Staff Spotlight: James Hood

My name is James Hood. I’m an instructor in the Russ Edwards School of Agriculture and Environment at Assiniboine. I teach mainly in the Land and Water Management program but also teach a few courses in our Agribusiness and Agriculture programs. I have been working at the college since 2014.

I’m from Manitoba, born in Winnipeg but moved to Swan River Valley for junior high and high school (Go SVRSS!). I went to the University of Winnipeg and did a B.Sc. in biology. I then completed my Master’s degree in Natural Resources Management at the University of Manitoba.

I’ve had a few different jobs after university. I worked as an environmental consultant in Winnipeg for a couple of years where I did some work with Manitoba Hydro and worked with Indigenous communities. After that, I had a job with Manitoba Agriculture and worked for the Agri Environment branch. This was the job that took me to Brandon for the first time. Before that, I didn’t have much of a background with Brandon; I had some friends who lived here so I made the odd visit, but I didn’t know too much about the community.

I grew to really like Brandon. I lived here for a bit but then took advantage of a great opportunity in Regina. I worked for the province of Saskatchewan doing watershed planning, which was super interesting. I was part of a coordinating a watershed planning team who help governments and communities make locally appropriate land and water management decisions. I worked with this group on the Lower Qu’Appelle river between Regina and the Manitoba border. I was quite happy with that project and the group we formed is still operational today. However, after four years, I decided I wanted to move back to Manitoba and when an opportunity opened up at Assiniboine, I moved back to Brandon.

I get asked a lot about how I got into the land and water management field, but I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in the environment. I was a huge reader as a kid and was always interested in sciences, biology and chemistry. Reading about the environmental challenges at a young age led me into my biology degree and then my undergrad thesis, which looks at the effect of combined herbicides on algae. Fairly geeky lab stuff, but really interesting and applicable to the real-world. I still get excited about these things and what I find interesting now, especially working with some of our capstone students, is our students are taking on the challenges that I have worked on. That’s the great thing about teaching; it’s our chance to give back and to pass on the torch.

My field and area of study have been getting increasingly more prominent with the focus on the environment and climate change. I mean, it’s always been important, but it’s now becoming more obvious and mainstream as we see that the changes can’t really be explained away by natural variation. And this has translated into job opportunities. In the 8 years that I’ve been at the college, I’ve noticed a significant increase in career opportunities right out of school and in the number of employers approaching us to hire Assiniboine students.

Some of my favourite teaching moments come from field work. There are so many teachable moments that come from the opportunities to work outside that would be much harder to teach in the classroom. The capstone course offers many of these opportunities. Our students are able to focus on an environmental issue that really interests them and become experts in it. I can only take them so far; they seize the project, make it their own and learn so much more quickly than they would in a traditional classroom. They are then able to take that extra step and become the expert on the information or topic. It’s exciting when a student takes initiative and leads the project in a new (good) direction that I didn’t expect. That’s the best part of my job: when someone really understands a lesson and then applies it in a way I have never discussed. That’s how I know I’ve succeeded. They get it, they make it their own and they take it in a new direction.

Assiniboine’s environmental programs have taken some major leaps forward in the last few years and as they continue to grow, we offer new learning opportunities for our students. Our province has so many lakes and rivers that aquatic lessons are abundant.

I’m very proud of the work I’ve done here during my time at Assiniboine. It’s just so great to see our graduates go off into the field and excel at what they do. I’ve also been lucky to have received recognition in the form of an Excellence in Teaching award handed out by the college at our last staff gathering. It’s great to be recognized, but it’s also important to remember that it’s the team that does the work and it’s the team that supports our students and gets them ready to for the world of work. I try to do my part, but it’s the whole Assiniboine team that prepares our students.