Tuesday, September 20, 2016

President Hamdullahpur in New York for launch of HeForShe parity report 

President Feridun Hamdullahpur will be at the United Nations today to join leaders from nine of the world’s top universities in revealing their institutions’ progress on gender parity.

HeForShe IMPACT 10x10x10 engages 30 male heads of state, university leaders and CEOs of global corporations to accelerate the achievement of ‘Planet 50-50 by 2030’ — UN Women’s vision for a gender-equal world.

Ten global universities representing five continents are on a high-speed path to achieve gender equality on their campuses by 2020.

President Hamdullahpur accepted an invitation to participate in the HeForShe IMPACT 10x10x10 framework in 2015.

As the only Canadian participant, Hamdullahpur will report on the bold gender equality commitments the University of Waterloo has undertaken as part of the HeForShe IMPACT10x10x10 initiative. The commitments include:

• Boost female student participation in STEM outreach experiences and academic careers to build the pipeline of future female leaders in traditionally male-dominated disciplines
• Enhance female faculty representation to improve the campus environment today and drive towards parity in the future
• Attract and advance female leaders into senior academic and administrative university positions

The press conference will take place in New York during the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 20 from 11:00 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. It will be streamed live. 

Later tonight, an event at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art will mark the second anniversary of the UN Women's HeForShe initiative, and speaking at the event will be Waterloo physics and astronomy student and 2015 HeForShe Impact Scholarship winner Anya Forestell.

This celebration event will be attended by UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson and other dignitaries including Finnish President Sauli Niinistö and Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan.

Forestell will share her experience of being a woman in STEM at the second anniversary celebration of the UN Women’s HeForShe movement for gender equity.

“Emma Watson has always been a role model for me,” said Forestell. “Everything she does is genuine and strong. She’s fearless and I admire her very much.”

Forestell, who attended a very small high school that had equal numbers of boys and girls in math and science classes, says attending university has given her a much broader perspective on gender issues in STEM disciplines.

“When you look up and you are the only woman in a room of 30 men, it changes your outlook,” said Forestell. “It’s a reminder that not all young women had the same experience I had. There are women, and the numbers are growing, but university is a very different environment from my high school.”

Forestell said the HeForShe scholarship has inspired her to get involved with Waterloo’s FemPhys group, an extracurricular group that supports women in physics. Her advice to young women who want to study in the STEM fields is to persist no matter the obstacles and find a good community that will support you through the ups and downs.

“I know physics is my passion. I know that Waterloo is the right university for me and nothing else matters,” said Forestell. “It doesn’t matter if I’m a man or a woman. I’m exactly where I need to be.”

The celebration event will also be livestreamed starting at 7:00 p.m.

Make Lasting Connections at Reunion 2016

a message from Alumni Relations

Reunion 2016 is on Saturday, October 1 and staff and faculty are invited to attend! Come out and enjoy a full day of activities with friends, family and fellow alumni.

Bring your kids and show them the fun in science, join the AHS Fun Run or check out the East Asian Festival. Share your memories at the Reunion Luncheon with President Feridun Hamdullahpur, faculty open houses and at the Alumni VIP Tent. Show your UWaterloo pride by cheering on the Warriors football team. Finish the day with some toe-tapping and dancing at the Oktoberfest Dinner and After Party at the Bomber. There’s something for everyone!

Show us your Waterloo pride before and during Reunion by participating in our Recapture Reunion – Photo Challenge. You could be the winner of a Pebble SmartWatch by completing our list of photo challenges. Now’s a great time to dig up your old university photos!

Join us and learn about all the amazing things alumni are doing and tell others about all the great things you’ve been up to. Reunion is for everyone with a personal connection to UWaterloo including alumni, staff, faculty, students, and community members.

See the full Reunion 2016 schedule and register for Reunion today!

Join the fight to put spam back in the can

by Terry Labach

​This fall has seen a large increase in unsolicited commercial email (UCE), better known as spam, being sent to members of the University of Waterloo community.

We're used to seeing spam for products like pharmaceuticals sent by mysterious and secretive organizations overseas.  A notable difference with the current spam surges is that many of the messages are coming from real companies with offices in Canada.  They are offering things like student housing or textbooks, and appear to be legitimate enterprises.

However, even if these are legitimate Canadian companies, they are not legally entitled to send commercial email to whomever they please. Under Canada's anti-spam legislation (CASL), they are required to obtain consent beforehand from the recipient. When the company is located in Canada, there is a much better chance of getting the government to deal with them than with suspicious foreign companies.

If you receive unsolicited commercial email from a Canadian firm, you should forward the offending email to the Government of Canada's Spam Reporting Centre at spam@fightspam.gc.ca or submit it using their web form.

Please encourage anyone you know who has received similar email to send copies to the address or site above.  You can also send a copy to the IST Security Operations Centre at soc@uwaterloo.ca, so that we will be aware when these problems arise.

You can find out more about CASL online.

Barbarian Lost and other notes

Renison University College will host Alexandre Trudeau this afternoon at 2:00 p.m. for a book launch of his book, Barbarian Lost. 

Trudeau’s first book, Barbarian Lost provides an insightful account of the dynamic changes going on right now in China, as well as a look back into the deeper history of the highly codified society. 

"As the Kitchener-Waterloo stop on Trudeau’s book tour, Renison is the ideal location to discuss the topic of modern China," says Renison's press release. "The university college is the home of the University of Waterloo’s East Asian Studies department and is the host institution for the Confucius Institute in Waterloo."

Trudeau and Renison’s Principal and Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Wendy Fletcher, will converse about the book at the event, which will be held in Renison’s atrium. The event is free and open to the public, and attendees can register online.

The Federation of Students is hosting a special event to commemorate the life of Neelanjana Pal, a graduate student who died last year shortly after attending a trip with Feds’ service International and Canadian Student Network (ICSN). The University of Waterloo community is invited to be a part of the memorial gathering on September 21 from 12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. outside the Quantum-Nano Centre (QNC). A memorial tree has been planted outside QNC along with a plaque dedicated to Pal.

In attendance will be some of Neelanjana’s extended family, the Feds Executive, the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) Executive, and former ICSN volunteers. More information is available on the Feds Facebook page.

Drivers, start your search engines: Beginning this week, ION-related closings will take place across some major routes near campus as work on the track crossings is carried out:

• From September 23 to approximately September 26, University Avenue will be closed at the railway tracks. A detour directing vehicles to Phillip to Columbia to Westmount will be in place during the closure.
• Beginning September 27, Columbia Street will be closed at the railway tracks. A detour using Phillip-University-Westmount will be in place during the closure.

Check the ION-related travel disruptions site for further updates.

Get Involved Week, which is being hosted by the Federation of Students, continues tomorrow with the Volunteer Fair. The Volunteer Fair is a joint effort between the Feds Volunteer Centre and the Centre for Co-operative Education and Career Action (CECA). From 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. in the Student Life Centre Great Hall, all undergraduates will be able to meet staff members from across campus and discuss volunteer roles. Students will be able to choose from hundreds of enriching volunteer positions in the community. More information about Get Involved Week is available online.

The Waterloo Public Interest Research Group (WPIRG) is hosting Waterloo alumna Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein for a public lecture entitled "Let Physics Be The Dream It Used To Be" tonight at 7:00 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre.

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is a Research Associate in Physics at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her current research focuses on early universe cosmology and technical questions relating to how to do quantum field theory calculations in curved spacetimes. She was listed by the L'Oreal-UNESCO Foundation as one of "5 Amazing Woman Astronomers You Should Know." Prescod-Weinstein is a passionate advocate for racial and gender diversity in STEM and will be sharing her stories about her efforts in this area.