The Friends are proud to present the big cheque to increase the Helen McArthur Scholarship in Nursing. This scholarship is awarded annually to a student entering the second year of a Bachelor of Science in Nursing.

Meng Wang (Leadership Annual Giving), Luca Vanzella (Friends President) and Dr. Shannon Scott(Dean, Faculty of Nursing)

More information here: https://www.friendsoftheuofa.ca/scholarships/#Helen #UAlberta and some Fast Facts from @ualbertanursing

Academic unions protect academic workers and, by extension, higher education, students' learning, and publicly-funded research.

These are valuable sources of knowledge and skills that aren't (yet) beholden to political whims and social fads.

Hi Friends,
Join Chancellor Nizar J Somji in an engaging evening considering the dangers of misinformation and how you can work to counter it.

More information and in person registration link here:
https://www.ualberta.ca/en/chancellor-and-senate/senate/what-we-do/chancellors-forum.html

No registration is required for the livestream - link on above page will be available closer to May 7.
#UAlberta

Join us on Tuesday, Apr 22, at Blue Chair for Raise The Bar with Dr. Ted Bishop presenting "The Social Life of Ink" Tickets are $15 and include a drink. Limited seating - more info:
https://www.friendsoftheuofa.ca/2025/04/the-social-life-of-ink/
#UAlberta

The City of Edmonton has declared today, March 21, as Save Soil Day. I was at City Hall for the presentation of the official proclamation, and to speak to the gathered group about our recent Senate report on soil health. Tomorrow, the Save Soil group hosts a free double-bill at Campus Saint-Jean theatre: first, the documentary film Common Ground, followed by a one-woman show by Dale Hamilton called She Won’t Come in From the Fields. #yeg #yegcc #Edmonton #SenateofCanada #ualberta #SoilHealth

Earlier this week, I had a honour of joining two of Edmonton, and Canada’s, most extraordinary queer rights advocates, Doug Stollery KC and Justice Julie Lloyd, onstage at the #ualberta Timms Theatre to discuss the impact of the historic Vriend decision, which established equal rights protections for #LGBQT Canadians. Our conversation, moderated by Fiona Kelly, the new Dean of Law, was inspired by a screening of the terrific Vriend documentary Pride vs Prejudice. #yeg #Edmonton #Vriend

Pre-registration has closed - but there are still plenty of tickets at the door for this showing of Pride vs Prejudice - which includes FREE SNACKS at the pre show reception. Come on down! https://www.ualberta.ca/en/law/events/2025/3/pride-prejudice.html#:~:text=The%20documentary%20film%20explores%20the,2SLGBTQ%2B%20people%20across%20the%20world #Edmonton #yeg #ualberta #LGBQT

Super excited to be invited to give this talk at the University of Lethbridge on March 27. I've been thinking a lot about temporality and childhood in this new era of fascism. #uleth #ualberta #academicchatter #ChildhoodStudies #childism https://www.ulethbridge.ca/notice/events/childhood-time-monsters

Wonderful news for Edmonton's AI mage Rich Sutton, for the University of Alberta, and for AMII, the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. I've had a couple of chances over the years to interview Rich and his colleagues, and tour their labs. Their work on reinforcement learning - far more interesting than LLM - has made Edmonton a real AI centre of excellence. Meeting him is the closest I'll ever come to meeting Gandalf. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/folio/2025/03/computing-science-professor-wins-turing-award.html #yeg #Edmonton #ualberta #TuringAward #Turing #AI

Amazing! My Becomes Music EP is at #2 on the most recent Electronic music chart for CJSR 88.5FM.

It's been wonderful to see Canadian campus & community radio stations like CJSR supporting this music

https://www.cjsr.com/2025/02/charts-and-hot-wax-february-24-2025/
https://socool.bandcamp.com/album/becomes-music

University of Alberta hires six-time CFL all-star Almondo Sewell as defensive line coach

https://3downnation.com/2025/02/26/uni…

Senator Rob Black will be in Edmonton this week to deliver the annual Bentley Lecture in Sustainable Agriculture this Wednesday. Rob, who until prorogation chaired the Senate’s agriculture committee, was the guiding force behind our major study of soil health in Canada. He’ll be speaking (mostly) about our report. The lecture, at the Westin, is free and open to the public. Rob is a peach of a guy! Delighted to welcome him to #yeg. https://www.ualberta.ca/en/renewable-resources/events-and-lectures/bentley-lecture/index.html #ualberta #Edmonton #SoilHealth #cdnpoli

Trying to stem the tide of anti-intellectual, anti-conservative "Conservative" funding cuts in Alberta. Here's the latest appeal - to protect funding and front-line academic workers at the Univesity of Alberta: https://action.supportthespark.ca/letters/stand-up-for-the-university-of-alberta?source=direct_link&

Join us on Tuesday, February 11 at Blue Chair for Raise the Bar with Andrew Derocher presenting "Polar Bears: A Cultural and Climate Icon" Tickets are $15 and include a drink. Limited seating - more info: https://www.friendsoftheuofa.ca/2025/01/polar-bears-a-cultural-and-climate-icon/
#UAlberta

It was a beautiful night to see the planets at the #UAlberta observatory on the roof of the CCIS building last night. And, it wasn't even that cold!

We were promised a view of the ISS but the clouds came by at the wrong time, so now I need to figure out how to find that myself.

Folks in #yeg might be interested to know that the observatory open 7-8 Thursdays and it is free to visit.

#ualberta folks, IST's Research Computing Bootcamps are coming up - well worth it if you need an introduction to stuff from shell scripting to cloud environments from Digital Research Alliance https://www.ualberta.ca/en/information-services-and-technology/research-computing/bootcamps.html

Happy left-over Friday, which some people have off and some don't! A good day to eat holiday left-overs in your fridge, and to look back at the year that was. Since I have so many new followers, I thought I'd take the liberty of re-posting a few of my favourite #AlbertaUnbound episodes of 2024 - in case you missed them the first time, or just wanted a re-listen. To start? My conversation with author, academic, TV host, and defender of science, Timothy Caulfield. https://open.spotify.com/episode/7eNP4xHWXYlv71Pu7ZQ8Rc?si=V2NgRmyjQjucKowPu4VjXg #ualberta

Provincially imposed funding restrictions = hiring freeze at #UAlberta. Announcement released Dec 17'24: