The UBC Connects speaker series has a very simple goal: connecting UBC with the communities in which we study, research, and work. By bringing fascinating speakers from across North America to meet with UBC audiences, UBC Connects has been able to change the way the university engages with the community.
Read a message from UBC President Santa Ono on the reach of the UBC Connects series.
In 2018, the series’ first year, UBC Connects featured talks by novelist Isabel Allende, physicist Michio Kaku, futurist Jeremy Rifkin, and activist-athlete Waneek Horn-Miller.
In 2019, UBC welcomed author and journalist Michael Pollan, civil rights activist Tarana Burke, award-winning Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and anthropologist and neuroscientist Dr. Helen Fisher.
Now in its third year, the first UBC Connects event in 2020 featured Egyptian doctor-turned-satirist Bassem Youssef in the Middle Eastern Monologues on March 2 at the Vancouver Playhouse.
While the rest of the 2020 series on hold due to current events, you are encouraged to check out the 2018 lecture series on the alumniUBC podcast channel:
- UBC Connects with Isabel Allende: The Alchemy of Truth: The power of story to change the world (November 26, 2018)
- UBC Connects with Michio Kaku: The Universe in a Nutshell: Why physics is the key to pretty much everything (October 12, 2018)
- UBC Connects with Waneek Horn-Miller: The Wisdom of Reconciliation: A roadmap for multiculturalism (April 27, 2018)
- UBC Connects with Jeremy Rifkin: The Third Industrial Revolution (March 20, 2018)
UBC Connects invites community members to take part in the University’s innovative and engaging programming, as a natural outgrowth of the University’s Strategic Plan, Shaping UBC’s Next Century, which focuses on inclusion, collaboration, and innovation.
At its heart, the vision of the strategic plan is to inspire people – people in university community and in our partner communities across the province and the globe – through our scholarship, through our teaching, and through our community engagement. UBC Connects encapsulates much of how we are reaching across communities, as exemplified in Strategy 20: Coordinated Engagement.