PhD Student David Chang receives Steel Memorial Scholarship

Doctoral student David Chang is the recipient of this year's $17,000 Steel Memorial Scholarship. The William and Ada Isabelle Steel Memorial Graduate Scholarship is awarded every year with the intention of providing students with a period of time that they can devote largely to graduate studies and research. 

Chang aims to integrate intellectual investigation with contemplative practice, music with conceptual exploration, human relationships with ecological experience. 

Chang's research plan is to investigate life in off-grid communities that are relatively independent from the mainstream economy by spending a year on the remote off-grid BC island of Lasqueti. While there he will spend time at the local elementary school to explore the lessons that the school community might offer to city dwellers embedded within the mainstream economy.

Chang’s overall plan is to better understand how communities like Lasqueti can reconnect us to the earth and help us transition to lower-impact lifestyles.