****NEW WEBSITE****

We have created a new website for the Geography and Planning Students’ Society! The new web address makes it a bit easier to find us, check it:

ualberta.ca/~gapss

GAPSS Executive Members 2014-2015

Thank you to all those who came out on the last day of classes (April 9, 2014) to vote! Please welcome your new Executive team for 2014-2015:

President: Victoria Pham

Vice President Planning: Christine Lee

Vice President Human Geography: Dylan Ames

Vice President Finance: Ranon Soans

Vice President Events: Lucas Sherwin

We are all excited for what will surely be a fun upcoming year! In the meantime, good luck on those finals!

Overview of Past Events

Hello everyone! 

Apologies for the lack of posts but here is a quick run through of the events we had. 

-Grilled Cheese Fundraiser 
-Socials 
-Tour of Edmonton’s Department of Sustainable Development 
-Movie Night 
-WDCAG in Lethbridge 
-Tour of Edmonton’s Waste Management Centre 

Executive Members 2013-2014

Hello everyone!

Congrats to the new exec members!

President: Larissa Poseluzny 

VP Human Geography: Michael O’Neill 

VP Planning: Brent Dragon 

Treasurer: Dylan Ames 

Social Events Coordinator: Elise Shillington 

We are also starting Members At Large positions. These people will be informed about exec meetings and will have the opportunity to contribute their thoughts and opinions.

Please email GAPSS (gapss@ualberta.ca) if you are interested!

-Louise

GAPSS Executive Committee Elections for 2013-2014

Hello Geographers!
Hope the semester is going well

GAPSS is hosting elections March 25 at 5PM SHARP in Tory 3-19

These are the positions available starting September 2013 and a general idea of the duties:

1. President
– Attend all meetings or send proxy
– Oversee organization of events and fundraisers for the club
– Ensure compliance of rules and regulations of the club

2. Vice President
– Share responsibilities with the President in all duties
– Act as proxy for the President
– Oversee organization of events and fundraisers for the club

3. Treasurer
– Maintain the GAPSS budget
– Oversees yearly applications for group grants
– Responsible for counting floats before and after events
– Make annual budget address at general meeting

4. Event Coordinator
– Organization of events and fundraisers for the club
– Share responsibilities with the President in all duties

These roles provide great opportunities in regards to leadership roles, building relationship with faculty and peers, and being involved in awesome human geography and planning related activities!

If you are interesting in running, please email Louise (Lye2@ualberta.ca) or GAPSS (gapss@ualberta.ca) with the position title before the election date. If you do not intend to run, please come out and support your fellow peers, as we will be voting if 2 or more people run for the same position.

Clubs Fair!!

I hope you all had a wonderful summer and is excited about the new school year! We’ve got lots planned this year, starting with Clubs Fair!

You can find us…
Tues, Sept 4 from 1-5pm in the Butterdome
and Wed Sept 5 from 9-3pm in Quad

Stop by and say hi! 😀

School Year End Wrap Up Party!

EVENT: Come out for a drink and celebrate this year’s challenges and the triumphs on Friday, April 20^th at 7:00pm at Hudson’s on Campus.

See you then!

ATLAS Symposium

The ATLAS graduate society hosted their research symposium from April 12^th-13^th. Fellow graduate human geographers Jen Baker and Sirina Hamilton presented their masters work in the afternoon. Jen discussed her preliminary research on “Backcountry snowmobilers’ risk perceptions, avalanche related information seeking behaviours, and decision-making process when dealing with avalanches and backcountry risk,” and Sirina explained her initial findings on “Local residents’ perceptions and use of the 124th street commercial corridor.” They were great presentations that showcased the important work underway in the Human Geography field.

Read Jen’s and Sirina’s abstracts here: http://wp.eas.ualberta.ca/atlas/category/symposium/

Afterwards, I actually had the chance to compete in the first ever undergraduate ATLAS symposium poster competition. I presented my work, “Applying Sustainable Cemetery Planning Initiatives to the City of Edmonton.” I was terribly worried that when I presented my poster to the judges none of it made sense. However, something quite shocking happened because I actually won the competition! My main goals in participating were to 1) get people to think more about cemeteries issues and 2) represent the human geography program. Having the judges appreciate my work was more than I could have hoped for! I hope more human geographers and planning students decide to participate in the poster competition next year.

Atlas Undergraduate Poster Competition: http://wp.eas.ualberta.ca/atlas/category/symposium-poster-competition/

Cheers,

Stephanie

Post-Election Results

Hi HuGSS!

We have some wonderful news to report about your next year representatives! The election process (on April 5^th, 2012) has resulted in the following new HuGSS leaders starting September 2012-August 2013:

President: Louise Ye
Vice President Human Geography: Angelica Zhang
Vice President Planning: ???
Treasurer: Michael O’Neil
VP Social: Sarah Gee

We have no doubt that they will do an excellent job representing the Human Geography program. But wait! You may be wondering what the ??? means. As we all have heard, the Planning program at the University of Alberta will begin this Fall. HuGSS is keeping a VP position open for a planning student, who will likely be sworn into the society sometime in the Fall. We’ll keep you posted.

Anyways! That’s all for now. A huge congrats to the new HuGSS executive!

WDCAG Conference – Kelowna, BC

Where did the time go? Sorry that we haven’t posted anything since November!

The biggest thing that happened this semester with HuGSS is the Western Division Canadian Association of Geographers from March 8-10^th, 2012. The conference was held in Kelowna, BC. It is such a quaint and beautiful city! I miss it already and want to go back. The harbour and the cultural and arts district are my favourite parts of Kelowna. The six of us who went were Kevin, Helaina, Dirk, Louise, Keegan and myself (Steph) along with fellow professors, Dr. Garvin (who was the chair of WDCAG this year) and Dr. Naqvi. So U of A representation wasn’t too shabby! Most of the other conference participants were from Universities in BC and there were a handful of students from Alberta (Kings University and the University of Lethbridge).

Good morning, Kelowna!

The whole kick off to the conference began with an ice breaker at the Doc’s pub downtown. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that we were supposed to dress up. When I arrived the man checking my ID said to me, “Oh, you didn’t dress up?” I had no idea what he was talking about and thought he meant that I was under dressed. So I retorted, “You didn’t dress up either.” He gave me an equally confused look. But when I entered the pub, it all made sense that he wasn’t referring to me wearing anything nice or elegant, but literally to a dress up. I think I saw Disney characters, Carmen Sandiego, a monkey and a jungle explorer among other things. After chatting with somebody, apparently all schools have a “theme” for the dress up. I am still not sure if this is fact or fiction.

The next day, Louise and I went on a walking tour of downtown Kelowna. This was about $20 (including lunch) and was a great and inexpensive way to learn about the city. I especially liked the temporary patios restaurant owners create by buying up parking spaces on the street. They then must construct this awkward sidewalk around the patio. Even though it is awkward, I did like this idea and thought it was better than the red tape that currently surrounds the patio dilemma for the restaurants in Edmonton. There were many neat things in Kelowna’s downtown such as the Japanese Zen Garden, the apple packing plant (Laurel Packinghouse) and the art sculptures scattered on every other street. The evening ended with a lecture by Lorna Read of War Child Canada. Truthfully, I wasn’t too familiar with the topic, but it was definitely an interesting and intense discussion to get into.

Outdoor patios in Kelowna's downtown

Saturday was the big day for the conference and the banquet. This was my first time at a geography conference and I highly recommend the experience to any of you thinking about attending one in the future (next year it will be at the University of Lethbridge). It was so much fun to bond with other human geographers from our department, as well as from other schools. The presentations and poster sessions were jammed packed with over 100 presentations. Yes. 100 presentations! It was crazy. Of course you couldn’t see all of them, but it was amazing to have 100 presentations to pick and choose the ones you wanted to go and see. My personal favourites were the GIS and urban planning related ones. Keegan, Kevin and Louise mentioned a presentation on graffiti that “blew their mind” because it was so awesome!

Left to Right: Kevin, Louise, Helaina, Dirk, Stephanie

Keegan, Kevin and I also presented posters during the coffee break sessions. I absolutely loved it! I felt a rush of adrenaline presenting an academic poster for the first time. There were about 15-20 posters up during a coffee break session – the first coffee break session was in the morning and the second one was in the afternoon. [As a side interjection: I swear, geography conferences try to fatten up the students. There were so many breakfast breads, sandwiches, pastas and desserts to choose from. Not to mention an unlimited supply of coffee and tea!] It was extremely satisfying being able to present your own work that you have spent countless hours on to a group of people who appreciate it. I presented my work on sustainable cemeteries planning in the City of Edmonton and received a lot of positive feedback from other conference attendees. Kevin presented his poster on suburban gardening in Edmonton (the printing of his poster is a completely different story in itself, but the moral here is to 1) work on your poster earlier and 2) remember that you CAN print a poster at Staples). Keegan also presented his famous rustic looking poster on the Transcend Cafe and how it has embedded itself into the Edmontonian culture.

Keegan presenting his poster

Poster Fight

We all ended up at the Laurel Packinghouse (apple plant), which is now a historic building used for event functions, for the banquet. The food, company and conversation were great! Video presentations reflecting the “Day and the life of a geographer” were presented and they were quite amusing. Unfortunately, HuGSS didn’t have a video to contribute, but maybe next year? Next up, awards were presented to undergraduate/graduate posters and presentations. Lastly, the evening ended with a dance party! And let me tell you, geographers know how to own the dance floor! It was a perfect conference experience in my books!

The banquet

Left to Right: Patrick, Keegan, Kevin, Dr. Garvin, Louise, Stephanie

Some tips for the future if you’re thinking about going to an upcoming conference:

1. Apply for the early bird conference registration (you will save so much money).

2. Apply for grants. I personally received an individual CBAS grant. The HuGSS group also received SU grant funding.

3. Fundraise early with HuGSS (ex. BBQ, bake sale)

4. If applicable, check for seat sales EARLY and just book! It will not go down in price in March (that is peak flying time for everyone!)

5. Reflect upon the work you have done for a project or independent study and think about turning it into an academic poster soon.

6. Give yourself lots of time to make a poster (ex. 5-15 hours, depending how much of a perfectionist you are).

7. Just commit and go – you won’t regret it!

🙂

Stephanie