Two Professors Awarded Principal's Impact Courses Grants

Congratulations to Dr. Alexander Braun, and Dr. Hom Nath Gharti, on being awarded Principal’s Impact Courses grants. The two proposals were among ten courses selected from across the university.

According to the Queen’s Gazette, “Ten ‘blue sky’ courses have been selected for the Principal’s Impact Courses (PIC) initiative this year. The programs will use funding creatively to support the development of educational experiences that push the boundaries of teaching and learning.”

Dr. Alexander Braun, and Dr. Dorit Naaman (Film and Media), will be offering a course entitled, Belle Park: Exploring (UN) Sustainable Reality. The description reads, “Exploring (UN) Sustainable Reality explores interwoven environmental, socio-economic, and arts and cultural issues related to the United Nations (UN) sustainability goals and attempts to find solutions using inter- and cross-disciplinary perspectives. It also exemplifies past and present Indigenous approaches to the environment, and as such can model sustainable principles beyond Western paradigms. The course is based in the field, in the classroom, in labs, and various archives, as well as community venues. Real world problems require multi and interdisciplinary teams in the broadest sense, to find solutions. Students from across the university – engineering, sciences, social sciences, humanities, arts and planning – form groups that focus on a burning question and will approach inquiry-based learning with much autonomy in planning, executing and presenting their projects.“ 

Dr. Hom Nath Gharti’s course will be titled, Computation and machine learning in geosciences through music. The description reads, “With the rapid advance of computing technology, computation and machine learning have become indispensable tools in many fields. This course combines the beauty of music with the power of advanced computation and machine learning to inspire next-generation scientists and engineers to tackle a vast array of problems in geosciences and related fields. Musical or sound data, both instrumental and natural, will be collected, computed, and analyzed, and later applied to solve real-world problems in geosciences.“ 

More information about the Principal’s Impact Courses Initiative can be found by reading the full article in the Queen’s Gazette.

Congratulations to both Dr. Braun and Dr. Gharti on their respective courses being selected!