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It was the culmination of years of hard work. For the last few weeks, Family Relations and Human Development student Angela Underhill had been waiting to hear back from the University of Guelph ethics board for the go-ahead to start her PhD research – the last phase of her doctoral program. Angela was planning on using arts-based workshops and in-person interviews to investigate access to fertility care. Now, approval had been given. She could put her plan into action.

On a cold spring night in 1903, John Muir sat around a campfire in Yosemite Valley alone with then President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Muir, founder of the Sierra Club and ever an advocate for the preservation of the great American wild, took the opportunity to speak with the president about the need for government supported conservation. That discussion had great impact. Roosevelt returned to Washington with a mission to pass laws to protect wild lands. He established the U.S. Forest Service and signed into existence five national parks and 150 national forests.

If you have driven along College Avenue in Guelph sometime in the last year and a half, you may have noticed some hefty construction happening at the corner of College Avenue and Smith Lane. The building known as the former VMI (Veterinary Microbiology and Immunology) building has undergone a complete transformation, both inside and out, in order to house the new Maplewoods Centre for Family Therapy and Child Psychology.

Eleni Nicolaides, PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science, investigates the impact of legal mobilization on judicial decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada and action taken in response.

Justine Townsend is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics. Her research interrogates the possibilities for reconciliation in the Canadian conservation sector, particularly by supporting the current surge in Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas.

What we choose to learn and who we choose to learn from shapes how we think and the futures we build. From my perspective as a grad student working under pandemic conditions, certain types of learning opportunities vanished, but there was more choice in online formal and informal learning than ever before. In fact, the abundance of webinars, online courses and conferences was overwhelming at times. So how to tune out the noise and tune in to real learning? For me real learning is when my ideas about what’s possible expand or shift.