News

Elijah Dalton, a MSc Candidate in Capacity Development and Extension (CDE) within the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development has won a prestigious 2019 Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute Research Fellowship.  The Government of India through the Ministry of Human Resource Development funds this competitive fellowship. Elijah will use this funding to support three-months of fieldwork in rural Bihar State in India.

We are proud to offer congratulations to Graeme Reed, PhD student in Rural Studies, on being awarded the prestigious Doctoral Aboriginal Graduate Scholarship. Graeme is of mixed Anishinaabe and European descent. He is a senior policy advisor at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), where he advocates for the inclusion of First Nations in climate and energy policy. His PhD research, under the supervision of Dr. Nicolas Brunet, Dr. Sheri Longboat and Dr.

Congratulations to Sean Kelly, Associate Professor and Director of the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development who was honoured by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) at the annual conference held March 6-9, 2019 in Sacramento California.  This year's CELA conference theme was "Engaged Scholarship:  Bringing together research, teaching and service".  The annual conference brings over 400 attendees from across the world to exchange their recent scholarly activities fro

Rural Canada is doing immigration differently. Although historically not sites of large-scale immigration, rural communities and regions throughout Canada continues to welcome new immigrants. This session explores how rural communities and regions are building strategies to attract, settle, welcome, and integrate new immigrants. These strategies, however, can not simply replicate urban-based strategies. This session highlights lessons learned from the perspectives of programs, policies, and research when doing immigration different in rural Canada.

On March 20, 2019, Dr.

The 1st year Master of Landscape Architecture students, as part of their design studio with Professors Karen Landman and Martin Holland, visited the Headwaters Health Care Centre (HHCC) in Orangeville, Ontario, on a bitterly-cold wintry day in March.

Kim Davids Mandar is a first year student in the Capacity Development and Extension graduate studies program. In her local community development work, she met and collaborated with PhD Rural Studies Candidate, Valencia Gaspard, to form the Rickson Ridge Neighbourhood Group in their local neighbourhood. This affiliated arm of the Guelph Neighbourhood Support Coalition required increased engagement and communication, so Kim and her partner Howie set about publishing a Best Version Media magazine.

I am currently enrolled in the Capacity Development and Extension program in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development at the University of Guelph.  As part of my master’s thesis project I had the opportunity to travel to Lusaka, Zambia this past fall to conduct field research on the role of trust and gender in mobile money adoption.

RPD students in the Advanced Planning Practice class visited the Muskoka District from February 27 to March 1. They met with planners from the District and local planners in Gravenhurst and Port Carling (Township of Muskoka Lakes). They also attended an LPAT hearing over a contested severance application.  They met with planning consultants concerning an area development and went out to dinner with RPD alumni.  Of course, there was also a site visit to Sawdust Brewery to study the positive impacts of development on downtown Gravenhurst!

Dr. Ryan Gibson and Ashleigh Weeden (PhD student, School of Environmental Design & Rural Development) hosted a workshop at the Ontario Good Roads Association’s 2019 Conference in Toronto on February 26, 2019 to launch the “Building the Future: Rural Infrastructure & Regional Economic Development” research initiative.