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Campus Life - Kamloops  

TRU researchers awarded prestigious federal grants

Canada’s research community has received over $1.7 billion in funding for researchers and students nationwide, including three faculty members at Thompson Rivers University (TRU).

“Congratulations to top-tier researchers who will get a boost through this vital funding to take their projects to the next level. Our government is proud to support future generations by enabling students and post-doctoral researchers to acquire and hone the skills and knowledge they need to excel in their challenging fields,” said François-Philippe Champagne, minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, when making the announcement on March 13.

“Their pioneering research will further establish Canada’s position as a global leader in innovation while helping to drive our economy and achieve our shared vision of a brighter, healthier future for all Canadians.”

Emerging research

SSHRC Insight Development Grants support research in its initial stages, building knowledge and understanding about people, societies and the world by supporting research excellence in the social sciences and humanities.

Dr. Scott Rankin, business and economics

New theories of people management in social enterprise

The research team, led by Scott Rankin and Salvador Barragan, along with Bruce Martin, Tolulope Oluwafemi and Melanie Reed, is studying human resource management and leadership within social enterprises and social-purpose organizations. These are businesses that try to accomplish social and environmental impacts or goals, as opposed to for-profit businesses. This research will be passed on to future social enterprise managers and contribute to their ability to achieve social missions more effectively.

Dr. Kimberly Thomas-François, tourism

Information communication technology at hotels: A route to sustainable development

Thomas-François aims to generate knowledge on the level of technological integration at hotels in Canada. She will assess the willingness of Canadian hotels to integrate technology into their day-to-day operations in a manner that improves their overall sustainability. A higher level of integration may also contribute to more efficient and sustainable operations and help address some concerns, such as labour shortages in the sector.

Research partnerships

NSERC Alliance Grants encourage collaboration between researchers and partners from different sectors to generate new knowledge and apply research results for Canada’s benefit.

Dr. Omer Waqar, engineering

Scalable and trustworthy machine learning over the wireless edge networks

In partnership with his global collaborators from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, Waqar plans to design innovative machine learning models that are scalable and trustworthy. These models will be designed with a distributed architecture, making them ideal for deployment over the wireless edge networks. Additionally, they plan to develop customized radio resource management strategies tailored to support the unique requirements of the distributed machine learning models.

Waqar received his NSERC Alliance International Catalyst Grant while at TRU and currently holds an assistant professor role at the University of the Fraser Valley.

The Research Support Fund provides a portion of the costs associated with managing the research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Natural Science and Engineering Council (NSERC), such as salaries for staff who provide administration support, training costs for workplace health and safety, and library maintenance.



Wildfire expert publishes research about drought and overnight blazes in Nature

KAMLOOPS — A renowned Thompson Rivers University (TRU) expert on wildfire behaviour has co-authored an article on drought and overnight wildfires in Nature, one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journals.

Dr. Mike Flannigan, the BC Innovation Research Chair in Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science, graduate student Kaiwei Luo – who works alongside Flannigan – and two other researchers examined 23,557 fires that occurred in North America between 2017 and 2020, using a combination of satellite and terrestrial data to analyse the burn cycle of these fires and identify continuous overnight burning events.

In the article, Drought triggers and sustains overnight fires in North America, Flannigan and his colleagues demonstrate that drought conditions promote overnight burning, which is a key mechanism fostering large active fires.

The authors identified 1,095 overnight burning events in 340 individual fires, ninety-nine per cent of which were found to involve large fires (larger than 1,000 hectares). Additionally, 20 per cent of large fires experienced at least one overnight burning event.

Another key finding was that when fires have overnight burning, one-third start burning overnight on the day they ignite and over half start burning overnight within two days, leaving little time for firefighting interventions.

Wildfires that deviate from the conventional diurnal cycle of ‘active day, quiet night’ and instead burn continuously through the night are anticipated to become even more frequent under continued climate change,” said Flannigan.

“Dr. Flannigan’s contributions in Nature underscore his leadership in the field of wildfire science and the global impact of his research,” said TRU Vice-President of Research Shannon Wagner. “TRU is strongly committed to advancing knowledge and identifying innovative solutions in the field of wildfire science.”

The article follows the introduction of TRU’s Institute for Wildfire Science, Adaptation and Resiliency, a resource that highlights the university’s growing expertise of wildfire researchers. Dr. Flannigan is scientific director of the institute.

Contact:
Dr. Mike Flannigan, BC Research Chair in Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science
Faculty of Science, Thompson Rivers University
780-222-6819 | [email protected]



TRU seeks community input on internationalization plan

Thompson Rivers University (TRU) wants Kamloops and area residents to contribute their thoughts on global education at two public consultations on the university’s inaugural Strategic Internationalization Plan (SIP).

TRU invites anyone interested to attend either of next week’s meetings on campus that will contribute to shaping the future of internationalization at the university. The SIP is a comprehensive roadmap that will guide TRU’s approach to international education, mobility, partnerships and development for the next decade, aligning with its mission.

Internationalization involves including worldwide perspectives throughout the university, from curriculum development to cross-cultural experiences, from global research to international partnerships. The goal is to make TRU a more interconnected and globally aware institution that provides a widely diverse learning environment.

The SIP addresses the need for a university-wide strategy to navigate the evolving landscape of global education, ensuring a stronger, more interconnected future for the TRU and Kamloops community.

The sessions coincide with the university’s annual IDays cultural celebration, which highlights the diversity of people on campus.

The public is invited to attend:

  • Wednesday, March 13, 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. (in person)
  • Thursday, March 14, 5 – 6:30 p.m. (in person)

Both events take place in the Alpine Room of the Campus Activity Centre

Parking in lots H or N

Anyone interested in participating is asked to register ahead of time.

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Contact:

Michele Young, Manager of Communications Content
Thompson Rivers University
[email protected] | 250-828-5361



Home-grown solutions for tackling housing gaps

Inspiration can come from anywhere during the planning phase of a research project. Some find their focus in exploring timely issues, filling literature gaps or informing decision makers and policy. 

For MBA student and Researcher-in-Residence (RiR) intern Tana Dagneau-Jones, inspiration came in the form of a spreadsheet —more specifically, a spreadsheet of issues identified by City of Kamloops staff as areas to explore with respect to local housing decisions and policy. 

Dagneau-Jones’ work now explores the missing middle housing, or whether higher density, infill development ranging from duplexes to live-work setups has potential to meet resident demand more effectively than single-family homes — and how it may help fill housing gaps in Kamloops.

From fire codes to panhandle lots

MBA student and Researcher-in-Residence Tana Dagneau-Jones

“The goal of this missing middle research project was very much rooted in addressing real-world problems and hearing the conversations that happened around these real-world problems in a practical setting,” Dagneau-Jones says. “It helped the research become more engaging.”  

The Researcher-in-Residence program was launched by Thompson Rivers University (TRU) and the City of Kamloops in 2021. It gave Dagneau-Jones access to asking questions at monthly meetings with city officials who are intimately familiar with local housing issues.

She ultimately spent two years collaboratively exploring factors affecting housing options in the city, from fire codes to panhandle lots.

Real questions for real benefits

TRU’s first Researcher-in-Residence, Cheryl Gladu, is now an assistant professor with the Bob Gaglardi School of Business and Economics. She says this approach to research benefits the researcher and the research outcomes.  

“If you come at a project like this stating, ‘I’m a researcher and these are my findings,’ you lose the opportunity to learn from other people about the questions you should be asking,” says Gladu.

“City of Kamloops staff have a great deal of expertise. When we co-create questions, we can do a better job helping them with their job, and they help us with ours, because we’re meant to tackle real questions that will have real benefits to the community.” 

Gladu has worked with TRU students from different disciplines, including social work and nursing, on issues such as stigma around homelessness.  

Making a positive change through research

As in many Canadian cities, housing insecurity in Kamloops is a growing issue.

Recent data from British Columbia’s Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction suggests the number of people in Kamloops with no fixed address rose from 285 in 2019 to 479 in 2023 — an increase of 68 per cent.

Gladu has hopes that community research projects and programs like the RiR pilot project will benefit city planning. Long-term, she hopes the collaboration will expand people’s understanding of the role of researchers in the development of cities and communities.  

“It’s easy to critique policy if it doesn’t have the outcome you hope for, and that can happen with planning: It’s a live experiment that shapes our experience 20 years later,” says Gladu. “Part of Tana’s work is to help clarify and articulate why misalignments lead to problems.”  

Dagneau-Jones says the RiR experience has inspired her to consider a career in academia and that she plans to continue researching the Missing Middle. As such, she’s shifted from the course-based MBA option to pursuing a thesis. She is now in the finalization phase which includes interviewing local housing market experts across three industries to explore local barriers to housing development. Next, she will defend her thesis.

“I’ve always been interested in practical problem-solving, and this project changed my understanding of what research is,” says Dagneau-Jones. “You can make real positive change, and that’s something I want to continue to pursue.”



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