By Lori Tarbett

Third year student Saille Bishop-Legowski is headed to Norway this summer as the undergrad nominee for the Terrestrial Cryosphere Exchange.

Organized by the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, the exchange will allow Bishop-Legowski to study terrestrial cryosphere (permafrost and glaciers) at the University of Oslo and also comes with a 24,000 NOK (about C $4,300) scholarship to help students travel to Norway and cover living expenses while there.

Bishop-Legowski describes glaciers as one of her “pet curiosities” and is excited for the experience: “Part of the deal is that I have to take cryosphere-related courses while I study at the UiO, but that’s no trial at all! I’m really excited for them!”

She will spend four months, from mid-August to December, enrolled in glaciology, periglacial and glacial geomorphology, geomorphology of the Nordic countries, and remote sensing courses. She will then make her way to France to study music during the winter term at Lumière Lyon II to balance out her two majors of geography and music. As Saille explains, she “settled on the two subjects it seemed [she] couldn’t do without, even though they aren’t the most obvious or career-directed combination.”

She is excited about the opportunity to take these specialized courses and is looking forward to making connections with others who are interested in the cryosphere. “I expect the exchange itself to be an amazing, enriching experience, and give me new perspectives on geography and myself. I know I’m going to learn a lot in school and out of it,” adds Bishop-Legowski.

By Lori Tarbett

Stephanie Shoobert’s “great sense of direction” led to her Carleton’s geography and environment studies department to pursue a geography degree with a minor in geomatics. Now, four years later, that same internal GIS technology has directed her to help execute Carleton’s 10th GIS Day on November 19, 2008.

GIS (Geographic Information Systems) technology was developed in Ottawa at Natural Resources Canada and has become so omnipresent it is celebrated annually around the world as part of Geography Awareness Week. Carleton’s GIS Day gives participants the opportunity to see how GIS technology is present in their everyday lives from better displaying of election results, to predicting disease outbreaks and ensuring your pizza is delivered on time.

Shoobert is the vice-president of the Carleton University Geographic Association. Last year, members of the association attended GIS Day to encourage awareness in geography, geomatics and GIS technology, but this year they are much more involved. The association has created a mini Geocaching game for attendees which includes a GPS unit, clues and an outdoor adventure. Geocaching is a high-tech GPS treasure hunt game played throughout the world by adventure seekers.

The fourth year undergraduate has also entered a map into the GIS Day mapping contest which will feature student map submissions. Additionally, she’ll be busy promoting the Find Your House display, which allows participants to bring home air photos of where they live using GIS Software, and she’ll be supporting the poster displays and general GIS Day setup.

Shoobert encourages all types of individuals, techno-savvy or not, to check out GIS Day: “I think GIS is a fun way to see and understand the world we live in and on. GIS allows any user to display visual data.”

She recommends attendees visit the Google Earth display and origami Globe folding.

GIS Day will be held in Porter Hall from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Visit http://www.library.carleton.ca/gis/gisday.html for more information.

By Lori Tarbett

In response to President Runte’s request to see Carleton members volunteering in the community, Patricia Ballamingie enrolled her second year environmental studies class in a service learning activity: the TD Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a nation-wide initiative and the second largest cleanup in the world.

Approximately 55 students, along with Ballamingie, travelled by bus to the Ottawa Riverside Terrace Park and Westboro Beach to help clean the shorelines.

“This was an opportunity for the students to live their values and become engaged in local activities while helping the Ottawa river ecosystem,” says Ballamingie.

The class was instantly interested when the assistant professor introduced them to the activity. One student, Ian Covey, says he was excited, “. . . because it was a good, hands-on way to environmentally make a difference in the area.”

The cleanup was more than overdue as an air mattress, socks and used condoms were among the countless debris the class helped remove. “There were more cigarette butts on that beach than the number of people I’d seen smoking in the past year,” says Covey. “In fact, we even came across ducks that were eating the cigarette butts.”

Ballamingie and the students alike say the experience was worthwhile and the professor plans to participate in this service-learning project again.

“Although it felt like such a positive step, I also felt we were just scratching the surface. I wonder what percentage of the total garbage we actually collected: 1/100? 1/1000?” asks Ballamingie. “Hopefully, this exercise will spur us all to become more active in our community.”

By Lori Tarbett

Second year environmental studies student Jessica Pelow is taking her love for the environment beyond the classroom and into the community. Among the many other community initiatives she participated in throughout high school and university, Pelow became involved in the Children’s Garden project at Lady Evelyn Alternative School through Carleton University’s First Year Experience Office.

Pelow, along with other Carleton students, presented to a class of grade four, five and six students who were developing a garden for children created by children. She taught the children about reptiles and amphibians and helped them brainstorm which elements would attract these creatures to the garden, while her peers discussed birds, bugs and bats.

Although Pelow initially came to Carleton as a Public Affairs and Policy Management student, she realized she was best suited for a program that would allow her to study her true passions. She decided Carleton’s comprehensive Environmental Studies program was the perfect fit. “The program at Carleton was appealing to me because it not only looks at the physical environment, but also delves into topics such as human geography, sustainability and even environmental politics,” says Pelow. “The range of subjects offered will allow me to attain a broad understanding of environmental matters and provide me with many options for a future career.”

The ambitious student has been hired by the First Year Experience Office as a Community Service-Learning Peer Helper. Some of the projects Pelow will be involved in this year include the Children’s Garden in Old Ottawa East, a collaborative project between the FYEO and four other community organizations. She will also be a part of a school ground greening project at Cambridge Street Community Public School.

Pelow’s love for the environment and children is evident: “After my studies at Carleton, I would ideally like to work at a conservation area as an environmental educator, so getting a Bachelor of Education may be in my future,” says Pelow.

Advocating for a national bird, surveying perspectives on biofuels and launching a media campaign to raise awareness of conservation practices are all in a day’s work for Andrea Robson.

The fourth year environmental studies major is logging 90 hours in volunteer work at Nature Canada, a not for profit organization, as a research assistant. Getting an early start on completing the requirements for her Carleton placement program, Robson is acquiring new skills in addition to the theoretical knowledge developed through her course work.

“In the environmental studies degree program, there is a strong focus on developing practical research skills that can be used in the field,” said Robson. “A lot of the skills I have used during my placement at Nature Canada were initiated and refined while in school.”

However, her experience so far has not been limited to research techniques alone. Over the summer, she will dabble in media relations and lobbying. The first project aims to engage local media outlets in an attempt to raise community awareness of the Prince Edward County Natural Wildlife Area.

Nature Canada has also been developing a strategy to lobby the government to designate a national bird to represent Canada. Robson is working with similar organizations in other countries to determine how they developed similar campaigns.

A final project involves assessing Canadian opinions on biofuels. While the topic has been making headlines in the United States, Robson says that only now are Canadians paying attention to the issue. As a result, the research has proven challenging. To date, little can be found about this issue in secondary sources, and what information exists is contradictory in nature.

Robson appears undaunted by her dual role as an undergrad and NGO researcher. In addition to her course load, Robson has also taken up a daunting number of extracurricular activities. She was one of the volunteers who travelled to Mexico last February to work on community-based projects for Alternative Spring Break. She has also been active in the FYEO as a Community Service-Learning Peer Helper. While she hasn’t pinpointed an exact career focus, she is increasingly interested in the influences of geography on health.

By Nicole Findlay

On a Monday morning a few weeks back, William Parkinson woke up to find he had received an email informing him that he was $1,500 richer. While he may have been tempted to chalk up the unsolicited email as a phishing scam, he had in fact been selected as the recipient of the 2007 ESRI Canada Scholarship Award.

Doug King, Dan Patterson, and Scott Mitchell – all professors in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, and Heather McAdam, GIS coordinator, Maps, Data and Government Information Centre, Carleton University Library formed the selection committee. They selected Parkinson as the recipient of the award which is given to returning third year Geomatics students who have demonstrated academic excellence.

“I am incredibly grateful for this recognition and opportunity,” said Parkinson, a third-year, B.Sc. Honours major in Geography. “This material will allow me not only to further my studies in geomatics, but to excel in a field that I am so passionate about.”

The 2007 ESRI Canada Scholarship Award combines financial, technical and educational support to assist students in furthering their careers in Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

In addition to the monetary award, Parkinson will receive a student license of ESRI Canada ltd. ArcGIS software, a selection of GIS themed books, and a ticket to attend one of the company’s regional user conferences.

Alex Miller, president of ESRI Canada, will present the award to Parkinson at GIS Day on Wednesday, November 14 at 11:30 a.m. in the Galleria.

By Nicole Findlay

Armed with cameras and a critical eye, students enrolled in Derek Smith’s cultural geography class, set out to examine Canadian cityscapes.

Combining the resulting photos with quotes from assigned academic texts, each student produced a photo essay that critically examines the spaces through which we navigate every day.

Cultural and geographic issues examined through the course emerge as a thematic link in the resulting collection of 15 photo essays. Through their camera lenses, the students have explored Canada’s multicultural communities and dissected local symbols for what they tell us about how race, gender, ethnicity and economic status are perceived by the country’s power elite.

Throughout the year, Smith introduced eight themes that included the effects of culture, identity, power, knowledge, place and globalization on the environment.

“I proposed the photographic essay because we continue to be exposed to more and more visual information, and students need to be able to analyze and critique different ways that ideas and discourses are communicated,” said Smith. “Cultural geographers are accustomed to working with visual material through their use of maps and interpreting cultural landscapes, and cybercartography offers new ways of integrating images, video and audio into new digital formats.”

As she worked through the assigned academic readings, Nikki Farquhar, a fourth-year geography major, envisioned the scenes within Ottawa she felt best exemplified the social and physical environmental themes.

“With a great interest in changing cultures especially those of the First Nations people of Canada due to a globalizing world, I knew that I wanted to incorporate Victoria Island and the efforts put forth to maintain cultural traditions and beliefs,” said Farquhar. “The irony of it and the reason I thought the pictures would work is because of the location and the surroundings of the area, being stuck between factories and the downtown core of Ottawa.”

Like Farquhar, many students set out with specific themes and locations they wanted to explore. Others took the opposite approach. The assignment caused Sarah Schachhuber, a fourth-year geography major, to re-evaluate the city she had always taken for granted.

“I have lived in Ottawa my entire life, but doing this assignment forced me to look at it in an entirely different way,” said Schachhuber. “Things such as monuments, gates and murals, which before were simply markers typical of any city, became complex cultural landmarks.”

Other essays addressed the student’s perceptions of gender and race inequality indicated by the public representations of historic figures, concepts of “othering” exemplified by ethnic and economic disparity.

Although the photo essay was assigned as an experiment and an alternative to a term paper, it taught students to connect the theory presented in class to their own environment.