Hello MFRE Alumni,

We had a wonderful time reuniting with over 50 alumni on October 12, 2018. Dean Rickey Yada and Assistant Dean Zhaoming Xu were present, as well as most of the MFRE professors, lecturers and staff.

The night started with George announcing that he has recently stepped down from his position as MFRE Academic Director and Manager. He was very pleased to announce that Dr. Kelleen Wiseman has taken over the position.

Then we heard some words from Dean Yada, followed by two guest speakers. Meg O’Shea, Program Manager, Thriving Vancouver at the Vancouver Economic Commission. She discussed the Thriving Vancouver program, Vancouver’s Green Economy & the Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan. Viviane Gosselin, Curator of Contemporary Culture at the Museum of Vancouver, discussed how the Museum recently reconsidered their approach to materials used in exhibitions and adopted a circular economy approach.

After some food for thought, we mingled and enjoyed delicious Syrian food from the social enterprise Tayybeh.

We followed with presentations from Caroline Chiu (MFRE’12) and Blair Baillargeon (MFRE’18) about their post-MFRE experiences.

After MFRE, Caroline completed a farming program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), which she learned a lot from and loved so much that she decided to start her own farm. She got great visibility for being a young Chinese female farmer and tapped into the niche market of growing organic Asian greens. While she was farming, she also became the Manager for the farming program. Despite not farming anymore, she is transferring her experience and insight to aspiring farmers in the program. 

Blair completed his Graduating Project at Farm Credit Canada (FCC) in Regina and developed a nowcasting model to predict Total Canadian Livestock Receipts. He then worked with SaskTel where he was called a “wizard” for his great data analysis skills. He is now back with FCC working on a market intelligence team. Blair, originally from Saskatoon, was inspired by Vancouver’s hedges and spent his summer weekends developing Nature City Developments, a business installing junipers and cedars as hedges in Saskatoon.

In addition, George outlined the evolution of MFRE from the start of the Program in 2009 across the ten years of its existence. At the beginning of the program, he noted that there were many doubts about starting such a unique professional master’s program. He praised the first cohort of students for being “risk takers” and also praised his colleagues – Rick, Jim, and Sumeet – for taking on risk as the “founding faculty.” He gave a number of examples of how MFRE has responded to students’ requests to offer more FRE graduate courses specifically designed for the MFRE program. George also mentioned how beneficial it is that our staff members in MFRE (currently six part-timers) are all MFRE alumni. He concluded by saying he is leaving MFRE is such good hands that there is no doubt the program will continue to improve, and thanked everyone for the ten great years that he spent with MFRE.

Janelle Tan (MFRE’12) officially launched the MFRE Alumni Network! After explaining the vision and goals of such a network, she encouraged alumni to volunteer for being part of the Alumni Network Committee (thanks to those of you who volunteered, we will contact you separately).

As an MFRE alumni, you are invited to attend the various workshops and seminars with guest speakers offered to the MFRE students. You can also come back to take courses that were not offered when you were a student, or that you did not have the chance to take. For more details about these benefits, please check out the MFRE Alumni Network tab on the MFRE website. Have a look at the pictures of the night here.