Oh yeaaah... I'm a working stiff again!

Lucky, lucky me. I'm back at UBC - again. For one more year.

Had an interview a few weeks ago with the good folks from the Human Early Learning Partnership, a research group whose objectives are to:

1. To build effective partnerships and serve as British Columbia's early child development research infrastructure.
2. To measure, analyze, interpret and build effective frameworks for new, interdisciplinary understanding in child development.

They have a core group of mapping & GIS folks and I'll be replacing someone there who's off to England for a Masters in GIS. I'll be their GIS Officer and doing a bit of everything, from data entry & cartography to fine-tuning a ArcIMS site.

The HELP mapping program is a good example of partenerships between research and local communities. The researchers are interested in the health and social markers of young children and through the Early Childhood Development Portal, communities can see the results of surveys in their communities on-line. Community coalitions interested in the results (i.e. Richmond (PDF)) can then develop programs to target/improve at-risk children in their communities (or schools &/or daycares for example).

So yours truly has a couple of weeks to enjoy the last remnants of EI and the sunny weather. I start back at UBC on August 1. Thankfully, this will allow my liver to recover after a stint in Las Vegas for a buddy's stag. (VEGAS, baby, VEGAS!)