Meet KPU: Lee Beavington
Beavington has always been close to the KPU community from his time as a student to leading the Amazon Field School
Lee Beavington is a KPU learning strategist at the Learning Centre and a faculty leader for the Amazon Field School. (Ahanya Tonse)
Lee Beavington is an interdisciplinary instructor and learning strategist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. He is also a TEDx speaker and faculty leader for the Amazon Field School, an immersive education experience heart in the Amazon Forest that’s open to students from any background or discipline.
Beavington also promotes KPU Wild Spaces, an interdisciplinary teaching and learning hub that focuses on ecological place-based education in post-secondary. He’s a part of the Climate+ Challenge, a KPU-wide initiative that encourages learning about climate change through a solutions-oriented approach. In 2021, he was one of the speakers at TEDx Talk for the 10-year anniversary of TEDxSFU.
An award-winning author, Beavington started writing at a young age.
“Writing for me is a creative process and gets me to really understand myself and my place in the world,” he says.
When did you join the KPU community and why?
In 1995, I was a biology student at KPU, and then I joined the biology department as an employee in 2002 and taught biology for 20 years. As a student, KPU was close to home, and as an employee, the small class sizes and the teaching focus is something I really enjoy and appreciate. There are a lot of amazing folks that work here whether it’s at the Learning Centre or the Climate+ Challenge. I love to share ideas and collaborate with them. A lot of faculties and departments do their own thing, and they are sort of siloed in a way. One of the things I have tried to do as I have been here longer is to bridge those connections to cross-pollinate ideas across disciplines.
What is your favourite story of your time at KPU?
The first one that pops into my head as a teacher is the Amazon Field School. We were paddling through the flooded forests, and when the Amazon River floods during a certain time of the year, it gets 20 kilometres wider. When you’re in a little boat and paddling through these forests, you are actually paddling the canopy of the Amazon. There was a student, at the front of one of these boats, and as we were paddling through the flooded force of the Amazon, she started to sing in her Indigenous language, she was from the Semiahmoo First Nation. I didn’t know what she was saying, but I could tell that she was honouring the place. It was such a perfect moment of synergy of reverence, reciprocity, and learning in place. It still gives me shivers down my spine just thinking about that moment.
As a student, ecology comes to mind because I got to teach ecology later on. The ecology field trips were a way to get to the local forests, stream, and shoreline. I have a vivid visual memory of those experiences. I remember getting to visit all these local parks and forests. That really stuck with me.
What is something you’d like to say to people new to KPU?
There are a lot of community-building events, programs, and groups at KPU. That is a way to have conversations with folks that might be in your discipline or in other disciplines. We have KPU Wild Spaces, which is an outdoor teaching and learning group, the Climate+ Challenge, which is focused on getting a climate credential, getting climate content into every course, and there are many other student groups as well such as the geography club.
If you are new, either get in touch with me because I know a lot of these groups or find out about them so you can get involved and get connected with other folks at KPU. It makes a big difference when you feel like you are part of a community and there are ways to do that at KPU.
What are you working on or doing right now?
Too many things. So, KPU Wild Spaces and I am also on the Climate+ Challenge team. Liz Toohey-Wiese, a KPU fine arts instructor, and I are working together with some inspiration from Amy Huestis, another KPU fine arts instructor who had the initial idea, to start a local river field school in southwestern British Columbia.
My regular job is as a learning strategist in the Learning Centre, which is helping students become effective, lifelong learners. I like to wear too many hats, but I enjoy that because it means I can cross-pollinate across different areas and disciplines. I can work with people from almost any department. I might have a student come into the Learning Centre who needs help with a poem, and the next one needs help with a lab report. I enjoy that so that I can do all these different things.
What is something you’d like people to know about you?
I have written fiction, nonfiction, and poetry and published in various places. For me, the creative process gets me to really understand myself and also my place in the world. It’s getting a sense of what I really think and feel about something, but then an opportunity to share it with others who might be interested.
I am always open to collaboration. Some of my greatest moments of joy at my work are collaborating with folks from across the university. If something inspires you, get in touch [with me at] lee.beavington@kpu.ca.
