Urban Planner | Lifelong Learner
Feeling through Conflict is a guided reflective exercise I designed as a final project for my masters of planning course "Design and Planning for Community Power". I mobilized my skills in facilitation and storytelling to create an interactive worksheet for planners & designers engaged in anti-oppressive work.
Community engagement is an integral ingredient in planning decision-making. For my final project in my "Communication in the Face of Power" course as a Planning master student, I created a community engagement strategy and poster for a hypothetical project in Vancouver's Chinatown.
Over the last year, I took on a lead role in the writing and research for the updated UBC Bird Friendly Design Guidelines for Buildings. Through research of academic studies and best practice review of municipal guidelines across North America, the update promotes cost-effective and co-beneficial strategies to designers.
In Summer 2019, I had the very enriching opportunity to collaborate on urban design research at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany as a visiting research student. I conducted a study to examine the relationship between soundscapes, urban design, and mental health and produced a research poster to illustrate my findings.
From Fall 2017-2018, I had the very exciting and unique opportunity to participate in writing and researching the new UBC Green Building Action Plan (GBAP) for UBC Campus and Community Planning. The GBAP outlines goals, targets, and actions to advance academic and residential buildings at UBC towards making net positive contributions to human and natural systems by 2035.
Buildings are the main anthropogenic cause of death for birds in cities, with approximately 16 to 42 million deaths in Canada each year, and around 10,000 deaths at UBC. To investigate this issue as a final project in my Advanced Issues in GIS class, I created a model to identify core institutional buildings of high bird collision risk at UBC. The project aims to recommend UBC operational staff where to target bird friendly design retrofits.
This week, I have been tasked to identify and produce a report on a rare plant species, Spiranthes diluvialis, to help a hypothetical botanist with her field work in the southern Okanagan. Using BC TRIM data, I create a digital elevation model and then use a multi-criteria evaluation methodology to map out ~700 hectares of potential habitat for the botanist to research.
It’s been about over a year since I was first introduced to GIS, and I’m back to take GEOB 370 Advanced Issues in GIScience! In this lab assignment, I create a least cost path analysis for a hypothetical new marijuana greenhouse in Surrey and Langley, BC.
As an English Conversation Program Facilitator, I am responsible for preparing a lesson plan and guiding discussion for ESL learners on topics selected by the Program Coordinator. While I teach speaking skills, vocabulary, and pronunciation at the Learning Exchange, I'm also always learning from the patrons I meet as we exchange stories, skills, and laughs!
Here is a timeline of my involvement with ePortfolio making and the UBC Arts ePortfolio program starting from my 3rd year GIS class to the present! This post will be updated as I continue to collaborate with the UBC Arts ePortfolio program.