Student Support

Discovering where ideas come from.

Ever since he joined the Department of Geography in 1983, Professor Trevor Barnes has tried to do more than expand the minds of his students. He has tried to expand the narrow focus of his own discipline. “I always want to say to my students, ‘Where do ideas come from?’” Barnes explains. “They don’t just come like lightning out of the blue sky, but they come from particular kinds of practices, which are bound up with culture, with politics, with cultural division.”

Origins of Geography

Barnes says we need to look no further than the first geographers for an example of what he means. During the 19^th century, when the colonial powers were scrambling to lay claim to vast swaths of Africa, rulers turned to geographers to survey and understand the wealth of the land — and more often than not to fight wars over their respective empires. “That’s where the discipline gets going,” says Barnes, who started out as an economist — a field he says he found too “narrow, purified and abstract” — before going into economic geography.

“Geography is so much about variety, diversity and context that it just doesn’t fit with the notion that there are these essences, that there are these unimpeachable cores,” he says.

Research and Recognition

Beyond the classroom, Barnes has been a leading figure in re-theorizing economic geography through a close analysis of its underlying values. He has shown how dominant social attitudes have influenced the work of geographers just as much as rational scientific practices. The results have earned Barnes many distinctions, including the Presidential Award of the Association of American Geographers in 2006.

These days, his research focus on the topic of creative cities — urban centres such as Vancouver that are moving beyond an industrial economy. He is especially interested in how they vie with each other to lure an educated workforce in the information age. Aside from his interest in modern cities as a subject of research, he says it’s also a subject he likes to teach. “I think that’s the course that students enjoy most, because it’s about them and their lives; they can step out of the classroom and they’re there.”

Challenging Students

But Barnes also likes to leverage the shock value of the dramatic changes he sees unfolding in the world’s economy.To get his students thinking about globalization and consumer culture, for example, he tells them how Wal-Mart imports about 15 per cent of China’s total manufactured output. China, he reminds his students, is the biggest manufacturing country in the world.“You almost hear this collective sucking in of breath, when you say a fact that they didn’t know before.”

Still, facts by themselves don’t make a good course, nor are they going to help students understand a complex, changing world. “They have to be placed within a larger context,” he says, which is where his particular perspective comes into play.

“My stories tend to be critical. I mean, I’m on the left, politically, so I’m suspicious of what goes on in the name of capitalism. And so I try to raise those issues about some theme below the surface.”

Sociology Department Head and Professor, Neil Guppy, believes in the power of student initiatives, especially Student Directed Seminars.

Guppy has been the Sociology Department Head for 4 years, in which he has worked to ensure the best possible experience for UBC students and faculty.

“My most important duties are hiring new faculty in conjunction with my colleagues, trying to provide a supportive environment for learning and research, and trying to represent the interests of sociology students and faculty, and the university more broadly,” he described. In addition, Guppy teaches several sections of Sociology 100, a popular first-year survey course.

During his UBC career, Guppy has had a hand in some of UBC’s most popular outlets for student engagement; including working with UBC’s unique first-year orientation, Imagine UBC, and helping to create the Student Directed Seminars (SDS) program.

Guppy coordinated the inaugural SDS program with former AMS president, Vivian Hoffmann. Hoffmann was interested in creating opportunities for students to lead learning. She based her proposal upon a program she witnessed while studying at the University of California, Berkley. Hoffmann brought her idea to Guppy, looking for support and guidance.

“She came to see me because I was the Associate Dean, and most responsible for student issues,” Guppy remembered. “She and I constructed and implemented what is now the SDS seminar.”

The SDS program is an extension of UBC’s Directed Studies program, which allows students to work one-on-one with a professor doing research in a narrow field. SDS courses are designed and directed by students with the assistance of a volunteer faculty member. The SDS Advisory Committee reviews and approves final course outlines before they are offered for registration. Guppy has served as chair on the SDS Advisory Committee for the past six years.

Proposed classes must be on a topic that is not offered at UBC, and have a minimum registration requirement of eight. Students in third year and above are encouraged to submit applications by the deadline. Past courses have included: Think Globally, Act Locally: Citizenship in Vancouver; Chick Lit: Making (Over) a Context; Lifting the Veil: Representations of Middle-Eastern Women; and Graphic Novels: Legitimizing the Genre. SDS courses can span across all faculties and departments.

“We did it as an alternative way for students to engage with topics that weren’t in the UBC curriculum.” Guppy said, explaining that students flourish when they are given the chance to pursue topics they are passionate about. “I believe it’s been tremendously successful. Students are very engaged with learning in the program.”

“My favourite example is the concluding workshop that students had in a hotel in the Downtown Eastside, where they had been exploring alternative ways of representing social change. It was just a very moving, very involved, very passionate three hours of presentation and debate and dialogue with 40 or 50 members of the Downtown Eastside community.”

“Like Imagine UBC, which I was also very involved with when it started, it happened because a student at the University had a really good idea and we were able to jointly implement it,” he said.

“Many of our students have had many good ideas and have been able to push and work them in ways that are beneficial to generations after them.”

By Meghan Roberts (BA 2008, English Literature and International Relations).