Please update your RSS feeds — we’ve actually improved the filtering so that you’ll be able to select a feed by faculty or department or by type of blog post, such as scholarships, events, tips or achievements. Or, of course, keep receiving everything!

The 26th Annual Fall Semester TA/TM Day — The Teaching Orientation Program — is coming up in September.

Friday, September 9, 2011
8:30 am–4:30 pm
Opening Plenary Session: Diamond Alumni Centre | SFU Burnaby

TA/TM Day addresses teaching and technological skills that are essential for you as a teaching assistant or tutor marker. Advance registration is not required, but your time at TA/TM Day counts toward your TA/TM work hours for the fall semester.

The fall 201 program for TA/TM Day is now available.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

1. Bar-Ilan University
2. Ben-Gurion University
3. Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
4. Tel Aviv University
5. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
6. University of Haifa
7. Weizmann Institute of Science

The value of this post-doctoral fellowship is $40,000 annually, and the duration is for one year, with a possible one-year renewal.

Application deadline is November 1, 2011.

There are five prizes:

• Grand Prize – two round-trip tickets to Australia
• 2nd Prize – one Apple iPad
• 3rd Prizes – three Amazon Kindles

To enter, create a video with an academic component: how would studying in Australia help you achieve your goals and aspirations? Contest entrants must be Canadian or US citizens or permanent residents. Submission deadline is October 18, 2011. See full contest rules.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Prize amount increased and deadline extended, so we’re reposting.

SFU graduate students are invited to share their climate change-related research at the Sustainability Festival which will be held at SFU on September 20, 2011. The festival is co-sponsored by the Sustainable SFU, Faculty of Environment, SFU Sustainability and Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions.

The poster session is an excellent opportunity for graduate students to share their research with the SFU community. More details are available on the sustainability_poster guidelines (PDF).

Research areas can cover but are not limited to:

• sustainable communities
• low carbon emissions economy
• resilient ecosystems
• social mobilization
• health and climate change
• effects of climate change on ecosystems
• mitigation and adaptation measures

There is a prize of $200 $300 for the best poster, as adjudicated by a panel of faculty members. For further information contact Nastenka Calle, PICS-SFU Coordinator at n_calle@sfu.ca

Submission deadline: August 20, 2011 September 6, 2011.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Reposted on August 6, for their second call for volunteers.

Terry Lavender and Natalie Funk, graduate students in SFU’s School of Interactive Arts + Technology, are looking for participants in a research study on women, gaming and weight loss.  Participants will receive a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate for spending two hours watching demos, playing video games and completing a questionnaire.

You may be eligible if you:
• Are a woman between the ages of 25 and 50
• Are fluent in English
• Like playing casual or social video games
• Are interested in new ways to improve your weight and health
• Are available to travel to SFU Surrey (accessible by SkyTrain and bus)

To register, visit http://wetcoast.org/limesurvey/index.php?sid=85786&lang=en

• Terry’s website
• Terry on LinkedIn
• Terry’s columns in the Vancouver Observer
• Part of Terry’s master’s thesis: Homeless: It’s No Game
• Master’s thesis: Homeless: It’s No Game — Measuring the Effectiveness of a Persuasive Videogame

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Congratulations to Deyar Asmaro (above, with his mother at right), who received a prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship this summer from Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his upcoming PhD research: Out of sight, out of mind: Do electrophysiological markers elicited by nicotine-related visual cues predict relapse in a sample of adult smokers?

Deyar’s master’s thesis examined  the brains of marijuana addicts and his PhD research will examine the brains of nicotine addicts who are trying to quit. As we know, tobacco is the number one cause of preventable death in the world today, exceeding the number of annual deaths from car accidents, suicide, murder, AIDS, and illicit drug use combined. He hopes that his research will lead to a better understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying tobacco addiction, which will lead to more effective intervention and prevention programs. All of his research work has been in SFU’s Department of Psychology, as part of Dr. Mario Liotti’s Affective and Developmental Neuroscience Lab.

This isn’t Deyar’s first award by far. As an undergraduate, he received the 2008 Terry Fox Gold Medal and as a master’s student, he received a Arthur and Ancie Fouks Graduate Entrance Scholarship in Public Service and a Fredrick Banting and Charles Best Master Award. He’s also a world-class expert in martial arts.

Scans may help pinpoint addiction centres in the brain

• Deyar’s profile in the Affective and Developmental Neuroscience Lab, SFU Department of Psychology
• Master’s Thesis: The neural correlates of marijuana addiction: Differences in the processing of drug-related and emotional pictures between addicted versus healthy controls
• SFU Release: Overcoming effects of bullying earns Terry Fox medal
• The Province: Special Mentor Helped Rescue Troubled Teen

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Changes to Student Loans for BC Students
The governments of Canada and BC are integrating their full-time student financial assistance programs (Canada Student Loans and BC Student Loans) to simplify your borrowing experience. Whether you have previous BC student loans or you are a first-time applicant, you will be affected. For further information, see http://www.aved.gov.bc.ca/studentaidbc/integration.htm

Changes to Work-Study and Bursary Assessments
Financial Aid and Awards will be implementing changes to the bursary and Work-study assessment processes to address the growing financial need of our students.  This may affect your funding eligibility. Application period:  August 29–September 16, 2011.

Need Advice?
If you have any questions regarding these changes, please meet with a Financial Aid Advisor.  Financial Aid Advisors are available at the Burnaby campus in person or by phone (778-782-4356) during the following drop-in times:

Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30 am to 3:30 pm
Wednesday, 9:30 am to 2 pm
Friday, 10 am to 3:30 pm

Limited drop-in times are also available at the Surrey and Vancouver campuses.  Please see http://students.sfu.ca/financialaid/dropin-advising.html for days and times.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Barbara Lindenberg will be presenting her final MFA dance project for the School for the Contemporary Arts on August 18, 2011, 8 pm, at the WISE Hall in Vancouver. Admission is by donation.

A Thousand Mountains brings Barbara Lindenberg’s choreography to the charming dancefloor of Vancouver’s Wise Hall. From unsettlingly silent lip-synching to slow motion depictions of crowd surfing, each dance creates a world on its own and in relation to others. Best performed in informal environments, Barbara’s dances are short events of a depictive nature. These highly accessible works present a synthesis of simplicity, complexity, absurdity, and optimism.

Barbara Lindenberg is a choreographer/performer who creates contemporary dance for the stage as well as site-specific works. She had the pleasure of carrying forward research and creation as a guest with the Amsterdam Master of Choreography (AMCh) at the Amsterdamse Hoogeschool voor de Kunsten this past spring/summer.

She has worked with songwriters and composers including Jennifer Castle, Dave Chokroun, Eric Chenaux, John Sherlock, Dale Morningstar, Jason Benoit, Jonathan Adjemian, Taylor Rankin and Michael Overton. While she most often creates and performs her own choreography she has also performed dances by Marie France Forcier, Learie McNicolls, Megan English, Aimée Dawn Robinson, Hope Terry, Magali Charrier, Sara Porter, Denise Duric, Allen Kaeja and others.

Her dances have been presented by Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Just for Laughs Street Festival (Toronto), Fringe Shanghai, Series 808 Season Finale, AWOL Gallery’s wHole exhibition, Lab Cabaret, A Month of Sundays, Au Revoir Darling, and Up Darling. Barbara has also presented sets of dances independently at a variety of informal venues in Vancouver and Toronto.

—

Update: This post is moving to a new home: [See our new website.]

Topics that will be covered: