Monday, April 2, 2018

Goose merchandise ready to take flight

The geese have landed.

Or at least, that’s the case when this year’s batch of whimsical Canada goose merchandise hit the shelves at the Waterloo Store in South Campus Hall this morning. The annual line of goose apparel and giftware celebrates the onset of Waterloo’s seasonal tenants’ nesting season and brings a bit of levity to campus, explains Beth Alemany, general merchandise manager.

“Over the years we’ve carried plush geese, t-shirts, water bottles, stress balls and even a goose-themed ugly holiday sweater,” she says. “It’s just a bit of a stress release for students at this time of year – a fun end to the term.”

What started in 2012 as a little internal joke has taken off. Hundreds of students and visitors come to the store each year to snatch up t-shirts and post photos of themselves beside the big, plush Canada geese – custom made for Waterloo – near the merchandise table.

Graphic design co-op students brainstorm a few designs and slogans each year, and the Retail Services team chooses the best one. The ideas are always different, cheeky and clever. (One of the first designs showcased a Canada goose in a snowstorm – with only the bird’s black markings showing up in a sea of white.)

This year for the first time, however, there will be a second design added to the lineup. Catherine Dallaire works in shipping and receiving for Retail Services during the day, but at night, she stays up until midnight or 1:00 a.m. working as an artist.

With an education in graphic design and art shown in galleries, Dallaire, who is Métis (Kichesipirini band of Algonquin - Allumette Island and the Weskarini band of Algonquin - Trois-Rivières), designed this year’s t-shirt – a mother goose, gosling and eggs – to acknowledge the campus’s Indigenous roots, both in land and people. Dallaire’s tshirts retail for $12.99 each and Retail Services will donate $5 from the sale of each one to help fund this year’s celebration of National Indigenous Peoples’ Day in June.

“It’s just so important to see the original people of this particular land represented, which are the Neutral, Anishnawbe and Haudenosaunee peoples, because we’re still here. This is something that helps both Indigenous students and staff feel they belong,” she says. Representatives from the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre will be on hand to celebrate today’s launch from 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm in the SCH concourse.

According to the geese, the Waterloo campus certainly belongs to them too. Jaime Philip, business development officer, has only worked on campus for about six months, but she’s heard about geese, bent on aggressively protecting their nests in parking lots, chasing people to their cars – and then chasing the car out of the lot.

“I’ve heard stories….” she says.

Meanwhile, Kevin Suess, marketing communications coordinator, admits he’s had “run-ins” with the geese, but they were probably more his fault than theirs.

“I wouldn’t really say, ‘attacked,’” he explains. “All the times I’ve been flown at have been because I’ve flaunted the limits of how close I can get to them. Or I’ve tried to stand up to a goose – and it didn’t go well.”

In reality, there are far more jokes about aggressive goose attacks than actual reported incidents on campus. Suess says most people appreciate the fact that Waterloo shares space with their feathered visitors and like playing up the stories for comedic value. What’s more, nesting season creates a sort of collective experience.

“Without making too grand a statement, the geese are something that everybody here can identify with,” he says. “It brings us all together.”

AquaHacking is back! Find out more at info session

AquaHacking is a water-focused pitch competition that mobilizes interdisciplinary teams of entrepreneurs, environmentalists, engineers and other creative minds to develop a technology that solves the issues facing our Great Lakes.

Last year, 20 University of Waterloo teams competed in the AquaHacking competition where they pitched their ideas for solutions to the biggest challenges facing Lake Erie. Five Waterloo teams made it to the finals where they battled it out for $25,000 in shared prize money and a spot in Waterloo’s Velocity Garage.

AquaHacking 2018 is challenging teams to develop solutions to five issues facing Lake Ontario:

• Water crisis prediction and adaptation: How can we predict water crisis events and improve communication and co-ordination to reduce the risks and impacts of extreme weather events?
• Phosphorus capture and recycling in farming: How can we mitigate the excess phosphorus from agriculture that ends up in our water systems through surface runoff or sub-surface drainage systems?
• Tackling endocrine-disrupting chemicals: How can we capture and destroy chemical compounds like triclosan, phthalates and bisphenol-A (BPA) before they end up in our sewage treatment plants and in receiving waters?
• Real-time reporting of sewage overflow and untreated sewage spills: How can we do a better job of notifying the public of when and where sewage overflow is occurring, and when it’s safe to interact with water in this area again?

Participants 18 or older, are encouraged to sign up as a team, or as individual contributors, to compete in this year’s competition. There is $50,00 in prize money available to the winning teams, as well as a spot in Waterloo’s Velocity Garage.

On Tuesday, April 3, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. in RCH 306, the Water Institute will be hosting an information session with Velocity where students can hear from last year’s winners, meet other like-minded individuals, and find out more about the format of the competition and how to sign up.

Register for the information session today. Free food and drinks will be provided.

New education technology resource for faculty

The Centre for Teaching Excellence has developed a new online resource for instructors interested in learning more about educational technologies. The resource is called ET@Waterloo, and emerged from a survey of Waterloo instructors that CTE undertook in 2017.

In that survey, instructors were asked what educational technologies they have used, how they have used them, how effective they found those technologies to be, and how difficult they were to implement.

The survey found that nearly 70 different educational technologies are used by Waterloo instructors, with the three most popular being Piazza, iClicker, and Crowdmark. Over 90 percent of the survey respondents reported having success with their educational technology, and 85 percent of them found them easy to use.

The top five purposes for using the educational technologies were: group work, dissemination of course content, fostering a community of learners, collaborative learning, active learning. Especially impressive is the fact that more than 40 Waterloo instructors generously agreed to act as “friendly contacts” for the 17 educational technologies that are currently included in the ET@Waterloo resource.

These friendly contacts are instructors who have already used specific educational technologies, and who are willing to talk to other instructors about them. Learn more about this new CTE resource at ET@Waterloo.