4 KPU instructors win ‘Chancellor’s Chair’ awards

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Kwantlen Polytechnic University has recognized four instructors with “Chancellor’s Chair” awards, providing each of them a $60,000 grant to support research initiatives over three years. 

Educational studies instructor Candy Ho, history instructor Kyle Jackson, product design instructor Victor Martinez, and sociology instructor Fabricio Telo have all been recognized with the award and will be released from class commitments to pursue their respective projects. 

“I felt very surprised, because I was not expecting it at all, because it was a competition with the entire university, and I am relatively new to the university, so I was really happy,” Telo says. 

Telo’s research will focus on examining a Canadian company’s influence in allegedly undermining the sovereignty of Brazil in the 20th century, with a special focus on the Brazilian Traction, Light and Power Company, now called Brookfield. 

Telo says the company invested substantially in public utilities like electricity, transportation, telephones, and banking in Brazil. While they had a hand in developing the country’s infrastructure, their lobbying efforts also gained significant influence in the country’s politics. 

They provided financial and political support to a campaign to destabilize the government, which ended in the military coup taking over the government in 1964, he says. 

By the late 70s, Telo says the company purchased a large area of land near Rio de Janeiro where several families had lived for generations, but didn’t hold the property titles. These families were forced out of their homes so the land could be used for a new project. 

The funds will go toward travelling to Brazil, interviewing surviving members of these families, and reviewing literature and archives in both Canada and Brazil, which began when he started his research on this topic in 2022. He has hired four research assistants to help with this project. 

Martinez is focusing on developing design solutions to solve complex social problems facing communities, starting with a focus on Vancouver Island, using tools, concepts, and plans he has taught in his classrooms for years. 

“It’s a dream come true. It’s an opportunity that I was waiting for quite a bit of time, so it felt like a huge piece of air and oxygen that was very much needed,” Martinez says. 

He has already hired research assistants, and is planning out where he will go to conduct community-led focus groups. The aim is to provide necessary tools to help fix anything from adapting farming practices so they are more resilient to addressing economic inequalities within the community. 

“To me, success is a community very aware of what’s going on and with all the knowledge and all the tools in their hands to make systemic change feasible,” Martinez says. 

For Ho, she will be working with kindergarten to Grade 12 schools to help teachers incorporate education on the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) into the curriculum to bring forward the next generation of sustainability leaders. 

Part of what made Ho interested in developing this research was from talking with her son’s school, and what they thought sustainability meant. 

“‘Sustainability? Is that just recycling [and] making sure that your garbage goes in the right spot?’ And I [said], ‘Oh no, there’s so much more,’” Ho says. 

The funds will go toward hiring research assistants, providing $1,000 honorariums to 20 teachers for SDG professional development, and incorporating the goals into their lesson plans, beginning at the elementary level. 

Ho hopes this project will catalyze getting SDGs incorporated into the provincial curriculum in the future. 

“Hopefully there’s doors that get opened to superintendents … because the idea of this three-year grant is that after the three years, it blooms and it grows more seeds, and then it spreads,” Ho says. Finally, Jackson is focusing his research on the understudied northeastern region of India. His research will be important to challenge “colonial stereotypes about remoteness and tribal primitivism,” Jackson said in a KPU news release.