Thursday, July 4, 2019

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• Diana Parry to serve as AVP Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion to 2024
• New measures will enhance password security on campus
• Introducing Open Scholarship at Waterloo
• Optometry students seek bone marrow match for classmate; other notes

Diana Parry to serve as AVP Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion to 2024

"I am pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Diana Parry as Associate Vice-President, Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion for a five-year term commencing July 1, 2019," wrote Vice-President, Academic & Provost Jim Rush in a memo circulated to Executive Council and academic chairs and directors yesterday.

Parry has a Bachelor of Recreation and Leisure Studies (Brock University), Master of Arts (University of Waterloo) and a PhD in Leisure Studies (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Her history of administrative roles includes a 2013 appointment as Special Advisor to the President on Women’s and Gender Issues. In this role, Parry liaised with senior administration, faculty, and the Director of Equity to advise on policy and structural level gender equity issues, and to help foster a supportive environment for students, staff and faculty. Parry is the campus lead for the UN Women’s HeForShe/IMPACT 10x10x10 campaign, which is a global solidarity movement that unites people around the world in advancing gender equity.

Parry joined the University in 2003 and most recently served as the Associate Vice-President, Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion beginning in 2017 for a two-year term. 

"As AVP Diana provided strategic and academic leadership and made significant progress working with the campus community to lead, articulate, and affect culture change through policies, programs, and practice," the provost writes. "She has helped cultivate UW’s core values of respect, equity, diversity, Indigeneity and inclusion. A Professor in Applied Health Sciences and a fellow in the Academy of Leisure Sciences, Diana’s research utilizes a variety of feminist theories to explore the personal and political links between women's leisure and women's health, broadly defined. Diana’s scholarship and activism has been recognized through accolades including the Ontario Women’s Directorate Leading Woman Award."

"I am grateful to Diana for taking on this important leadership role at the University of Waterloo. Please join Feridun and me in congratulating Diana on her appointment," the provost concludes. "I would also like to thank the members of the nominating committee, Jean Andrey, Matt Erickson, Amanda Fitzpatrick, Norah McRae, Naima Samuel, Marilyn Thompson and Becky Grant for a job well done."

New measures will enhance password security on campus

A message from Information Systems & Technology (IST).

Like any organization with a significant Internet presence, the University of Waterloo is facing ongoing cyber security challenges with passwords. To help address these challenges, the Information Security Services team recently conducted a password audit on central campus systems. Owners of accounts with passwords that did not conform to the University password standards were contacted by the Information Systems & Technology and instructed to update their password in WatIAM.  

Restricting use of breached or commonly-used passwords 

A recent change to the WatIAM system will now prevent employees from setting a password that has been identified as one of over 520 million breached or commonly used passwords. In addition to the adoption of two-factor authentication, this change will help protect against two growing security risks: 

• Credential stuffing: The automated injection of breached username/password pairs to gain access to user accounts. 

• Password spraying: Attempting to gain access to a large number of user accounts using common passwords (made more available by the increase in breaches over the years).  

Employees are encouraged to use a passphrase and can learn more about this by visiting the Cyber Awareness website, https://uwaterloo.ca/cyber-awareness/passphrase.  

Anyone with questions or concerns is invited to contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or by calling extension 44357. 

Introducing Open Scholarship at Waterloo

A message from the Open Scholarship Committee.

A new website, Open Scholarship at Waterloo, launches today. It will be useful for everyone interested in creating, finding, and/or using open content.

Open content is an umbrella term for open access, open educational resources, open data, open publishing, and open science.

The site is brought to you by the Open Scholarship Committee (OSC). Its diverse membership includes faculty, staff, and students who work to advance conversation about open and its application on campus. Prior initiatives include speakers and workshops during Open Access Week, Open Education Week, and the Teaching and Learning Conference. For more on membership and mandate, see the OSC Terms of Reference.

Welcome to the conversation.

Optometry students seek bone marrow match for classmate; other notes

Classmates of School of Optometry and Vision Science student Karam Kaur are rallying in search of a candidate for a bone marrow transplant.

Kaur, a member of the School of Optometry and Vision Science’s Class of 2021, was recently diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer, and her famliy and classmates are getting the word out about getting tested for bone marrow transplant compatibility through a series of cheek-swabbing drives in Brampton, ON and Surrey, BC in partnership with Match for Marrow.

“Karam is an amazing girl and our class would be incomplete without her healed and with us in third year,” writes Cindy Shan, class president. “As a class, we’re doing everything we can to get the word out, but the more people the merrier!

The first step is to get as many people to get their cheeks swabbed and registered in a donor database. The test is painless and non-invasive, merely a q-tip swab rubbed on the inside of a participant’s cheek. Anyone between the ages of 17 and 35 can join the registry.

The swabbing drives are taking place on the following dates:

Brampton, ON

• Chinguacousy Park - Sunday, July 7 from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (Note: the poster says “International Students" but it is open to everyone)

Surrey, BC

• Darbar Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (8820 168th St) – Saturday, July 6, 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
• Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara (7050 120th St) – Sunday, July 7, 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and July 21 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
• Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib – July 14, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., and July 28, 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

If you cannot make that events, you can register to donate stem cells with Canadian Blood Services.

“It has been shown that the most likely candidates for a transplant share an ethnic background, so if you have close friends or family members that are of South Asian descent, please put in the extra effort,” writes Shan.

The University of Waterloo Staff Association (UWSA) has organized a bowling night on August 20 for staff association members, friends and family. The event will take place at the Kingpin Bowlounge from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Bingemans in Kitchener, and includes pizza and appetizers from Boston Pizza. Shoe rentals are included in the $40 ticket price. The deadline to register is August 13.

Dr. Ofelia A. Jianu, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering at the University of Windsor will be delivering a Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) public lecture today entitled "Hydrogen as a Sustainable Fuel: Its Role Globally and in Ontario" at 10:30 a.m. in CPH 4335. This talk focuses on why and how transitioning to a hydrogen-based economy would alleviate concerns related to climate, air quality and energy security as well as create new economic opportunities for Canadians. Jianu is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Windsor in the Department of Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering. Her area of expertise involves energy systems, specifically multiphase chemically reacting flows, hydrogen production, and the thermochemical copper-chlorine cycle for water splitting. This event is part of the WISE public lecture series.