Applied Research Province: British Columbia

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Building a bridge to change: connecting post-secondary teachers and staff with student diversity

The population of post-secondary students is becoming increasingly diverse. Over time, colleges and universities have seen increasing numbers of students from diverse cultural, ethnic, and first-language groups (including Indigenous students).

But other types of differences are also becoming more common, like cognitive and neuro diversity in students with autism, Asperger’s and ADHD. Institutions are also more aware of gender diversity, both among different gender identities and also through recognition some gender groups are underrepresented, such as women in engineering and computing.

This project hinges on the fundamental notion that educators welcome diversity and embrace the increasing diversity of student population as positive — but at the same time, speaks directly to the reality that supporting an increasingly diverse student body requires more resources, awareness, and new knowledge.

The project sought to develop an effective model to help post-secondary teachers and academic staff engage with increasing diversity positively, sensitively, and strategically. The objective is to leverage the power of community-based expertise to drive responses to diversity, and empower all participants in the diversity conversation.

To do that, the project used an indigenous framework to allow organic engagement at many levels within communities and institutions. Based on that framework, the project team created a series of panels, workshops and tools to help people engage with diversity. Some of the workshops so far have been on the Culture of mentoring; Language and diversity; and Gender diversity.

The project is in its second year and the team is running small, customized workshops for individual departments, focused on student resiliency, teamwork, mentoring and diversity. The team is also designing a digital diversity map, which will be an open digital resource to link the project, resources, and people to other diversity projects, resources, and people. The map, like the project framework, involves a strong research creation aspect informed by a Coast Salish aesthetic, envisioned by artist and collaborator Aaron “Splash” Nelson-Moody.

Students and highly qualified people have been engaged at every stage of this project and are intensifying their involvement this year.

Funded by: BCIT Faculty and Staff Association, Community and College Social Innovation Fund

About British Columbia Institute of Technology

For over 50 years, the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) has been a leader among Canadian post-secondary institutions. Offering an applied, hands-on education that... Learn more
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Sharing the fruits of research: studying the state of the apple industry in the Okanagan

The amount of land in the Okanagan Valley dedicated to growing apples dropped by 35 per cent between 2001 and 2011 — a shift that led to substantial changes in the industry, with broad repercussions for processing and distribution, and inspired two Okanagan College School of Business professors, Lee Cartier and Svan Lembke, to examine the situation and the new opportunities it has given rise to.

Their work looked in particular at the links among “clusters” — the interconnected businesses, suppliers and other organizations in a geographic area that are all involved in the same industry. Cartier and Lembke found that focusing on common interests and encouraging groups in the cluster to share knowledge benefits everyone involved. At a cluster-wide workshop, the researchers also revealed opportunities to improve that had been missed and recommended adopting cluster-wide quality standards, developing new types of apples, improving production technologies and doing better marketing.

Two students participated in the project. One analyzed apple packing and sales data and did a trend analysis of it. The other summarized data from 17 in-depth interview, summarizing what she had learned from them. Working on this research project provided the students with a new understanding of how companies use research to inform their business practices.

The researchers’ recommendations on the best ways to exploit the collective power of the Okanagan apple cluster were discussed during a stakeholder workshop. The research showed the local cooperative organization, BC Tree Fruits (the largest employer in the cluster), was already enabling smaller firms to share equipment, get field service advice and pool their marketing and sales costs. However, the cooperative overall remained a minor player compared to some of the operations in Washington just the other side of the border and had not been aggressive in positioning products or trying new marketing approaches. After the workshop and armed with the research, the cooperative and other industry stakeholders created a list of actions to improve the performance of the conventional apple industry in the Okanagan.

Industry: Agriculture | Food
Partner(s): BC Tree Fruits
Funded by: College and Community Innovation Program, Engage Grant, NSERC

About Okanagan College

Situated in one of Canada’s most picturesque and dynamic regions, Okanagan College offers more than 130 different programs, and credentials that range from certificates to... Learn more
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Plugging into a new housing concept

Family dynamics in Canada are fast becoming more diverse, but the housing industry has been slow to adapt to them. It used to be that families remained in one house for decades or even generations. Today, according to the Vanier Institute of the Family, each Canadian on average owns five houses over a lifetime, upsizing and downsizing as children are born, age, and eventually move out of the nest. Often, families renovate rather than move, which can be an expensive and disruptive process.

This is making the traditional notion of the family home obsolete. Families today need innovative housing models that can quickly and easily adapt to their changing needs. One possible solution is a housing model that can expand or contract as a family evolves. But adapting house models requires adapting everything in them — so this research project examined “plug-in” electrical circuits that can be snapped in and out as needed.

It was visionary Okanagan developer Andrew Gaucher, president of the Okanagan chapter of the Urban Development Institute and of Catalyst Land Development and its parent company, G Group, who approached Okanagan College in 2016, asking for research assistance to explore his idea.

Gaucher teamed up with a 17-year-old carpentry student, an electrical apprenticeship student and an electrical trades instructor, who is an emerging researcher, to explore the possibility of developing a revolutionary concept for housing units. Gaucher wanted help to realize his vision of living-space modules that could be joined and separated again.

“To bring this idea of modularity to reality we need to think about making it easy for families to add another module to their home or take it away as things change,” says Gaucher. “Safe, reliable, dependable and easy connections are vital. And while you’d think there were already-developed systems that meet that criteria, I wasn’t able to come up with any. The idea is to move away from hardwiring all connections to the grid.”

Investigation let Okanagan College researcher to recommend a plug-in system for electrical wiring that’s already commonplace in heavy industry. This system was chosen because it was weather resistant, complied with the Canadian Electrical Code and homeowners can operate it safely and simply, even when the electricity is connected. Now, with the electrical problems addressed, Mr. Gaucher is tackling other construction and infrastructure issues for his adaptable housing.

“I really appreciate and value the support of the College, Luke, and Noah, and the federal government,” Gaucher said. “The opportunity to innovate and create or refine different approaches to housing needs is clearly here and it’s tremendous to have this kind of resource at our fingertips in the Okanagan.”

Partner(s): The G Group
Funded by: Applied Research and Development (ARD) Grant, College and Community Innovation Program, The G Group

About Okanagan College

Situated in one of Canada’s most picturesque and dynamic regions, Okanagan College offers more than 130 different programs, and credentials that range from certificates to... Learn more
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Where is the wearable? Improving mine safety

Knowing where workers are is essential for keeping them safe in high-risk environments, such as mines. It is not an easy task: GPS systems rely on satellites, which don’t work underground. It’s an issue that’s central to the work of Vandrico, a Vancouver-based company focused on developing technology to improve information flow in mines — with a particular focus, since 2013, on wearable technology, to help employers keep track of where their workers are.

Vandrico approached Langara College’s Computing Science and Information Systems program with a challenge: to adapt an industrial Wi-Fi network and off-the-shelf wearable technology to keep track of employees underground. Program Coordinator Kim Lam, working with students Calvin Hu and Edmond Wong, used his radio frequency engineering background to tackle that challenge. They tested both smart watches and industrial cell phones as possible options to serve as the wearable technology, since workers commonly use both.

Over six months, Lam and the two students came up with a smart phone app called ConnectedWorker, which greatly improved the precision of this new type of locating system. The students, who each contributed more than 100 hours to the project, testing and gathering data, were tremendously excited to know their work was real-world relevant.

The outcome of this project was a much greater precision in locating people than Vandrico’s previous solution, and one that should make mine workers safer and better able to react to incidents underground.

“We are very happy to have advanced the capabilities of indoor and underground location tracking using wearable technologies,” says Vandrico President Kenny McKenzie. “Langara College has produced an order-of-magnitude improvement in locating abilities with this technology.”

The improvement will be important in bidding on future projects, as well as being an intellectual property asset for Vandrico.

About Langara College

Located in beautiful Vancouver, B.C., Langara College is a leading undergraduate institution providing university studies, career studies, and continuing education programs and courses to more... Learn more
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Aclarus

Easy access to high-quality drinking water can be a challenge for people outside urban areas — and it was to improve that access that Aclarus Ozone Water Systems approached Lambton College in Sarnia for help to test, develop and optimize its ozone water purification system.

Aclarus, based in Peterborough, Ontario, specializes in water purification through the use of ozone technology. Ozone, an inorganic molecule, is extremely efficient at removing bacteria, pesticides, odours, chemicals (and more) from water.

In June of 2015, Aclarus partnered with the Lambton Water Centre at Lambton College on a research project to validate its system’s effectiveness in treating and disinfecting bacterial contamination in drinking water. The project included installation of a remote monitoring system that allows the consumer or Aclarus technical staff to monitor the system from a smart phone or central control station.

Dino Evangelista, coordinator of the Lambton Water Centre, led the research project together with faculty researcher Kevin Ryan. Two students from Lambton’s Instrumentation Control and Engineering Technology program worked with them.

The research project with Lambton allowed Aclarus to improve and validate its technology, while at the same time improving the customer experience by creating remote monitoring options for the system. Due to the success of this project, Aclarus is planning to continue doing research projects with the Lambton Water Centre.

Partner(s): Aclarus
Funded by: Applied Research and Development (ARD) Grant, Community and College Social Innovation Fund, NSERC, Ontario Centres of Excellence

About Lambton College

As a post-secondary leader in education, training and research, Lambton College has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. In addition to a significant rise in... Learn more
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Flying out of college to a job with kiteboarding innovation

Ocean Rodeo came to Camosun College with a problem. The company, a kiteboard manufacturer, wanted to build a new kind of composite control bar for kiteboards — but could a “plastic” bar hold up to the rigours of kiteboarding?

After meeting with the Camosun Innovates team, Ocean Rodeo agreed to partner with the college on an NSERC Engage Grant, and first year mechanical engineering technology student Ben Costin was hired to work part time with Camosun Innovates on the project. Ben conducted a series of destructive tests that mimicked and exceeded the stresses and forces that kite-boarders would put on the bar used that controls the kite and influences where the boarder is heading.

Ben’s controlled studies showed the bars were breaking in roughly the same place with identical patterns. With the help of a local expert in injection molding, he created an injected-molded control bar, which ultimately solved Ocean Rodeo’s breakage problem. The new bar has since been launched with great success; some call it a game-changer for kite-boarding.

The company was so pleased with the results of the collaboration it worked with Camosun Innovates to pursue a three-year NSERC Applied Research grant to continue their joint research and development efforts. The funding allowed Camosun Innovates to hire Ben after his graduation to work with Ocean Rodeo on designing and fabricating other prototypes.

Industry: Manufacturing
Partner(s): Ocean Rodeo
Funded by: College and Community Innovation Program

About Camosun College

Camosun College is located in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. Our two campuses serve approximately 18,000 learners a year in certificate, diploma, bachelor’s degree and continuing... Learn more
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Looking for a Way to Nurture Systems to Feeds Us

Agricultural land is an irreplaceable natural resource and we are not looking after it as we should, according to Kent Mullinix, director of the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

“Nations and provinces and municipalities create policy and law and regulation all the time to advance their vision, their agenda, and somehow we have decided a sustainable food system isn’t worth doing that for,” Mullinix said in a telephone interview.

Mullinix is the lead researcher on Fostering Regional Food Systems, a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, from its Community and College Social Innovation Fund.

He and his colleagues are studying the importance, potential and challenges of implementing sustainable regional food systems—which he defines as “all the elements that collectively contribute to production, distribution, purchasing and consumption of food and handling the waste associated with it.” Regional food systems build local economies, rather than shipping money and jobs elsewhere.

There are good reasons to move back from our globalized food system, Mullinix said, including that climate change, transportation costs and other factors are making it unsustainable and unaffordable, while foreign agricultural practices may be unsafe.

The problem is that planners have ignored food systems despite their essential role in keeping us all alive. Agricultural land is under pressure from development — nowhere more than in Richmond, B.C., where Mullinix works, next door to the hottest real-estate market in the country. B.C. does have an “Agricultural Land Reserve,” protected for agriculture. But it fails to encourage regional food systems in several ways, Mullinix said.

Preserved land does not have to be farmed. B.C.’s land reserve policy does nothing to prevent speculation, putting prices well out of reach for people who might actually want to farm. (Wealthy landowners renting to farmers is known as feudalism, Mullinix pointed out, and probably not a model we want in this country).

Earlier research by the Institute for Sustainable Food Systems suggests about one-third of the unfarmed land in the agricultural reserve in Surrey could be productive, and — with small-scale single farmers doing community-focused, intensive farming — could create 1,200 jobs, satisfy Surrey’s needs for 27 crops and animal products six months of the year, while generating $77 million in net income.

The researchers will assess land value and ownership trends since 1977 and try to determine the extent regional food systems can supply local food needs, create jobs, and contribute to environmental stewardship. They will also create the world’s first web-based, open-access regional food system research and information hub.

“I am an agricultural scientist,” Mullinix said. “I have witnessed the industrialization of agriculture and what it has done to farmers, to food, to the economy, to communities and the environment. I have witnessed it, and I know there is a better way to do food systems.”

Funded by: Community and College Social Innovation Fund

About Kwantlen Polytechnic University

Established by the government of British Columbia in 1981, Kwantlen, now Kwantlen Polytechnic University, has four campuses located in the Metro Vancouver region of British... Learn more
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Planning for Sustainable Salmon Aquaculture

Fish farmers and fisheries experts are working together to monitor the effects of aquaculture on the ocean floor with the help of researchers from North Island College.

The BC Salmon Farming Association (BCSFA) and the local offices of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) identified a need to strengthen capacity in monitoring the ocean floor of hard bed substrates where some B.C. fish farms are located. North Island College was approached in 2012 to help research the issue for the North Vancouver Island salmon aquaculture industry with the aim to ensure environmental sustainability of aquaculture.

Dr. Aisling Brady, a biology instructor at the college, looked at two fundamental issues — the significant ecological changes likely to occur at hard bottom sites near salmon farm operations, and the habitat indicators and thresholds at which significant negative large scale seabed changes occur. The research team used remote controlled vehicles and video observations for invertebrate community surveys on the seabed as well as environmental monitoring and measuring interactions between invertebrates and salmon farm waste.

The investigation provided a solid foundation for future industry growth in hard bottom areas. It also helped stimulate a broader dialogue about environmental monitoring and supports decisions grounded in empirical evidence. The college’s industry partners are interested in continued research to develop strategies and solutions to monitor and better regulate hard bottom substrates.

Funded by: Innovation Enhancement (IE) Grant

About North Island College

NIC is honoured to acknowledge the traditional territories of the combined 35 First Nations of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka’wakw and Coast Salish traditions, on whose traditional... Learn more
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Sustainable Aquaculture

Dr. Stephen Cross, Research Chair in Sustainable Aquaculture at North Island College, has been involved with aquaculture development and research in Canada since 1985. He has worked with industry, government, and academia on all aspects of environmental management for coastal aquaculture. Dr. Cross has also assisted with regulatory development in Chile and Thailand, on academic curriculum development in Mozambique, and on projects in the U.S. and Australia.

With growing global demand for sustainable seafood, the major focus of research at North Island College will be to support sustainable aquaculture industry in Canada by assisting in efforts to diversify production through integrated systems, increasing efficiencies in short and long-term environmental management approaches, and increasing public awareness and acceptance of aquatic food production (“fish farming”) for Canada.

Dr. Cross, in partnership with local industry partners Marine Harvest Canada, Grieg Seafood, Cermaq Canada and Creative Salmon, will focus on four applied research and development themes: refining and testing new environmental monitoring protocols, introducing finfish aquaculture into B.C., developing an integrated coastal surveillance platform, and deepening understanding of B.C. aquaculture.

Research in new environmental monitoring protocols will design, refine and test new approaches for environmental management of the waste discharge from farms in an effort to address many of the technical challenges associated with current methods. It aims to provide technical options that are rigorous and scientifically-defensible as well as cost-effective and efficient.

Inorganic nutrient release from fish farms offers an opportunity for the development of partial Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) in existing farm operations. North Island research explores this approach and the design of a system and economic modeling for a fish-kelp component for the industry as a whole.

Coastal surveillance researchers are designing and testing a standardized, water quality monitoring station for farm site installation which requires minimal maintenance. The design includes web-based telemetry and a network for industry-wide data acquisition, relay, consolidation, analysis, and access for multi-stakeholder use. Industry will benefit through linkages to a fish heath database that will allow local or regional assessments of performance.

As most aquaculture in B.C. takes place in remote coastal locations, the general public has little opportunity to visit “fish farming” facilities. In an effort to make aquaculture accessible, a web-based viewing platform will be developed situated in several locations both above and below water and will allow user control of remote cameras. Researchers will pilot these systems for use in the classroom and in long-term aquaculture displays in the Comox Valley Visitor Centre, the Campbell River Discovery Passage Aquarium, and the Vancouver Public Aquarium.

About North Island College

NIC is honoured to acknowledge the traditional territories of the combined 35 First Nations of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Kwakwaka’wakw and Coast Salish traditions, on whose traditional... Learn more
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Tackling the Effects of Climate Change on B.C. Forests

Climate change is having a discernible impact on the forests of British Columbia and is one of the biggest challenges facing the forest industry today. One of the most important applied research focuses for the forestry industry in central B.C. is finding new tree species to plant that will be better adapted to the climate projected for the future, and will provide forest products for future generations.

The College of New Caledonia is working with local forest companies, the provincial government, three research forests, and collaborators from other academic institutions to research potential tree species. Species like western larch and Douglas fir may be ideally suited to current and future climates in our region. College faculty and students in the Natural Resources and Environmental Technology program are involved in research trial plantings across the region, and measuring, analyzing and reporting tree and climate data from these sites. Once established, research installations will provide important data to the forest industry over several decades, and will also provide an ideal teaching and demonstration facility for students.

“This project is a perfect fit with our future forest stewardship objectives,” said Frank Varga, a B.C. Timber sales practices forester. “The research these students are doing will provide valuable knowledge about the effects of climate change on northern B.C. forests and help us determine which tree species are best-suited to the region.”

About College of New Caledonia

The College of New Caledonia (CNC) has played an important role in training and educating residents in northern B.C. since 1969. Along with being one... Learn more