Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Members of 25, 35, 45-Year Club named

The University of Waterloo will welcome 79 new members into its 25-Year, 35-Year, and 45-Year Clubs at a celebration event on June 20.

There are 46 new inductees into the 25-Year Club. Employees who started working at Waterloo in 1992 include:

Joanne Atlee; Lydia Bell; David Blowes; Ramona Bobocel; Lutz-Alexander Busch; Hector Budman; Zheng-Yu Chen; Joseph Cheriyan; Lorne Dawson; Ralph Dickhout; Tan Dinh; Fraser Easton; Bill Eickmeier; Erick Engelke; Jane Forgay; David Geffros; Nancy Gibson; Robert Gorbet; Margaret Grosch; Randy Harris; Mark Havitz; Denise Hay; Jayne Hayden; Sheshakamal Jayaram; Beverly Kuepfer; Lorna Kropf; Michael Lang; Donna Lutz; Ann-Marie MacMillan; John McPhee; Douglas McTavish; Kelley Moran; Kenneth Noakes; Carlomagno Oblitas; Ajoy Opal; Maria Polak; Dereck Revington; Maria Sillato; Diane Schunk John Straube; Bruce Taylor; S. Lynne Taylor; Levent Tuncel; Doug Turnbull; Ross Willard; and Wei-Chau Xie

The 32 employees who started at Waterloo 35 years ago in 1982, which is also the year that the first cohort of 25-Year Club members were named, include:

Gordon Agnew; Marie Amodeo; Susan Arruda; Fred Bakker; Andrew Barber; Derek Barclay; Kim Bast; James Bookbinder; Kerry Brown; Margaret Burnett; Edward Chrzanowski; Maurice Dusseault; Jennifer Ferguson; Susan Hache; A.Richard Heemskerk; Cindy Howe; Rohan Jayasundera; Susan Key; Sandra Laughlin; Jeffrey Lappin; Reginald Leland; Patrick Matlock; W.Scott Nicoll; Lorenzo Pignatti; Faye Schultz; Christopher Small; Wanda Speek; Carol Steele; Gordon Stubley; Penny Stumpf; Donna Sutherland; and Joanne Voisin.

This year there is a single inductee into Waterloo's 45-Year Club: Ingrid Pinos, who joined the University in 1972.

The milestone celebration reception takes place on Tuesday, June 20 at 6:00 p.m. in the Physical Activities Complex.

Congratulations all on achieving these impressive employment milestones!

Co-op student helps build groundbreaking vehicle

By Chris Carniello

After 36 years in business, Tracks & Wheels Equipment Brokers Inc. took on one of the most extensive projects in company history - an underground mining personnel vehicle called MineMaster Commander. The creation of this vehicle in fall 2016 required extensive manpower, experience and knowledge to complete, and 3B Systems Design Engineering co-op student Matthew Gougeon was on the frontlines.   

“My official title at Tracks & Wheels was engineering co-op student, but I had the opportunity to work across the organization with a few different teams on different projects,” explains Gougeon. “The majority of my work was directly with the engineering department helping with electrical designs and programming controllers for the vehicles.”

The MineMaster Commander is a state-of-the-art new class of underground mining personnel carrier. “I worked, with the support of the engineering department, to move forward the technical design and prototype build of a small electric vehicle,” explains Gougeon. “The majority of my work revolved around refining an existing design in terms of electrical components, and integrating systems on the vehicle.”

Working for a company that is at the forefront of innovation, Gougeon credits his academic background for his work-term success. “I find that academic knowledge helps me make more informed decisions about my work, and allows me to build defensible recommendations around my decisions and opinions,” says Gougeon. “It has been very helpful in preparing me for my work term.”

Lady Aberdeen and her feminist legacy at Waterloo

Library staff members Adelheid Bender, Carolynne Presser and Doris Lewis displaying suffragette materials from the Lady Aberdeen Collection, 1967. [Photo from Special Collections & Archives]

This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Library's news site.

You likely know that University of Waterloo is a global leader in the United Nation's HeForShe campaign, but did you know we’ve had a legacy of women’s studies dating back to our earliest years?

This June, University of Waterloo Library’s Special Collections & Archives (SC&A) is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of receiving the Lady Aberdeen Collection. This library of early feminist works laid the groundwork for Waterloo Library to be a nucleus of women’s studies across Canada, and are now some of the most-used items in the Library's Archives.

Ishbel Maria Marjoribanks Hamilton-Gordon, known as Lady Aberdeen, was born in 1857, and married the first Marquis of Aberdeen in 1877. Both were social reformers ahead of their time, and Lady Aberdeen’s entire adult life was dedicated to philanthropy in the United Kingdom and Canada.  Following a visit to Canada in 1890, Lady Aberdeen founded the Lady Aberdeen Association for Distribution of Literature to Settlers in the West, which sent literature to isolated Prairie households. Lord Aberdeen was Governor-General of Canada from 1893-1898, and despite their return to the United Kingdom, Lady Aberdeen would say before her death many years later that “I have been a Canadian for many years. I shall always be a Canadian.”

Lady Aberdeen was the first woman to receive an honorary degree in Canada, and the first to deliver a speech to the House of Commons. She played a key role in establishing the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON), and helped found the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC), a non-partisan federation of women’s organizations with a goal of social reform and suffrage.

In 1954, the NCWC's Arts and Letters Committee began to assemble a library of material by, and about, women. Named in honour of Lady Aberdeen, the council’s first president, the collection of books grew to include periodicals, government documents, pamphlets, clippings, manuscripts, ephemera and realia. The collection is particularly strong in literary and biographical works by and about Council members.

The Lady Aberdeen Library on the History of Women, known as the Lady Aberdeen Collection, was donated to the University of Waterloo Library in 1967 to mark the occasion of the Centennial of Canadian Confederation.

Lady Aberdeen’s influence at University of Waterloo did not stop there – her legacy continues on in Women’s Studies students today.  Since the fall of 2015, there has been an evolving collaboration between Women’s Studies and Special Collections & Archives. 

Read the rest of the article on the Library's news site.

Wednesday's notes

On Tuesday, June 13, join the Wilfrid Laurier Univeristy and UWaterloo Sustainability Offices in a combined effort to promote active transportation around our campuses. 

The group bike ride will start at the Community Access Bikeshare station in front of the Dana Porter Library main entrance and then it will finish off at Waterloo Park. For more details and to register, please visit the event page.     

Human Resources has reported the following staff and faculty retirements, effective May 1, 2017.

• Phil Frowd, who started at Waterloo in January 1980, retired as Custodial Supervisor - Plant Operations;
• Bob Hicks, who joined the University in May 1978, retired as Director, Client Services in IST;
• Helena Calogeridis, who began working at Waterloo in November 1978, retired as Liaison Librarian in the Library;
• Ron Champion, who began working at the University in August 2004, retired as Manager, Renison International Office at Renison;
• Paul Adams; who joined the University in October 2012, retired as Faculty Financial Analyst in the Dean of Engineering Office;
• Carl Nagel, who began working at Waterloo in June 1983, retired as Head, Library Technology & Facilities in the Library;
• Peter McCarthy, who started at the University in September 1988, retired as Manager, Operations in Food Services;
• Janice Marks, who started in October 1976 and retired as Food Service Assistant in Food Services;
• Professor Erik Woody, who began working at Waterloo in July 1981 as an Assistant Professor, received tenure and was named Associate Professor in July 1987, and retired as Associate Professor.

In addition, Human Resources reports that Professor Eric Roy retired effective January 1, 2017. Roy started at the University in January 1976, was named assistant professor in February 1976 and Associate Professor in July 1981, received tenure in July 1988, and retired as Associate Professor.

Hootsuite is on campus next week hosting an employer information session. Visit the employer information sessions calendar for more details.