Charles Chang, a Beedie School of Business alumnus, has donated $10 million to SFU to  create the Charles Chang Institute for Entrepreneurship. Chang is the founder of Vega, a multimillion dollar nutritional company which offers a variety of vegan products.

The institute offers courses in various faculties such as applied sciences, health sciences,  environment, and communication, among others. Students who complete the requirements will receive the Charles Chang Certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, along with their program major degree.

Chang spoke to The Peak about the motivation behind his decision: “The reason I want to give back is because SFU did a lot for me. I did my co-op there, [got] my degree there, and I feel like SFU and I are aligned when it comes to entrepreneurship.

“Especially when Vancouver becomes more and more expensive and harder to afford, I look at the kids and think where they’re going and how they can afford to live here and so forth. The way to do it is to create an entrepreneurship mindset — whether it’s actual experience or just people who think more about entrepreneurship,” Chang suggested. “That’s the biggest long-term benefit that I can give.”

As Chang explained, the idea to donate to the institution started a year ago: “There’s been a lot of conversations going back and forth and working together with SFU to figure out what the best way was to make the biggest difference.”

He emphasized the wide accessibility of the university to those from a diverse array of disciplines. “The issue is that everyone has access — whether you’re in sciences or in arts or in design or in engineering, it doesn’t matter. Wherever you are, you can actively participate in the institute in getting the certificate in entrepreneurship, and we are not only promoting business students. That is what matters.”

The details of the Institute and its plans are still in development, and The Peak will be offering further updates as required.

SFU president Andrew Petter expressed his gratitude to Beedie Newsroom. “Thanks to Charles’ generosity, students from all disciplines will have the opportunity to gain market knowledge and skills, and to learn how to transform their ideas and innovations into businesses and social ventures.”

On the Simon Fraser subreddit, SFU senator Paul Percival wrote a clarification on the news: “As a member of the university Senate, I feel that I must make clear an important detail which the press release glosses over: While Charles Chang has donated money to support the institute and the certificate program [. . .] he has no control over the operations of the institute or the curriculum of the certificate program.

“SFU would never compromise its academic integrity for the sake of donations.”

For most people, the NHL Draft is when a year’s worth of scouting comes together to make in-depth predictions on players’ futures. But according to Peter Tingling, an associate professor in the Beedie School of Business, people in charge of these decisions do not always make the best ones.

“In terms of decision making, what I would say is that most teams are not very good at it, and what most teams talk about [doing], they don’t do,” Tingling told The Peak. “My research quite clearly states that this business about whether teams draft by position or best player available, it’s just nonsense.”

In particular, Tingling’s research on the Draft focused on ordinal ranking error. As an example, he mentioned the players picked by the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2003 Draft, some of whom were key in the Blackhawks’ recent Stanley Cup wins, such as Brent Seabrook, Corey Crawford, and Dustin Byfuglien.

However, they were not picked in that order. While Seabrook and Crawford were picked first and second respectively, five players were picked by the Blackhawks before they eventually selected Byfuglien. According to Tingling’s research, ranking error would occur 28 percent of the time if you simply randomly selected players. The Vancouver Canucks have ranking error 38 percent of the time, while the Red Wings, widely considered one of the best drafting teams in recent memory, have ranking error 56 percent of the time.

Another aspect of Tingling’s research is the value of Draft picks. It likely comes as no surprise to learn that the most valuable pick to have is first overall. Over the last 30 years, all the first overall picks have played more than 160 games, and there is “statistical significance” within the first 30 picks, according to Tingling. However, there is no real statistical significance between late-second round picks and third round picks, and none between picks 120–210.

Tingling’s research has caught the attention of some NHL executives, and figures such as St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong have reached out to speak with the professor about his research.

“He [Armstrong] asked some incredibly insightful probing questions. [. . .] I sent him some of my research, he phoned me up, and one of his questions was ‘Talk to me about the inter-round variance.’ [. . .] This is not some guy who just knows arithmetic. This is a guy who is asking a pretty sophisticated question.”

Tingling’s upcoming research has him still focusing on the NHL, but this time looking at the relationship between front office movement and on-ice movement.

“Our research shows quite conclusively that [as] front office movement goes up, trading goes up. If I’m Vancouver, and I send one of my AGMs [Assistant General Manager] to Florida, then you’d expect there to be more trades, because we know each other.

“What’s interesting is that what we find that the more you trade [with a particular team], the more likely you are to go to that team, so there’s a bit of a circular relationship.”

SFU molecular biology and biochemistry senior lecturer Irina Kovalyova is receiving critical praise for her most recent publication, a collection of short stories titled Specimen.

Published in June 2015 by House of Anansi Press, Specimen recently earned Kovalyova the Emerging Writer prize in Literary Fiction from Kobo. Kovalyova’s stories are influenced by both her background in science and love of literature.

In the story “Mamochka,” set in Kovalyova’s hometown of Minsk, an archivist at the Institute of Physics grapples with her daughter’s new marriage to a Chinese man living in Vancouver. In “Peptide P,” Kovalyova uses a clinical lab report to tell an emotional story about sick children.

While science and art are often regarded as separate worlds, Kovalyova sees things differently.

As a child growing up in the former Soviet Union, Kovalyova was an avid reader. She fell in love with short stories through the works of Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Bulgakov, and other Russian writers.

Even when she became interested in science in high school, Kovalyova said, “I never left literature behind.”

Kovalyova jokingly calls herself a “triple threat” as she went on to get graduate degrees in chemistry, microbiology, and immunology, and most recently an MFA in creative writing from UBC.

“I always find it strange that people are surprised by the fact that I’m a scientist and yet I’m also a writer. I don’t think the two things are necessarily separate,” she said.

Kovalyova learned to approach science with a complex, narrative point of view, and to apply a critical, investigative lens to her writing. Specimen’s unique combination of science, technology, and human emotion came naturally to the author. After all, it reflects her own life.

“Even if I set out to write a short story that doesn’t have any science in it at all, inevitably there would be something,” Kovalyova said. “That’s what I do and I can’t get away from it.”

She noted that she gets a lot of inspiration from her classes at SFU, adding, “I blame my students for a lot of the short stories.”

Kovalyova published several fiction and non-fiction pieces in literary magazines before compiling Specimen. Along the way, she realized that a lot of her work was linked by common themes of looking beyond oneself and fostering empathy.

Her stories take place across the world, from North Korea to Poland to Vancouver, and bridge cultures, beliefs, and expectations. She writes about the fall of the Berlin Wall in one story, and unexpected side effects of Botox injections in another.

Kovalyova plans to continue writing and experimenting with different forms of fiction. She hopes to remind readers of the power of collaboration, not segregation, in the workplace and their lives.

“Ultimately [. . .] my goal is to explore humanity and [. . .] urge people to integrate, not separate, but integrate in whatever way we can,” Kovalyova said.