I’m excited to announce the birth of the Blue & Goldcast.

As you can probably guess from its name, the Blue & Goldcast is a podcast. I’ll be cohosting it every month along with Jennifer Gardy.

Jennifer is an assistant professor at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health, a Canada Research Chair in Public Health Genomics, and a Senior Scientist at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control. And she’s a talented communicator, acting as an occasional host of CBC’s The Nature of Things, and on the Discovery Channel’s The Daily Planet. She’s even cowritten a children’s book on germs and microbes.

Jennifer and I will discuss big issues in higher education, from the perspective of UBC scholars, staff, and students. Each episode will focus on a different theme, such as student diversity, international engagement, women in STEM, and other topics.

The first podcast is available today, September 17. You can listen to it on blueandgoldcast.com, subscribe on iTunes, or hear it on CiTR 101.9FM.

In the first episode, Jennifer and I talk to UBC biologist Eduardo Jovel about how scholars can research with Indigenous communities, and discuss UBC’s relations with the Musqueam people. There’s even a guest appearance by Musqueam elder and adjunct professor Larry Grant, who talks about the new bilingual signage at the UBC Point Grey campus. Bonus, there’s a musical performance by At Sea, a band fronted by UBC grad Omar Prazhari.

Future episodes will be released the second Monday each month.

I’m looking forward to it. If you have any ideas for future episodes or guests, let me know by emailing blue-and-goldcast@lists.ubc.ca.

Best wishes,

Professor Santa J. Ono
President and Vice-Chancellor