Friday, August 12, 2016

Tales of a Teacher: Tamara Maciel

By Arifeen Chowdhury. This is the third of three Centre for Teaching Excellence Teaching Stories that will be featured in the Daily Bulletin this week.

Tamara Maciel is an expert in a very corporeal discipline – human anatomy – yet she still manages to infuse a great deal of soul into her work. Her interest in the human frame is reflected in her dual role at Waterloo: she is both an instructor and the Teaching Laboratory Coordinator in the School of Anatomy. Anatomy is essential to understanding the human body, and Maciel takes pride in helping her students build a foundation for future careers in health and medicine.  

​Maciel is highly regarded by her students, in part because of the rapport she develops with them by virtue of genuinely caring about their personal and academic well-being.

The majority of her students are in their first year and she recognizes that most of them have just left home and are adjusting to the new environment of a university. She explains, “I take into consideration the fact that my students have lives beyond the classroom, and make sure that if they are overwhelmed I can assist them in some possible way. Sometimes they just need reassurance or redirecting to resources that can help.” Her positive rapport with students has made it easier for her to convey high expectations: they trust her assessment of their abilities, and they know she wants them to succeed. To this end, Maciel seeks to eliminate or at least mitigate all barriers to learning that students might encounter. She and her students function as a team as they progress through the term — “My students know that I am not playing any games and that I am trying to set them up for success.” 

Anatomy is often considered a content-heavy discipline that requires a lot of rote memorization, but Maciel eschews that approach. Learning anatomy, she says, is like learning a new language, and while it does require practice and repetition, she aims to ease the burden of memorization by focusing on concepts, logical relationships, and experiential learning. In addition to making and uploading videos on essential anatomical topics, Maciel has her students engage in student-driven, hands-on learning: they examine human cadavers in Waterloo’s Human Anatomy Dissection Laboratory, and they reinforce their learning by sketching the components they observe. While anatomy apps for mobile devices can supplement this experiential learning, Maciel admits she is a bit old school: “There are no substitutes for the real thing,” she says.

Collaboration is also an essential part of Maciel’s teaching practice. She encourages students to share information and engage in discussions via social media such as Facebook groups. Maciel and her colleagues also provide leadership opportunities for students: after successfully completing an anatomy course, many students become Volunteer Teaching Assistants. Each of these students is assigned to a lab section for an entire term, where they mentor students who are new to the program. The experience also, of course, reinforces their own knowledge. With such resources and teaching strategies in place, Maciel says she tends not to worry about how many students are passing or failing — she believes they can all be successful if they diligently and consistently apply themselves.

"Tamara taught this lab so well. It was laid back and very open but you still managed to learn so much. It was very independent, you could work alone or with others and could move at your own pace. The volunteer TA's were also extremely helpful and friendly." -Kinesiology student

Maciel recognizes that teaching is an evolving craft, and that how she teaches now might not be how she teaches in the future. “Students are always the same age,” she says, “but the instructors are not. We keep getting older and sometimes we don’t recognize that we have to adapt and change with the times.”

Panel discussion examines the future of the PhD

This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared on the Faculty of Arts news site.

“It seems that we are in a transitional moment - individuals and institutions are starting to grapple with the fact that PhD training must be modified in order to remain maximally rewarding and relevant,” says Masa Torbica, PhD candidate in English.

Both Masa and Andria Bianchi, PhD candidate in Philosophy, attended The Future of the PhD in the Humanities conference in the spring, alongside the Dean of Arts, Doug Peers, and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, Linda Warley. The conference provided delegates from across Canada with the opportunity to discuss the importance of graduate education in the humanities, and develop tools to restructure PhD programs and enhance the focus on non-academic career preparation.

“Although it would be ideal to obtain a tenure track position in academia, the job prospects in the humanities are scarce,” explains Andria. “I plan to become a bioethicist after I graduate, assisting patients, families, and health care providers with the process of making ethically complex decisions.”

There is an urgent need for PhD training to change, Masa explains. “Students are suffering under the current structure: struggling to simultaneously fulfill degree requirements, stay afloat financially, and somehow bridge the chasm between academic training and non-academic employment.”

Read the rest of the article on the Faculty of Arts news site.

New policy, Policy 46 – Information Management

By the Secretariat & Office of General Counsel

On 11 July 2016, the President approved new Policy 46 – Information Management. With the approval of Policy 46, the following guidelines and policies were superseded and are no longer in force:

• Policy 8, Information Security
• Policy 12, Records Management
• Policy 13, Archives
• Policy 19, Access To and Release of Student Information
• Statement on Information Management

New Policy 46 clarifies information management roles and responsibilities at the University by consolidating the superseded policies and guidelines into one more concise and accessible policy.  Inconsistencies across polices have been eliminated. New Policy 46 makes no significant changes to information and records management practices or requirements.

The one exception is this - Policy 46 adds a new information management role, “information service provider.” This role is additional to the roles of information steward, information custodian, and information user previously defined in Policy 8. As defined in Policy 46, the “information service provider” role more accurately describes the responsibilities of IT personnel in supporting the work of the information stewards and custodians responsible for information management decisions.

The policy was developed over the past year by a working group of the Administrative Information Governance Committee (AIGC), in consultation with University committees, as part of the Secretariat’s Policy Renewal Project.

In the coming months, further guidance on implementing Policy 46 will be made available by the Secretariat and IST. In the interim, questions about the policy can be directed to Chris Halonen, University Records Manager, or Nadia Singh, Associate University Secretary.

All University offices should now update their documentation to remove references to the old policies, as follows:

• References to Policy 8 or Policy 12 should be replaced with a reference to Policy 46.
• References to Policy 19 should be replaced with reference to Policy 46, Appendix A.

Questions about matters previously addressed in Policy 13 can be directed to Nick Richbell, Head of Special Collections & Archives, Dana Porter Library.

For more information on the Policy Renewal Project, including a list of policies currently under review and a list of policies to be reviewed in the upcoming year, please visit the Policy Post, which can be found on the website of the Secretariat & Office of General Counsel, https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat-general-counsel/4-august-2016-policy-post.

Friday's notes

Plant Operations has announced that window cleaning and maintenance will occur through the remainder of August: 

• QNC - Aug 15th - 19th
• DP Library - Aug 22nd - 23rd
• East Campus Hall - Aug 22nd - 23rd
• RAC 1 - Aug 24th - 25th
• RAC 2 - Aug 24th - 25th
• E3 - Aug 24th - 25th

Any questions can be directed to the General Maintenance line at ext 36318 or pltops.workorders@waterloo.ca.

Beginning August 29th, Key Control will be relocating temporarily to GSC 1102. Access will be available from the GSC main entrance door off DC/MC Service Road. This is same entrance used to access Plant Operations Administration and where HR was once located.