SAPAA highlights the contributions of volunteers and students to Alberta’s Protected Areas, emphasizing the importance of recognizing their efforts. Upcoming initiatives include a nomination process for lifetime members and various student projects across multiple disciplines aimed at enhancing community engagement and improving reporting on protected areas, set for 2026.
Organizations in general run on the three T’s: Time, Talent, and Treasure. Micro-nonprofits such as SAPAA, rely on the first two T’s. This page exists to honour volunteers and students who have made lifetime or project based contributions. In many ways, these two perspectives are book ends of a person’s life – both deserve honour.
Volunteer Recognition
The following individuals are honoured as builders and founders of SAPAA. Of course, all volunteers are valuable but these individuals have made an outsized contribution to not only the organization but also in the thankless task of protecting Alberta’s Natural Areas. It is easy to consume, it is a special person who contributes.
Lifetime Members
This is a category of individuals who has contributed decades to Alberta’s Protected Areas. Currently the SAPAA board is preparing a proposal for the members to consider at the 2026 Annual General Meeting. If you know of a deserving individual, hold their name. A nomination process will be developed.
In Memorial
These are special individuals that SAPAA remembers for their contributions to Alberta’s Protected Areas. Sadly, they are no longer with us but their outsized contributions live on.
SAPAA Student Projects
SAPAA has benefited from a number of classroom projects. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Individual students are listed and are welcome to reference this page into their respective futures for job applications or just remembering how they contributed to civil society. As available, LinkedIn profiles are linked to the individual.
2026 – SAPAA Student Projects
Rural MLA Engagement (GMU)
- STATUS and RESULTS: Completed Winter 2026. Rural MLAs and SAPAA – 2026-03-20. While engagement was not as fulsome as hoped, the project sparked the conversation with the political process.
- INSTITUTION & STUDENTS: Grant MacEwan University.
- Gabriel Ambutong (student team lead)
- Francheska Monzones
- WHAT: The constituents of Rural MLAs are a potential beneficiary of improved monitoring of protected areas. What are the value propositions for both audiences and how best to enlist their assistance in support of SAPAA?
- DELIVERABLE(S):
- Conduct a market assessment of both rural MLAs and local residents vis-à-vis the benefit of protected areas and the problems they encounter.
- Develop a prospect list and marketing plan based on the above assessment; recommend next steps and seek approval to proceed.
- Implement at least a test marketing effort in support of the above.
- RESUME FODDER: Conducted a market assessment that included both rural landowners who lived in proximity to natural areas and their Members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Development a marketing plan and tested its efficacy.
- ACADEMIC FOCUS(es): Marketing, Communications, or Political Science.
2026 Minister’s Report (GMU)
- STATUS and RESULTS: Completed Winter 2026. 2025 or third annual report continued to improve with incorporation of better data and linkage of the report to the Minister’s letter.
- INSTITUTION & STUDENTS: Grant MacEwan University.
- Aditi Gujar (Project Lead)
- Nolan Gray
- WHAT: For the third year in a row (see the 2024 and 2025 reports), SAPAA will provide to the responsible provincial Ministers a report on the state of Alberta’s protected areas. This project is a multi-disciplined effort to prepare the report.
- DELIVERABLE(S):
- Write up to the final draft of the 2025 Minister’s report and support the final version.
- Incorporate a three discipline approach into the report, namely:
- 1. Economics/Political Science: This individual(s) will be the student lead on the project and will consider what does the Minister(s) need to know and what will be of most interest to them.
- 2. Information Technology: Having a data analytics/science background allows this individual to generate both evidence based tables and visualizations consumable by senior executives.
- 3. Environmental Sciences: As the content expert, ensures both the report and the presentation adheres to sound scientific principles.
- Other skills: communications for report presentation, psychology to make the data/report consumable to the public and media.
- AI Option: Use available artificial intelligence to support the above. This will include retrofitting historical data with current data methodologies.
- Develop documentation for SAPAA to recreate in subsequent years.
- This team in particular will be run as a ‘gig-consultant’ project.
- DETAILS:
- Review the rolling 3-year site inspection data and previous reports and recommend enhancements, changes, and other modifications to the 2026 report.
- Conduct data analysis and generate findings/visuals.
- Assist in the drafting of the report.
- Develop and potentially deliver live and recorded summaries of the report findings.
- RESUME FODDER: Analyzed three years of data to support the findings of a report to provincial Ministers responsible for the environment. Recommended data visualization to improve the messaging for a variety of political, public, and peer audiences.
- ACADEMIC FOCUS(es): Computer Science, Humanities, Communications, Statistics, or Graphic Design.
SIR-SAPAA v1.0
- STATUS and RESULTS: Launch planned for May 9, 2026. Called ‘SIR-SAPAA’, this web based application provides AS-IS and much better functionality than the Google Form based process it replaced. This launch built on previous CMPT 401 projects.
- INSTITUTION & STUDENTS: University of Alberta, SAPAA thanks Dr. Mark Polak and CMPT 401.
- Harveer Deol (Student Team Lead)
- Akib Choudhury
- Braden Woods
- Raiyana Rahman
- Vishal Sivakumar
- Jason Liang
- Zoe Prefontaine
- WHAT: Previously SAPAA collected its site inspection data via Google Sheets and stored the data is a Microsoft Access database (Access). This technical infrastructure was great for system and data modeling but not for collaboration. This project picked up where two former Computer Science 401 projects left off. The focus was on a web based application that was deployed for the 2026 field season.
- DELIVERABLE(S): Determine how best to store SAPAA data.
- Review pre-existing development done by CMPT 401 groups and understand the design and technical decisions made.
- Launch and perform a field test.
- Analyzed the SAPAA Data model particularly in consideration of scalability.
- Implemented an image management method to replace a manual process.
- Analyzed and implemented and improved data model in the Supabase Backend.
- Propose a design to completely replace the existing Google Form SIR process with a web based application hosted on the existing WordPress site.
- Propose a design for Android phones with iOS as a secondary consideration.
- Using Agile developments, plan to deploy for field testing in early March 2026.
- Provide recommendations as to what are next steps and further development needed.
- Continued development and use of Access must be an option.
- RESUME FODDER: Conducted a comprehensive market scan of data systems associated with protected areas and evaluated them as to their fit for purpose for managing site inspection data.
- ACADEMIC FOCUS(es): Computer Science.
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