Andrew Cline

For John and Michelle Cline, the critical moment happened sometime in the mid-1980s, when they met as students at the University of Guelph. But they enjoyed another moment – poignant in a different way – when they returned to U of G last summer with their eldest son, Andrew.

The family planned to tour the campus before Andrew began biology studies in the fall. Walking from the parking lot, Michelle noticed that her son appeared pensive. Finally his thoughts came out: “So grandpa and grandma went here, and aunt Peggy and uncle Paul, and dad and you…”

Her reply? “We’re standing in a long tradition here.”

Recalling the exchange one morning last month, she smiles across the kitchen table of The Evergreens, the family’s 1820 stone house in Grimsby, Ont. “It was the moment he put it all together. It was a nice moment.”

Plenty of families boast wide-ranging connections to Guelph, with numerous members and generations having studied or worked here. Count the Clines among them.

With alumni from all three of the University’s founding colleges – including one current professor – and with the third generation now embodied in Andrew, the Cline family might view U of G as their school of choice.

Not that there was any plan, says Robert Cline, the family patriarch and a 1956 graduate of the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC): “We just sort of grew into it.”

John and Michelle met here during the 1980s. They were in different programs – he studied soil sciences for a B.Sc.(Agr.) in 1987 and she finished her DVM a year later – but they met on campus somehow. “Probably at the library,” says John.

Today he’s a plant agriculture professor studying tree fruits at U of G’s Simcoe Research Station near Lake Erie, about a 90-minute commute mostly through southern Ontario countryside.

Simcoe was connected with a sister station in Vineland, just a 15 minutes’ drive from home along the Queen Elizabeth Way. At both stations, researchers have long studied horticultural practices, developed cultivars and supported farmers in the Niagara fruit belt and on the Norfolk sand plain.

One of those researchers was John’s father, Robert, who spent 37 years at Vineland studying nutrition, fertilization and irrigation of tree fruits, grapes and vegetables.

Robert had begun working at the station as a Guelph chemistry student in 1953. He’d grown up in nearby St. Catharines and helped his grandfather occasionally on a Niagara-area farm.

Retired in 1992 and now living in Owen Sound, Robert had also met his wife, Barbara, Mac ’56, at Guelph. Speaking over the phone last month, Robert recalls living in Johnston and Mills halls.

Barbara and Robert Cline

“We developed a great year spirit,” says Robert. He and Barbara last visited Guelph in 2006 to mark their classes’ respective half-centuries.

Barbara died in early 2011. Her brother, Bruce Marshall, and his wife, Donna, also attended OAC and Macdonald Institute, respectively, during the 1960s; they now live in Woodstock.

In 1992, the elder Clines moved to Owen Sound to start an orchard on an 88-acre spread they’d bought a decade earlier. There the couple also ran a country market store called Sound View Orchards, where Barbara, a nutritionist, sold apples and baked goods. Robert still owns the farm, where he grows about 25 acres’ worth of apples.

In turn, their grandparents’ farm became a favourite destination for a young Andrew and his brothers, Peter and Philip. The boys drove a golf cart through the orchard, helped their grandparents pick fruit, visited their market store and swam in nearby Georgian Bay.

Robert recalls a phone call last year from his grandson. “I remember him calling me to say he was going to Guelph. I was very pleased. It was nice to see that he was carrying on.”

For Robert, the conversation carried echoes of another chat he’d had decades earlier with John. Besides attending OAC – by then one of the colleges of U of G – John later followed his father’s path to grad studies at Michigan State University.

He and Michelle were married by then. While he studied horticulture, she worked in a mixed animal practice. They took their ag-vet tandem to Kent, England, where John completed his PhD in 1994 at the East Malling Research Station affiliated with the University of London.

Back in Canada, things fell into place at home and at work.

Robert and Barbara had just moved to Georgian Bay, leaving the family home in Grimsby vacant. For John, coming home would have layered meanings.

He’d grown up in The Evergreens, a stone farmhouse that had already accumulated a century and a half of history before his parents bought it in Canada’s centennial year.

The house was built in 1820 by a member of the Pettit family, descendants of United Empire Loyalists who worked a 160-acre farm spanning the Peninsula between the Niagara Escarpment and Lake Ontario. The property remained in that family for about a century, according to an old ownership deed that the Clines found in the house. Says Michelle: “We tap maple trees planted by the Pettits.”

Today that house with its Georgian touches is easy to miss, tucked in the middle of a decade-old subdivision.

But growing up, the Cline kids – John, his twin brother, Paul, their older brother, David, and sister, Kathryn – still had acres’ worth of open space to run in. “We grew up with fruit farms around us,” says John. Sometimes they went with their dad to the Vineland station, where they picked fruit and wandered the fields and buildings between Lake Ontario and the QEW.

Robert never pushed his kids to follow his own path, although one bit of advice did stick with John: “Father said there should always be jobs in agriculture, people always need to eat.”

That message must have resonated indirectly with Paul, too.

He studied microbiology at Guelph and graduated in 1987; now at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in St. Catharines, he works with farmers on nutrient management regulations. Paul’s wife, Peggy, took consumer studies at Guelph, graduated in 1988 and works at her local library. (Breaking with family tradition, Paul and Peggy met not at U of G but in Owen Sound. Kathryn studied nursing at the University of Western Ontario and now lives in Owen Sound; David lives in Simcoe.)

Settling into the new-old family home in Grimsby after their return from England, Michelle worked at several practices in Hamilton. In 1999, she moved to the Grimsby Animal Hospital, where she is now an associate working with three Guelph grads: Bill David, DVM ’78, Suzi Peters, DVM ’94, and Dalia Gough, DVM ’02. Michelle had settled on veterinary studies early in life, having grown up on a hobby farm in London, Ont.

Michelle Cline

John found himself not only living in his childhood home but also later working at the Vineland research station where his dad had spent his entire career. He even occupied his father’s old office and lab there. In 2002, he began dividing his time between Vineland and Simcoe.

In 1997, those stations and a third one in the Holland Marsh near Toronto – all part of the Horticultural Research Institute of Ontario – were transferred from the provincial government to U of G’s Department of Plant Agriculture. That change turned John from a government research scientist into a U of G researcher and teacher.

Today he spends most of his time in Simcoe, where he supervises graduate students in plant agriculture. He also teaches horticultural courses in Guelph.

Coming to the U of G campus now gives him a chance to catch up with Andrew.

After his first semester, Andrew switched from general biology to agriculture. Although he hasn’t decided on his career path yet, the Guelph student plans to pursue horticulture. “Seeing what my dad does makes me interested.”

Riding in a Gator vehicle around the Simcoe campus seems to have made more of a lasting impression on him than visits to the veterinary clinic. Or at least a better impression: he went to work one day with his mom, but says that was enough: “I don’t think I could do surgeries.”

His brothers have also helped dad with his research. But middle son Peter also helps mom at the clinic down the road from home. Another OVC candidate in the making? Who knows, says Michelle.

Until then, Andrew is the family’s U of G baton-carrier. “Generations of the Clines have been here,” he says. “I feel like I’m fulfilling something, living up to the goal, something like that.”

Sociology professor Mavis Morton, right, works with community partners like OPP constable Cheri Rockefeller, whose is also a Guelph grad. Rockefeller earned a BA in sociology in 1993.

Students are making vital connections among theory, research, policy development, action and impact through fourth-year seminars taught by sociology professor Mavis Morton; her course demonstrates the value of community-engaged learning (CEL) projects.

Morton has built successful relationships with local social service and criminal justice agencies, with the support of the University’s Institute for Community Engaged Scholarship and the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences. She is committed to the notion that social scientists must orient their work in the real world and draws inspiration from the assertion of sociologists Christopher Uggen and Michelle Inderbitzin that university faculty members can serve as “transformative intellectuals.”

Morton says academics who link tertiary-level education with government agencies and communities play a crucial role in this effort. Over the past five years, she developed and launched a community-engaged research agenda with Guelph community partners interested in positive social change, then brought it into the students’ domain.

“My background in community-based research fuels my desire to incorporate community-engaged teaching and learning in the classroom,” Morton explains.

Advanced Topics in Criminology focuses on women as victims, offenders and professionals, and offers students the opportunity to collaborate with a variety of non-profit organizations: women’s shelters, police services, prisons, child protection agencies, sexual-assault centres, immigrant services and community legal clinics.

The community partners provide an overview for students early in the term and propose a specific question or problem for them to tackle. Working in teams of four to eight, Morton’s students develop a plan to resolve the issue and present their work when their community partners return to the classroom at the end of the term for a conference-style forum. Each team’s final written report is given to the community partners at the end of the course.

The information the students provide may be used by the organizations in various ways: funding applications or public education sessions, to advocate on an issue, or to inform their own policies and practices, for example.

Inspector Scott Smith, commander of the Wellington County OPP detachment, participated in CEL for the first time in 2011, hoping to obtain answers to some key questions about recruiting women into the police force. Why do so few women apply for careers in policing? Are there any strategies that may assist in recruiting women of diverse cultures? What would it take to entice women to apply for and remain in a policing career?

“I didn’t quite know what to expect, but I am very pleased with the experience,” Smith says. “The students’ presentations in November proved to be informative for me as the commander of a detachment comprising approximately 20 per cent women working both in uniform and in criminal investigation functions. I had the opportunity to learn not only from the results of the students’ research, but also from the process.”

It was a good learning experience for the students too, he added. “They learned some things about women in policing that they would not have gleaned from a textbook.”

Fourth-year student Azra Manori concurs: “It’s invaluable. Sometimes we surprised ourselves by discovering new information when we thought we already knew the answer. The results themselves are interesting. While our community partners can gain a unique perspective from us and our research may become stepping stones for positive change within their organization, as a student, it’s so exhilarating to take fresh knowledge and apply it directly.”
The Grand Valley Institution for Women provided students with additional experience conducting research in a real-world setting. For program manager Sarina Randall, Morton’s CEL project offered a chance to glean information that might assist in finding employment for women in the correctional facility. She got involved in CEL seeking a symbiotic relationship: “I believe it is essential for university students to have hands-on experience in the field. I also believe it is important to address the barriers between prisons and community in order to help offenders who attempt to re-enter society to succeed.

“The students’ final report will be consulted when the employment counsellor meets with community businesses to secure work-release positions for the women. The students’ work will further assist in our discussions with the community about the realities faced by incarcerated women seeking employment when they are released.”
At the end of the course, Morton asks students to write a critical reflection of their experience. She encourages them to consider the work they did for and with their community partner, the course curriculum and their academic experience. In their written reflections, students often share the ways in which their CEL project brought the connections between theory, research, policy and action to life.

Not long ago, Morton received an email from a former student who is working on a master’s degree in public administration: “In this program, we are doing a scoping review group project, which is essentially a research project in co-ordination with a public sector client – similar in nature to what we did (in your course) last year. It was great experience and I’m glad I had the opportunity to do it. Most students in my program have not had any client interaction. I am glad you made us do that!”

Morton often receives positive feedback from students, but it typically comes after the course has ended, “partly because community-engaged learning is new to them and can be very challenging,” she says.

The CEL projects are never duplicated, and Morton says she enjoys “the messiness” each one brings as students wrestle with the subject matter and the research process. After working their way up what can be a steep learning curve, she says each project ends with a group of people who are different from who they were at the start.

“Initially, it is extremely hard for students to jump in and get going on something so unfamiliar to them. The first term really can be difficult, but some of the students most apprehensive in the beginning are the most engaged by the end. The transformation can be amazing.”

Rob Henderson

When Rob Henderson decided to go back to school at the age of 35, he knew he was going to be one of the oldest students in his class, but that didn’t stop him from enrolling as a mature student at the University of Guelph. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” says Henderson, who will receive his B.Comm. at winter convocation Feb. 22. “Growing up, I had to leave school early and go to work, so I’ve always tried to upgrade.”

He worked in construction and as a delivery truck driver for 15 years. When he injured his back on the job, he decided to learn new skills that would help him find a new job. A friend who worked in computing inspired him to study computer science at U of G. But after one year in the program, he realized that he was better suited to business, since he enjoyed working with people and numbers. He switched to human resource management.

Henderson’s age turned out to be an asset. His classmates, most in their late teens and early 20s, looked up to him. For group assignments, he was automatically designated the leader. “Younger students look to you for answers and leadership,” he says. His professors were also sympathetic to his obligations to his wife and two children, then ages three and five. Going back to school allowed him to spend more time with his family than when he worked 60 to 70 hours a week.

On top of his course load, he worked as an undergraduate research assistant (URA) for Prof. Nita Chhinzer, Department of Business, an experience he describes as “the best thing that ever happened as far as my university career goes.”

What started with data entry and research grew into collaborating on papers. Henderson and Chhinzer presented two abstracts at the 18th annual International Conference Promoting Business Ethics in Manhattan last October. One paper looked at a new framework for downsizing in the public and private sectors; the other examined the efficacy and ethics of layoff legislation. He received feedback from attendees, including researchers from the United States, Australia and Iceland.

Henderson says working with Chhinzer gave him a new perspective on professors. “It was incredible,” he says. “As a student, you’re looking at these professors and you have a picture of what they do, but you get to see what they do behind the scenes above and beyond teaching.”

Henderson also gained a new appreciation for what goes into getting a paper published. As a URA, he gathered data from the Ontario Ministry of Labour and worked with Chhinzer to develop a concept for their paper. After writing and submitting their paper, he says, “You wait patiently for that nice little acceptance letter to come in the mail. And in my case it was great: I got my first doctoral letter in the mail because they just assumed I was a doctor. I had some fun with it. It certainly made its way to my Facebook page.”

Henderson is currently looking for HR jobs and hopes to work his way into upper management. “I have a two-pronged approach: I’m looking at larger companies with larger HR departments, but I’m also looking at smaller companies that I can grow with.”

For anyone thinking of going back to school as a mature student, Henderson offers the following advice: “First, find out if the school has a mature student association. Guelph has a fantastic one: the GMSA. From day one, I joined it, and it was probably the best decision I ever made.” The Guelph Mature Student Association uses humour to bridge the age gap with younger students, offering T-shirts that read: “No, I’m not your prof” or “No, I’m not a TA.”

Sandra Sabatini

You’ve heard of the slow food movement? Sandra Sabatini, research manager in the College of Arts, thinks we need a slow writing movement. “There are fewer and fewer occasions when someone looks at you and says ‘just slow down,’” says Sabatini. “People tend to write in ways that are easy for them, and it can become a kind of shorthand where there is no texture or geography.”

She’s offering some antidotes to that type of writing during her session of the 2012 Writer’s Workshop at the University of Guelph Library. The workshop runs Feb. 23 and 24 with sessions that cover a range of topics – from fiction to non-fiction and academic writing to the awesomeness of  Twitter’s 140 characters. The full program is outlined here and advance registration is required. (The workshop is free to U of G staff, faculty and students; others can pay per session or per day.)

“It takes some courage to sign up for these workshops,” Sabatini adds. “You will have to write, and you will have to read because it is a workshop, not a lecture. When you know you are going to have an audience, you pay a little more attention. And your audience will be people with no vested interest in anything except excellence.”

Sabatini’s writing career shows her commitment to that interest in excellence. A lifelong Guelph resident, she has a PhD in Canadian fiction and rhetoric and a master’s degree in creative writing, and is the author of two collections of short stories. The One with the News (2000), a collection of linked stories exploring the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on a family, was shortlisted for the McClelland Stewart Writers Trust Journey and for the Upper Canada Writers’ Craft Award. The second short-story collection, The Dolphins at Sainte-Marie (2006), explores small town living in Southern Ontario. She also recently published a novel, Dante’s War, about the lives of two young Italians during World War II. As well, Sabatini has a non-fiction book entitled Making Babies: Infants in Canadian Fiction (2004).

Since being involved in an accident last August, Sabatini is feeling the challenge of finding her own voice again – and a little anxiety as she struggles once more with the discipline and practice of being a writer.

During her workshop, Sabatini says she hopes to “challenge people’s impressions of what writing can do.” She will share excellent writing and provide inspiration to writers looking for ways to improve their own work.

Paying attention, she says, means sharpening your awareness, not just of your experiences and observations, but of yourself. “You bring your history, your context, your voice and your own peculiar perspective to the stories you tell with that voice,” Sabatini says.

But she doesn’t promise that the road to good writing will be an easy one. “Writing is a practice and a discipline,” she says. “You’ve got to decide to do it. Read broadly, steal carefully, and find good mentors – preferably ones who don’t like you too much.” Mentors who don’t like you? Sabatini explains that “disinterested mentors” would be ideal, but those are hard to find. A mentor who doesn’t like you too much is more likely to be honest in appraising your work and pushing you to improve.

Writers also have to be willing to take risks in their work, she adds. “If the writing isn’t scaring you a little bit – in a ‘did that come out of me?’” way – then it isn’t going to be as good as it can be.”

The truth is that writing is one of the best places to take risks, because you can always go back later and change it if you decide you’ve gone too far. Bad first drafts are gifts, Sabatini claims, because now you have something to fix. “You’re not hanging off the precipice of the blank page.”

“The Guelph Police Service and lady’s family wish to express sincere thanks to the staff at Planet Bean and students Madison Oskamp, Matthew Oskamp and Amelia Campbell who assisted in this incident. Their respective efforts helped save this lady’s life and bring this missing persons investigation to a successful conclusion,” commented Guelph Police Sgt. Douglas Pflug.

Robb-Jackson is among five young women from across the province to receive the award, which is presented annually during International Development Week. As part of being named a global changemaker, the students share their stories and international experiences on the OCIC website.

“Seeing young women becoming increasingly aware of gender issues and women’s rights was an inspiration,” Robb-Jackson said of her experience in Tanzania working with a local organization that provides support services for individuals and communities affected by HIV/AIDS.

Robb-Jackson completed her master’s degree at the U of G in 2009. Her thesis examined women’s participation in reconciliation processes in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and South Africa.

Since then she has worked with Canada’s International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, first with the women’s rights and citizenship program and currently with the governance, security and justice program. She also volunteers in a court watch program for the Ottawa Coalition To End Violence Against Women, gathering data to better understand the barriers to accessing justice faced by Canadian women.

This year Robb-Jackson will travel to Sierra Leone for five weeks to research women’s access to justice and the role of paralegal programmes.

Robb-Jackson says that in the developing countries she has visited women involved in grassroots activism have made a great impact on her. “To witness their dedication and perseverance inspires me in my gender equality work,” she said.

Suresh Neethirajan

You probably brushed your teeth this morning. And you probably didn’t think much about the reasons for that part of your daily routine, but engineering professor Suresh Neethirajan would tell you that brushing is a good way to detach bacteria from the surfaces of your teeth, helping to prevent cavities.

But what if those bacteria could be prevented from sticking to your teeth in the first place? One of Neethirajan’s research projects is about improving our understanding of how bacteria attach themselves to surfaces – what he calls the “adhesion kinetics” of bacteria. Once we understand that, there is potential to develop extremely thin films that could coat medical instruments used in surgery, prosthetics or medical implants, or even human teeth, to prevent infection.

To study this, he’s developed tiny devices made of silicon in which bacteria can be grown and then studied under optical and laser-scanning microscopes.

That’s just one of several projects Neethirajan is working on. He grew up in India and did his undergraduate degree there, but completed his graduate work at the University of Manitoba. There he used nanotechnology to develop sensors that could be inserted in a device the size of a sugar cube and added to grain storage bins.

“If insects get into these bins, or if the grain spoils, that means a major loss for the farmer,” says Neethirajan. “These sensors can detect chemicals such as carbon dioxide that are released when insects start eating the grain or the metabolites released when a fungus infects the grain. The sensor can identify exactly what the problem is so the farmer can respond properly.”

The sensor, which has been patented, also has the ability to send electronic signals through the Internet. “One of my students is working on developing a wireless unit so that the farmer doesn’t even have to be near the farm – he could be vacationing in Florida – but he’d be notified of, for example, a fungus in the grain bin and could call to have the treatment started,” he says.

During his student years, Neethirajan attended summer school at Oxford University and spent some time in Grenoble, France. After completing his studies in Manitoba, he traveled again – to Tokyo, where he worked at the Japan Food Institute under a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Fellowship. “I was doing research to create new value for minor food crops such as buckwheat and quinoa,” he says.

These crops are highly nutritious, but not grown as often as the better-known grains. Neethirajan’s work sought to group and map the chromosomes of these grains, and to find ways to use the grains in the cosmetics and biofuel industries.

He then completed a post-doctoral stint at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S., where he built microfluidic devices and developed nanoscale analytical techniques for studying plant-microbe interactions. This well-known facility was at one time headed up by Albert Einstein and was where the atomic bomb was developed during World War II. The laboratory still has a research budget of some $1.5 billion. “I wasn’t in the ‘top secret’ area,” he jokes.

Now that he’s at U of G, Neethirajan is embarking on “very ambitious” projects to use nanoscale devices, technologies and methods to study biological and agricultural systems. These technologies, for example, are very valuable in studying bacteria.

This better understanding of bacteria may help in determining appropriate doses of antibiotics, he adds. “Right now we usually take higher doses of antibiotics than we really need, just to be sure,” he explains. “Using microfluidics to mimic the cellular environment, we can study bacteria and determine exactly what the minimum effective dose would be.”

Neethirajan also envisions the “nano-cellphone.” Ten or 15 years ago, he points out, a cellphone was roughly the size of a brick. Today it fits in the palm of your hand. It can get smaller, Neethirajan says. “Now we can make wires from DNA that we can pass electricity through. And the cellphone won’t need to be recharged – it will run on solar energy using bacteria to convert the energy of light to fuel the phone can use.”

Perhaps not surprising given his love of world travel, Neethirajan is a licensed private pilot who flies single-engine planes. He also likes to go sky-diving at least once a year. “It’s really thrilling,” he says. “Sometimes you tumble in free fall when you first jump out of the plane – that’s the biggest thrill. Then you open the parachute and it’s just a smooth glide to the ground.”

David Mutch and Carolina Stryjecki

Want to help lower the risk of chronic health problems associated with obesity, diabetes and heart disease? Look to your genes, says a new study led by University of Guelph researchers that links genetics, dietary fats and inflammation tied to these conditions.

The researchers hope their work will eventually help in testing for people predisposed to such diseases and in altering diet to prevent or treat chronic health problems.

Prof. David Mutch, Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences (HHNS), says this is the first study to relate dietary fatty acids and blood markers for disease inflammation to genetic variations in an enzyme called stearoyl-CoA desaturase 1 (SCD1).

He co-authored the study with researchers at Guelph, the University of Toronto and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). Their paper appears online in the December 2011 issue of Molecular Genetics and Metabolism.

The SCD1 enzyme converts saturated fats to monosaturated fats. It is associated with obesity, which is regarded as a low-grade inflammatory state, says Carolina Stryjecki, the paper’s lead author. She completed her master’s degree with Mutch last year and is now a staff scientist at PHAC in Toronto.

Says Stryjecki: “We want to see if SCD1 can influence that relationship and contribute to inflammation.”

Other Guelph researchers on the study were HHNS Prof. David Ma and graduate students Kaitlin Roke and Shannon Clarke.

The study found genetic differences in how SCD1 regulates metabolism of fatty acids in Asian and Caucasian young women. Mutch says more research is needed to learn about the enzyme’s role and how exactly it affects the relationship between fatty acids and inflammation. They’d also like to learn more about those differences in different ethnic groups.

“SCD1 is definitely involved, but is it a driver or a passenger?” he says, adding that “knockout” mice lacking the gene have been shown to resist diet- and genetic-induced obesity.

For this study, the researchers looked at blood samples from a cohort of young adults aged 20 to 29 in Toronto. (Those subjects, both male and female, were recruited by Ahmed El-Sohemy in U of T’s Department of Nutritional Sciences.)

SCD1 and other enzymes are key “metabolic hubs” that are known to be involved in metabolism of dietary components, but remain relatively unstudied at the genetic level, says Mutch.

In a study published earlier last year, he and his colleagues found a relationship between another enzyme called fatty acid desaturase 1 and the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the blood. That genetic variation affects lipid metabolism differently between ethnic populations, he says, and perhaps affects risks of diseases in ethnic groups.

On their own dinner plates, Mutch and Stryjecki both follow the mantra of “everything in moderation.” But people with versions of genes that regulate fatty acid levels and that are associated with inflammation may benefit from altering their diet – the ultimate goal of these kinds of nutrigenomics studies, says the Guelph professor.

Stryjecki developed an interest in nutrigenomics while studying biology as an undergrad at Guelph. “It sounded cool,” she says. “I liked the aspect of looking at someone’s genome and saying, ‘Do they metabolize different nutrients differently?’”

Bare feet were the order of the day for this group of Guelph students travelling in India under the University’s semester-abroad program. Photos courtesy Chris Hall

This winter, 25 students and two faculty members are travelling through India under the University’s semester-abroad program offered by U of G’s Centre for International Programs. The group is spending four months travelling and studying in one of the world’s most diverse countries, one steeped in tradition and culture.

“The rich tapestry of culture and history that exists in India, as well as the vitality of the Indian people, presents a wonderful backdrop,” says Prof. Cynthia Scott-Dupree, School of Environmental Sciences (SES). She is using part of her research leave to help lead the India semester, a long-time dream.

“India is a country in transition, and it’s amazing to be able to witness the changes first-hand. Everyone at the University will be pleased to know that there is a fabulous group of young people representing U of G in India this semester.”

The senior undergrads in India this year come from diverse programs: international development, political science, history, adult development and well-being, environmental science, anthropology, agriculture, geography, psychology, economics and French.

Profs. Cynthia Scott-Dupree and Chris Hall, sitting middle row right, are leading the 2012 India Semester that will take them and their students from southern India to Jaipur in the north.

This is the third India semester since 2008 for co-ordinator and SES professor Chris Hall. Besides broadening his own view of teaching and outreach, he says the experience will make a difference for students. “These young people are dedicated to making lasting contributions to society, which in my opinion is one of the key outcomes of a university education.”

By early February, the group had visited numerous destinations, including Chennai, Pondicherry, Coimbatore and a rainforest retreat in the Western Ghat mountains. Their entire trip will take them from Mysore in southern India to Jaipur in the north, with study sessions in both places.

In-class sessions began in late January. Before that, the students immersed themselves in Indian culture and daily life, including taking local transportation and sampling local foods. Besides a lack of infrastructure and law enforcement, the country poses challenges, including issues of gender, caste and religion – not to mention traveller’s sickness.

In Coimbatore, the students visited Tamil Nadu University, one of the country’s top universities and world-renowned for its agriculture studies. Researchers there collaborate with the University of Guelph and with the Canadian International Development Agency on agricultural extension programs in local communities. Through e-learning, researchers connect with farmers to share efficient farming techniques and information.

In the mountain village of Ooty, the students visited a horticultural research station connected to Tamil Nadu University. Here researchers study fermentation of organic fertilizer and use of medicinal plants, working with 100 local farmers to improve crop productivity.

The students will visit about 10 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on various local issues. In Turtle Bay, FSL India installs toilets in neighbouring fishing villages and along the beach, where lack of facilities raises health and gender problems. Only three years in, the project has improved the lives of villagers, especially women. The Guelph group donated $400 to the NGO, enough to build one toilet.

At the Rainforest Retreat at Mojo Plantation in Karnataka state, the group learned about organic crop production, rainforest biodiversity, balanced ecosystems, and natural farming and production. The students helped to harvest vanilla beans, coffee beans and tea leaves on the plantation while learning about organic cultivation and biological pest control.

There’s much to explore for Guelph students visiting a rainforest retreat and local villages in India’s Western Ghat mountains.

At a village school, the Guelph group learned about challenges facing children from farm families, including isolation, long treks between school and home, and conflicts between attending school and working on the farm.

By sharing songs, dances, gifts and information, the visitors and the children glimpsed each other’s culture, says Erin Stefaniuk, a Guelph student in international development and history. “Spending time with them may have been a small act, but these moments are reminders of the blessings of travelling to India and experiencing another culture,” she said. “They invoke thoughts and ideas about issues in India and how they relate to similar ones back in Canada. It is through these travelling experiences that we find ideas to make positive changes to our world.”

Offered since 1995, the India semester is one of several semester-abroad programs run by U of G.