It all started when I moved here in 2006, and UNA founder Jim Taylor observed me immediately and effectively standing up to a bully at the design meeting for the soon-to-be built Old Barn Community Centre.
It was a role I volunteered for as soon as I arrived at UBC as the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Preventive Medicine and Population Health. Afterwards, I was invited to Jim’s home in Hampton Place to discuss how I ought to continue volunteering for such efficient beneficence by running for the UNA Board.
Within six years, I became involved in creating three campus gems.
The first was the UBC skatepark located on Thunderbird Boulevard in 2017, where I worked with five 8-to-12 year-old neighbours, the UNA, and UBC to propose, design, and fund it. Once it was built, I studied usage at the skate park with three medical students and published research on its effects.
A second gem was the design of UBC’s Bioenergy Research Demonstration Facility.
I suggested the building should have huge windows, so we could all see the world’s first commercially scaled facility that converts “waste” wood to both energy and heat. I also created its “social license” through community outreach so residents could learn and feel safe about its emissions, and worked with public health students to create the informational signage that’s still there today.
A third gem I’m proud to have been a part of is UBC’s first outdoor workspace and classroom at the School of Population and Public Health. It’s a long table with benches, all cut from a log that UBC Properties Trust (UBCPT) retrieved from the Fraser River, where it had been well-preserved. The space is covered with glass, and has sockets below the table, so you can sit, work, eat, charge, and chat year-round, 24-7.
Over the years, I’ve also gotten UBCPT to retrofit housing to meet fire safety code, promoted emergency preparedness, participated in saving the UBC Farm, co-started the UNA’s community gardens, helped design community centres and parks, and selected fruit trees and bushes for our common harvesting joy.
And there’s so much more to do.
Starting in a few months, you’ll see invitations in the mail and around campus to participate more actively in UBC’s Campus as a Living Lab.
We’re working with the UBC Ethics Board now to see how we can most-safely and valuably build on the fact that we’re essentially a community filled with researchers and our families.
Many of us see this as a rare opportunity. There’s a large potential usefulness in being a “university company town”—one whimsically describable as being populated with humans who are both potential co-Investigators and lab rats—one that carries with it a mandate for us to seriously study the effects of living here.
In our investigations, we’ll explore questions that will be useful to us on campus and then to the world. For example, what are the measurable effects of being housed within a building in an apartment facing toward versus away from construction? We’ll determine the psychological, physical, and financial costs attributable to such exposures, and then we’ll be able to accurately answer a question like: “How much does construction exposure actually cost residents, and what evidence-based reduction in rent should we therefore receive for such exposure?”
This can create valuable research for us as residents, UBCPT as landlords, and for the world. For example, as President of the University Faculty and Staff Tenants’ Association, I will provide this data to UBCPT to act on, and after we submit this research for peer-reviewed publication, it will be available to other tenant associations and landlords around the world to use the same data and modelling henceforth.
Doesn’t that all sound like such a rewarding way to be in community?
I invite you to go explore some of these “campus gems” for inspiration, and volunteer to help shape your community as you become deeply connected to others similarly committed to our Campus as a Living Lab.
ERICA FRANK, MD, MPH CAME TO UBC IN 2006. SINCE THEN, SHE HAS LIVED IN MANY PLACES ON UBC’S CAMPUS, SERVED AS A UNA DIRECTOR, AND IS CURRENTLY PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY FACULTY AND STAFF TENANTS’ ASSOCIATION (UFASTA). SHE’S ALSO THE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR OF COMMUNITY-BUILDING AND EPIDEMIOLOGIC RESEARCH EFFORTS IN UBC’S ‘CAMPUS AS A LIVING LAB’.