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Gord Pennycook published research on everything from BS to how smartphone use is linked to lazy thinking. Now he’s on a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.

Pennycook is a psychology expert on how humans think, reason and make decisions. His passion for cognitive science may well be connected to his own extraordinary ability to think fast.

Tomorrow, 618 students from the Faculty of Arts will cross the stage to receive their degrees and distinguished alumni return to campus for special awards. Cindy Blackstock will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws and address Convocation.

The Globe and Mail reports on essay writing skills with comments by Associate Dean, Undergraduate Programs, Katherine Acheson:

Even in an age of quick-bite digital communication, writing skills are key because they can be transferred to any number of other forms, including a song, a sales pitch, or even a profile on a dating site.

Zuhair Zaidi, a student in the Master of Public Service program at Waterloo, has been interested in Canadian politics since the age of 15. Thanks to Waterloo’s flexibility in allowing students to arrange their own jobs, Zaidi landed a co-op work term in the House of Commons this past spring.

The social and clinical psychology areas of the Department of Psychology have much to be proud of - and this week that includes the announcement of the prestigious Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships for 2016. Two PhD students are among the recipients.

Students in the Faculty of Arts have long benefited from digital tools in the classroom. And over the past ten years or so they’ve had a growing range of program and course options to develop their skills as digital makers and users.

Professor Heather Douglas, Waterloo Chair in Science and Society and a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy, told CBC radio's The 180 this weekend that gaps in public understanding or support of science and technology can  force the scientific community to be more rigorous and innovative. Read or hear the full story on CBC.

Congratulations to the team of doctoral graduates and professors from the Department of Psychology for winning the infamous Ig Nobel Peace Prize for their study published last year, “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit.”

Anthropology professor Robert Park has spent years working with the Government of Nunavut investigating and documenting the Franklin Expedition sites on land in Canada's high arctic. Two years ago he played a key role in the historic discovery of one of Franklin's fated ships, the HMS Erebus. Last month, the second ship, the HMS Terror, was discovered.

Universities are one of the few places where people can speak frankly about hard-to-talk-about problems, says Tim Kenyon, associate dean of research and a professor of philosophy. It’s for this reason that the Faculty of Arts tackled a topic that has received a lot of attention recently: rape culture.