Faculty

On March 6, 2020, Arts hosted its Three Minute Thesis (3MT) faculty-level heat and advanced Psychology PhD candidate Martin Turpin (first place winner and People's Choice winner) and Psychology master's student Sarena (second place winner) to the university-wide finals. While that university-wide final is now being held virtually, this doesn't mean our Arts graduate student competitors don't need your support. 

Serena McDiarmid, a PhD candidate in Psychology, has been recognized with the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her incredible research proposal titled “Supporting second language acquisition of Canada’s child refugees: a longitudinal study of risk and protective factors for language learning success.”

Janet Jones, a PhD candidate in Philosophy has been recognized for her wonderful dissertation work titled “It Probably Won’t Help Anyway: How Stigma Hurts Health Care Access for Persons with an Addiction” and is the recipient of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for her work.

She is the type of student who is not easily forgotten, wrote her nominator. The positive impact that new graduate Kiera McMaster leaves on her peers and wider community was recently recognized when she won the Faculty of Arts Award for Excellence in Service.

When he was an undergraduate in Winnipeg, Harrison Oakes (MA ’16, PhD '20) witnessed the difficulty of promoting change for marginalized groups when he sat in on hearings for Manitoba’s proposed Bill 18. People argued that they couldn’t see how the legislation for anti-bullying to protect LGBTQ+ youth applied to all kids. Seven years later, Oakes’ doctoral research helps to answer that question.

The Faculty of Arts proudly celebrates all graduates (more than 1,400 of them!) who would have been walking across the stage to receive their diploma's this week. As part of our virtual spring 2020 convocation celebrations, we warmly congratulate the distinguished undergraduates receiving top performance awards. 

In our work and interactions, we need to be conscious of and proactively challenge white privilege and colonial structures. We need to continuously strive to create an equal, fair and welcoming learning environment for everyone.

Congratulations to Arts and Business student Taylor Legere for being selected Co-op Student of the Year (Arts). For her eight-month Winter/Spring 2019 work term, Taylor served as an Operations Coordinator at the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation in UWaterloo’s Faculty of Environment.

Since the COVID-19 lockdown, the University of Waterloo has released a steady stream of media advisories with Waterloo experts on all aspects of the pandemic -- and many of these feature experts in the Faculty of Arts. Last week included a Q and A with Joel Blit on re-starting the economy, and this week includes a Q and A with Mikal Skuterud on labour data, CERB, and jobs.