Thursday, May 28, 2015

Waterloo historian reflects on the liberation of the Netherlands

This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Waterloo Stories page.

Waterloo history professor Geoffrey Hayes has been researching Canada’s role in the Second World War for more than 30 years, but this year a study tour of Dutch battlefields held special significance.

This spring marks the 70^th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation at the end of the Second World War. More than 7,600 Canadians sacrificed their lives during the campaign to liberate the Netherlands. On May 28, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands will visit the University of Waterloo. The royal couple will tour research labs in the Institute for Quantum Computing and announce an historic scholarship program marking the 70^th anniversary.

Rifleman R.M. Douglas of The Royal Winnipeg Rifles with a group of Dutch women who are celebrating the liberation of Deventer, Netherlands, 10 April 1945. Photo credit:  Library and Archives Canada: Lieut. Donald I. Grant/Deptarment of National Defence fonds/PA-140683.

The annual European study tour led by Hayes was sponsored by the Canadian Battlefields Foundation, an organization established to educate and promote public awareness of Canada's role in the Second World War

“I’ve been to these battlefields so many times but each time they speak to me in a different ways,” says Hayes. “Every time, I come back more determined than ever to tell the stories of the young men who died here. The cemetery visits always remind me that the officers I research were young kids who died before anyone really knew their names. We should know more about them.”

The other Waterloo student on the study tour, Heather Whiteside, who is just completing an undergraduate degree in history, researched the life story of a Canadian soldier whose remains were found last year in the Netherlands - almost 70 years after he was killed in January 1945. Private Albert Laubenstein was given a military burial in the Canadian cemetery Bergen-op-Zoom in early May.

The students visited Canadian war cemeteries in The Netherlands at Bergen-op-Zoom  and Groesbeek  as well as one in Holten, Germany. They also visited the transit camp at Westerbork where nearly 100,000 Jews, Sinti-Roma and resistance members were taken before being killed in Nazi concentration camps. Anne Frank, who died in Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 just weeks before the end of the war, was held at Westerbork.

Read the rest of the piece on the Waterloo Stories page.

Details on the Dutch royal visit today

Today, Their Majesties King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands will visit campus as part of a half-day visit by a delegation from the Netherlands.

There will be an opportunity to welcome the king and queen outdoors upon their arrival at the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre at 11:00 a.m. and to witness their departure from campus at 12:35 p.m.

Members of the University community can be part of the official greeting party inside the Quantum-Nano Centre on a first-come, first-served basis. Attendees should arrive at the Quantum-Nano Centre entrance nearest the MC building (adjacent to the Peter Russell Rock Garden) no later than 10:30 a.m. so that their Watcard can be examined and they can find a place in the atrium. A Watcard is required for entry.

Once the atrium has reached capacity, there will also be a public access area set up on the creek-side of the Ring Road across from the Quantum-Nano Centre.

The delegation's visit will impact transportation on the Ring Road this morning. A section of the road from the Student Life Centre to Needles Hall will be completely closed to traffic as of 9:00 a.m., with police, parking attendants and barricades in place. Grand River Transit has been notified and buses will be rerouted to the other side of the Ring Road between 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Thursday. Emergency services have also been notified of the temporary road closure.

The visit will consist of an event in the Quantum-Nano Centre's atrium showcasing research innovations, followed by the signing of a memorandum of agreement between Delft University of Technology and the University of Waterloo and an agreement with the Region of Waterloo, Canada's Technology Triangle and Brainport Eindhoven. The delegation will then launch the new Liberation Scholarship Program set up in recognition of Canada's involvement in the liberation of the Netherlands 70 years ago. The royal and academic delegation will then tour a lab at the Quantum-Nano Centre. Their Majesties will depart the University of Waterloo at 12:35 p.m.

English PhD program thrives at 25

by the Department of English Language and Literature. This piece was originally published on the Arts news site.

Twenty-five years ago this month, the PhD program in English Language and Literature admitted its first students. Since then, the program has become the second largest PhD in the Faculty of Arts at UWaterloo, with 64 current students, and one of the largest English doctoral programs in the country. Blending literary, rhetorical, and digital media studies, the program is the only one of its kind in Canada.

Behind its growth lies the extraordinary success of its graduates over the last two and a half decades. In recent years, the career trajectories of English PhD graduates have expanded from many securing full-time academic positions to an increasing proportion who have embarked on excellent careers outside academia.

Former chair of English Gordon Slethaug spearheaded the development of the new PhD in the mid-1980s, shortly after a new BA in Rhetoric and Professional Writing and a new MA in Language and Professional Writing (now Rhetoric and Communication Design) were launched. This period of exponential growth in the department combined elements of American-style rhetoric, writing, and communication studies with the study of literature in English. Key contributors to the development of the PhD include such department members as David Goodwin (now in Drama and Speech Communication), Neil Randall, Lynne Magnusson (now at the University of Toronto), Helen Ellis, and Bill Macnaughton.

The PhD has flourished since its humble beginnings in the 1990s. “Our PhD program has seen successful graduates join us from across Canada and the world, including students from Russia, Iran, Italy, Iraq, and Nepal,” says current Chair of English, Fraser Easton. “And the PhD program is diverse in other ways, too, with student dissertations spanning medieval poetry, medical informatics, post-911 American fiction, games studies, and graphic novels, to name only a few.” 

Current PhD student Elise Vist comments, “I came to Waterloo's English department to do my PhD because there is no other English department in Canada that does it like we do. I wanted to come somewhere where I could dig into the digital humanities while maintaining a link to English literary and rhetorical studies.”

Twenty-five years on, UWaterloo English doctoral graduates teach at York, Dalhousie, Brock, Laurentian, and Ryerson universities, as well as the British Columbia Institute of Technology and the University of Winnipeg. They have also secured positions in English departments internationally, in the U.S., in China, and even in Kazakhstan. And they work full-time in academic units other than English, such as university departments of Medicine, of Interactive Arts and Sciences, of Marketing, and of Professional Communication. One noted graduate, Isabel Pedersen, is Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media and Culture, in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

“This degree is unique in requiring our PhD students to do course work and examinations that span literary, rhetorical, and digital dimensions,” notes Aimée Morrison, Associate Chair, Graduate Studies. “This internal interdisciplinary scope gives our doctoral graduates invaluable range and flexibility that help them get excellent jobs inside and outside of academe.” The program’s attention to writing lies behind many successful careers outside the academic track, whether in administration, the executive suite, or professional communication. One successful graduate, Catherine Scott, is now director of foundation relations for Heifer International in Huntington Beach, California.

What will the next twenty-five years hold? The English department looks ahead to continuing to mentor and support nimble PhD graduates ready for careers in and out of academe, graduates who will thrive in various areas of our new creative economy.

Alumni surveyed on entrepreneurship

Anecdotally, we know Waterloo students, faculty and alumni have made a habit of building new companies and organizations for more than 50 years. Collectively, you’ve changed the economic and social landscape.

But as more institutions try to lay claim to entrepreneurship, we want to ensure we have irrefutable proof that when it comes to start-ups and long-term entrepreneurial success, no one does it better than Waterloo. With your help, we want to better measure the enormous economic and social impact Waterloo alumni continue to have in creating and growing new companies and ventures.

That’s where your contribution is vital.

If you haven’t already, please take the time to complete the University of Waterloo Alumni Entrepreneurship survey. If you received an email, please use the embedded link to access and complete the survey. If you’re an alumnus and you didn’t receive an email, you can find the survey online. Please complete the survey only once, but feel free to share the link with any alumni in your network.

If you have any questions about the study or would like to receive a copy of the results, please contact Daniela Seskar-Hencic at iap.surveys@uwaterloo.ca. If you experience technical difficulties, please contact the Survey Research Centre at uwsrc@uwaterloo.ca.

Thursday's notes

Feridun Hamdullahpur and Canadian Space Agency President Sylvain Laporte pose with the University of Waterloo pennant that astronaut Chris Hadfield took with him to the International Space Station. President Laporte visited the University of Waterloo on May 12 and presented President Hamdullahpur with the space-age souvenir.

Plant Operations notes that the tunnel remediation under the Needles Hall service road is complete and the road is open to traffic as of Thursday morning. The tunnel was reinforced to allow heavier vehicles to pass over it, which will come in handy as the Hagey Hall addition continues.