Thursday, December 22, 2016

Changes in Secretariat, Office of General Counsel

Effective January 9, 2017, the Secretariat & Office of General Counsel will be divided into two distinct offices, according to a memo from President Feridun Hamdullahpur circulated to campus yesterday.

“This will better support the successful navigation by our campus community within our complex policy and governance environment,” Hamdullahpur writes. “The Secretariat will remain in Needles Hall 3060. The Office of General Counsel will move to Needles Hall 3007 as soon as renovations to that suite are completed. Both Offices will report to the President.”

Logan Atkinson will be taking responsibility for the Office of General Counsel as the University’s General Counsel. “In this capacity, Dr. Atkinson will be responsible for the management of the full range of legal issues affecting the University.” 

“In his time as University Secretary, Dr. Atkinson has led a number of important initiatives,” Hamdullahpur writes. “Since his arrival at the university in 2012, the Secretariat and related offices have developed an excellent integrated risk management program. In this regard, we now have a thorough and important emergency response plan, a much improved and comprehensive statutory and regulatory compliance regime, and a properly efficacious internal audit program. These plans are fully integrated through the university's overarching risk management framework, the basics of which are set forth in Policy 11 and related documents.” 

In addition, Atkinson established the university's first Equity Office and hired the University’s first Director of Equity. “This initiative continues to show great benefit to the University, and will assist in moving us forward toward the accomplishment of many of the ambitions captured in our institutional strategic plan,” the president writes.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank Logan and his colleagues in both the Secretariat and the Office of General Counsel for their commitment and dedication to the well-being of the University over the past several years,” writes Hamdullahpur. “In the interim, Karen Jack will report to me and act as Associate University Secretary. She will ensure continuity and oversight on policy and governance priorities until a new University Secretary is named.”

The Office of the President will initiate a search process for a new University Secretary in January 2017.

Hug’s Tree of Life named one of 2016's top articles

This article was originally posted on the Faculty of Science's news site.

Biology professor Laura Hug’s A New View of the Tree of Life is ranked one of the most-discussed journal articles of 2016, according to Altmetric’s top 100 articles of 2016 list.

Published in Nature Microbiology in April 2016, Hug, working with Dr. Jillian Banfield at UC Berkeley and collaborators, revised Charles Darwin’s “tree of life,” discovering 1,000 new microorganisms that may provide keys to cleaning up environmental contamination in water and on land.

The paper was in the top 5 percent of all research outputs scored by the U.K.-based company that tracks and analyzes the online activity around scholarly research outputs. It placed 79th among the 2.7 million research outputs Altmetric tracked this year and received mentions from a host of online platforms.

Hug’s research suggests that humans are but a small, rather insignificant part of the ever-growing tree of life. She will continue to focus not just on characterizing new organisms in the environment, but understanding the function of new genetic material.

"Contaminated sites are extreme environments with microbial communities that have adapted to these harsh conditions and whose members are often able to degrade the contaminants,” says Hug, a Water Institute member from the Faculty of Science. “This new tree highlights how much microbial diversity is still uncharacterised, including organisms with activities we can use for remediation.

Read more: New tree of life may hold clues to cleaning up pollution, published by the Faculty of Science.

Campus prepares to celebrate 60 years of innovation

As we prepare for a yearlong celebration of our first 60 years, all members of the University community—alumni, faculty, students, staff, and supporters—are being invited to share their memories of the past and their visions for the future.

You may have already noticed the displays of 60^th Anniversary merchandise at the Waterloo Store in South Campus Hall, and words about the 2017 celebration have been published in the Daily Bulletin and Waterloo Magazine. The plan is to hit the ground running in January as campus celebrates this milestone anniversary.

The official kick-off to the diamond jubilee celebration will be the Beyond 60: University of Waterloo 60^th Anniversary Lecture on Monday, January 9, 2017 featuring keynote speakers Edward Snowden, Kate Darling of MIT, and Waterloo professors Heather Douglas, Dana Kulic, and Michele Mosca.

Tickets for the event in the Humanities Theatre have sold out, but you can still register to attend one of the special viewing events taking place across our campuses, including:

• The Student Life Centre
• The Stratford Campus
• The School of Architecture
• The School of Pharmacy
• The Hong Kong Foundation

If you’re looking to have your memory jogged about Waterloo’s history, check out the 60 Years of Innovation feature story in the Fall 2017 issue of Waterloo magazine for a year-by-year, brick-by-brick history of the campus. Feel free to browse the University of Waterloo Archives 60^th Anniversary Image Bank of more than 2,000 historical Waterloo photos. And don’t forget to peruse the classic unofficially official campus chronicle “Water Under The Bridge” written by Simon the Troll (as told to Chris Redmond), which gives a snapshot overview of the University from before 1956 to 1993. Keep an eye out for regular weekly anniversary content to appear on social media with the hashtag #Uwaterloo60 and in issues of the Daily Bulletin next year.

Get involved by visiting the 60 Years of Innovation website and contributing a memory, a prediction, or a photo. The website has a calendar of upcoming anniversary events across campus and beyond, a photo gallery, interactive timeline, blog posts, and resources for those of you looking for ways to join the celebration.

There’s much to celebrate and much to anticipate in 2017. Let’s make the most of it.

Photograph by Kelly McManus.