The following appeared in the Monday, February 8, 2010 edition of Y-File:

UYFIf you look at the York home page, you’ll see two new items: the logos of the social media sites Facebook and Twitter, guiding you to more sources of information about the University.

With the growth of social media on the Web, it has become essential for organizations to be where their audience lives – on Facebook and Twitter, among other popular sites. In recent times, many units at York have expanded their presence on one or both of these services – often with spectacular results.

The Admissions & Recruitment unit, for instance, has been among the pioneers in the use of social media at York. Having begun using Facebook in the spring of 2007, its York University page now boasts the most fans of all, at more than 4,200. York Alumni, which has more than 2,600 fans, launched its page in December 2008 and is growing quickly as more and more of York’s 235,000 grads sign on to keep in touch. On Twitter, the Admissions & Recruitment team also leads the way with over 3,300 followers at last tweet, although anyone can read Twitter messages without being a follower.

With the number of official York pages growing rapidly – now well over 30 – it was time to provide a guide to all the Facebookers and tweeters.

“York has a strong presence in social media, and we’d clearly reached the point where we ought to show it off. So we decided to put lists of all York’s official Facebook pages and Twitter feeds in an easy-to-find place on the home page,” says Berton Woodward, York’s publications director in the University Relations Division and chair of the New Media Subcommittee of York’s Brand Stewardship Council (BSC), which brings together communications experts from across the University.

The lists have been created within the Facebook and Twitter environments, so that users can easily click around to see what York offers. All Facebook fan pages and Twitter feeds are accessible by anyone online, without need for registration. (Facebook groups, which can be more restrictive, are not listed.)

Woodward is the first to agree that the lists are likely to have missed some official pages and feeds, given the amount of activity. Any unit that wishes to be included should send a note to editor@yorku.ca. An official Facebook or Twitter page is one set up and hosted by a Faculty, division, department or unit of York.

The Account Direction unit of University Relations has also developed York's new Social Media Guidelines in collaboration with the BSC New Media Subcommittee. York units contemplating a Facebook or Twitter page should adhere to these guidelines, which include a Social Media Brief that will ensure integration of a unit's broader objectives. Account Direction can provide guidance on creating a page, messaging and creative elements that maintain the consistency of York's visual identity.

The Facebook overview page so far lists 20 official York sites – everything from York International to I’m Thinking Environmental Studies at York University for 2010. There’s also a page for the Glendon campus that currently has almost 1,000 fans. And the student and alumni page for the Schulich School of Business boasts over 1,400 fans, currently the third most popular.

The Marketing & Communications group took the plunge in the fall, creating the York University - Home news and referral page, which hosts the Facebook list along with a Wall of news, and setting up the Twitter feed YorkUnews. Selected news stories from York’s daily news sites YFile and Ylife, as well as key media releases, are posted daily on both Facebook and Twitter to ensure the widest possible audience. “There is a cardinal rule with Facebook,” notes communications officer David Fuller, who handles the Facebook and Twitter feeds. “Make sure you post relatively regularly, but don’t over-post or it will clog up your fans’ own pages. So we make sure we limit Facebook to a single post each day showing a group of headlines. But with Twitter, it’s pretty unlimited.”

For Laura D’Amelio, manager of print & e-media content development in Admissions & Recruitment, it was clear that experimenting with social media was a priority, based on a growing awareness that students were already using it for their own networking. “Then we realized that, with all the day-to-day questions we were getting, it was working for us,” she says. The fan base jumped from 1,300 in June 2009 to more than 4,100 in February, in significant part thanks to a bold decision to open the site up to student comments, warts and all, and delete only those that are really offensive.

“We like to put the power back in the students’ hands,” says D’Amelio, explaining her group’s policy for answering student posts. “We’ll respond to anything. First we acknowledge the comment and then we suggest how they can go further to get answers or offer solutions.”

One of the biggest benefits of using social media, D’Amelio says, is learning what questions are uppermost in students’ minds and using that information to adjust the emphasis in the printed material that students receive. D’Amelio’s colleagues have also discovered that students, who can sometimes be reticent in person, are more willing to ask questions online. “They can also ask questions that occur to them at one in the morning. And sometimes other students answer them before we do because they have seen us give the answers before,” she says.

For Liz Teodorini, manager of alumni communications in the Alumni Office, two-way communication is the key to using social media successfully. “We’re trying to encourage dialogue among our grads and the number of comments has spurted up in the last couple of months,” she says.

For York academic units, using social media has also been rewarding. Annette Dubreuil, project manager at York’s Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS), says her unit made the decision to switch from a Facebook group to a fan page just recently. (Pages have more flexibility than groups, and are always public.) IRIS also made use of Twitter at COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen, where York sent a team of official observers. “We used tweets to keep in touch with everyone,” said Dubreuil. “It seems to be a good way to connecting with people, particularly students, faculty and staff.”

It’s important to have an overall social media strategy, says D’Amelio, whose office also uses Flickr to post photo galleries of York events and Vimeo for videos, and maintains YU Blog, written by both student information officers and student volunteers.

Visit the York University - Home page to see the current list of York Facebook pages.

To follow York on Twitter, see the YorkUnews list of official feeds.

IRIS Call for Nominations for the IRIS Executive

IRIS is now accepting nominations for volunteers to serve on the IRIS Executive, the executive board which oversees and approves the implementation of the Institute's policies, procedures, budgets, annual reports and strategic plans.

Nominations are open to students, staff and faculty and are due by March 3rd. University community members who are interested in serving on the IRIS Executive board should submit their CV to Annette Dubreuil, IRIS coordinator, at afdubreu@yorku.ca.

To learn more about the IRIS Executive and its structure, read our the IRIS Membership and Governance document.

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IRIS promotes practical sustainability solutions that encompass environmental, social and economic considerations at local, regional and global scales. Operating as a leading edge interdisciplinary research institute, IRIS is a hub for sustainability-related activities at York University.

The following appeared in the Monday, February 8, 2010 edition of Y-File:

Howard Daugherty, a professor of environmental studies and a researcher in neotropical ecosystems, died on Feb. 12 after a short illness. He was 68.

Prof. Daugherty was also the public face of York's Las Nubes Reserve, a 133-hectare area of mountainous cloud forest in Costa Rica. The land was donated to York University by Dr. Woody Fisher in 1998 and Prof. Daugherty played a key role in its oversight.

Born in Kremmling, Colorado, Prof. Daugherty received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in ecology at the University of Georgia. His primary areas of research included studying protected areas in the neotropics, natural resource policy and management, biological conservation and sustainable development. Prof. Daugherty was keenly interested in human disturbance of tropical ecosystems and how to prevent the loss of the tropical rainforest due to deforestation for agriculture.

In addition to his work within York's Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES), Prof. Daugherty was a member of the teaching faculty of the Latin America and Caribbean Studies Program. He was also a Fellow in York's Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean and a member of the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability.

Right: Howard Daugherty

At FES, Prof. Daugherty taught biological conservation, resource management in the Third World, and development and ecology in the Third World. He supervised graduate student researchers in the areas of applied ecology, biological conservation and protected areas management in the tropics.

Las Nubes, situated adjacent to Chirripó National Park and the Amistad Biosphere Reserve in Costa Rica, means "the clouds" in Spanish. Fisher, a medical doctor, was inspired to purchase the rain forest and preserve its immense biodiversity after visiting the country on a holiday. Prof. Daugherty played a key role in making the reserve a living laboratory where York faculty and students, along with international partners, conduct valuable research related to protecting the biodiversity of the region, sustainable development of local communities and understanding and conserving our global biosphere.

The Las Nubes Reserve, coupled with Prof. Daugherty's own commitment to research in fair trade and to the communities adjacent to the reserve, has also helped raise public awareness about the value of shade-grown, organic coffee as an ecologically sound alternative to deforestation of critical ecosystems in Latin America. Prof. Daugherty was the primary steward behind York’s partnership with farming cooperatives in the area and Timothy’s Coffees of the World to produce Las Nubes Coffee, York’s own brand of sustainable, fair trade coffee, which is sold at Timothy’s Coffee stores in Canada and through several food establishments on the University’s Keele campus. A portion of all sales of the coffee is donated to the Fisher Fund for Neotropical Conservation, which supports ongoing research and conservation activities in the Las Nubes region.

Prof. Daugherty received numerous awards over the course of his career for his work. Most recently, he was the recipient of the 2009 Faculty Member Award for Outstanding Contribution to Internationalization from York International. The award recognized his contributions to the internationalization of the student experience at York University. He was also very proud of several national awards for outstanding environmental service in El Salvador and Honduras, including the prestigious Blanca Jeannette Kawas National Award for Excellence in Environmental Service in Honduras. The Specialty Coffee Association of America awarded Prof. Daugherty its Sustainability Award in 2005 for his outstanding contributions to fostering a more sustainable coffee community.

He leaves his wife Marina, and daughters Jessica, Alexandra, Danielle and Marrianne, and his brother James. Visitation for Prof. Daugherty will take place on Friday, Feb. 19, from 5 to 9pm, at the Elgin Mills Cemetary and Visitation Centre, 1591 Elgin Mills Road, located at the corner of Elgin Mills Road and Leslie Street in Richmond Hill, Ont. A funeral service will take place Saturday from 2 to 4pm, at the same location.

Donations may be made in Prof. Daugherty’s memory to the Fisher Fund for Neotropical Conservation by contacting Lisa Gleva, principal gift officer, at the York University Foundation at 416-650-8245.

A more detailed appreciation of Prof. Daugherty will appear in a future issue of YFile.

The following appeared in the Monday, February 8, 2010 edition of Y-File:

What is the value we ascribe to trees and urban forests? Are they merely things that stand in the way of development and urban sprawl or do they have value?

These questions and more will be the subject of a special lecture today hosted by the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS). The lecture, which will take place from 1:30 to 3pm in 280 York Lanes, features a number of speakers who will address the value of urban forests. It also marks the release of a report by IRIS researchers on the value of the Keele campus urban forest.

Above: A Google map of the Keele campus. The circles indicate surveyed plots within buildings and squares indicate plots within park-style land. For each plot, IRIS researchers recorded the location of the plot, its global positioning coordinates and the actual land use. They estimate that the Keele campus has 97,575 trees.

Participating in the lecture are Lionel Normand, a terrestrial biologist with the Toronto & Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), Meaghan Eastwood, an urban forestry technician with the TRCA, and IRIS Senior Fellow Cecilia Tagliavia. The event will be chaired by IRIS director and York biology Professor Dawn Bazely.

Right: Dawn Bazely

Normand and Eastwood will discuss TRCA’s current urban forest study project. Their presentation will offer an in-depth look at the project’s intentions, partnerships and collaborations, study methodology, findings and recommendations, and more. The TRCA manages a number of urban forest studies within the Greater Toronto Area and works in partnership with municipalities and other conservation authorities.

Tagliavia has been examining the urban forest canopies on York’s Keele campus, both in existing blocks of natural forests (woodlots) and in man-made urban forests (gardens, recreational areas and parklands). By adapting the Urban Forest Effect model (UFORE) to the smaller campus scale, Tagliavia and her research team were able to estimate the role of York’s forest in carbon sequestration and removing greenhouse gas pollutants.

Her study highlights the importance of preserving the forest in park lands, including woodlots, which contain more than six times the number of trees compared to building areas. The full results and an accompanying analysis have been captured in the IRIS report titled, The Value of Keele Campus Urban Forest, which will be officially launched at the lecture.

This event is free and all are welcome. For more information, visit the IRIS Web site.

IRIS to house $1 million SSHRC Climate Change Project

The following appeared in the Friday, February 5, 2010 edition of Y-File:

Carla Lipsig-Mummé, professor of work and labour studies in York's Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies and research fellow in York’s Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability, has received $1 million over six years from the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Right: Carla Lipsig-Mummé

The award will fund an international project to study the challenge climate change presents to Canadian employment and workplaces. Lipsig-Mummé will examine seven Canadian employment sectors to seek policy, training, employment and workplace solutions to effectively assist Canada’s transition to a low-emission economy. By combining research, workplace education, policy recommendations and pilot projects in transnational work adaptation, her project will allow Canada to re-enter the international debate about how best to engage the work world in the struggle to slow global warming.

“We need to know more about the chain of processes that comprise work, employment and training in key Canadian industries and professions – and how their decision-makers understand and respond to the challenge that global warming poses to these processes,” says Lipsig-Mummé. “Our second goal is to engage community partners active in the work world and the environmental community in research that identifies critical spaces for adaptation, drawing on their hands-on experience and linking it to the expertise of the academics.”

Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) awards, among the largest awarded by SSHRC, bring postsecondary institutions and community organizations together as equal research partners to jointly develop new knowledge and capabilities, provide research training opportunities, and enhance the ability of social sciences and humanities research to build knowledge in areas that affect Canadians and their changing communities.

“This award is the latest in a series of funding successes that reflect York’s leadership in national and international collaborative research projects,” said Stan Shapson, vice-president Research & Innovation. “Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century and climate research and innovation are priorities for York. Our researchers are working with industry, government at all levels, academia, and the community to find ways to address the complex issues it raises.”

Lipsig-Mummé’s research team includes nationally- and internationally-based climate scientists, senior labour market actors and academics from a wide range of disciplines. A total of 23 researchers, 20 partners, and 10 universities in three countries will participate, including York Professors David Doorey, Dawn Bazely, Irene Henriques, Jan Kainer, John-Justin McMurtry, Stepan Wood and Steven Tufts.

Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science & Technology), announced the funding yesterday in Kitchener, Ont. Lipsig-Mummé’s project is one of 20 large-scale research projects funded through SSHRC’s CURA program.

“These grants highlight the excellence of our country’s talented researchers and recognize the importance of fostering collaboration to keep Canada at the leading-edge of research, development and innovation in the 21st century,” said Chad Gaffield, president of SSHRC.

For a complete list of CURA awards, visit SSHRC Web site.

The following appeared in the Tuesday, January 26, 2010 edition of Y-File:

Above: From left, Jacqueline Medalye, York graduate student; Annette Dubreuil, IRIS project manager; Benjamin Ramirez Jimenez, York nursing student; and Miriam Duailibi, director of ECOAR and co-head of the York/ECOAR observer delegation to the UN Climate Change Conference, COP15, in Copenhagen

“Great, chaotic, aggravating” – those were the first three words Professor Ellie Perkins used to describe her experience as an official York observer at COP15, the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen in December.

At the suggestion of colleagues from the University of São Paulo and Brazil's ECOAR Institute for Citizenship, York applied for official civil society observer status at the conference in order to take a message about the plight of poor and indigenous peoples affected by climate change to those who are planning the global response to the greatest challenge of our time (see YFile, Oct. 29, 2009.) Of course, while they were there, they kept watch on the negotiations over reducing greenhouse gases, and saw them come to an inconclusive end.

Right: Ellie Perkins in Copenhagen

“The outcome was disappointing,” said Perkins, a professor in York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) and core faculty at York’s Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS), of the conference’s non-binding final agreement that urges major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts – but does not require it. “It raised the question of whether the UN is capable of being the venue for crucial issues of global governance like climate change – and if not, what the alternatives might be,” said Perkins, who was co-head of the York delegation, along with Dawn Bazely, biology professor in the Faculty of Science & Engineering and IRIS director.

Left: Dubreuil at the York/ECOAR booth in the convention hall

Perkins was accompanied on the trip by six other York observers and Miriam Duailibi, director of ECOAR, a São Paulo-based institute promoting sustainability which has a partnership with York. The York group included FES colleagues Professors Anders Sandberg and Jose Etcheverry, and Annette Dubreuil, project manager of IRIS. Four students made the trip: FES graduate students Tor Sandberg and Janina Schan, Jaqueline Medalye, a PhD student in political science, and nursing student Benjamin Ramirez Jimenez.

The York-ECOAR booth was sited right next to a UN media interview location. York’s delegates were able to watch officials being interviewed, including Mohamed Nasheed, president of the Republic of Maldives, whose South Asian nation – much of it made up of numerous small islands – is among the most vulnerable and least defensible countries to the projected impacts of climate change and associated sea-level rise.

York’s observer status at the conference arose from efforts Perkins and other researchers are making to address justice issues surrounding the effects of climate change. “We learned a lot and shared a lot,” said Perkins. “Information was shared with delegates from around the world, and York became known as a centre for work on this issue.”

Left: York team talks climate justice with a conference visitor

Perkins said there were even international students dropping by the group’s booth, inquiring about studying at York. “The booth was beautiful and people were very interested in what we were saying about climate justice.”

Handouts at the booth included ribbons printed with the URL to a new Global Climate Justice Web site co-sponsored by IRIS and ECOAR, and fortune cookies with messages such as “Your future depends on Global Climate Justice.”

The group has already sent in two grant proposals for student exchanges and research, including building a Global Climate Justice for Disenfranchised People Web portal. Dubreuil said the purpose of the portal is to allow people and communities affected by global warming to connect with researchers and to directly share stories of how they are adapting. Their struggles to find solutions will be shared on the site, which will be multilingual. “The problems vulnerable communities face may be different but often the methods they use to solve them are transferable.”

Dubreuil said York’s official side event was hastily presented by Ramirez Jimenez after UN organizers gave them only 24 hours notice of their time-slot, which was on the first day of the conference. The York and ECOAR delegates also made presentations at two side events held by the Brazilian Action/Resilience on Climate Adaptation (BARCA) group and by the World Wildlife Fund. Greenpeace International also made space for the York delegation on the program at their Climate Recovery Station exhibit outside the main hall.

Right: Ribbons for climate justice with a URL for the proposed Web portal

Professor Sandberg gave a speech at one of the “Seminars in the Street” in downtown Copenhagen and Etcheverry gave a talk on feed-in tariffs in North America.

Perkins said COP15 was especially instructive for the students in the group, one of whom was able to do interviews for her thesis with many of the delegates.

Although she was pleased to be able to network with other people from around the world who are working for climate justice, Perkins said the conference’s vague conclusion was disappointing and the challenge of such a complicated problem is daunting. “But there was an overwhelming level of energy and commitment to work on climate justice which we were part of in Copenhagen.”

“I feel that the demonstrations, level of NGO participation and global attention surrounding COP15 showed that climate change is going mainstream," said Perkins. "There’s a process of public engagement and education underway which is promising, not just on climate change but on broader global justice issues too.”

“At the end of the day, having members of the York University community at COP15, was, more than anything, about simply bearing witness to how global governance actually functions today,” said Bazely. “If an observer delegation from one of the wealthy countries in the world found negotiating the byzantine UN bureaucracy so difficult, just imagine the barriers faced by other members of civil society without our resources. Of course, now we’re looking ahead to the next COP, which will be in Mexico City in November.”

A Perilous Imbalance
The Globalization of Canadian Law and Governance
Stephen Clarkson and Stepan Wood

Through an examination of Canadians’ complicated roles as agents and objects of globalization, this book shows how Canada’s experience of and contribution to globalized governance is characterized by serious imbalances. It explores these imbalances by tracing three interlinked developments:
the emergence of a neoconservative supraconstitution, the transformation of the nation-state, and the growth of governance beyond the nation-state. Advocating a revitalizated Canadian state as a vehicle for pursuing human security, ecological integrity, and social emancipation, and for creating spaces in which progressive, alternative forms of law and governance can unfold, A Perilous Imbalance offers a compelling analysis of the challenges that middle powers and their citizens face in a globalizing world.

Please refer to the attachment for more information.

Climate Law and Developing Countries
Legal and Policy Challenges for the World Economy
Benjamin Richardson, Yves Le Bouthillier, Heather Mcleod-kilmurray, Stepan Wood

This timely book examines the legal and policy challenges in international, regional and national settings, faced by developing countries in mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Please refer to the attachment for more information on this book.  Please click here to see the review plan.

You can also get more information about Google Book Search Previews by clicking here.

The IRIS Annual Report 2009 is now available. Click on the image to download.