Wednesday, May 30, 2018

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• Pharmacy celebrates its bold start and bright future
• Workday User Acceptance Testing begins in June
• Executive actions at Convocation and beyond
• Wednesday's notes

Pharmacy celebrates its bold start and bright future

Jake Thiessen, Carl Zehr, Ron Schlegel, Feridun Hamdullaphur, and Jim Hallman at the Founders and Friends event.

This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared on the School of Pharmacy website.

A project manager who didn’t plan on becoming Waterloo Pharmacy’s first Hallman Director. A mayor who didn’t expect to lead Kitchener city council in providing 30 million dollars and 8 acres of land to the University of Waterloo. Students who took a chance on a program with no building, six faculty members, and Canada’s first co-operative education pharmacy program.

The story of how Waterloo Pharmacy began is full of unlikely circumstances like these, all underscored by the dogged pursuit of innovation and excellence. On May 23, founders and friends of Waterloo Pharmacy gathered to celebrate these achievements and the School’s 10^th anniversary.

Watch video on YouTube

“Sometimes what doesn’t happen is as important as what did happen,” said Founding Hallman Director Jake Thiessen. Thiessen was reflecting back to 2004 when the idea arose to open Canada’s first new pharmacy school in twenty years.

The plan was to make the new school a satellite program of the University of Toronto’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. However, it soon became clear that the University of Waterloo had the leadership, support, and ambition to make the school their own. Five years after the proposal of the new school, the University of Waterloo welcomed its first pharmacy students.

“We wanted a program that created a sense of diversity, creativity, and adaptability in our students,” Thiessen told the audience. That adaptability is apparent today in the varied roles that Waterloo Pharmacy alumni hold across the province and country.

Heather Foley is one of these alumni – a family health team pharmacist and adjunct faculty member with the School, she shared her experiences as a member of the first cohort of Waterloo Pharmacy students.

“Our first year of pharmacy was quite ad lib… we didn’t have many of the resources the students on main campus had,” said Foley. “We started from scratch – just four walls and a bunch of amazing people. But it didn’t take long to get the wheels turning, and progress has been made continually ever since.”

Read the rest of the article on the Pharmacy website.

Workday User Acceptance Testing begins in June

A message from Human Resources and Information Systems & Technology

Workday, the new Human Resources system with improved usability and new functionality, is coming to the University of Waterloo early next year.

During the month of June, we’re holding User Acceptance Testing (UAT) sessions to test Workday functionality with various campus employee groups. This is an important stage in the Workday implementation process as it will confirm that the system meets the needs of campus end users.

UAT is preceded by testing from the Project Team and is an important final step in resolving any remaining issues or gaps identified by users before Workday is launched.

User Acceptance Testing is designed to:

• Provide users with the opportunity to test processes that will be completed through Workday
• Gather feedback from users on Workday training materials
• Test the new system to ensure that it’s working as intended before final design

These sessions are not meant to provide training on the new system; a detailed training plan and curriculum will be available in the fall to all employees and managers. UAT participant invitations will be going out soon. If you’re interested in participating in a UAT session, please contact Monica Czagan.

To learn more about Workday, visit the Workday website.

Executive actions at Convocation and beyond

It’s Wednesday, May 30. Do you know where your president is?

What follows is a non-exhaustive list of President Hamdullahpur's recent activities on and off campus and a look ahead at what's on his calendar.

What’s the President been up to?

On Tuesday, May 22, President Hamdullahpur welcomed delegates to the first Conference of NSERC Network for Holistic Innovation in Additive Manufacturing. The conference, hosted at the University, brought together researchers from some of Canada’s leading research institutions to present and discuss their research findings.

On Wednesday, May 23, the president traveled to the School of Pharmacy in downtown Kitchener to celebrate at the 10^th Anniversary Founders & Friends Reception, a formal event for founders, friends, donors, alumni, faculty and staff of the School of Pharmacy. The participants celebrated the milestone of the School of Pharmacy’s 10^th anniversary, with remarks from President Hamdullahpur, Dean of Science Bob Lemieux, former mayor of Kitchener Carl Zehr, founding Hallman Director Jake Thiessen, and alumnus Heather Foley.

On Monday, May 28, the President welcomed a delegation of directors and vice-presidents representing 22 Chinese higher education institutions who will be touring the University to gain insights on overseas university management and operations, with a focus on Waterloo’s co-op programs, teaching excellence and professional development for professors, online education, research initiatives/joint labs, campus wellness and extra-curricular activities, student innovation and entrepreneurship, and other areas, including joint academic programs. The delegation’s tour continues through Thursday, May 31.

Also on Monday, May 28, the President hosted a delegation from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras to discuss research collaborations including joint/dual Master and PhD degree programs/post-doctoral fellowships, online and continuing education, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

The evening of Monday, May 28 was spent at the University Club for the Full Professors Promotion Dinner, which honours those faculty members promoted to full professor and those named University Professor.

On Tuesday, May 29, the President welcomed 125 guests from the True North conference for a “True North @ Waterloo event” featuring three sessions, including a panel discussion, networking break, and interactive experience in the Sedra Student Design Centre in Engineering 5. Waterloo thought leaders, including Vice-President, University Research Charmaine Dean, discussed the University’s role in the Waterloo Region ecosystem.

What’s next on the President’s schedule?

On Friday, June 8, President Hamdullahpur will be delivering introductory remarks at the Presidential Lecture featuring Harvard professor Eric Mazur. Professor Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University. Mazur is a prominent Physicist known for his contributions in nanophotonics. In education he is widely known for his work on Peer Instruction, an interactive teaching method aimed at engaging students in the classroom and beyond. Professor Mazur will be speaking on innovation in teaching and learning.

From June 12 to June 16, the President will be participating in the University’s 116^th Convocation ceremonies. President Hamdullahpur will proudly honour the many accomplishments of the 2018 graduates and celebrate their achievements with graduates, their families and friends.

What’s on the President’s mind these days?

• News and commentary about the upcoming Ontario election on June 7
• The history of Canada in the context of Indigenization
• Building cases for fundraising

Wednesday's notes

Don’t forget that this Friday is the Keystone Picnic!

Join your colleagues from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the DC Quad for live entertainment, a fabulous lunch, popcorn, cake, cotton candy and our ever-popular dunk tank. Check out this year’s lineup.

The picnic recognizes staff, faculty, and retirees for their generous contributions as Keystone Campaign donors and volunteers.

A few reminders:

• You will receive a food ticket by e-mail. Print that and bring it along for admission
• Bring your water bottle so you can fill up at our water station
• Food is served on a first-come, first-served basis

Employers on campus next week hosting employer information sessions include Credit Karma, Arista Networks, Splunk, Yelp and Redfin. Visit the employer information calendar for more details.

Human Resources is reporting that retiree Mary Currie died on May 10. Currie started working at Waterloo in September 1966 and retired in November 1990 as Housekeeper in Village 2. She is survived by two daughters, Brenda Girvan and Darlene Hartung.