Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Thank you for making a difference

a message from the United Way Campaign.

The University of Waterloo’s 2015 United Way Campaign is wrapping up and we wanted to send a sincere thank you to everyone who was involved. There are so many ways to support the United Way campaign and whether you donated time or funds, you’ve made an impact.

We’re thrilled to announce that we’re at 95 per cent of our goal (there’s still time to donate to help us reach $260,000), and that once again this year, Executive Council had a 100 per cent participation rate. Did you attend a bake sale or participate in a silent auction? You’re responsible for helping us raise over $20,000 in special events funds!

The University of Waterloo is making a difference every day, whether in the lives of our students or through transformational research. And the United Way campaign is one more way that you’re helping us create positive change in our community.

While our official campaign month of October is over, we encourage you to think about ways to support the United Way throughout the year. Many offices and departments host year-round events, check out our volunteer toolkit for ideas.

New building aims to transform engineering education

by Angela Pause. This article first appeared on the Waterloo Stories page.

Construction of the Faculty of Engineering's new Engineering 7 (E7) building began at a ground-breaking event that included robots, autonomous vehicles and good old-fashioned shovels.

As several hundred students, alumni, faculty, staff and donors watched a live video stream of the event on November 12, Dean of Engineering Pearl Sullivan, along with University President Feridun Hamdullahpur, tossed shovels of dirt into the air, officially launching the construction of the 242,000 gross-square-foot building that will be one of the largest facilities on campus.

The groundbreaking festivities included the acknowledgement of several significant gifts from private sector donors, including two anonymous gifts of $25 million and $10 million. Also in attendance were Jacques and Céline Lamarre whose family foundation gifted $1.5 million in support of the construction of Engineering 7. Other major gifts to the Educating the Engineer of the Future campaign were also announced including more than $1 million each from General Motors of Canada, Magna International Inc., and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc.

“When I look around, I see people who truly believe in Waterloo Engineering.  People who know we are deeply committed to Educating the Engineer of the Future and they have generously supported our fundraising campaign so we can accomplish these four crucial things:  Build Engineering 7, enhance student experience,  establish Chairs in emerging technologies and support graduate students,” said Sullivan, just before donning a Waterloo Engineering hard hat and leather jacket and jumping into an autonomous golf cart with President Hamdullahpur.

The $70 million campaign, publicly launched in April of this year, has reached the $55 million mark from private sector donations alone. The new E7 facility will feature an additive manufacturing—or 3D printing—laboratory and a RoboHub for testing autonomous and robotic vehicles.

It will also accommodate growth from Waterloo’s new biomedical engineering program and the expansion of the Faculty of Engineering’s highly popular mechatronics engineering program. It will house the Faculty’s new teaching innovation, the multidisciplinary Engineering Ideas Clinic™, where undergraduate students will integrate classroom theory with hands-on learning as they design, build, test and refine ideas.

A student-centric building, there is dedicated study and social spaces, lecture halls and entrepreneurial support areas, along with 20 design garages for student design teams to prototype their Capstone Design projects.

EllisDon will construct the building that will also become the permanent home for the Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre, and the Engineering Outreach unit, which offers STEM education programs for elementary and high school children, such as Engineering Science Quest and Go ENG Girl.  

Hannah Gautreau, president of EngSoc B and Elahe Jabari, PhD candidate in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, also lent a hand to break ground, as Steve Waslander, professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, narrated the journey for the indoor audience as they viewed the entire event on large screens inside a packed Sedra Student Design Centre. As soon as shovelfuls of dirt were tossed in the air, confetti cascaded on the cheering crowd.

Read the rest of the article on Waterloo Stories.

Relive Random Act of Kindness Day

This is the latest in a series of #UWaterloo stories that feature Waterloo in the community.

On Friday, November 6, more than 135 Waterloo volunteers came together to participate in Random Act of Kindness Day, performing over 6,800 acts of kindness for the local community. Check out the highlights from our trip to the local Superstore & share your thoughts with #UWaterlooRAK.

Wednesday's notes

Waterloo chemical engineering student Kaveh Sarikhani has been accepted into the RISE professional program, a scholarship offered by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst or DAAD).

DAAD is the German national agency for the support of international academic co-operation and is the largest funding organization in the world supporting the international exchange of students and scholars.

“DAAD programs help create goodwill and professional relationships that will build a solid basis for relations between Germany and North America,” says the official scholarship announcement. “DAAD scholarships are highly competitive and recipients are selected by independent selection committees on the basis of outstanding academic records and convincing project proposals or statements of purpose.”

Sarikhani was one of a number of recipients of scholarships and grants for the 2015-2016 academic year.

To accommodate students preparing for exams, the Library will be extending its hours from November 22 to December 22. The Davis library will be opened 24 hours except on Sundays, when it will be closed from 2:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. Porter will be open from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m. every day.

During this time, service desks and related services will be closed at regular times (Porter at 11:00 p.m. and Davis at midnight). On December 22, the last day of extended hours, the Dana Porter library will close at 11:00 p.m. and the Davis library will close at midnight.

At the Davis library there will be attendants present for security purposes. Staff will monitor for noise, cell phone use, and hot foods that are not permitted in the library.

Employers on campus next week hosting employer information sessions include AECOM, Deloitte and Huawei Canada.