UBC Emeritus College: Senior Scholars Series

SENIOR SCHOLARS’ SERIES: THE PASSIONS THAT DRIVE ACADEMIC LIFE
Meet our event speaker: Fes de Scally

Professor Emeritus of Earth, Environmental and Geographic Sciences (2019)

Reflections on a Career of Field Science and Experiential Education While Building UBC’s Okanagan Campus

Fes retired in 2020 after 32 years of teaching at Okanagan University College and UBC. He was part of the first cohort of faculty hired by OUC to create the institution’s first degree programs. Seventeen years later, those programs became the core of UBC’s newly acquired Okanagan campus. Fes has spent his career as a field scientist on a wide range of research problems, including the hydrological role of snow avalanches, the dynamics and hazards of high-mountain fans, tropical cyclone hazards, and wildland-urban interface fire risk. His fieldwork has taken him to Pakistan’s Punjab Himalaya and Karakoram Mountains, the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the Cascade and Rocky Mountains of western Canada, and the Cook Islands. His passion for undergraduate education, especially experiential and field-based, has been recognized by a teaching award from the Canadian Association of Geographers and a Visiting Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury.