Leveraging the Okanagan Charter to Bounce Forward From the Major Crises of our Time: COVID-19 Pandemic, Systemic Racism, Colonialism, and the Climate Emergency
A Canadian Post-Secondary Leadership Virtual Dialogue Series
December 9th, 2020 | 10am-11:30/12:00pm PST | 1-2:30/3:00pm EST
Post-secondary institutions face complex issues around health and wellbeing, including the implications surrounding the global COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, and the renewed urgency to advance Indigenous peoples’ human rights and to address systemic racism for historically racialized communities.
The Okanagan Charter for Health Promoting Universities & Colleges provides us with a common language, principles, and framework to address these pressing systemic issues as it calls on higher education institutions to embed health into everyday operations, business practices and academic mandates.
The Canadian Health Promoting Campus Network and the Universities of British Columbia, Waterloo, and McGill invite you to join them in a dialogue that will explore the following questions:
Collective impact and Multi-solving - How can universities approach human rights, wellbeing, and sustainability in a unified way that advances all agendas? When addressing multiple crises like this, how do you give appropriate focus to any one of them?
Moment of Change - We are in a unique moment of disruption that could allow for big societal changes. How can we best leverage this time to address multiple crises?
Engaging leadership - How do we convene conversations with various levels of leadership across the university?
Addressing systems - How can we structure this work to focus both on individual actions and shifting policy, culture, and societal change?
The Okanagan Charter - What is the role of the Charter in this work for Higher Education?
Missed the live panel? Be sure to check out the recorded session below:
Many themes emerged during this dialogue, including:
When we think about addressing systemic racism, the climate emergency, and the human rights of indigenous peoples, we are addressing that which stifles hope. In this way, they are so directly issues of wellbeing.
The university needs to come at this work from a place of humble listening - how are we deeply listening?
Can we reimagine the 21st century university as a unity of research, teaching, and praxis of transforming society and self?
We need to think of individual action AND systemic change and be careful not to pit these two against each other. This needs to come from a place of building hope, not from pushing guilt. Keep in mind the difference between guilt and responsibility.
Students already think of these areas as intertwined. They’ve never lived in a world where they think of them as separate. Listen to them.(eg. Prof. Ono meeting with students often to listen)
How are we compensating the people that are already doing this work (often BIPOC)?
Invest in climate youth organizers. They are so well positioned in this work as they’ve been organizing around the biggest exasperator of these issues for so long (climate change). This is why they’ve organized around COVID so fast, as it is another exasperator of these major issues.
Multisolving is a strong tool to support work to tackle complex problems. It also encourages this work to benefit vulnerable or marginalized groups, not just those already well off.
At the end of the event, participants were asked “What will you do in your work to approach systemic racism, health and wellbeing, colonialism, and the climate emergency?” Check out their responses.
Speakers
We're pleased to welcome this panel of incredible speakers to kick off our virtual dialogue on December 9th. We'll then reconvene in 2021 for more conversations.
Santa J. Ono
PhD FRSC FCAHS, 15th President & Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia.
He also serves as Chair of the U15 Group of Universities, on the Board of Directors of Universities Canada, and as Past Chair of Research Universities of British Columbia. In 2018, he served as co-chair of the Tri-council advisory committee on equity, diversity and inclusion policy.
Prior to his appointment as President and Vice-Chancellor of UBC, Dr. Ono served as the 28th President of the University of Cincinnati and Senior Vice-Provost and Deputy to the Provost at Emory University.
A molecular immunologist educated at the University of Chicago and McGill, Dr. Ono has taught at Johns Hopkins, Harvard University and University College London.
He holds Honorary Doctorates from Chiba University and the Vancouver School of Theology and is a recipient of the Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award from the American Council on Education, the Professional Achievement Award from University of Chicago, a Grand Challenges Hero Award from UCLA and the NAAAP 100 Award from the National Association of Asian American Professionals.
Mat Thijssen
Director of Sustainability, University of Waterloo
Mat supports Waterloo’s sustainability activities and efforts, in partnership with a broad range of stakeholders on and off campus. He has helped develop the campus’ Environmental Sustainability Policy, Environmental Sustainability Strategy, and climate action plan.
He publishes Waterloo’s annual sustainability reports and supports the President’s Advisory Committee on Environmental Sustainability, as well as working with numerous teams and departments for project and program implementation. In addition to his work on campus, Mat volunteers actively in the community, including chairing the City of Waterloo’s Sustainability Advisory Committee and supporting the Region of Waterloo’s community climate action planning efforts.
Prior to joining Waterloo, he worked for three years with Sustainable Waterloo Region, a local environmental non-profit which engages businesses in converting interest in sustainability into tangible action.
Ainsley Carry
Ed.D., MBA, M.S. Vice President Students, UBC
Ainsley Carry is the Vice President, Students of the University of British Columbia. Carry brings nearly 25 years of experience in college administration and creating educational experiences outside the classroom. He is most proud of his work to enhance the student experience. Carry wrote, “Throughout my career I have come to realize that our greatest responsibility as academic leaders includes the health, wellness, and safety of all students. Issues of sexual misconduct, mental health, overconsumption of alcohol, and equity are matters of public health. When any student is negatively impacted by any one of these experiences, their learning experience is severely compromised. We must tackle these challenges with the same rigor with which we approach public health issues — evidence based and prevention focused. There is no reason why UBC cannot be the healthiest campus in Canada.”
Before joining UBC, Dr. Carry served in leadership positions at the University of Southern California (USC), Auburn University, Temple University, the University of Arkansas, and Southern Methodist University and he held a faculty position in the Rossier School of Education. He is a three time graduate of the University of Florida where he earned his Bachelors degree, Masters degree, and Doctorate of Educational Leadership. He also earned a Masters in Business Administration from Auburn University.
Grace Nosek
Founder and Student Director, UBC Climate Hub
Grace is Founder and Student Director of the UBC Climate Hub. She is a PhD Candidate in Law at UBC studying how to use law to protect climate change science from manufactured doubt. She is a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation scholar and a Killam doctoral scholar, and a past Canada-U.S. Fulbright recipient. She holds a B.A. from Rice University, a J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School, and an LL.M from the University of British Columbia. Grace has written and published three novels in a hopeful climate fantasy series, the Ava of the Gaia trilogy. She also created and hosts Planet Potluck, a podcast exploring stories of hope, joy, and community in the climate movement. She’s never met a dance party she didn’t want to join.
Angela Campbell
Associate Provost (Equity and Academic Policies), McGill University
As Associate Provost (Equity and Academic Policies), Professor Angela Campbell is responsible for academic policies and procedures, as well as the oversight of all equity matters, at McGill. In her role, she advises senior academic administrators on the application of University policies and regulations. She further supports strategic academic and recruitment plans and operations, and provides oversight of the academic life cycle from recruitment to retirement. In this connection Professor Campbell leads the nomination and allocation of Canada Research Chairs, James McGill Professors, and William Dawson Scholars. She serves as Chair of the Joint Board-Senate Committee on Equity (JBSCE), Chair of the Universal Access Capital Projects Working Group, and Vice-Chair the Academic Policy Committee (APC).
Angela Campbell is a Professor in the Faculty of Law, specializing in Family, Health, Successions and Criminal Law. She has previously served as Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) and Director (Institute of Comparative Law) in the Law Faculty.
Sylvia Cheuy
Consulting Director, Tamarack Institute Collective Impact
Sylvia is a Consulting Director of the Tamarack Institute’s Collective Impact Idea Area. She is passionate about community change and what becomes possible when residents and various sector leaders share an aspirational vision for their future. Prior to joining Tamarack, Sylvia was the founding Executive Director to Headwaters Communities in Action (HCIA), a grassroots citizen initiative that fosters collaborative leadership and action in support of a long-term vision of well-being for Ontario's Headwaters region. Her work with HCIA was published as a chapter entitled, A Citizen-Led Approach to Enhancing Community Well-Being in the newly published Handbook of Community Well-Being Research. Sylvia completed her Masters Diploma in Social Innovation at the University of Waterloo in 2013 where she explored opportunities to create change within regional food systems.
Temitope Onifade
Co-founder and Coordinator, Liu Institute Network for Africa, UBC
Temi is a co-founder and coordinating co-chair of the Liu Institute Network for Africa, SPPGA, and PhD Candidate and Vanier Scholar, Allard Law School, UBC. His most novel work contextualizes and conceptualizes hybrid renewable energy policy (Energy Policy, Elsevier). After engaging experts at the University of Calgary and Columbia University, he started building on this contribution with a PhD at UBC.
Temi’s other works address climate policy, Alberta royalty review, sovereign wealth funds, natural resource funds, peoples-based permanent sovereignty over natural resources, renewable energy policy schemes and Africa’s non-renewable extractive sector law. He has contributed over 20 outputs in journals, books, reports, and policies, and has served on several editorial and NGO boards. He has consulted for a climate programme at Oxford University and is participating in the Public Voices Fellowship on the Climate Crisis Finalist Programme at Yale University. He mobilizes experts to teach youth about climate change and has advocated for climate action as a co-host on Vancouver Cooperative Radio. He is a grateful recipient of 40 awards and grants.
Anjali Mishra
UBC SDG Alliance
Weeks into her Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, Anjali was cutting class to road-trip across BC to engage communities on sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This transformed into co-authoring policy briefs on Canadian SDG implementation, advocating for intergenerational equity in sustainable development at the United Nations, creating a student directed seminar on the SDGs, and supporting UBC’s first-ever SDG week. Believing collaboration is a powerful tool for change, she is currently working with the UBC SDG Alliance to bring together students, staff and faculty around the shared goal of advancing sustainability on campus. She is captivated by her research on faith and climate justice- inspired by how our deepest values shape how we engage with the world.
Zabeen Khamisa
PhD Candidate, Religious Diversity in North America
Zabeen Khamisa is a PhD candidate in the joint Laurier-Waterloo PhD program, Religious Diversity in North America. Her research interests include the anthropology and sociology of religion, socio-political movements, digital media and technology, and cultural economics. Zabeen is currently the Vice President of Communications for the Graduate Student Association-University of Waterloo.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND THIS EVENT?
Are you a higher education leader, faculty, staff, researcher or a community partner?
Does your work aim to advance wellbeing, health promotion, sustainability, Indigenous engagement, and/or equity and inclusion?
Are you interested in approaching your work through a multi-solving lens in an effort to advance multiple social change agendas?
WHY A DIALOGUE ON THE OKANAGAN CHARTER? WHY NOW?
With issues facing society growing ever more complex and urgent, we can no longer address them in silos. We need to work in a way that allows for the advancement of multiple social change agendas.
The Okanagan Charter for Health Promoting Universities & Colleges recognizes that the wellbeing of people, places, and the planet are interdependent and provides us with a common language, principles, and framework to address these pressing systemic issues concurrently.
“Health promoting universities and colleges infuse health into everyday operations, business practices and academic mandates. By doing so, health promoting universities and colleges enhance the success of our institutions; create campus cultures of compassion, well-being, equity and social justice; improve the health of the people who live, learn, work, play and love on our campuses; and strengthen the ecological, social and economic sustainability of our communities and wider society.” - The Okanagan Charter
WHEN (AND HOW!) WILL IT TAKE PLACE?
December 9th, 2020
10:00 - 11:30 AM PST Main event
11:30 - 12:00 PST Optional breakout discussions
The event will take place virtually. Once you register, you will be sent invitations to participate on zoom in the days leading up to the event. You will receive two zoom invitations, one for the main event and one for the optional breakout discussions immediately following the main event. This is the first event in the series. We will reconvene for more dialogue in early 2021.