Category: Events

The Friends of the University of Alberta present Raise The Bar
with Dr. Andrew Derocher

Polar Bears: a cultural and climate icon

Polar bears evolved from a grizzly bear ancestor and moved onto the sea ice to exploit seals as their main prey. This incredibly rich food resource allows the bears to live in an extremely dynamic and challenging environment to which they are superbly adapted. Polar bears are one of the world’s most identifiable species and have been infused in art, history, and culture. Past over exploitation from commercial and sport hunting greatly reduced polar bear abundance across the Arctic but harvest controls and scientific monitoring allowed them to increase. However, climate change has emerged as a new challenge to their long-term persistence.

Tue, 11 Feb 2025
5:00 PM Doors Open
6:00-7:30 PM Speaker + Q&A

Blue Chair
9624 – 76 Avenue NW Edmonton
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TICKETS $15 on Eventbrite:

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/polar-bears-a-cultural-and-climate-icon-tickets-1204095795939

BIO
Andrew Derocher has studied polar bears and other Arctic species for over 35 years. Other research species include barren-ground grizzly bears, caribou, wolves, Arctic ground squirrels, Dall sheep, and peregrine falcons. His focus is predominantly in the Arctic but to facilitate graduate student training, he has also established a cougar research project in Alberta. His research has an interdisciplinary approach and he has worked in a diversity of areas including ecology, behaviour, physiology, anatomy, and ecotoxicology. Andrew has worked with a wide variety of specialists and has used polar bears as a model organism. His research has a strong collaborative component with international and national partners. In recent years, Andrew’s research has focused on the effects of climate change on polar bears.

Raise The Bar is a program designed by The Friends of the University of Alberta to provide engaging learning opportunities delivered by U of A researchers in a causal setting – like a bar. We’re raising the bar on the way people consume content!

The Friends of the University of Alberta present Raise The Bar
with Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell

Who is responsible when you chat with an AI?

Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can hallucinate; so what happens when they are integrated into services? In this presentation, Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell will look at cases like the one where an Air Canada chatbot on their web site gave Jake Moffatt incorrect information about bereavement discounts. Dr.  Rockwell will use these cases to reflect on how ethical responsibility is changing as we develop sophisticated systems that are hard to predict.

Tue, 22 Oct 2024
5:00 PM Doors Open
6:00-7:30 PM Speaker + Q&A

Blue Chair
9624 – 76 Avenue NW Edmonton
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BIO
Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell is a Professor of Philosophy and Digital Humanities at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is also a Fellow of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Haverford College, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. He has published and presented papers in the areas of artificial intelligence and ethics, philosophical dialogue, textual visualization and analysis, humanities computing, instructional technology, computer games and multimedia. He was the project leader for the CFI (Canada Foundation for Innovation) funded project TAPoR, a Text Analysis Portal for Research, which has developed a text tool discovery portal at tapor.ca. He has published a book Defining Dialogue: From Socrates to the Internet.

Raise The Bar is a program designed by The Friends of the University of Alberta to provide engaging learning opportunities delivered by U of A researchers in a causal setting – like a bar. We’re raising the bar on the way people consume content!

Dr. Laura Beard

 “It’s Real! It’s Wild! It’s Western!”: Talking about Deadwood Facts and Fictions

Tue, 28 Nov 2023
5:30 PM Doors Open
6:00-7:30 PM Speaker + Q&A

Arcadia Brewing Co.
10712 120 St NW Edmonton (View on map)

Have you heard of the Dead Man’s Hand in poker? Ever been fascinated by Wild Bill Hickok or Calamity Jane? Or been to Deadwood, South Dakota? Or watched the “Deadwood” tv series on HBO?

The Friends of the University of Alberta are proud to bring you Raise The Bar on November 28, 2023 at Arcadia Brewing Co. (10712 120 ST NW) with Dr. Laura Beard, University of Alberta.

Come hear some of the real stories of Deadwood, South Dakota, the Black Hills, the Treaty of Fort Laramie, Saloon No. 10, and more, as Dr. Beard, talks about her research on an early Deadwood resident and his memoir, Pioneer Days in the Black Hills, taken as the authoritative source on all topics related to Deadwood and the Black Hills.

Join us for what is sure to be an insightful evening as we raise the bar on the way people learn and engage with their community. And as the promotions for the Days of ’76 rodeo proclaimed in the 1930s in Deadwood: “It’s Wild, It’s Real, It’s Western!”

BIO
Dr. Laura Beard is a Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies in the Faculty of Arts. Laura works in the areas of life narrative in the Americas. Research interests include life narratives, Inter-American literature, Indigenous literatures and cultures and related topics.

A current research project, entitled “Wanted: A Life Narrative in Deadwood,” takes up the 1939 memoir “Pioneer Days in the Black Hills: Accurate History and Facts Related by One of the Early Day Pioneers ” by John S. McClintock in order to explore how how life narrative and current heritage tourism are media through which we continually play with the past, reconfigure it, and try to make meanings out of the traces we chose to pick up from that past.

Raise The Bar is a program designed by The Friends of the University of Alberta to provide engaging learning opportunities delivered by U of A researchers in a causal setting – like a bar. We’re raising the bar on the way people consume content!