News

Whitehorse-  The Board of Governors of Yukon College is pleased to announce Paul Flaherty has been named interim Chair of the Board.

Flaherty is President and Chief Executive Officer of Northwestel, based in Whitehorse. He replaces Clarence Timmons, who stepped down from the position of Board Chair in December.

“I have been Board Chair for five years, and a College Governor for eight,” says Timmons. “With a new College president in place, it’s a good time to have a new start all around.”

“It has been an honour and privilege serving as Chair of the Board, and I’ll miss it,” he added. “But it is gratifying to know I’ll be leaving the position in Paul’s capable hands.”

Whitehorse –You may know how much fuel your furnace burns in a month- or how much you spend on gas for your car. Now imagine scaling that up to include all the energy used and emissions created by every person, home, business, and vehicle in your community.

That’s the job facing researchers at Yukon Research Centre (YRC) and the Kluane First Nation (KFN) in southwest Yukon.

“It’s actually a lot more complex than the home energy audit most people are used to hearing about,” says Lisa Christensen, the researcher with YRC. “That’s why we call it an ‘energy use and emissions inventory’.”

Whitehorse – A small Yukon software company is bringing its novel product to the world, thanks to support from the Yukon Research Centre.

Subvert (http://www.subvert.ca) is just a small operation- two guys working out of an office in downtown Whitehorse doing software development. But sharing information between them could be a pain at times.

“We’d need to share files, send messages to one another, or links, or snippets of text,” says Geof Harries. “But email was onerous, Skype was overkill- there was no other simple way to send these small things.”

If only there was some simple way to “flick” these snippets of information to one another, they thought. And out of that idea, Flik was born.

Whitehorse –   Students of Yukon College and University of Saskatchewan (USask) will have more access to programs, research and facilities of both institutions as a result of a new agreement between the College and University.

A memorandum of understanding between USask and YC is being signed today by College President Karen Barnes and Peter MacKinnon, president of the Saskatoon-based University.

“This is really a foundation for further collaborative participation that will broaden opportunities for our students, as well as University of Saskatchewan students,” says Shelagh Rowles, the acting vice-president of Education and Training at the College. “It really is creating a ‘two-way street’ for students.”

The MOU states the college and university will look for “appropriate collaborations across the spectrum of their missions”.

WHITEHORSE-  Yukon College is starting a series of consultations next week about the Yukon Native Teacher Education Program (YNTEP).

Dr. Deborah Bartlette, the College’s Dean of Applied Arts, says the College has hired Dr. Thomas Fleming to conduct a thorough external review of the 20-year-old program’s content, objectives, and effectiveness.

“We’re approaching this consultation with the thought that, if we were starting again to build the best teacher education program we could, to meet the needs of the Yukon, what would that look like?’,” says Bartlette.

Dr. Fleming, she says, is eminently qualified to conduct such a review.

  WHITEHORSE—The Department of Education is partnering with Yukon College to offer a dual credit pilot program that allows eligible Yukon high school students to take one of three Yukon College courses for credit. All three courses are transferable to universities and colleges in British Columbia.
“The dual credit program contributes to our vision of supporting success for each learner by offering another option for students to pursue their education and career goals,” Education Minister Scott Kent said. “It also reflects our work to expand and support alternative education options.”
Dual credit students are enrolled with Yukon College and provided access to all College services. They are able to experience post-secondary education while enrolled in secondary school; to gain university level course credit and to get a head start on their first year of college or university studies.

Whitehorse – More than 30 Yukon College students will take to the stage at the Yukon Arts Centre in Whitehorse Tuesday night to receive financial- and moral- support to finish their studies.

The second annual Yukon College Student Awards ceremony recognizes academic excellence and the need for financial support for College students. It also provides an opportunity for the donor and student recipient to meet: donors like to see their donations benefiting students and students appreciate the opportunity to say ‘thank you’ in person.

“I take my studies very seriously and I like to dedicate a lot of time to them,” says Jesse Vigliotti, a second-year student in the Northern Environmental Studies Diploma program at Yukon College.

Plastic recyclables may become a new source of oil for the Yukon. Cold Climate Innovation (CCI), at the Yukon Research Centre, is financing a local innovator to investigate the territory’s capacity to convert local low grade plastic to fuel.

Yukon researcher and innovator, Andy Lera, approached CCI with a proposal that may solve two local problems: the net financial loss of shipping plastic recyclables south and the costly shipment of oil to the north. “The Yukon has a large supply of low grade plastics that could be turned into oil and this could benefit the territory ecologically and possibly economically”, said Andy Lera. Converting plastic to oil would reduce the Yukon’s carbon footprint and may save the government and recycling depots money while producing oil that is ecologically friendly.

Whitehorse – Two papers detailing what we know of the lives of the first Canadians are being included in a new textbook on the archaeology of Beringia.

The papers, written by Yukon College anthropology instructor Norm Easton and his co-researchers, are published in “From the Yenisei to the Yukon: Interpreting Lithic Assemblage Variability in Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Beringia”, from the Texas A&M University Press.

Researchers from the United States and Russia also contributed chapters to the book.

“It really shows that Yukon research is recognized as meeting scholarly standards and is internationally important,” says Easton. “This recognition is very gratifying.”

The book is a compendium of knowledge about the pre-historic people, cultures, economy and technology of the Beringia area. It reflects the state of knowledge up to 2009, when a conference on the subject was held in Vancouver.

Plastic recyclables may become a new source of oil for the Yukon. Cold Climate Innovation (CCI), at the Yukon Research Centre, is financing a local innovator to investigate the territory’s capacity to convert local low grade plastic to fuel.

Yukon researcher and innovator, Andy Lera, approached CCI with a proposal that may solve two local problems: the net financial loss of shipping plastic recyclables south and the costly shipment of oil to the north. “The Yukon has a large supply of low grade plastics that could be turned into oil and this could benefit the territory ecologically and possibly economically”, said Andy Lera. Converting plastic to oil would reduce the Yukon’s carbon footprint and may save the government and recycling depots money while producing oil that is ecologically friendly.

Whitehorse –When a crew of riggers from Yukon College’s trades program hoists a huge canoe into place in the college cafeteria, its creator will be a satisfied man.

“I was looking for a good home for this canoe,” says Dawson City artist Halin de Repentigny. “I am happy it is going to be safe here at the college.”

The 28-foot birch-bark canoe will placed into position on Nov. 16, hanging in the stairwell of the college’s cafeteria. There, the artisanship will be on display for years to come.

 Whitehorse – People interested in climate change and climate science in Yukon can now find the last eight years of research on the subject in one easy-to-access document.

The Northern Climate ExChange (NCE) released the “Compendium of Yukon Climate Change Science” this week. It can be found at http://www.taiga.net/nce/mainstreaming/index.html.

The report, produced as part of the Northern Climate ExChange’s mainstreaming program, includes over 175 studies divided into ten general themes. There are studies on everything from fish to forestry, from pollution to the breeding cycles of red squirrels at Kluane Lake. (they’re giving birth an average of 18 days earlier, largely as a result of climate change in the area). (see backgrounder, below)