Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Executive actions in Glasgow and beyond

President Feridun Hamdullahpur, graduating Science student Xiaojing Lei, and Professor Donna Strickland, University mace in hand, pose for a photo at Convocation.

It’s Wednesday, July 3. Do you know what your president is up to?

It was an active month of June for President Hamdullahpur with convocation and a number of events taking place on and off campus. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the President’s recent activities and a look ahead at what's on his calendar.

The Board of Governors gathered on Tuesday, June 4 for their most recent meeting as the President delivered important updates to the University Governors on the current state and future endeavours of the institution.

The President traveled to take part in the Global University Leaders Council meeting in Hamburg, Germany from June 5-7. The gathering of invited 45 higher education leaders from 23 countries discussed a wide range of issues and opportunities for universities around the world, with the result being the adoption of the declaration “Rebuilding the University – Society Relationships” that lays out a series of observations and recommendations for other university leaders to adopt to create stronger universities for a better society.

The Faculty of Engineering welcomed GCI Ventures to campus for a generous gift of $1 million to help create more research collaborations on Monday, June 10. President Hamdullahpur was on hand to recognize the impact of the investment and thank GCI for their contribution.

The President once again led an exciting Spring Convocation from June 11 to 15. The 12 ceremonies celebrated the accomplishments of more than 6,500 new graduates from all six faculties, as well as welcomed esteemed guests who received honourary doctorates and presented distinguished alumni and graduating students with special awards of recognition.

On Monday, June 17, President Hamdullahpur was on hand to announce the Collaboration on Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, and Cybersecurity, a joint partnership innovation hub between the University of Waterloo and the National Research Council of Canada. The new collaboration will strengthen our institution and enable our talented researchers to make further strides in these impactful technologies.

The President traveled to London, United Kingdom at the invitation of the Future Talent Council for their 2019 Future Talent Summit from June 18-19. The Summit brought together leaders from industry and academia. President Hamdullahpur was part of a panel discussion of other global university leaders on the trends and best practices being utilized around preparing students for the future.

The University of Strathclyde, located in Glasgow, Scotland, honoured President Hamdullahpur with an honourary degree at their convocation on June 25 for his contributions and achievements as an internationally recognized researcher and leader in higher education.

As the Spring term continues, the President and his leadership team will be actively preparing for a filled back half of the year with Orientation, the opening of the Field House, the Waterloo Innovation Summit, the 2020-2025 Strategic Plan and many more upcoming initiatives. Stay tuned later this summer for more.

Athletics welcomes new coaches

Athletics and Recreation has announced new coaching appointments for several varsity teams.

Eric Ciezar, a Waterloo alumnus who has taught mathematics at Bluevale Collegiate Institute for 25 years, returns as head coach of the women's rugby program. Ciezar perviously led the Warriors for 13 years from 1997-2010, the most successful period for women's rugby. During that time, Ciezar accumulated a winning record of 70-37-3, while leading the Warriors to two OUA gold medals (2000, 2001), three silver medals (2001, 2003, 2007) and three OUA bronze medals (1998, 2002, 2006).

Ciezar was also a student-athlete at Waterloo playing for the men's rugby team from 1988-93.

Ciezar introduced rugby to Bluevale back in 2007, guiding the Knights to three straight senior boys' championships. The NCCP Level 2 certified coach has also led the Waterloo County U-19's, Waterloo County Women's team and Northland Rugby Union Senior Rep Squad. Currently, Ciezar is head coach of the Waterloo County Women's Rugby team.

Check out the announcement on the Athletics website for the full story.

Dollee Meigs has been hired as associate coach of the women's hockey program. Meigs was a hockey Warrior herself, joining the Warriors as a student-athlete two years ago (playing the 2018-19 season), taking the Recreation and Sports Business program while finishing her final year of eligibility as a Warrior. 

Since coming over to join the Warriors Meigs has taken her path to become a coach very serious putting in time to earn her coaching certifications and learn coaching tactics from Coach Reagan. Meigs has worked with the Ontario Women's Hockey Association (OWHA) coaching the highest achieving young female hockey players in Ontario at the Team Ontario Identification and Selection Camps for both U18 and U16 levels. She has also had the opportunity to coach these first-rate athletes on two occasions at the Ontario Summer Games.

The Athletics website has the full story.

MySharePoint sites to be phased out

Information Systems and Technology (IST) has announced that MySharePoint will no longer be supported as of October 1, 2019. Current MySharePoint users have been contacted about the phased deletion of their mysharepoint.uwaterloo.ca site. 

On July 17, all MySharePoint sites will become read-only, and users will have until October 1 to transfer any files they wish to keep.

IST notes that this only impacts MySharePoint sites, and departmental and group SharePoint collaboration sites will not be affected.

So why is this happening? MySharePoint sites only provides 1 GB of OneDrive storage and limited functionality and these sites are not being used by most of the campus community. The cloud-hosted Office 365 OneDrive provides 5 TB of storage and is better supported by OneDrive desktop and mobile clients.  

Instructions on moving documents, OneNote Notebooks and Site folders (bookmarks) are available on the SharePoint website. If assistance is required, please submit an RT to rt-IST-SharePoint@rt.uwaterloo.ca with the subject ‘MySharePoint Assistance’.

Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or extension 44357 if you have any questions or concerns.