Join us at the Environmental Roundtable
The University of Victoria Sustainability Project’s (UVSP) Environmental Roundtable has been around for more than 10 years and was created to foster community around student-led change and environmental action, nurture connections between nonprofit organizations, sustainable businesses, and the student community, and support student vision for a more sustainable campus community.
This year, the Environmental Roundtable is back —for the time since the COVID-19 pandemic! The Roundtable will be taking place on April 12th from 4:00pm to 8:00pm in the Michelle Pujol Room in the Student Union Building (SUB) at UVic.
Throughout the day students —but also UVic faculty and staff, and members of the community of Greater Victoria— will be welcome to join the UVSP at the Environmental Roundtable for a series of speakers, workshops, and participatory discussion circles and roundtables. From start to finish, event-goers will also have the opportunity to meet, visit, and make connections with campus and community groups and businesses who offer programs, services, and resources that are valuable to students in terms of sustainability, accessibility, and community. There will also be raffles at this event and participants can enter to win sustainable prizes created by local businesses and artisans. A partially dumpster dived meal will also be provided for participants (including some vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free food options).
This year, the Environmental Roundtable is back —for the time since the COVID-19 pandemic! The Roundtable will be taking place on April 12th from 4:00pm to 8:00pm in the Michelle Pujol Room in the Student Union Building (SUB) at UVic.
Throughout the day students —but also UVic faculty and staff, and members of the community of Greater Victoria— will be welcome to join the UVSP at the Environmental Roundtable for a series of speakers, workshops, and participatory discussion circles and roundtables. From start to finish, event-goers will also have the opportunity to meet, visit, and make connections with campus and community groups and businesses who offer programs, services, and resources that are valuable to students in terms of sustainability, accessibility, and community. There will also be raffles at this event and participants can enter to win sustainable prizes created by local businesses and artisans. A partially dumpster dived meal will also be provided for participants (including some vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free food options).
Speakers
Our speaker presentations will be approximately 15 minutes long and will take place between 5:00pm and 6:00pm.
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Simi Kang (she/they)
Simi is a mixed Sikh American community advocate, educator, artist, and scholar. Their work centers Asian American collaborative resistance as a site for imagining environmentally and economically just futures in Southeast Louisiana. Working alongside a Vietnamese and Cambodian American commercial fisherfolk-serving non-profit, Kang’s community engagement and writing practices reject the imperative for structurally underserved communities to be resilient to extraction, environmental racism, and the violence of the US immigration system. Kang is currently a Rising Resident at A Studio In the Woods through the ByWater Institute at Tulane University and works as an Assistant Professor in the Gender Studies Department at the University of Victoria, BC. |
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Pamela Spalding (she/her)
Pamela is an ethnobotanist and ethnoecologist who researches how Indigenous peoples’ relationships with native plants reflect their laws and governance. She recently completed her doctorate titled: “Unsettling Landscapes: Applications of ethnobotanical research in defining Aboriginal rights and re-affirming Indigenous laws in T’sou-ke territory, Vancouver Island and beyond.” Previously, she worked for the Government of the NWT as a Cultural Liaison Coordinator and the Province of BC as a treaty negotiator. She is a post-doctoral fellow with BIOSCAN at the University of Victoria (UVic) and teaches ethnoecology and ethnobotany in the School of Environment Studies and the Indigenous Education Department at UVic. She has authored and co-authored several papers on the subject of Indigenous use, governance, and co-management of native plants and ecosystems within BC. |
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Ken Josephson (he/him)
Ken, an architectural technologist, works as a cartographer, graphic artist, and community mapping specialist in the department of Geography. He has been on staff at the University of Victoria since 1980. Since 1998 he has been a partner in the Common Ground Community Mapping Project participating in and/or coordinating over 70 community-engaged mapping projects both print and online. In 2008 he helped to establish and has coordinated / managed the community mapping collaboratory, now The Map Shop, in the Department of Geography. He facilitates action-based, community-engaged projects through various courses and field schools. Previous to working at the University of Victoria, he worked for the Canadian Hydrographic Service drawing nautical charts of the southern BC coast and Canada’s western Arctic. |
Roundtable
For the roundtable portion of the event (taking place between 6:00pm and 8:00pm), students, community members, faculty and staff will have a chance to contribute to collective visioning and discussion loosely framed around what re-conceptualizing sustainability means and what participants, particularly student participants, envision for creating a sustainable campus and campus-community at UVic —the outcomes of the Roundtable will help to shape the work undertaken by the UVSP at UVic in the next year!
Participants will seat themselves at one of four smaller roundtables arranged in the middle of the room. Each of these tables will have a facilitator that will support conversation at the table and a notetaker that will record what is discussed. At 20 minute intervals participants will shift around the roundtables and new groups will be created at each table. After the first 40 minutes of the roundtable, there will be a 20 minute break that participants can grab food during and check out some of the tables at the event, before coming back together for another 40 minutes of roundtabling. The purpose of this roundtable is to support student and community vision for what re-conceptualizing sustainability means and what participants envision for creating a sustainable campus and campus-community at UVic. At the end of the evening, before the raffle draws, the key ideas and outcomes of the roundtable will be shared with the group.
The UVSP is excited to have Mack Ross (she/her), Jen Kostuchuk (she/her), Kelly Bannister (she/her), and Sid Boegman (he/him) joining us as facilitators for the Roundtable!
Participants will seat themselves at one of four smaller roundtables arranged in the middle of the room. Each of these tables will have a facilitator that will support conversation at the table and a notetaker that will record what is discussed. At 20 minute intervals participants will shift around the roundtables and new groups will be created at each table. After the first 40 minutes of the roundtable, there will be a 20 minute break that participants can grab food during and check out some of the tables at the event, before coming back together for another 40 minutes of roundtabling. The purpose of this roundtable is to support student and community vision for what re-conceptualizing sustainability means and what participants envision for creating a sustainable campus and campus-community at UVic. At the end of the evening, before the raffle draws, the key ideas and outcomes of the roundtable will be shared with the group.
The UVSP is excited to have Mack Ross (she/her), Jen Kostuchuk (she/her), Kelly Bannister (she/her), and Sid Boegman (he/him) joining us as facilitators for the Roundtable!
Tablers
We are excited announce that a number of campus groups, local businesses, and community organizations will be joining the UVSP at the Environmental Roundtable to share programs, resources, job and volunteer opportunities, and more!
Our tablers include: the UVic Campus Community Garden, Capital Bike, the Compost Education Centre, the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance & Centre for Global Studies, SUPPLY Victoria, the UVic Environmental Studies Student Association, Curbside Farms Cooperative, the UVic Ecological Restoration Club, UVic Campus Sustainability & Planning, the UVic Birding Club, the UVic Society of Geography Students, WILD Outside, and Community Cabbage.
Our tablers include: the UVic Campus Community Garden, Capital Bike, the Compost Education Centre, the POLIS Project on Ecological Governance & Centre for Global Studies, SUPPLY Victoria, the UVic Environmental Studies Student Association, Curbside Farms Cooperative, the UVic Ecological Restoration Club, UVic Campus Sustainability & Planning, the UVic Birding Club, the UVic Society of Geography Students, WILD Outside, and Community Cabbage.
Raffle
The Environmental Roundtable raffle has been made possible by generous donations from Cold Comfort, Ecologyst, Uncouth Chocolate, Joni, Luna Collective, ASH Refillery, Abeego, Level Ground Coffee, Xocolat, Habit Coffee, Niche Grocerant, and Mile Zero Coffee. Tickets will be sold for only $5! Each raffle basket will be work upwards of $75 of wonderful, locally-made, and sustainable goods! All proceeds will support more student-led events like the roundtable. The UVSP is so excited to be showcasing each of these businesses at the Roundtable and so thankful for their support of this event!