Media releases

• 93-year-old history buff among students set to cross Brock Convocation stage

  Thursday, June 01, 2017 | By Brock University

  1 June 2017
  R00107
  Brock University — Communications & Public Affairs

  With more than 3,500 students set to convocate next week at Brock University, there are plenty of inspiring stories of determination and hard work in the crowd.

  Nine Spring Convocation ceremonies will take place in Ian Beddis Gymnasium over five days from Monday, June 5 to Friday, June 9. Ceremonies will take place at 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. each day, except for Friday, when only a morning ceremony will be held.

  In all, 3,121 undergrad students and 433 grad students will receive degrees. Honorary doctorates will be presented to Maureen Sabia, Chairman of the Board for Canadian Tire Corporation and David Kanatawakhon-Maracle, an instructor of Mohawk language.

  Among those 3,554 graduands are 93 student-athletes in 24 different programs who have carefully balanced their time between studying and representing the Brock Badgers on 37 varsity or club sports teams.

  All of the Convocation ceremonies are free to attend and no tickets are required. Parking is free for guests throughout the week.

  Below is a schedule of this year’s convocation ceremonies along with some of the highlight stories:

  Monday, June 5, 10 a.m. — Faculty of Social Sciences
  •    The first convocation speaker of 2017, Psychology Professor Tim Murphy is the Social Sciences recipient of the Faculty Teaching Award.

  Monday, June 5, 2:30 p.m. — Faculty of Social Sciences
  •    Devon Ainslie is one of 12 recipients of the 2016-17 Spirit of Brock Awards, given to one undergrad and one graduate student from each faculty who stand out as academic and community leaders. Ainslie has been a Brock ambassador and organizer for numerous events on and off campus.

  Tuesday, June 6, 10 a.m. — Faculty of Education

  Tuesday, June 6, 2:30 p.m. — Faculty of Education
  •    Lauren Caldwell will become the Faculty of Education’s first-ever BEd Specialist graduate as she completes the additional qualification program created in 2011. The professional degree program for educators allows for in-depth research and study in areas of teaching, learning and curriculum.

  Wednesday, June 7, 10 a.m. — Faculty of Applied Health Sciences
  •    Lindsay Cline will receive her doctorate after completing award-winning research focusing on the power of positive body image. Cline is the recipient of the Governor General’s Gold Medal for receiving a 97 per cent average, the highest mark of all 433 graduate students convocating this year.

  Wednesday, June 7, 2:30 p.m. — Faculty of Applied Health Sciences
  •    Jonah Mondloch was seven years old when his grandfather, Charles Burke, started taking classes at Brock. Fifteen years later, the two will graduate together — Jonah with a degree in Kinesiology and Charles with a general degree in Humanities. The two will be hooded by Brock Professor Cathy Mondloch, Johah’s mother and Charles’ daughter.

  Thursday, June 8, 10 a.m. — Goodman School of Business

  Thursday, June 8, 2:30 p.m. — Goodman School of Business
  •    Maureen Sabia, Chairman of the Board for Canadian Tire Corporation, who grew up in St. Catharines, will receive an honorary degree and give the Convocation address. Sabia, the daughter of high-profile social activist Laura Sabia who received her own honorary degree from Brock in 1979, is one of Canada’s most powerful female business leaders.

  •    Business graduate Jessica Menchella will receive the Dean’s Medal Award for the highest overall average in Brock’s Goodman School of Business, but she’s not the first in her family to receive the honour. Menchella is following in the footsteps of her brother, Jordan, who also received the prestigious honour when he graduated from the same program in 2014.

  Friday, June 9, 10 a.m. — Faculties of Humanities and Mathematics and Science
  •    David Kanatawakhon-Maracle, who has made it his life’s work to teach the Mohawk language, will receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the Convocation address Friday. Kanatawakhon’s texts have become the foundational tools for those learning indigenous languages.

  •    Robin Guard, 93, and Allan Edgington, 74, have spent nearly a century watching history unravel before their eyes — and the past few years closely studying it. The friends will convocate together, completing the Master of Arts in History program, of which Guard will become the oldest-ever graduate.

  Media are welcome to attend Brock’s Spring Convocation. Interviews can be arranged in advance with any of the graduands, honorary degree recipients or faculty members. Photographers shooting from directly in front of the stage are asked to wear a convocation gown, which can be arranged though Media Relations Officer Dan Dakin.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
   
  * Dan Dakin, Media Relations Officer, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970

  Brock University Marketing and Communications has a full-service studio where we can provide high definition video and broadcast-quality audio.

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  Categories: Media releases

• Brock research helps reverse rattlesnakes’ death rate

  Wednesday, May 31, 2017 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE: 31 May 2017 – R00105

  The Massasauga rattlesnakes in Niagara’s Wainfleet Bog have a friend in Brock University researcher Anne Yagi. After years of population decline and habitat loss, a managed recovery appears to be underway now that Yagi’s work is helping the reptiles survive winter hibernation.

  Ontario’s only native venomous snake, the Massasauga is a species at risk whose habitat has diminished due to agricultural and urban development. Another peril is people simply killing them out of fear and ignorance.

  In reality, the Massasauga is a cryptic species, the mottled pattern of their skin blending well into their surroundings and making them challenging to see in their natural habitat. Their venom is a modified digestive enzyme allowing them to predigest their prey (mice, voles, shrews) before swallowing them whole. After eating, snakes bask in the open to increase their body temperature to aid in digestion and mobility. Rattlesnake bites are rare in Ontario and are normally associated with the young male demographic, trying to pick up a snake. Nobody has died of a rattlesnake bite in Ontario in more than half a century.

  The Massasauga is still found in scattered locales across Ontario, including the Bruce Peninsula, the eastern shore of Georgian Bay, a small area near Windsor — and in the Wainfleet Bog, a 1,500-hectare peatland wetland near Lake Erie, in southern Niagara region.

  Yagi — a retired management biologist with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, now doing her master’s degree in Biology — knew that older rattlesnakes instinctively return to their place of birth to hibernate, just like salmon go back to their natal rivers to spawn. She had to find a way to break the cycle of neonatal snakes selecting their first burrow in hibernation areas that do not maintain a “life zone”.

  Her research on snake hibernation in the Wainfleet Bog began in 2001. When rattlesnake hibernation sites were confirmed during a radio telemetry study, she established a method of measuring subterranean parameters (the life zone) using groundwater wells, frost tubes, temperature and groundwater dissolved oxygen during winter. The measurements showed differences in the amount of life zone (the space below the frost line and above the groundwater table) where snakes could potentially survive winter.

  While Yagi’s research had established that a life zone was key to a snake’s winter survival, it was difficult to know exactly where the safety range started and ended.

  Four winters ago she began snake hibernation research in Brock’s Cairns Family Health and Biosciences Research Complex. The state-of-the-art lab was used to replicate winter temperatures found beneath Wainfleet Bog, so Yagi could test neonatal and juvenile gartersnakes and Massasauga winter behaviour, in simulated burrow habitats (acrylic tubes lined with sponges bought at a dollar store). Snake behaviour in the lab was measured using a high definition camera system.

  “Since you can’t see down a natural burrow during winter, and you should not disturb snakes at this time, I set up both a lab and field experiment to test the life zone hypothesis,” said Yagi. Eastern gartersnakes in their artificial burrows were ‘force hibernated’ in the life zone, and winter survival was determined 180 days later.

  Earlier this year, Luke Gray, a third-year Earth Sciences student at Brock, won the Esri Canada GIS Scholarship, which helps students continue studies using geographic information systems (GIS). Using specialized ArcGIS software that generates two- and three-dimensional interpolated maps, Gray mapped Yagi’s life zone data collected during one of the forced hibernation experiments. The mapping helps researchers  display the underground zone where snakes survived winter.

  Using Yagi’s study site, Gray collected the life zone parameters during the forced hibernation of a model species, Eastern gartersnake. He used the life zone data to develop his GIS mapping technique.

  This spring, Yagi and her team have been rewarded with evidence that the strategy is working. The growing snake population in areas where they’d been released indicates they are returning to hibernate in the safe “life zones.” 

  Soon, nature itself will help drive the renaissance of the Wainfleet rattlers. The first wave of snakes released three years ago will be reaching reproduction age, launching a new generation whose annual cycle begins in a safe hibernation habitat.

  For Yagi, the heartening results are what helps keep a researcher going.

  “The Cairns Complex is a wonderful facility,” she said. “Being able to do three years of metabolism and thermal behavior research in simulated winter conditions was a key to the project.

  “Our results provide the necessary evidence for where ideal snake hibernation habitat exists, and supports our theory that successful snake hibernation requires the continuous presence of a life zone.”

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
   
  * Dan Dakin, Media Relations Officer, Brock University ddakin@brocku.ca, 905-688-5550 x5353 or 905-347-1970

  Brock University Marketing and Communications has a full-service studio where we can provide high definition video and broadcast-quality audio.

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  Categories: Media releases