The University of British Columbia ranks 39th in the 2012 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), prepared by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UBC ranked 37 last year, and has consistently ranked in the upper 30s in recent years. Of the other Canadian universities in the top 100, the University of Toronto goes from 26 to 27, McGill University moves up from 64 to 63 and McMaster University moves from 89 to 92.

ARWU ranking methodology uses the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes, the number of highly cited researchers, the number of articles published in top journals, and the number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance with respect to the size of an institution.

For details, visit: http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2012.html.

In October 2011, Times Higher Education World University Rankings put UBC at 22nd in the world. To view UBC’s placing in both rankings since 2003: http://www.ubc.ca/about/global.html

to top

Arvind Gupta, chief executive officer and scientific director of Mitacs and professor at UBC Dept. of Computer Science, is the recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Gupta sat on the six-member Research and Development Review Expert Panel struck by the Government of Canada to conduct a comprehensive review of all existing federal support for business R&D.

Gupta was among the 15 Canadians awarded the medals at a ceremony at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC. For more information, visit http://thelinkpaper.ca/?p=18212.

to top

Ian Ross McDonald, adjunct faculty at the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), and his former student Andrew Neumann won awards of excellence in two of the juried categories of re:THINK HOUSING, a City of Vancouver competition on new ideas for affordable housing.

McDonald proposed “Bridge Housing,” a regulatory reform to increase density and the availability of property ownership while maintaining a community’s existing urban fabric. UBC alumnus Neumann explored new ecological models of home ownership with community-centred, performance-based lots and housing designs organized around shared energy and resources.

The competition saw almost 70 entries come from around the world including the Netherlands, Turkey, the U.S., Mexico and Singapore. Winning entries will now be submitted as part of the mayor’s report on housing affordability to Vancouver City Council in the fall.

to top

Four members of UBC’s Dept. of Curriculum and Pedagogy contributed to the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS) in Rio de Janeiro on July 2 to 5. This fourth conference, held every three years, drew 160 attendees from 22 countries.

Peter Grimmett, professor and head of Curriculum and Pedagogy, led the UBC delegation with a talk about the educational need for curriculum theory. Jung Hoon Jung, an advanced doctoral student, explored the relationship between the high test scores Korean school students achieve on international tests and the high suicide rate of students studying for those tests. Professors Bill Pinar and Bill Doll delivered the final keynote. Prior to the conference, Pinar taught a course on his own works at the State University of Rio de Janeiro that was delivered via distance-learning to four other universities in Brazil.

For more information on the conference, visit http://www.periodicos.proped.pro.br/iviaacs/.

to top

Times Higher Education magazine is inviting students, student unions, university faculty and administrative staff to make a 10-second video that completes the sentence “My university is world-class because…”

The short-video competition is part of the official launch of the World University Rankings 2012-13. The winner willreceive an iPad and will be featured in the official launch video for the Rankings. The video will also be broadcast on the rankings website http://bit.ly/thewur, which reaches a global audience of millions.
 
Films may focus on qualities at which the institution excels at—teaching, research, access, diversity, sport and social life. All entries must be submitted by Sept. 4, 2012.
 
For more information, visit http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/videocomp.

to top