In keeping with its interdisciplinary nature, IRES faculty members represent a wide range of backgrounds and interests. IRES faculty members work extensively with a variety of public agencies as advisors and consultants. IRES faculty are dedicated to serving the academic and wider community through their membership on boards and councils of many national and international panels, including the US National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Ministerial Advisory Panel on Sustainability for Public Works and Government Services Canada, Westcoast Environmental Law, and the David Suzuki Foundation. In addition, faculty hold offices in scholarly societies and committees, as well as reviewing and serving on editorial boards for a wide range of journals and publications. From Nepal and Bhutan, to Colombia and Peru, IRES faculty are engaged in research across the globe. They have been strengthening relations with local institutions and organizations for over 30 years, resulting in meaningful, practical, cross-cultural partnerships.
The Institute for Resources, the Environment and Sustainability (IRES) is both an interdisciplinary research institute and a major interdisciplinary graduate education program at the University of British Columbia.
IRES host the highly interdisciplinary graduate program (RMES) which focuses on issues of societal concern in partnership with extra-academic actors. The studies often cut across the natural science/technology-social science/humanities divide. Our students develop tailored academic programs for their graduate degrees drawing on the expertise of faculty from across the campus, from other educational institutions, as well as the private and public sectors in British Columbia and beyond. To enable students to develop these unique graduate programs that capture the breadth of their previous educational experience and their academic and career goals, the RMES program offers MA, MSc. and PhD degrees. The RMES students may be supervised by IRES core faculty members or by our faculty associates who come from nine of UBC’s eleven faculties. One third of our students are supervised by faculty members in the Fisheries Centre (FC). Most of the RMES students have study space on the 2-4th floor of the AERL building.
Students
The students enrolled in the RMES program come from a wide range of backgrounds, including engineering, economics, geography, natural sciences, marine sciences and fisheries, business, computer science and many others. RMES welcomes and continues to attract international students. The students section of this site discusses the backgrounds of some of our current and former students, as well as their research areas.
Faculty
The faculty members in IRES include specialists in a wide range of subject areas. Their key common linkage is an emphasis on interdisciplinary, integrated approaches to research and learning regarding environment and sustainability issues, making use of a wide range of methods and perspectives. The faculty members share an interest in working directly on addressing real world problems of contemporary concern. The academic backgrounds of faculty members are diverse, including natural sciences, social sciences, humanities and engineering as well as professional programs such as public policy analysis. The unit has 12 core faculty members and approximately 30 associate faculty members from nine of UBC’s 12 Faculties. Details of the backgrounds, current research activities, publications and related information for IRES core and faculty associates can be found here (this will be a link once the page exists.)
source: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Sandbox:Handbook_Who_we_are
