binns, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’03, is a lab technician with Chapman’s Ice Cream in Markdale, Ont. She and her

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husband, David, were married in 2006 and have two daughters: Caitlyn Grace, born in April 2007, and Lexis Faith, born in November 2008.

■ Rachel Bryans, B.Sc. ’00, is a beekeeper in Alvinston, Ont. ■ Yuhiro Chavez, B.Comp. ’07, lives in Mississauga, Ont., and is a software consultant at Indellient Inc. ■ Kylee Childs, BA ’08, is currently working for Bell Aliant in Thunder Bay, Ont., but will be heading to graduate school in September. She plans to study international business and trade.

■ Jessica DeVries, BA ’07, can’t seem to pry herself out of Tanzania. She made her first trip to the East African country in February 2008. She wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, take a safari and visit Zanzibar. She also signed on to volunteer for three weeks, but ended up staying two months. She came back to Guelph for a summer job, but headed right back to Tanzania last September.

Now living in Moshi, DeVries is working with a women’s organization called the Mlodi Widows’ Group. It provides a platform for empowering women, she says, and the group’s commitment rests with helping widows support themselves and their children. She is helping to launch small-scale piggeries to allow women to earn money to pay for their children’s school fees, gain access to health care, buy nutritious food, and make much-needed repairs and improvements to their homes.

■ Alexander Kalimbira, PhD ’08, was a lecturer in human nutrition at the University of Malawi when he received a Commonwealth Scholarship and came to Guelph to complete a doctorate in applied human nutrition. He has returned to the

Alexander Kalimbira

University of Malawi and continues his research interests in child and micronutrient nutrition, an area he has pursued since his undergraduate training.

Kalimbira participated previously in national nutrition studies and micronutrient surveillance in Malawi, in addition to his active involvement in the development and implementation of nutrition policies for the country. He has also consulted widely for international organizations involved in nutrition work in Malawi, including World Vision, Save the Children (U.K.), Every Child, Concern Universal, Concern World Wide and the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee.

taken sailing through the Suez Canal.After the cruise, he backpacked through four European countries before returning home.

■ Christopher Knee, B.Sc. (H.K.) ’07 and M.Sc. ’08, is clinical research co-ordinator for hypertension research at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. He writes: “Guelph taught me everything I need to know to be successful in my new post-grad career! But an iPod Touch would definitely help!”

■ Christopher Logel, BAH ’03, works for the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services in Toronto. In 2007, he married Rebecca Gray, BA ’04.

■ Sonja Missio, BA ’08, is enrolled in a master’s program at Brock University and says even recent grads want to see what their peers are up to.

■ Kathleen (Boyd) Pentland, B.Comm. ’05, works for the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association and lives in Cambridge.

■ Kristen Roe, BA ’03, completed a double crossing of the Northumberland Strait between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick in July 2008. It was her second fundraising swim to raise money for the Stephen Lewis Foundation and help alleviate the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

Andrew Kaszowski

Andrew Kaszowski, BAA ’06, is communications co-ordinator for the United Way of London and Middlesex. He started that job after working from January to May 2008 as editor of guest publications on Crystal Cruises’ 2008 world cruise. He visited 22 countries on the trip, and this photo was

■

Greg Sabatine & Susanne Holtrop

Greg Sabatine, B.Comp. ’04, and Susanne Holtrop, BA ’04, met during their second

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year at Guelph and were married July 28, 2007, at the Arboretum. He works in software development for U of G’s Office of Open Learning, and she teaches English at Westside Secondary School in Orangeville.

■ Adam Scott, BA ’07, and Jennie McDowell, B.Sc. ’07, participated in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland in December.

They joined 24 other youth delegates from Canada to build on the momentum gained in

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Bali in 2007. McDowell is policy co-ordinator for the Canadian Youth Delegation.

■ Nicole Tuyten, B.Sc. ’01, works with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources as a resource manager in Minden.

Part of her job involves advising and educating landowners on how to be responsible stewards of the natural resources on their property.

■ Joe Varamo, BA ’00, is events co-ordinator in U of G’s Department of Athletics.

Jason Wilson

Jason Wilson, MA ’03, was nominated for a 2009 Juno Award in the category of Reg-

■

gae Recording of the Year for his first solo album, The Peacemaker’s Chauffeur. It was his second nomination; the first in 2002 was shared with his band,Tabarruk, for the album Jonah. Wilson, who is pursuing a PhD in history at U of G, has been performing as a musician for more than 15 years. He has collaborated with some of Canada’s biggest reggae acts and artists outside the genre, including Alanis Morissette, who played on his first album in 1994.

PA S S A G E S Frederick Abraham, BSA ’51, Nov. 14, 2008 Craig Alexander, BSA ’49 and M.Sc. ’51, March 23, 2009 Walter Alexander, BSA ’53, Sept. 29, 2008 Ross Alloway, BSA ’49, March 3, 2009 Allan Bailey, BSA ’45, Jan. 31, 2008 Archie Bishop, DVM ’48, Feb. 9, 2009 Thomas Borecky, BA ’72, July 27, 2008 Edwin Brent, BSA ’48, Dec. 5, 2008 Brian Brocklebank, ADA ’68, Dec. 27, 2008 Kathleen (Wing) Campbell, DHE ’32, Aug. 1, 2008 Brian Cardy, B.Sc. ’77, Jan. 18, 2009 Eleanor (Smith) Civalier, DHE ’32, Jan. 5, 2009 Margaret (Lamont) Clemens, DHE ’38, July 24, 2008 William Clutton, BSA ’49, Nov. 15, 2008 George Cope, BSA ’40, Oct. 15, 2008 Donald Cummins, DVM ’50, July 25, 2008 Douglas Dale, DVM ’50, Feb. 21, 2009 Joan (Norris) Dixon-Muzzell, B.H.Sc. ’55, Jan. 25, 2009 Murray Gaunt, ADA ’56, March 31, 2009 Alexander Graham, DVM ’52, Dec. 15, 2008

John Graham, DVM ’68, Feb. 8, 2009 Jim Henderson, DVM ’36, Dec. 16, 2008 Howard Henry, BSA ’52, Dec. 4, 2008 Daniel Hill, B.Comm. ’74, October 2008 Gordon Hooper, ADA ’53, in 2008 Elizabeth (Goddard) Jamieson, B.H.Sc. ’64, March 23, 2009 Henry Janzen, BSA ’39, Dec. 29, 2007 Grant Jermey, BSA ’43, Jan. 23, 2009 Michael Kamenar, BA ’75, Feb. 28, 2009 James Kenney, BSA ’44, Oct. 25, 2008 Lorne King, BSA ’46, Jan. 4, 2009 Allen Knight, BSA ’39, March 20, 2009 Woodburn Lambe, BSA ’61, Jan. 30, 2009 John Leeson, DVM ’36, Jan. 28, 2009 Nora Lewis, DVM ’94, Dec. 29, 2008 Gerald Loveless, ADA ’55, Dec. 1, 2008 Peter Marcus, BA ’80, Jan. 11, 2008 Islay McClure, DHE ’52, Nov. 10, 2008 Ruth (Davis) McDaniel, DHE ’36, Dec. 11, 2008 Maryanne (Hulshof) McDougall, B.A.Sc. ’81, Nov. 30, 2008 Peter McGovern, BSA ’63, June 28, 2008

Duncan McGugan, ADA ’47, May 20, 2007 Wallace McMillan, BSA ’33, Feb. 10, 2009 William Mitchell, DVM ’49, Jan. 11, 2009 Scott Murray, BA ’77, Aug. 24, 2008 James Neil, DVM ’51, Jan. 11, 2009 John Neilands, BSA ’44, Oct. 23, 2008 Eric Olson, ADA ’94, November 2008 Patrick Parry, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’72, April 3, 2008 James Pate, ADA ’49, Nov. 12, 2008 Carol (Prohet) Powe, B.A.Sc. ’83, June 4, 2007 Larry Robinson, B.Sc.(Agr.) ’73, Dec. 27, 2007 Donald Sanderson, BSA ’49, Feb. 13, 2009 Leon Saunders, DVM ’43, March 4, 2009 Elmer Shepherd, BSA ’36, Jan. 9, 2009 Jack Smylie, DVM ’49, Nov. 18, 2008 Charles Spence, DVM ’51, Feb. 27, 2009 Harry Stover, BSA ’47, Feb. 23, 2009 Gabriel Tsampalieros, H.D.La. ’07, March 11, 2009 Dawn Watkin, BA ’94, Aug. 1, 2008 Paul Wyczynski, H.D.Let. ’89, Nov. 27, 2008

Summer 2009 37

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