GREEN COLLEGE - Key Persons

Airini earned her PhD at UBC in Curriculum and Instruction, adding it to a BA in Religious Studies, a Master of Education and an MBA. She has been recognized by UBC as one of its Outstanding Alumni and as an Indigenous Woman Leader. She has led educational planning strategies in several different countries, handling budgets of over 90 million dollars, and is currently an advisor to the UN's Food and Agriculture Division. Her research focuses on the accessibility of educational success for all. Airini brings to her role as Vice Principal her view that research and leadership are forms of service. She says: "I will always be asking myself: How will my time in service and as Vice Principal be of greatest benefit to the students, to the staff, the leadership and to the community that Green College wishes to connect with." She intends, as well, to approach her role "with an appreciation for the opportunity to be in a nation and nation's territory, and to be a visitor there and to be in service to a land that has been involved in research and teaching and community-making and ideas exchange for millennia." Nicola holds a PhD from UBC in Human Kinetics, as well as an MSc in Human Biodynamics and a BSc in Psychology. She currently runs the Motor Skills Lab in Kinesiology at UBC, which examines how and why various practice variables (such as instruction, demonstrations, feedback and order of practice) impact motor learning and transfer. Nicola has a keen sense of the interdisciplinarity of the College. "I'm almost like a prototypical multidisciplinary researcher," she says, noting that her research has been funded by all three Tri-Agencies in Canada. Currently, she is doing work that straddles the social sciences and natural sciences. Nicola has remained a part of the Green College community since moving out, often going to talks which she says she finds invigorating: "I've been teaching all day and dealing with lots of things, and I walk over to the College, there's a sort of physical distance. You walk over to the Coach House and you listen to a talk that's not in your area, so you can put your pen down. You don't have to worry about taking notes and can just listen to something that reminds you why you're a scholar, and how privileged you are to have time to think and listen and engage in ideas and friendship." Airini and Nicola come back to Green College with their experience as former Resident Members. "Afterwards," remarks Airini, "you realize what an incredible opportunity it was: to break down barriers, to genuinely come together and have a go at talking across disciplines and sharing ideas that range from a microbe to black holes, from chemistry to poetry, from education-my world-to saving languages, saving salmon, saving trees." Closing her eyes, she continued: "If I just close my eyes and say ‘Green College,' all of these different images come forward, from the dining hall, to the scholars coming in to give talks, to when we were lucky enough to have a gala … and then to look outside my window from time to time when I'd be beavering away on my PhD research and to see the extraordinary forest." In the end, she said, living at Green "was this rarefied time of privilege to really swim in ideas and research and make yourself something that could do something that mattered." For Nicola, one of the most significant parts of College life was the people she was surrounded with, all coming from different programs and disciplines. "You arrive at dinner," she reminisced, "and you sit down and you have these weird and wonderful conversations, which was energizing. I think, especially after a very long day in your subject area, it was nice to just be in somebody else's world and subject area." Some of Nicola's specific memories of her time at the College, and which she narrated fondly, include joining the Green College Players and performing in productions of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Ernest. The beauty of Green College, Nicola suggested, is that "there's no shortage of people around you who will say ‘Yes, let's do this' and actually will go and do something about it. I mean, that's what's so amazing about Green College." She recalled one instance of this when a friend, who was in a pipe band at Simon Fraser University, offered to come to the College to play with the band, on the condition that they be fed. A full-blown Robbie Burns Night was organized, with pipe-playing, kilt-wearing, poetry-reading, haggis-eating and whisky-tasting.

Job Titles:

• Program and Communications Lead

My name is Anahita Karandikar (she/her/hers), and I am a second year student in the Economics PhD program at UBC. I am a Director and Women in Econ/Policy, a non-profit working to make the field of Economics less gender-unequal. My research interests lie in behavioural development economics, political economy and gender. In particular, I am interested in how social norms and experiences in childhood and adolescence influence the development of cognitive and non-cognitive skills and women's participation in the labour market. I have experience in psychological first aid and supportive listening. My background also includes several years of teaching (at the school and undergraduate level) and peer-mentorship. I am always happy to listen and talk through any interpersonal, academic, professional or mental well-being related issue and help with navigating access to resources and further support. Say hello or contact me via phone, text message, email or in-person when you see me.

Job Titles:

• Membership Coordinator

Anna joined Green College in December 2019 as the Finance and Administrative Assistant. Her previous role was responsible for the day-to-day financial management of the College. Now, she oversees Green College Membership and Society Members initiatives and support. Prior to joining UBC, Anna worked in the private sector in forestry, engineering, and financial corporations, as well as local non-profit organizations. She has a Diploma in Finance from BCIT and has studied Business Administration at SFU.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Chair of the Advisory Board

Arnie Guha is the multidisciplinary creative behind Acid4Yuppies, which focuses on experiential art works - from illuminated light boxes and electric murals, to psychedelics-inspired scarves and fine art prints. His 'trippy' works are complemented by an extensive body of minimalist photography and portraiture. From vivid colours to subdued hues, his practice explores both realms of the visual experience from extreme intensity to soft suggestion. Born and raised in Jadavpur, a fabled neighbourhood at the southern edge of Calcutta, India, Arnie spent much of his childhood in neighbourhood printing shops, and at the local portrait photographer's studio, where he became fascinated by the intersection of painting and photography as he watched the photo-artist manually touch up pictures with brush and pencil. Educated at Jadavpur University, Calcutta, and then at Cambridge University, UK, Arnie fell in love with medieval manuscripts: the unapologetic vibrance of the colours and the power of the image to communicate what remains ineffable in the verbal realm. This would later inform his doctoral work on secondary orality and information visualization in digital, hypertextual environments at the University of British Columbia, where he was also a Resident Member of Green College. Since then, Arnie has built a leading Canadian Experience Design practice at Phase 5, where his clients include the London Stock Exchange Group, media companies and several of Canada's largest banks. When COVID-19 put a halt to traveling, he found himself meditating in his garden in downtown Toronto. Acid4Yuppies is his collection of transformative art, born out of meditation during the forced stillness of COVID-19. Arnie splits his time between Toronto and Montreal, and enjoys collaborating with DJs and other visual artists to create experiential, accessible art. His last solo exhibit, "Northern Borealis," was held at the John B. Aird Gallery in Toronto, in the summer of 2022. In October 2022, Arnie's experimental video, "Entropy: A Walk in the Woods" was exhibited as part of NOCTURE: ART AT NIGHT in Dartmouth, N.S.

Job Titles:

• Assistant Principal, Operations

Clark joined the College in September 2006. As Assistant Principal, he is involved in all areas of the College including administration, facilities, financial management, human resources, and residence life. He has an academic background with a Bachelor of Arts double major in Psychology and English from the University of British Columbia, and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Victoria. Interested in human performance (and as an accredited Integral Associate Coach), technology, and design, Clark enjoys the variety of work his position provides. Privately, Clark enjoys cycling, music, photography, and games. The most rewarding part is coaching and mentoring residents, and he looks forward to discovering the unique talents and energies of each new group of Green College residents.

Job Titles:

• Lead, Policy and Partnerships, Foundry BC

I originally came to UBC for graduate studies after growing up with big blue prairie skies. Over a decade later, I've been fortunate enough to continue settling here and call these beautiful Coast Salish lands and waters home. My personal and professional life has spanned the social sector, including the anti-poverty, food security, and mental health and substance use fields. The core values of my work are embedding equity and justice-oriented principles into policy, research and decision-making processes to reduce systemic harms and support human wellbeing. Currently, I work at Foundry BC as Lead, Policy and Partnerships, to support health and wellness for young people across the province. I am a Green College Society Member, former Residents' Council Chair and hold many fond memories and dear friendships struck in the Great Hall.

Job Titles:

• Ex Officio Member
• Interim President and Vice - Chancellor, UBC

Professor Buszard served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UBC's Okanagan Campus from 2012 to 2020. Before joining UBC in 2012, Professor Buszard was at Dalhousie University where she served as Director of Environmental Programs and coordinated an initiative to create a new College and university-wide academic programming in sustainability. Prior to joining Dalhousie in 2006, she was Professor of Plant Science at McGill University and served as Dean of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Associate Vice-Principal of the Macdonald Campus from 1996 to 2005. A plant scientist and strawberry breeder, Professor Buszard is author of numerous scientific and technical publications. She holds an academic appointment as Professor of Biology in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science on the Okanagan campus. Her current research interests include institutional innovation and sustainability. Professor Buszard was born in the U.K. and received her PhD from the University of London. In addition to her academic work, she is active in her profession and as a volunteer.

Job Titles:

• Professor Emeritus

Prof. Fisher possesses a wealth of experience and deep knowledge of Green College and graduate education. He is no stranger to the College. He has been involved in various capacities since 1995. Most recently, he served as Vice-Principal from 2014-2017 and as Acting-Principal from 2015-2016. He is also no stranger to service. He has served as Principal of the UBC Emeritus College in 2019-2020. He has also served as President of four national organizations: Sociology of Education Association (USA); Canadian Foundations of Education; Canadian Society for the Study of Education; and the Canadian Federation of the Humanities and Social Sciences. He served as Head and Chair of the Department of Educational Studies. He was elected as a Senator at Large of the UBC Senate for the triennium 1999-2002. Prof. Fisher obtained his B.Soc.Sc. in Sociology at the University of Birmingham and his PhD. in Sociology of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He came to UBC in 1976 and was promoted to Professor in 1992 in what became the Department of Educational Studies. He has held Visiting Professor positions in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and France. Using an historical sociology approach, Prof. Fisher's research focuses on the impact of large scale philanthropy on university education, boundary work within the social sciences and between that group of disciplines and other knowledge areas, academy-industry relations and the marketization of university systems, and the formulation and implementation of higher education policy.

Job Titles:

• S Vision

The College was founded in 1993 with a generous gift from Dr. Cecil H. Green, a UBC alumnus and co-founder of Geophysical Services Limited, which eventually became Texas Instruments. Dr. Green observed that the University was on the edge of pivotal change. Being an expert in only one field was no longer realistic, he realized. What if engineers could learn from historians? What would happen if artists were inspired by physicists? And so the idea for Green College was born: A centre for advanced interdisciplinary scholarship at UBC. The heart of the College's mandate was to foster connections beyond the traditional limits of academic discourse, opening different disciplines to each other, and the University to the wider local community and the world. The College has formal ties with Massey College at the University of Toronto, and Green Templeton College, a sister institution at Oxford University and also endowed by Dr. Green.

Job Titles:

• Ex Officio Member
• Provost and Vice - President Academic

Dr. Gage Averill is Provost and Vice-President Academic, at UBC Vancouver, and Professor in the UBC School of Music. From 2010 to 2022, Dr. Averill served as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at UBC. Dr. Averill, a renowned ethnomusicologist whose research in Haitian popular music has earned him several awards, joined UBC in 2010 after holding positions as Vice-Principal, Academic, and Dean for the University of Toronto, Mississauga campus, and also Dean of Music at the University of Toronto. Prior to that, he served as Chair of the Department of Music at New York University.

Job Titles:

• Chairman in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

I am the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA, Faculty Affiliate at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Toronto, and Board Member at Carnegie Mellon University's Block Center for Technology and Society in Pittsburgh, PA. I have published many scholarly articles on the economics of innovation and am co-author of Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence and co-editor of The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda. I serve on the editorial boards of Management Science and the Strategic Management Journal. I am founder of the Creative Destruction Lab and co-founder of Next Canada, both of which are not-for-profit programs to support entrepreneurs. I am a proud alumnus of UBC and former Resident Member of Green College and served as chauffeur for Sir Cecil Green during one of his visits to the College.

Job Titles:

• Assistant Principal, Programs

Heather joined Green College in October 2021. In her role as Assistant Principal (Programs), Heather oversee the organization of all public events and programming at the College. Heather comes to the College by way of her former position in the Office of Research in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. She is also an alumna of UBC, having completed her Masters's and PhD in Art History, Visual Art and Theory, and completed her undergraduate degree in Archaeology at SFU. In addition to her role at Green College, Heather also occasionally teaches postsecondary classes in art history, and researches and publishes on the topic of early modern English portraiture.

Job Titles:

• Director, Simpson Center for the Humanities, Lockwood Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English, University of Washington

Given my position as Director of a center that supports cross-disciplinary research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences, I have long admired, even envied the very existence of Green College as an incubator of the kinds of work and conversations among faculty and graduate students we seek to encourage at the University of Washington. Thus, I was pleased to participate in the College's external review in 2012. As for my own research, I work in the broad domains of the emotions, women and aging, and technology and culture, with my last book entitled Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and Poetics of Emotions (2009). I have served as president of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes and am on the board of directors of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. My PhD in Literature is from the University of California, San Diego, my BA in Economics from Smith College.

Job Titles:

• Administrative Coordinator
• Finance

Job Titles:

• Associate Professor, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and Anthropology, University of British Columbia

I am an anthropologist and linguist. My research focuses on language reclamation, revitalization, documentation and conservation; language mapping, policies, politics and language rights; orality, archives, digital tools and technology. Indigenous methodologies and decolonial practice inform and shape my teaching and research. For over twenty years, my regional focus has been the Himalayan region (particularly Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan), and more recently, the Pacific Northwest. I direct two international research initiatives, Digital Himalaya and the World Oral Literature Project, and I edit the Oral Literature Series with the Open Book Publishers. I am also the principal investigator for the Relational Lexicography project through which we are developing a framework and toolkit for collaborative, community-informed dictionary work with marginalized languages. I write about language policy, linguistic rights, digital technologies, cultural heritage and mother tongue instruction. As a firm advocate of collaborative research, I am committed to widening public engagement with anthropology and linguistics.

Job Titles:

• Principal of Massey College

Nathalie Des Rosiers is the Principal of Massey College, Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, Senior Fellow of Trinity College and Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa (Common Law). From 2016 -2019, she was the MPP representing the riding of Ottawa-Vanier and Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry (2018). Prior to politics, she was Dean of Law, Common Law, University of Ottawa (2013-2016), General Counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (2009-2013), Vice-President, Governance, University of Ottawa (2008-2009), Dean of Law, Civil Law (2004-2008) and President of the Law Commission of Canada (2000-2004). With Peter Oliver and Patrick Macklem, she co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Canadian Constitutional Law (2017). She has written extensively on civil liberties, human rights and law reform, focusing her work on the right to protest and freedom of expression. Her early work on limitations of action for sexual violence has transformed Canadian law in the 1990s. With Louise Langevin and Marie-Pier Nadeau, she has also written L'indemnisation des victimes de violence sexuelle et conjugale (Prix Walter Owen, 2014). She has received the Order of Canada, the Order of Ontario, honorary doctorates from Université UCL (Belgium) and the Law Society of Ontario, le Prix Christine Tourigny (Barreau du Québec) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

My name is Prerna Kundu (she/her/hers), and I am a third-year Economics Ph.D. student at UBC. My research fields are development and behavioral economics, with a focus on gender. At UBC, I have worked for a year as a teaching assistant, providing support to students through academic difficulties, and helping them navigate university resources. I am the Founder of Women in Econ/Policy, an India-based nonprofit working to make the field of Economics more inclusive, and have several years of mentorship experience. You're always welcome to reach out to me with any academic, personal, interpersonal, or mental health-related issues you would like to speak about. I am happy to offer whatever assistance I can and direct you to where you may be able to receive further support. Please say hi or contact me by email, text, phone call, in-person when you see me, or by coming by my room.

Job Titles:

• Dean and Vice - Provost of Graduate
• Dean and Vice - Provost, University of British Columbia

Susan Porter is the Dean and Vice-Provost of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies at UBC, and a Clinical Professor in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. Throughout her 20-year career in graduate education leadership, she has sought to promote a student-centric orientation to graduate education, with a special focus on holistic development and rethinking of research graduate education's core - students' research and theses - to better prepare them for the urgent needs of the 21st century. She was the President of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies from 2017-19 and the 2020 recipient of the Council of Graduate Schools' Debra W. Stewart Award for Outstanding Leadership in Graduate Education.

My name is William Huang (he/him/his) and I am currently in my second year of law (JD) at UBC. I have over two years of training and experience in supportive listening and crisis intervention when I did my Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Alberta just before coming to UBC. In addition to experience discussing a wide variety of topics, I have also organized various educational and community building events such as a panel about relationships in the LGBTQ2S+ community. In my spare time you might see me playing various sports such as soccer or volleyball, streaming Netrunner, playing a group board game, at the piano, or enjoying a nice walk along the beach. Please feel free to reach out for any reason via the method you feel most comfortable. I am always more than happy to support you in any way I can; no issue is too big or too small.

Job Titles:

• Hospitality Coordinator