At UNB, we’re not just a campus community, we’re an integral part of the communities surrounding us. Our students, faculty and staff are contributing their skills and expertise to make a difference throughout New Brunswick. Here are just a few examples:
For 12 years, UNB’s Varsity Reds have been visiting local kindergarten classes with the Read with the Reds program, acting as role models for literacy and encouraging young children to pursue an interest in sports.
In 2006, Garth Wade, a former supervisor of physical education and health and co-founder of Read with the Reds, wrote Su and Red Become Junior Reds. The book tells the story of two children who visit UNB, meeting the student athletes and experiencing all the different sports that UNB has to offer.
Read with the Reds gives student athletes the opportunity to share their experiences with some of their biggest fans, says Joe Crossland, one of the organizers of the program. Mr. Crossland is a teacher who works with the school district and is the assistant coach of the women's soccer team.
"Most student athletes are nervous to go, but then they don't want to leave, and a big part of that is because they are stars to these kids who will go home and talk about their visit from the Varsity Reds. It provides a great connection for when the kids come out and watch the Reds compete," says Mr. Crossland.
The Saint John campus hosts events and competitions that promote hands-on, experiential and continuous learning for students in grades one through 12.
In partnership with Brilliant Labs, a not-for-profit organization supporting technology workshops in schools, the department of computer science hosts a Scratch Programming Competition for students up to grade eight. They practice hands on learning and critical thinking through the development of scratch coding projects that solve problems or entertain.
For older students in grades nine to 12, the department organizes the long established New Brunswick High School Programming Competition, where students work in teams, test their programming skills and solve advanced problems designed by Computer Science faculty members.
The department of mathematics and statistics hosts the Canadian Math Kangaroo Contest, a competition encouraging students from grades one through 12 to take an interest in and enjoy mathematics.
High school students interested in pursuing health studies take part in Discovery Days in Health at UNB Saint John. The one-day series offers workshops, lectures and career panel discussions, and provides students with the opportunity to learn about exciting careers in medicine and health sciences.
Over the past two years, fourth-year forestry and environment management students on our Fredericton campus have been working in the field, assembling a street tree inventory and management plan for the City of Fredericton.
The project came to be as a result of Hurricane Arthur, says Jasen Golding, the senior instructor supervising the project, which devastated most of New Brunswick and was extremely hard on Fredericton’s urban forest.
Students from the classes of 2015 and 2016 spent months in the field recording the health conditions and social, economic and historical values of more than 22,200 city-owned trees lining the streets of Fredericton. The City of Fredericton has already begun to implement some of their recommendations, removing trees that were flagged as a safety concern.
“Fredericton now has a 100 per cent street tree inventory, which is unheard of. It’s not a very big city relative to Toronto, but we have a world-class inventory a lot of places would love to have,” says Mr. Golding.
