Tuesday, April 21, 2015

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• It's Earth Week at Waterloo
• Toronto alumni event was pitch perfect
• Excellence in Science Teaching award winners named
• Tuesday's notes

It's Earth Week at Waterloo

The University of Waterloo is committed to having a positive impact on the environment, which is why the University has launched a brand new ‪#‎UWEarthWeek campaign to celebrate our sustainability successes and our plans going forward.

We invite you to join us at various events this week and help make a difference on our campus and in our community!

Toronto alumni event was pitch perfect

by Kaitlin O'Brien.

President and Vice Chancellor Feridun Hamdullahpur and Alumni Relations hosted an alumni reception on Thursday, April 9 at 99 Sudbury in Toronto. The event included Waterloo alumni, staff, faculty, and co-op students who came to witness the live pitch competition by alumni start-ups. The pitch portion of the event was artfully managed by the experts of pitching, the Velocity team. Alumni participated in an interactive way to help determine the pitch winner who then received the $5,000 prize provided by affinity sponsor TD Insurance Meloche Monnex. 

The evening began with the ten start-up pitches, followed by a reception that focused on innovation and entrepreneurship: something emcee Howard Armitage was very familiar with, considering his role as Special Advisor to the President, Entrepreneurship and Founder of Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre at the University of Waterloo.

The Toronto Alumni Reception featured pitches from the following companies:

• DraftingSpace takes the pain out of the renovation process by automatically creating construction-ready designs.
• Eye Check aims to eradicate preventable blindness.
• Grobo allows users to easily grow food when they want, where they want.
• Lani provides a 3D printing payment system.
• Vitameter is a personal handheld device that measures a person’s vitamin levels within minutes.​
• Medella Health provides contact lenses that continuously and non-invasively monitor patient's glucose levels.
• Palette allows users to build their own controllers.​
• Pout provides a social network for fashion and beauty.
• Suncayr indicates sunscreen effectiveness by changing colour when UV rays are penetrating through to the skin.
• Voltera enables circuit boards to be prototyped within minutes, eliminating the frustrations with traditional fabrication processes.

The company that managed to deliver the winning pitch and received the $5,000 was EyeCheck. Congratulations to the winning team as well as all of the other teams for their effort and dedication.

Excellence in Science Teaching award winners named

by Science Communications.

Teaching the next generation of scientists is a job our faculty takes to heart. Each year, the Faculty of Science recognizes the teaching quality and impact of our faculty through the Excellence in Science Teaching Awards (ESTA).

The 2015 ESTA were awarded to Dr. Andrea Edginton and Chemistry Department Chair Bill Power for their sustained, high quality teaching in their undergraduate or graduate courses.

Edginton, an Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy, has taken a highly innovative approach in teaching pharmacokinetics.

She was a pioneer at the University of Waterloo in using the “flipped classroom” model. This approach places most of the core instructional material online allowing classroom time to be used to address questions and provide supplementary explanations of difficult concepts.

Despite the challenges in teaching such a difficult subject, Edginton has consistently been one of the most highly rated teachers in the School of Pharmacy.

Power has taught at every level of the chemistry curriculum. He’s consistently praised by students for his ability to take complicated concepts and explain them in a way that makes them seem intuitive and almost simple.  

Students cite his love of teaching as one of his most outstanding qualities. Power is well known and admired by students and colleagues for his innovative approaches to engage students and maximize their learning experience.

The annual ESTA award was established to recognize and reward excellence in teaching and outstanding instructors within the Faculty of Science at the University of Waterloo. Winners of the ESTA receive a certificate and a monetary award, which is used to support teaching activities.

Tuesday's notes

"Waterloo LEARN will be unavailable from 2:00 a.m. on Monday, April 27 until approximately 12 noon on Wednesday, April 29 while the system is upgraded to version 10.4 (D2L)," says a note from Information Systems and Technology (IST). "Instructors still updating their final marks will find that the gradebook functionality has not changed in 10.4 and will be able to continue processing their grades once LEARN is back online on April 29."

Remember that wild turkey that was spotted lurking outside Hagey Hall last week? Turns out it was casing the joint and gained entry to the third floor of the building by breaking a window.

According to the English department's blog, the foul fowl has been handed over to the authorities and is now a jailbird. (Update: sadly, the CBC is reporting that the story has a tragic ending.)

Turkey photograph by Colin Wallace of Accounting and Finance, courtesy of the English Department's blog.

Human Resources is reporting that retiree Elaine Sim died February 23. Sim began her employment at the University of Waterloo in May 1987 and worked as Secretary in Independent Studies prior to her retirement in August 1998.