A new Centre for Scholarly Communications is being established at UBC’s Okanagan campus with support from Alaa Abd-El-Aziz, Provost and Vice Principal, and Gwen Zilm, Associate Vice President, Learning Services.
The Centre for Scholarly Communication, a new two-year pilot initiative at UBC’s Okanagan campus, will provide graduate students with opportunities to learn advanced writing skills and support them in sharing their research findings in the digital world.
“Preparing for publication in an open-access or digital environment presents unique challenges,” says Gwen Zilm, Associate Vice President Learning Services.
“Our goal in opening the Centre for Scholarly Communication is to ensure that our graduate students at both the master’s and PhD levels are adept at all forms of academic writing, be it an academic paper, a thesis or a dissertation, and that they can communicate their research findings effectively using both traditional and new digital tools and digital media.”
Starting with 41 graduate students in 2005, the College of Graduate Studies at UBC’s Okanagan campus has rapidly grown to more than 500 graduate students this year.
“We have an ambitious graduate studies program and view this new initiative as an important part of ensuring the success of our graduate students,” says Alaa Abd-El-Aziz, Provost and Vice-Principal, who is underwriting the new initiative with $200,000 in pilot funding. “We expect that our students will benefit from this not only as they pursue their graduate degrees but throughout their careers.”
“Bringing together the resources and expertise of the Library, IT Services and our Centre for Teaching and Learning, this program will allow graduate supervisors to focus on developing the research potential of each graduate student,” says Zilm, “and we will help those students succeed in sharing their knowledge effectively.”
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