UNews - One of the faculty members

Tidsbury helped create Olympic memories

trevor.kenney — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 19:33:34 +0000

It has already been one year since we came together as a nation to watch the world's elite athletes strive for glory at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. For many of us, the excitement of watching the world's top athletes compete for gold will forever be linked to the inspiring theme song, "I Believe".

For Josh Tidsbury (BSc '03), systems specialist, Creative Technology Systems with CTVglobemedia, the song represents one of the highlights of his career.

Working as a score producer and engineer as well as post-production technical lead for CTV during the games, Tidsbury played an integral part in bringing the sounds and music of the Olympics alive. Tidsbury, together with Mike Nunan, began creating the musical theme package in mid 2009, working with a composer and writer then executing the strings, brass, percussion and choir recordings before mixing and editing for the final musical score.

Alumnus Josh Tidsbury was back on campus recently, speaking to students in the New Media program about his career path.

"The entire Olympic experience was amazing, a once-in-a-lifetime experience to create the musical theme," says Tidsbury, who fondly refers to his more than 1,500 CTV colleagues as "our own little team Canada". "People have this connection between music and memory that brings them back the way nothing else does. The "I Believe" theme that the nation heard endlessly for 17 days will forever remind people of the extraordinary performances of the 2010 games. It was very humbling and inspiring to be a part of that."

Tidsbury has long been inspired by the world of music production and recording. After graduating from Calgary's Lord Beaverbrook High School, he and his former band teachers
received a provincial grant to build a recording studio and create the first high school recording program in Alberta. Despite his love of music and audio technology, however, Tidsbury came to the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge and entered the neuroscience program, intending to pursue a career in medicine.

"I was taken on a tour by one of the faculty members. When I got a sense of how student-centered the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ was and how many opportunities there were for undergraduates – things such as working in a lab – it was an easy sell."

Taking advantage of those opportunities, Tidsbury worked in a lab setting with
Dr. Glen Prusky for three years. Tidsbury says the experience kept him grounded in the sciences and gave him a creative outlet outside of the classroom.

"It allowed me to have a hands-on approach to the sciences. It helped shape how I approach my day-to-day work at CTV," he says. "I actually write a lot of software applications now to aid post-production flow, and I find myself taking a more scientific approach, studying what is right and wrong. I ask questions like, how do we make it better and how can we observe things and remove biases? Even though it isn't necessarily a straight line from neuroscience to what I do today, it's all interconnected."

Throughout his undergraduate studies, Tidsbury maintained a connection to music, playing in the ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ's jazz band under the direction of Dr. Ed Wasiak, and recording and mixing music on the side to help make rent. When he graduated in 2003 with a bachelor of science in neuroscience, Tidsbury realized that, despite his love of science, his true passion was with music production and recording. He spent the following year studying and working at the Banff Centre where he earned an audio associate certificate, before being accepted into the exclusive master's of music in sound recording program at McGill ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ on a full scholarship. He graduated from McGill in 2007 and moved to Toronto to begin his career at CTV. Grateful for the opportunities and encouragement he has received over the years, Tidsbury believes in giving back.

"If it weren't for the fact that everyone from my high school band director to the folks at the U of L, the Banff Centre and McGill took the time to help me out and push me ahead, I wouldn't be doing what I am doing now," says Tidsbury, who recently returned to the U of L to talk with students about his experiences. "If there is any way I can give back and bring help, inspiration, or guidance to students who are at the point I was not that long ago, then I want to wherever I can."

GET THE FACTS

· Tidsbury engineered the orchestral soundtrack for the Canadian Film, Just Buried, at Dvorak Hall, Prague, Czech Republic.

· He mixed the musical score for Stake Land, an award winning film that debuted at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.

· Tidsbury is a member of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and has been the lead designer of the AES online redevelopment since 2007.

· He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Toronto's Humber College, teaching courses in audio engineering and production.

Community care

trevor.kenney — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:54:10 +0000

They are former airline pilots, Olympic athletes, police recruits and liquor store managers. They've earned degrees ranging from kinesiology to biology, psychology and more, and yet they all have one thing in common – they're back at university to become nurses.

The ��Ѹ��Դ��߿�Ƭ of Lethbridge's Bachelor of Nursing After Degree (BNAD) program attracts a diverse array of students, but the goal they share is the same – to contribute to the community by caring for its people.

"When the U of L introduced the BNAD program, it was perfect for me because I looked at it as an opportunity to invest two years and then get back to helping people," says 31-year-old Justin Gatner, a psychology grad who was managing a liquor store before he came back to the U of L.

BNAD student, Sarah Calnan, works with a resident of Martha's House during a free clinic offered by the U of L program.

The Monarch, Alta. native was on a path to become a police officer, having also earned his criminal justice diploma from Lethbridge College, before a broken leg dashed his hopes of passing the physical requirements for the job.

"I reassessed my world and started looking around at other careers where I could still help people," says Gatner. "Some of the options included were fire fighting and working as an EMT, but nursing was also a part of that."

The BNAD program has many similar stories, graduate students who have acquired experience by being out in the workforce, and then turned their focus to nursing. One of the faculty members helping them achieve their goal is Em Pijl-Zieber, who, like her students, found community nursing after having taken a different path.

A registered nurse who previously worked in advanced practice, Pijl-Zieber never saw herself working in a community-nursing role, and as for teaching, she jokingly calls herself the "accidental professor".

"I never wanted to teach and yet I've found that it's really a lot of fun," says Pijl-Zieber, a Vancouver native who followed her husband and fellow faculty member, Mark, to Alberta. "To inspire students to greatness is always my hope. I want them to get passionate about something."

With Pijl-Zieber, students are able to take knowledge learned in the classroom into community settings. They now provide a unique level of care to homeless and marginalized populations, as well as seniors in assisted living residences.

One of the initiatives in which they are involved is a foot-care program that Pijl-Zieber began three years ago.

The program initially had her students involved with homeless persons utilizing Streets Alive, and has grown to where her students now participate in Project Homeless Connect, are active in visiting long-term care facilities in both Lethbridge and Coaldale, and will set up outpatient clinics for drop-in foot-care services.

"The work that students do during this course is often not bedside nursing, as much as it is program planning and population health promotion," says Pijl-Zieber. "By doing the foot-care clinics, students can have that interaction with members of the population. They like it because they can practice one-to-one care, something that's hands-on and practical. It's why they went into nursing in the first place – to do real things with real people."

Foot care is a real concern for homeless and marginalized populations. They generally have little access to health services, are constantly on their feet with inadequate footwear and may suffer from aggravating health concerns such as diabetes. Frostbite, ingrown toenails and other problems, if left untreated, can lead to amputations.

"Who else is going to look after their feet? Our goal is to be able to do a proper assessment and then to provide foot care so that hopefully they can keep their limbs attached," she says.

This past year, the foot-care program took her group into Martha's House seniors' residence.

"I've been very pleasantly surprised with what they've brought to us," says registered nurse Elda Barva, Martha's House administrator and the previous director of care at St. Michael's Hospital. "They are very motivated, they have some life experience behind them and they've come in here and taken this place by storm."

More than simply providing foot care clinics, the students created an entire health-care program for the facility, breaking off into four groups (health promotion, injury prevention, illness prevention and health maintenance) of focus.

"Em is phenomenal in creating a bunch of opportunities that we never really expected," says Sarah Calnan, a biology grad in her second year of BNAD.
"Our goal when we came here was to ensure that what we were doing was sustainable to the seniors in the future. We're hoping that everything each of our groups has worked towards, they can continue to do after we leave."

Calnan worked with the health maintenance group that created a health resource manual and facilitated a "Puzzled About Pills" seminar in which they helped seniors understand how to best manage the many medications they use.

Vicki Hughes, a kinesiology graduate, worked with the health promotion group. Their focus was to help seniors better utilize the exercise room, educate about fall prevention strategies and help implement a program designed around the new vibration wave machine that promotes better balance, strength and circulation.

"The main thing for me with this experience is that it has really prepared me for nursing in terms of improving my communication skills," says Hughes. "We came in here to assess their needs, and working with them and empowering them has been wonderful."

The BNAD program doesn't just teach nursing, it promotes the basic tenets of care and contributing to the betterment of a community.

"When we are given these kinds of opportunities to come and work with these people, we're basically practising that community element of nursing," says Gatner. "When you work with the nursing program inside the community rotation, it gets you out the front door and into the world, helping people. That's always what I've wanted to do."

This story first appeared in the Legend. For a full look at the January issue of the Legend in a flipbook format, follow this link.

UNews - One of the faculty members

Tidsbury helped create Olympic memories

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