News

Whitehorse - The Yukon/Stikine Regional Science Fair competition takes place at Yukon College on Saturday, December 7, 2013.

Interest is very high this year according to co-Chairs Ryan Sikkes and Jody Woodland. Over 300 science projects (Grades 4-12) were prepared for school fairs this past month. Seventy of those are advancing to the Regional Fair on Saturday.

Eight schools are participating in the science fair competition this year: Holy Family, Jack Hulland, Whitehorse Elementary, Kluane Lake (Destruction Bay), Golden Horn, Vanier Catholic Secondary, St. Elias (Haines Junction) and Teslin Community School. The Yukon Home Educators are also participating.

WHITEHORSE – Cold Climate Innovation (CCI) of the Yukon Research Centre has partnered with Icefield Tools Corporation, to revolutionize borehole drilling technology. This partnership will develop technology and software that will advance the mining, oil and gas industries.

This project will answer a need within the petroleum industry for greater drilling accuracy while significantly reducing overall survey time and associated costs. Icefield Tools Corporation, a Yukon-based company, is developing the technology and software that will make this process more efficient and cost effective.

“The development of this technology means more professional jobs in the Yukon, and exportation of locally designed technology products across the globe,” said Stephen Mooney, Director, Cold Climate Innovation.

WHITEHORSE-Yukon College is planning a big celebration event to close out its 50th anniversary year. On Friday, November 29, the main upstairs corridor at Ayamdigut campus will be transformed into a living timeline. Current and former students and staff, as well as the general public, will enjoy music and food by the decade, retrospective displays, alumni stories, and prizes – plenty of door prizes.

In addition to the grand prize draw of flights for two to Las Vegas for alumni who submitted their story about attending Yukon College, there will be many door prizes, and a small take home gift for the first 300 arrivals.

Yukon College has exciting news to announce at this year’s Geoscience Forum. The College owns the first metal analyzer to be dedicated to research and training in the Yukon.

The Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS) was purchased by the Yukon Research Centre (YRC) and the Mineral Resource Technologist program, for a total of $90,000, including installation.

The AAS will increase research capacity at Yukon College within the Yukon Research Centre laboratory. The instrument can be used to analyze metal concentrations in water, soil, rock, plant, and tissue samples, and will be used by Yukon College researchers, students, and visiting scientists.

“The AAS increases our laboratory capacity and allows us to provide training opportunities for our students, while advancing northern research,” said Karen Barnes, President of Yukon College.

WHITEHORSE – Dr. Fiona Schmiegelow is tired of the same old conversations. She wants to change the way people approach conservation, development, and land use planning and believes the answer lies in a more integrated, science-based approach and a process called adaptive management. 

Adaptive management provides a more holistic way of approaching land use planning that is solutions-based and can help reconcile the historic conflicts between those who support conservation and those who support development. 

WHITEHORSE – Yukon College elder-in-residence Randall Tetlichi will be a presenting panelist at the 15th Annual Symposium in Indigenous Research at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, this weekend.

Tetlichi will share his thoughts on how First Nations people and non-First Nations people can work together to create a better world with the 150 people expected to attend the event. The former Vuntut Gwitchin chief would like to see traditional knowledge from First Nations communities be given the same recognition as scientific knowledge when it comes to addressing the challenges of climate change in Canada.

“We have no choice but to work together, think together, and act together, for our own survival,” said Tetlichi.

Tetlichi is a highly respected traditional healer and teacher who has worked for years for the protection of the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates through traditional Gwitchin territory.

WHITEHORSE – Yukon College’s research efforts have been recognized. The Yukon Research Centre (YRC) is ranked 4th in Canada’s Top 50 Research Colleges in the category of research income, preceded only by SAIT Polytechnic, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology and College of the North Atlantic.

The Yukon Research Centre’s 2012 research income increased by 5.4%, totaling $5,385,000, according to Research Infosource Inc.

As the research arm of Yukon College, the Yukon Research Centre focuses on collaborative research with students, communities, first nations, industry and local government. The YRC has tripled its staff over the last four years and research has grown in the areas of mine site restoration and bioremediation, cold climate and technology innovation, climate change and the social science of resource development in the Arctic.

WHITEHORSE – Yukon Research Centre (YRC) is releasing some of the oldest weather data in Yukon history on Monday, November 4th, at the Partnering in Research event. The event will showcase this historically relevant weather data from the White Pass and Yukon Route (WPYR) log books of 1902 to 1957, while promoting a new data server on which the data will be stored.

The Yukon Research Centre Data Server is dedicated to hosting environmental and social science data that can be accessed from anywhere, allowing users the option to publish the data or keep it private. The environmental and social science research community is encouraged to consider this data server as a service provided to them to potentially make scientific information more accessible and easier to store.

WHITEHORSE—The Yukon government is expanding its Yukon College land reserve surrounding Ayamdigut campus. This will support a long term planning initiative by Yukon College to complete a campus master plan.

“Planning for the educational needs of Yukon students and the growing demand for skilled workers by Yukon industry are key to the long-term success of Yukon College and its work to meet the needs of students, partners, local businesses and governments,” Education Minister Elaine Taylor said.

The College has committed to completing the master plan within a five-year term.

“The college is outgrowing its physical space. With the newly-announced Centre for Northern Innovation in Mining, as well as the Yukon Research Centre and work of the Northern Institute for Social Justice, Yukon College has experienced tremendous growth in programming, research and community expectations in the past five years,” said Yukon College Board of Governors Chair Paul Flaherty.

WHITEHORSE—The Government of Yukon will provide $5.8 million in funding to assist the delivery of trades training through the Centre for Northern Innovation in Mining (CNIM).

“The Centre for Northern Innovation in Mining will provide Yukoners with the training they need to gain successful careers in the territory’s mining industry,” Premier Darrell Pasloski said. “It will give Yukoners in-demand trades experience and help provide the labour market with the skilled workers it needs.”

This commitment will provide operation and maintenance funding across five years to support CNIM programming. It is in addition to the $5.6 million in capital funding previously announced, which matches federal capital funding for CNIM. This will bring the Yukon government contribution to CNIM to more than $11 million over five years.

WHITEHORSE – Yukoners now have the ease of shopping online for local arts and crafts in one place this holiday season. Yukon’s Borealist online classifieds has just launched an addition to their website that will give them a competitive edge to sites like Kijiji, and eBay. Shoppers and vendors on Borealist will now find the new Storefronts feature that allows them to access virtual stores hosted by local artisans.

Technology Innovation, of the Yukon Research Centre, funded Borealist Storefronts $10, 000 to support the programming for this venture, in addition to funding the first phase of development.

DAWSON CITY – The Yukon School of Visual Art (SOVA) has two new reasons why young artists across North America should consider the only art school north of 60 for their foundation year. The School has announced two new entrance scholarships of $1,000 each – one for full-time students applying from within Yukon, and another for full-time students applying from anywhere else in North America.

“Our location, our faculty of practicing artists, our small class size, our connections with local First Nations culture, together provide an attractive and compelling package for prospective students. The introduction of these entrance scholarships enables us to more directly compete with bigger schools across Canada and the US, all of whom offer financial incentives to promising applicants,” said Dr. Curtis Collins, SOVA chair and program director.