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Dr. Rene Van Acker has been reappointed dean of the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) for a five-year term.

The decision follows a review by a committee of faculty, students and staff led by Dr. Gwen Chapman, provost and vice-president (academic). The effective renewal date is Sept. 1, 2021.

“Under Dr. Van Acker’s leadership and guidance, OAC has experienced incredible growth and attained new levels of excellence, allowing us to remain at the forefront of agriculture and food, nationally and globally,” Chapman said.

The best kind of chocolate is creamy, smooth and melts in your mouth, not in your hands. Now University of Guelph food scientists say they have found a way to create that perfect chocolate that simplifies the traditional “tempering” process of repeatedly heating and cooling chocolate.

In a world first, a team led by food scientist Dr. Alejandro Marangoni discovered that adding a key component in cocoa butter fat to melted chocolate helps to hold it together and give it an ideal structure, simply and inexpensively.

A University of Guelph professor is leading a major fundraising campaign in memory of his wife to support research aimed at finding new treatments for brain cancer.

Dr. Thomas Graham, a professor in the School of Environmental Sciences, lost his wife, Cindy Graham, a U of G alumna, on Feb. 24 after an 18-month battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. She was 47, and mother to twins Dean and Darwin, 8.

Sonia grew up in Vancouver and completed her bachelor’s degree in environmental design at the University of British Columbia. Here at the University of Guelph (U of G), she is continuing to pour her passion for design into her research which focuses on landscape design for wildfire management in the Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) program. Sonia looks forward to a career as an accredited landscape architect where she will contribute to communities in meaningful ways, designing landscapes for people to enjoy and where nature can flourish.

Justice Dorleku, an M.Sc. candidate in the Department of Food Science, is helping a major Ontario pork packing plant improve technology integration in the pork processing industry.

Justice is the recipient of the 2021 Percy Gitelman Memorial Scholarship, which aims to promote quality education and development for meat science research in Canada.

Originally from Ghana, Justice graduated in 2017 with a B.Sc. (Agriculture) specializing in animal science from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

By Ashleigh Weeden, PhD candidate, School of Environmental Design & Rural Development

Depending on who you ask, Canada’s 44th election is either poorly timed or urgent, inconvenient or generation-defining.

While political engagement and participation don’t start or end at the voting booth, elections represent moments where the relationship between people and our governments feels incredibly close as well as precariously prone to rupture.

Julia Romagnoli, a 2016 graduate from the Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, Animal Science program. She is the founder and curator of Pride in Ag and now works as a Production System Specialist for John Deere based in Guelph, ON. We recently chatted with Julia to learn more about her University of Guelph experience. 

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is a specialized United Nations agency based in Rome. It is an international financial institution and the UN’s food and agriculture hub. IFAD is dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries globally. Canada and IFAD have a long-standing partnership to end poverty and hunger. Both are invested in inclusive and sustainable transformation, particularly for rural populations.

People living in rural Ontario have experienced significant declines in mental health, employment satisfaction and personal safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a University of Guelph study.

Dr. Leith Deacon, professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, conducted a large quantitative survey with United Way Perth-Huron and Salvation Army, Listowel. They aimed to provide data to policy makers on how rural populations in Canada are underrepresented in COVID-19 emergency management policies.

The undergrad experience is certainly a journey filled with triumph, despair, and everything in between. From my experience, undergrad has done a fine job of breaking me down and building me up in ways I would have never imagined possible for the naive young 17-year-old who was responsible for me even being here, at U of G, in the first place.