Take The Next Step and Start Your Okanagan Career

The Okanagan Valley is BC’s sun destination, drawing tourists, retirees and students alike. While it’s a great place to attend university, what’s the job market like after graduation? Why do young graduates often leave the Valley to start their careers? Are the options for carving out a career in the Okanagan really so limited? Join us for The Next Step: Your Okanagan Career and find out about the region’s hot professions and where future opportunities likely lie. Learn about some of the Okanagan’s largest and emerging employers and what they’re looking for in organizational leaders. Discover what you can do today to build your professional value and plant your stake in the Okanagan.

Event Details

Tuesday, June 12, 2012
6:30 – 8:30 pm 

Laurel Packinghouse
1304 Ellis Street
Kelowna, BC, V1Y 1Z8

Moderator

Chris Walker –  Host, CBC Daybreak

Panelists

Donnie Ungaro – Youth Culture Officer, Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission

Bernard Momer – Associate Professor, Geography, UBC Okanagan

Kyla Lavallee, BA’12 – First Nations Liaison Intern, Okanagan Basin Water Board

RSVP

RSVP by Friday, June 8, 2012. If you have any questions, please contact Erica Triggs at erica.triggs@ubc.ca or 250-807-9360.

Panelist Biographies

Donnie Ungaro

Donnie is a born and bred local.  As the Youth Culture Officer for the CO-EDC, he is focused on creating a positive, dynamic and engaging culture for Young Professionals in the Okanagan. He is the director of the OYP Collective, a newly formed group that is the central hub for spotlighting the great work local young professional organizations are doing.

Bernard Momer

Biography available here

Kyla Lavallee

A daughter of the Nisga’a and Gitxsan Nations, Kyla Lavallee grew up in various communities strung along BC’s Highway 16. Upon completion of an associate degree in Arts from Northwest Community College, she continued her studies at UBC’s Okanagan campus where, in her senior years, she worked as an aboriginal peer mentor and, later, as lead coordinator for Aboriginal Programs & Service’s peer support network. In her work and volunteer roles, Kyla explores an inner drive to help others and an outlet for the “community compassion” she feels. She is now the First Nations liaison for the Okanagan Basin Water Board, a natural extension of her priorities and her educational and volunteer adventures.

Event Details

Sunday, July 15, 2012
Whitechapel Sports Centre
55 Durward Street, Whitechapel
London (map)

RSVP

Please email: ubc.uk.alumni@gmail.com. When registering, please indicate your preferred position.

Event Details

Sunday, July 1, 2012
10:30 am to 10:00 pm
Trafalgar Square (map)

RSVP

If you would like to volunteer at the UBC booth, or plan to drop by, please email: ubc.uk.alumni@gmail.com.

If you missed out on our bowling event in March, this is your opportunity to enjoy some pin-splitting entertainment!

RSVP soon as there are only 18 spots available!

Event Details

Sunday, June 17, 2012
4:00 – 5:00 pm

Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes
Lower Level, Tavistock Hotel, Bedford Way (map)
London

RSVP

Please email: ubc.uk.alumni@gmail.com

Event Details

Thursday, May 31, 2012
6:00 pm onwards

Alleycat Pub in Soho
4 Denmark Street
London (map)

RSVP

Please email: ubc.uk.alumni@gmail.com.

(Want to know more about the business of ideas? Look for the article in the Spring/Summer edition of Trek Magazine, due out this June.)

Here are just a few of the stories we’ve found about UBC entrepreneurs. If you have some of your own to share, please do so in the comments.

MobiChill, by Kaizen Biomedical

By inducing therapeutic hypothermia in cardiac arrest patients, MobiChill can reduce the risk of devastating side effects such as long term neurological damage, explains Annelies Tjebbes, who is graduating with a degree in electrical engineering— biomedical option.

“The device looks like a small blanket and can be used to quickly bring down the patient’s body temperature,” says Tjebbes.

Find out more

Target Tape, by Aeos Biomedical

A brilliantly simple idea, Target Tape is a disposable, adhesive sticker with grid or ruler markings that appear in medical scans, allowing doctors to make more precise incisions during surgery. It is applied to the patient’s skin over the area of interest, and when Target Tape is removed, it leaves behind an ink imprint of locational markings, allowing doctors to be more accurate in matching the image with the patient’s skin.

Find out more

Good Nights

Good Nights is a free app that allows users to purchase tickets for an event by scanning a QR code – which could be on a poster, a flyer or a Facebook page – with a smartphone. Ticket information appears on the phone and users scan a credit card to pay. The app then produces a digital ticket which is scanned by venue staff when the user arrives.

“So when you show up to an event, you don’t actually have to think about the will-call line or removing your credit card and all those things to verify who you are,” explains UBC commerce student Michael Moll.

Find out more

Nuuly, formerly RentGeek

Created by business and tech geeks who became frustrated by existing apartment rental listing sites, RentGeek turns up search results that caters to your lifestyle.

The first time you log on to RentGeek, you will be asked a series of questions on elements of your lifestyle – from “do you have pets?” to “do you cook?” to “do you go to the gym?”.  Questions like these help the personalized home rental site recommend areas that best match your current lifestyle. Further, RentGeek makes browsing easy by displaying your most important needs and rating each listing for you.

find Out more

Transcend Goggles

The Transcend Goggles—the world’s first goggles with integrated GPS and near-eye display—hit the slopes in November 2010, providing users with real-time feedback including speed, latitude/longitude, altitude, distance travelled, run counter, chronos, time, and temperature, and an application to upload recorded information to social media.

“It’s like a dashboard on your car,” Eisenhardt explains. “It completely changes the user’s experience and allows you to really test yourself and your performance. It’s completely addictive!”

Find out more

UBC Entrepreneurship Programs

The ARC Initiative

The ARC Initiative aims to challenge conventional ideas about providing aid to global communities in need. Its goal is to foster genuine and sustainable two-way exchanges and relationships that nurture community growth and prosperity.

Students, alumni and faculty from the Sauder School of Business, as well as established leaders in the Vancouver business community, will travel to Africa to share ideas about business practices and entrepreneurship. Local business leaders will participate in workshops to develop entrepreneurial and leadership skills, while the students involved in the project will have the unparalleled opportunity to understand local business practices and experience a new culture.

Find out how you can help

entrepreneurship@UBC

entrepreneurship@UBC is a campus-wide initiative led by the Sauder School of Business, the Faculty of Applied Science, the Faculty of Science and the University-Industry Liaison Office.

At the heart of this initiative to support entrepreneurship in its many forms at UBC is the entrepreneurship@UBC Seed Accelerator fund, provided in partnership with the BC Innovation Council.

UBC Alumni Centre

One of the challenges a startup faces is finding the space to get their business off the ground. The new UBC Alumni Centre will contain an business incubator space for student and recent alumni. We will be working with our campus partners to facilitate this amazing new tradition which will continue on a lot of great work done by our friends at Entrepreneurship@UBC.

An important part of the program is its alumni mentors, who provide direction to young entrepreneurs.  Do you have mentoring skills that you would like to share?  Don’t wait for the new building, sign up to be a mentor today.

Today, Dr. Gleave is a BC Leadership Chair and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Urologic Sciences at UBC. He is the Director of the Vancouver Prostate Center, and CEO of the PC-TRIADD National Centre of Excellence in Commercialization and Research, where he leads a multidisciplinary team of 20 scientists and several research programs that bridge the innovation gaps that confront competitive knowledge translation and commercialization. He has published more than 300 papers and attracted  over $60M in research funding. Dr. Gleave’s research characterizes molecular mechanisms mediating treatment resistance in cancer, focusing on stress-activated adaptive responses that drive acquired treatment resistance, and designing rational combination co-targeting strategies to abrogate the stress response to create conditional lethality and improve cancer control. He patented several anti-cancer drugs and in 2001 founded OncoGenex Technologies, now a Nasdaq-listed biotechnology company for which he serves as Chief Scientific Officer. Dr Gleave developed OGX-011, an inhibitor of the cell survival gene, clusterin, that potentiates anti-cancer therapies in many cancer models. 7 clinical studies have been completed, including a randomized trial demonstrating a 7 month gain in overall survival when OGX-011 was combined with docetaxel. Two Phase III registration trials with OGX-011 began in 2010.  OGX-427 is another agent targeting Hsp27 that completed Phase I studies in 2010, and a TFRI grant was supported in 2010 to support Phase II studies initiated in 2011.

Dr. Gleave is the recipient of numerous awards, including the NCIC’s prestigious William Rawls Award for contributions to cancer control in Canada, the Society of Urologic Oncology’s Young Investigator Award, Finalist, Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, 2004, and Clinician-Scientist Award, Prostate Cancer Foundation.  In 2003, he was appointed a Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia, and a BC Leadership Chair through the Province of BC’s Leading Edge Endowment Fund in 2005. Dr. Gleave was awarded the 2006 BC Biotech Award for Innovation and Achievement, and the 2007 BC Innovation Council Frontiers in Research Award.

On June 30^th, come and celebrate the 26th Anniversary of the All-Canadian Universities Alumni event in Chicago at Ravinia Festival, hosted by UBC!

Hosted for the second year, this will be a great opportunity to see old friends and make new ones among fellow Canadians.  Ravinia is a wonderful place to sit, relax and soak up the mellow tunes of a legendary fellow Canadian artist.

Event Details

Date:  June 30, 2012

5:00 pm:                   Doors open
5:15 – 7:15 pm:         Buffet dinner & drinks
7:30 pm:                   Concert begins

Venue: Ravinia Festival
200 Ravinia Park Rd
Highland Park, IL

Tickets:

$125 CAD for Reserved Pavilion Seating (including dinner and wine in private event tent)

We have reserved a limited number of the Reserved Pavilion Tickets and these tickets are sold out to the public, book your seats early! 

$100 CAD for Lawn Seating (including dinner and wine in private event tent)

All concerts in the pavilion are broadcast to the lawn via a state-of-the-art sound system.  Lawn seats are byo blanket or chair and the stage is not within view of the lawn seats. Lawn seats are on grass, so please wear appropriate footwear.

Deadline to purchase tickets is May 29, 2012

RSVP

Questions?  Please contact Alexe Yeung at ayeung2012@kellogg.northwestern.edu or 312.662.2405.

Parking will be $20 at the site.  Please consider taking the Metra to the venue, using the Union Pacific Northern Line.  More information can be found here.  www.metrarail.com

For more information about the event, please go to: www.ravinia.org

This event will occur, rain or shine, per Ravinia’s policy.

Here are a few of our favourite places to eat on campus:

Pricing guide:
$: Expect to pay $5-10 for your meal
$$: Expect to pay $10-20 for your meal
$$$: Expect to pay $20-30 for your meal

Student Fare

If you want to relive your student days, these are our recommendations.

• Honour Roll: Decent, pre-made sushi. Popular, so you know your food is pretty fresh! Located in the SUB downstairs. $
• The Delly: Great wraps, soup and curries. Located in the SUB downstairs. $
• The Moon: We are reliably informed that this Chinese is reminiscent of that served at Yum Yum’s in the good old days. Located in the SUB downstairs. $
• Place Vanier: See how residence dining has improved/deteriorated since your days! Has a variety of cuisines, including Mexican, Asian and custom sandwiches. $
• Pie R^2: Great pizza by the slice. Located in the SUB upstairs. $

Casual Eats

Looking for somewhere quick where you can still take a seat?

• Triple O’s: You have to order at the counter, but there are plenty of tables inside this White Spot spin-off burger joint. $$
• The Pit Pub: Student-friendly drinks pricing, decent burgers, waffle fries! What more could you ask for? $
• The Pendulum/Gallery Lounge: Currently closed, these two will be combined and reopen in May 2012. $

Sit-Down Restaurants

Full-service restaurants located on campus.

• Sage Bistro: Fine dining on campus, with a beautiful view of the north side of campus. Located west of Flagpole Plaza. $$$
• Mahony and Sons: Irish pub with good pub grub. Located near the Shoppers Drug Mart, South East of the Student Union Building. $$$
• The Point Grill: Pastas, pizzas, burgers and a few mains. Located on Lower Mall (Marine Drive Residence) $$

A little further afield…

Here are some options located off-campus but still nearby:

• One More Sushi: Popular Japanese restaurant at the University Village, just a block from campus. Bookings recommended on Fridays! $
• Burgoo: The grilled cheese and tomato soup is a staple in the winter. Their stews and cheese fondues also make this a popular spot. Located on West 10^th. $$
• Chin Ho: Fantastic ginger beef and Szechwan green beans. Located on West 10^th. $$

And if you’re looking for UBC-style cinnamon buns, try any of the faculty building cafes (eg. Sauder, MOA, Buchanan) or the Bookstore Cafe.

There are plenty of other places to eat on campus – check out the full list on the UBC Food Services website.

Disclaimer: Opinions stated above are those of individual staff members, not the university.