News

With food recalls from romaine lettuce to cauliflower generating perennial headlines, a new $1-million gift from two University of Guelph grads will establish a professorship intended to improve food safety in Canada and abroad. Prof. Lawrence Goodridge, a three-time U of G grad, will join his alma mater this month from a faculty position at McGill University to take up the new Leung Family Professorship in Food Safety based in the Department of Food Science.

Alumni Affairs and Development and the OAC Dean’s Office are pleased to announce Paul Klosler has been appointed as Senior Development Manager for OAC. Paul began in the role on January 7, 2019.

In this role, he will take on major gift fundraising responsibilities, working with both existing and prospective donors.

Did you know you could transform your local strip mall parking lot into a radiant community space? Or convert a side walk into an urban garden?

Introducing… the pop-up parklet.

Landscape architects are using colourful and creative ways to reclaim communities’ under-utilised urban spaces to transform them into community hubs. Large cities like Toronto need to rethink their suburban arterials to create high quality community spaces for their growing populations.  Pop-up parklets are an inexpensive, easy and fun solution to this problem.

Imagine being the first person on the moon. Imagine the adrenaline, the excitement, the sensory overload. You and your colleagues have put years, decades of dedicated hard work into your joint efforts – all knowing that your footsteps would be the first of many to come. 

It may seem like a daydream to most, but for Deron Caplan it’s a reality… so to speak. 

Peter Hopps knew from a young age that he wanted to work for the largest dairy in Canada, and that’s exactly what he did. He achieved his goal right after graduating from the University of Guelph by working for Silverwoods Dairy. So he set himself a new goal: to work for the world’s largest chain of ice cream shops, Baskin Robbins.

Carol Chui lives and works in one of the world’s most secretive states: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or known to most as North Korea.

She moved to the capital city, Pyongyang, two years ago to work with the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) as a food technologist.

“Every country faces its own issues,” she says. “There are three sides to this country. There is the dramatized media view, there is how the country presents itself, and then there is the real thing. There is food insecurity and under-nutrition, and that’s why we are here.”

Erin O’Neill was working for the Municipality of Wood Buffalo as a planner, looking after the municipality’s real estate interests, when her world changed.

On May 3, 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, was devastated by wildfires that forced more than 80,000 people from their homes. At $3.7 billion in damage, it was Canada’s costliest disaster, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada.

Erin, with the rest of her community, was evacuated and unable to return home. But on May 15, she returned to Fort McMurray at a city manager’s request.

Looking into the eyes of a tiger, rehabilitating birds of prey, developing formula for a newborn polar bear cub: caring for some of the world’s most revered and dangerous animals under an increasingly critical public eye, is no walk in the park. But for Dave Barney, it was all in a day’s work. 

Desmond (Des) Doran has been a student, husband, father, teacher, researcher, economist, world traveller, equity and diversity champion and activist. At 82, he is also a man of many stories, experiences and reflections.

Here are a few of those stories about a life best summarized by the Jamaican greeting: “Respect.”

During his time at Ridgetown Campus, Andrew Vokes (Associate Diploma in Agriculture, 2018) discovered the variety of club and association opportunities available to youth interested in agriculture and farming in southwestern Ontario. After returning home to Manitoulin Island, he decided to form his own association to support people ages 16-40 who are interested in collaboratively learning about production agriculture. We recently chatted with Andrew about his new association and his hopes for the future.