Final report of my studies and stay at the U of A in Edmonton

My name is Christoph Mozer and I am one of seven students from the Albert-Ludwigs

University Freiburg who got the opportunity to study abroad for one year in Canada. I was

accepted into that new scholarship program at the University of Alberta ( U of A) in

Edmonton. I was very excited and eager to experience a different culture and broaden my

horizons, especially with regard to environmental management practices.

The following report should provide you with some important information that might be

helpful for your one-year stay in Canada and in Edmonton. But as there is more than

enough information about Canada, Alberta and Edmonton and how to get there on the

Internet, I do not mention these parts, but will give you some other helpful facts.

Before I start, I would like to thank respectfully Mr. Heinrich Spiecker, Ms. Marianne

Stadler, Mr. Niethammer, the DAAD and all authorities of the U of A for a great year and

probably the best experience I have had so far.

Things to get organized before leaving Germany and before the beginning of your semester

It is very helpful to apply as soon as possible for the one year study permit (visa) in order

to avoid any complications. Just make sure to meet all the required points and apply on

the Canadian embassy website: http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/germanyallemagne/

visas/study etudier.aspx?lang=deu.

Do not apply too late, it might take more than eight weeks sometimes and make sure your

passport is valid longer than for one year! If you want to avoid any troubles crossing the

Canadian border, keep your letter of acknowledgment with you, as you might have to show

it to the officer. Once you are enrolled as an International Student at the university, you

have to pay a fee of 243 CAD per term. This includes the “U-Pass”, which offers you the

possibility to use public transportation and some health insurance. If you want to travel and

plan to cross the Albertan border, I strongly recommend getting a one year abroad health

insurance in Germany, as everything may not be covered by the Canadian one. Usually,

they are about 35 Euros a month.

Make sure to keep in touch with Alex Drummond, who is the student coordinator for the

AELS faculty and who always tries to help you out with any questions

(alex.drummond@ualberta.ca ). For course enrolments, try to contact Donna Thompson,

who is the Administrative Assistant (donna.thompson@ualberta.ca ). I also recommend

meeting up with her as soon as you are in Edmonton so there will be less complications at

the beginning of your semester. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the course options they

are available on the faculty website:

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses.aspx

Make sure that you have at least two course backups, as some courses might have been

cancelled and so you would have to substitute your choices. You should also contact your

professors before enrolling into their classes as they may provide you with some additional

information to the course description on the website.

University of Alberta

The main campus (where all the important lectures are held) is located on the southern

side of the North Saskatchewan River and was established in 1908. The main campus

covers over 50 city blocks with over 90 buildings within the univerity. Actually, there are in

18 faculties, there are more than 37,000 students and over 4,000 international students

enrolled, representing nearly every country in the world.

Alberta School of Forest Science & Management

The Alberta School of Forest Science & Management is integrated in the faculty of

Agricultural, Life & Environmental Sciences (ALES). ALES is home to over 1400

undergraduate, 400 graduate students and 110 faculty members. Currently there are

approximately about 80 undergrads, 20 students per age-group and about 30 Master

students in the forestry program. For further information you can contact the forestry

society (Fachschaft): uofafs@ualberta.ca.

ALES faculty

Life at the U of A

The U of A campus is comparable to a small city, with different shops, fast food restaurants

and recreational facilities like the “Butterdome”, the gym. Most days, I stayed on campus,

as it was easier to do homework, to work out and to keep in touch with my friends. Winter

and cold temperatures might be an aspect in not going home in-between your lectures and

spending your free time on campus.

At Butterdome, you have the opportunity to participate in nearly every sport you might be

interested in. Following facilities in this centre are included:

• Main Gymnasium with 3 basketball, 4 volleyball and 12 badminton courts

• The Clare Drake Arena (Ice Hockey)

• Aquatic Centre with two indoor pools

• Nine lecture theatres and classrooms

• Dance studio with 2 volleyball and 4 badminton courts

• 10 squash courts

• 3 multi-purpose gymnasiums

• 3 racquetball courts

• Weight training area

• Equipment Room - handles sports equipment, towel service, locker rentals for use

in the VVC.

• Fitness and Lifestyle Centre - contains cardiovascular and strength-training

equipment

If you are interested in sports, I strongly recommend enrolling yourself in the “Intramurals”,

which offer several opportunities for team sports. I found this to be a great way to meet

other students and make friends. I played futsal, ice hockey, handball, volleyball, outdoor

soccer, and ball hockey. For most of these team sports, I was playing for the Forestry

Society, you can ask the other students, they always need new players and would love to

get a team together.

The Butterdome

Money!

Now the most annoying part, money. Canada and more specifically Edmonton are

expensive. You should plan to budget more than you would in Germany as groceries and

other expenses can be up to twice as expensive as in Germany. Wait till the first week to

buy your textbooks, for one the line-ups will be shorter and you may not end up needing

one.

You will need more money than in Germany, scholarship included!

Courses

In fall term, I took the following four courses:

Climates and Ecosystems ENCS 461

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses/ENCS_Courses/ENCS461.aspx

This was the most interesting and challenging course I took at the U of A. It was a heavy

workload, but the professor, Mr. Grant is an expert in his field and a world famous climate

modeller. I learned a lot about irrigation management, climate change in Canada and

worldwide, nutrient cycling and also some smaller software applications in order to gain a

better understanding of all the plant-water-environment interactions. I highly recommend

taking his class.

Endangered Species Conservation and Management ENCS 464

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses/ENCS_Courses/ENCS464.aspx

This course focused on the ecological and anthropogenic factors leading to the

designation of species as vulnerable, threatened, or endangered, as well as strategies for

their recovery. The main focus was on the designation process an endangered species

has to go through to get its status. Once it became designated, you still have to learn a lot

of how stakeholder interactions and conservation efforts might interact with each other and

what kind of support the species might need.

All in all, I gained a better understanding of all the bureaucratic relations and how difficult it

is to set up a good conservation plan, especially in a huge country like Canada. That

course demanded a lot of writing and teamwork.

Disturbance Ecology REN R 440

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses/RENRCourses/RenR440.

As the course name already tells you, you are getting taught in the relationships between

disturbances and forest ecosystems with the main focus on Canadian respectively North

American ecosystems. I did not learn a lot more than I already knew before, but it was very

helpful to gain a better understanding, how Canadians are dealing with disturbances after

they occurred, especially in regard to clear cuts and forest fires, topics we don’t really have

to deal with in Germany.

Protected Areas Management ENCS 462

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses/ENCS_Courses/ENCS462.aspx

This class is taught by John Acorn, who is kind of an Albetan hero. He had his own nature

show for children on television in the early 90s and most of my friends watched his show.

He is very experienced with all the stakeholder interactions that are necessary in

managing a park or a protected area and knows about their difficulties. He is a very

interesting person to listen to and provides you with thousands of interesting stories. Class

participation is welcomed and encouraged in order to keep the lectures going.

In winter term, I took the following four courses:

Forest Fire Management FOR 340

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses/FORCourses/FOR340.aspx

This course was kind of a disappointment because it was taught more like being in a high

school lecture than for university students. We had a lot of guest lecturers, but most of

them spoke about the same topics and repeated themselves a lot. The professor did not

demand a very high level of knowledge and was more teaching about his modelling

research than about management practices. But all in all, I still gained a lot of important

future knowledge about fire issues, especially since we in Germany don’t have a lot of

related topics or possibilities in getting taught about forest fires.

Water Resource Management REN R 250

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses/RENRCourses/RenR250.aspx

As I am very interested in Hydrology and water management practices, I decided to enrol

myself into this class. But in the end, I have to say that I did not learn a lot of new things,

as this is more a basic course and I already took a lot of hydrology lectures in Germany. I

still learned some new things about how people are dealing with their water issues in

Alberta, especially in the drier southern part where agriculture is dominating.

Methods of Environmental Interpretation and Communication ENCS 467

http://www.ales.ualberta.ca/rr/CurrentStudents/Courses/ENCS_Courses/ENCS467.aspx

This was a completely new academic field for me. I gained many new skills in providing

the public with environmental-related topics in an easy and interesting way. This might be

a very useful skill for my future career, as it is becoming more and more important to

provide the public with information they are or might be interested in to sensibilize them for

a certain topic.

Northern Ecology BIOL 366

http://www.biology.ualberta.ca/courses/biol366/

This is a very good class taught by a very interesting professor, Mr. Derocher is Canada’s

polar bear expert and in my point of view the probably best person being able in providing

interested students with some boreal and arctic related topics. You are getting taught an

approximate overview in some of the ecosystem interactions in these rough and harsh

environments. He is also providing his students with some polar bear related topics and I

think if you are in Canada, you should take the opportunity to participate in his lectures.

I am extremely happy with my choices and do not regret any.

The teachers are very friendly and try to help you where ever possible. They also expect

you to contact them whenever you have any question and are more than happy being able

to help you out. You should not take more than four courses, the workload will be way too

much and you probably will not be able to deal with it. But this is my point of view and it

should still be up to you. There are a lot of labs and seminars and depending on the

course, you would have to write at least three assignments per term and at least two

exams. You will be way busier than in Germany for sure!

Accommodation

I do not recommend living on campus because it nearly is unaffordable and you will be one

of the oldest guys for sure. For this reason, I moved into an apartment close to university

and very close the LRT station (a 21 km long cable-car that connects the southern part of

the city with the northern one and by the way the only train line in the one million city). Pay

attention where to move, public transportation is not the same than in Europe and you will

probably not be able to afford a car. Winter will be hard on you and you should look out for

accommodations close to the LRT line.

I shared the apartment with three other guys, lived in a basement and paid about 450

Dollars per month. This price is the lower bound for Edmonton and for this location. For

contacts, I recommend to have a look on following website: http://edmonton.kijiji.ca/. This

site is comparable to the German “WG-Gesucht”.

After I finished my term, I moved into the house of my friends for four more months. The

price of 450 Dollars per month was comparable cheap for the very close location to the

LRT, campus and Whyte Ave (where all the bars are located). We even had a big backyard

with a fireplace.

My backyard in December

My second accommodation in August

My life and studying at the U of A

I am very lucky to have made many Canadian friends and to have spent a lot of time with

them. We went out together, went on ski trips, and went deer hunting up to Lac la Biche in

fall, or studied together. Try to get involved with the Forestry or Environmental Society (I

have been in both) to stay up to date.

Be aware that you are going into a completely different country and culture, try to keep an

open mind and be willing to try anything. What you can expect is a city located in an

agricultural dominated area surrounded with huge forests and prairies, quite close to the

Rocky Mountains and to the oil fields. It is a booming and very fast growing, rich city and

does not have a lot of cultural background. However, there are many other things you can

discover. There are many interesting and good concerts that take place at bars, you are

able to experience real North American blues music at “Blues on Whyte”, you can go the a

NHL game, watch the football games etc.

As life is very expensive, I did not spend a lot of time in bars or night clubs (at least not

that frequently than in Germany). I tried to do a lot of sports or went outdoors for some

hours, especially when sun was out and temperatures had been moderate throughout

winter. But most of the time, I was busy with studying. This should not scare you, but it is

the truth. Be also aware, that Edmonton is one of the coldest cities in the world. I had

some days with below -40 degrees and associated with a strong wind, it sometimes feels

like -55 degrees. Snow did not melt for at least seven months (but they told me that it was

an especially cold one that year). Try to get some warm clothes in order to be prepared. I

by myself, I dealt very well with the temperatures and it has always been an adventure

getting out, but sometimes, the cold was still quite painful. This winter was supposed to be

the one with the most snow pack in the last 30 years and the coldest for years. But most of

the Canadians had been able to deal with it quite easily and did not complain about any

weather at all.

Internship/summer job

I got my two month job in the department of land reclamation with Simon Landhäusser,

who was looking for some summer students to help him out in his lab and with his field

work. It was not very difficult to get the job. I just contacted him via email, had a short

meeting and afterwards he told me that I could get the job if I want.

As he is also doing lots of his field research up in Fort Mc Murray, where the famous oil

sands are located, I took this as a welcome opportunity to have a look into this business

and on what kind of stuff is going on approximately 550 kilometres north of Edmonton.

It is very difficult for me to explain the atmosphere up there. I think the most fitting words

for that might be strange and crazy. They did a very good job up there in destroying the

environment in the past few decades, but are also trying to reclaim the disturbed areas as

good as possible. But personally, I really don’t know if this would be enough.

For our research in Fort Mc Murray, we went on the disturbed sites and took lots of soil

samples and measurements of the research areas.

When we did not work on the oil sands, we had to take some measurements of already

planted trees (mainly aspen, jack pine or spruce) on reclaimed soils at a coal mine close to

Edmonton.

Furthermore, I got a lot into mountain pine beetle research that I did in the lab by

extracting and measuring many samples of different parts of attacked tree parts. They

hope to gain some more information on how the beetle will spread over Alberta and about

how it might or might not affect tree qualities in regard to commercial viability .

Overall, I have to say that this was a very great personal experience. I met very interesting

people through this job and had good and helpful conversations with all sorts of people.

Summary

This had been a great experience and I am very happy, thankful and also lucky to have

had this opportunity and all the support from all kind of people.

In summary, I had a great time in Edmonton and do not regret to have made this decision.

I really suggest to everybody, to take this chance and to gain some experiences for your

life and your upcoming career.

I wish you good luck with your applications and if you have any questions, feel free to

contact me any time: cmozer@gmx.net