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view . summer 2011
Dr. Weisener, an assistant professor in the University’s
Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research,
examines the effects of storing residual tailings from the
bitumen extraction process in pits that will be turned into
small lakes. Grgicak-Mannion, a geospatial learning
specialist, is developing an interactive, web-based mapping
and data cataloguing system for Syncrude to share
information with its researchers who are transforming a
tailings pond into a wetland.
Biology professor Dr. Ciborowski leads a team of scientists
from four universities on a five-year, $3.8-million study to
suggest the best ways to restore mined landscapes into healthy
ecosystems. Oil companies have hired some of his former
graduate students to implement those strategies. One grad
helped Suncor transform a tailings pond into a 220-hectare
watershed, marking the first successful completion of such
an effort in Canada.
REINVENTING THE HISTORICAL
DOCUMENTARY
A filmmaker and a musician are working together to
reinvent how historical documentaries are made.
Communications professor Kim Nelson is working with
music professor and experimental musician Dr. Brent Lee
to create an interactive, web-based documentary about the
work of history professor Rob Nelson.
Nelson studies how large countries such as Canada and
Russia colonized unsettled areas, and how other countries
subsequently adapted those methods for their own expansions.
Nelson previously collaborated with Lee on a
documentary called “Berliner”, about second-generation
Turkish immigrants living in Germany, but the music
professor was brought in after all the original footage
had been shot. This time, Lee is involved right from the
inception. The result will have a more experimental feel
than most traditional historical documentaries.
“Now we’ll be able to think about music and how to use
technology to get the sounds we want before we shoot,”
says Nelson.
EXPORTING CANADIAN CULTURAL VALUES
Governments often fret about brain drain. But
people who come to learn here and then return to
their home countries create value for Canada in
their own unique way, according to a Faculty of
Education researcher.
“Those people are cultural ambassadors,” says
Dr. Shijing Xu, whose work on issues regarding migration,
multiculturalism, and transnationalism is funded by the
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Institute. “They
study in Canada, take Canadian ideas home and often
transplant them in their own countries. In this way, Canada
travels and plants seeds all over the world.”
Xu helps lead an international teachers’ knowledge
exchange program between UWindsor, Liaocheng
University and Southwest University, both in China,
to share educational innovation between teachers and
educators in both countries.
