Tuesday, February 26, 2019

Registration opens for Heroic Minds conference

A conference dealing with resilience, hope, and mental toughness will take place on March 20 in the Humanities Theatre.

“Redefining Toughness – Stories of Adversity, Resilience and Triumph” will feature Warriors hockey coach and mental health advocate Ben Fanelli, creator of the Heroic Minds podcast, which focuses on resilience in the face of adversity with an emphasis on sport.

Six guests from Fanelli’s podcast will share their stories in an open discussion with the audience, including:

• Amber Shewfelt;
• Nik Knezic;
• Nichole Robertson;
• Matthew McCoy;
• Chris Miranda; and
•  Ryan Martin.

The conference is free but registration is required. In addition, the event will be livestreamed.

New changes on the road to Zero Waste

Plant Operations is pleased to share several changes to Waterloo’s waste management systems. These include expanding organics collection, some changes to waste sorting procedures, and improvements to campus spaces that all advance our shared zero-waste goal.

Over 80 percent of all materials that Waterloo sends to landfill could be composted or recycled, and capturing these materials is a core focus of how Waterloo strives to be a zero-waste campus. To support these efforts, Waterloo recently selected Waste Connections of Canada to provide full hauling services for garbage, cardboard, recycling, and organics across campus.

The new contract allows for expansion of organics collection. Food waste and paper towels can now be disposed through existing organics depots located at the waste stations in cafeterias and food service areas, or through bins labelled for “paper towels and organics” in washrooms.

These services are available at select buildings across campus, as listed on the Sustainability Website.

Plant Operations is also exploring organics collections options for department lounges/kitchenettes, and will update in the future.

In addition, there are some minor changes to sorting practices, including:

• Coffee cups go in organics, or in the “papers” recycling when organics is unavailable;
• Coffee cup lids go in the “containers” recycling;
• Plastic shopping bags and plastic wrap should now go in the garbage;
• Cardboard and boxboard items like tissue/cereal boxes and paper towel rolls should be folded and placed next to recycling bins.

Please do your part to place materials across campus into the correct bins and minimize contamination. For full sorting directions, visit the University’s Sorting Guide.

The new contract will also provide better data to campus administrators to identify waste generation by building, measure recycling more accurately, and identify sorting errors. It has also phased out most of the blue recycling carts outdoors to make our campus grounds tidier. 

For further information, contact Giovanna Zinken, Associate Director of Environmental Services.

Detecting Wimsey and other writings

Valleyhome Books has published two new volumes of papers by Distinguished Professor Emerita Nancy-Lou Patterson and co-edited by Emily E. Auger and Janet Brennan Croft on the subject of detective fiction and science fiction and fantasy.

Many of her papers on C.S. Lewis's fiction have been gathered in Ransoming the Wasteland Volumes I and II. Now her papers on the detective fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers and her many book reviews on Inklings and fantasy authors are also available as Kobo ebooks and in hard copy from Amazon and Lulubooks.

Patterson was a professor in Waterloo’s fine arts department from 1962 until her retirement in 1992, teaching art history while working as an artist, poet, and fiction writer. She also published extensively on her favourite research subject, the Inklings, a literary group associated with Oxford University that included Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and associated authors, such as Dorothy L. Sayers. Patterson passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's on October 16, 2018. 

Emily Auger, who took one of her first art history courses from Patterson at the University of Waterloo, is a graduate of the University of Victoria's History in Art program. She taught Art History at various universities in Canada and the United States from 1987 through 2010, before returning home to Wellington County where she spends much of her time writing and publishing. Janet Brennan Croft is editor of Mythlore and Librarian for Copyright and ADA, and Liaison to the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University Libraries in New Brunswick, NJ.