Wednesday, April 7, 2021

From 5 to 50 years, Waterloo celebrates employee milestones

Employees who have served between 5 and 50 years at the University of Waterloo will be honoured across a series of virtual events today, recognizing the dedicated contributions and tireless efforts which have shaped the success of the university. These virtual celebrations will honour 501 employees who started between 1971 and 2016 and have reached major landmarks in their time at the University of Waterloo.

Marilyn Thompson, associate provost, human resources will host the events, with welcoming congratulations and thanks provided by President Feridun Hamdullahpur. The 5 and 10 Year Recognition Reception will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., the 15 and 20 Year Recognition Reception from 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m., and the 25 to 50 Year Recognition Reception will be celebrated from 4:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. At the end of each event, employees and guests will have the opportunity to join a networking session on the Hopin platform, to share their stories and congratulate each other.

Everyone is encouraged to view the list of milestone recipients and send a message of congratulations directly to anyone you may know. Thank you to the supervisors and colleagues who have already shared messages on the celebration board.

Congratulations to all recipients. We wish you continued success.

Together at the top

By Brian Caldwell. This article was originally featured on the Faculty of Engineering website.

Two architects who have compiled a long list of accomplishments since graduating from the University of Waterloo added to it last week with a prestigious award from a national organization.

Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe, who met at Waterloo and graduated together from the School of Architecture in 1983, were named the winners of the 2021 Gold Medal by the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada (RAIC).

Awarded annually by the RAIC, a not-for-profit group that has represented architects and architecture for more than 100 years, the medal is its highest honour, recognizing a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian architecture.

“Brigitte and Howard are architect’s architects,” architect Brian MacKay-Lyons wrote in a media release. “In my view, theirs is one of the few Canadian architectural firms whose work consistently enjoys the respect of the architectural community worldwide.”

Personal and professional partners

A couple as well as the founding partners of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects in Toronto, they both earned degrees at Waterloo in environmental studies in 1981 before going on to study architecture. They have been professional collaborators ever since.

Shim and Sutcliffe have won 15 Governor General’s Medals for Architecture, made the Order of Canada together in 2013 and received the Team Alumni Achievement Medal from Waterloo Engineering in 2011.

Celebrated projects by the duo include their own residence, the Laneway House, and the Robertson Davies Library in Toronto. They are currently working on projects in North America, Russia and Hong Kong.

In addition to other qualities, their work is distinguished by meticulous attention to detail.

“By their relentless pursuit of excellence, Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe have produced a significant body of exceptional design works covering architecture, landscape, interior, furniture and hardware—all developed to an incredibly high standard, with craft, rigour, sense of place, and mastery of proportions,” commented one of the award judges.

Winter 2021 LITE Seed Grant recipients named

Since 2012, over 120 Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) Grants have been awarded to instructors and staff investigating innovative approaches to enhancing teaching and learning at Waterloo. The Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic, and the Centre for Teaching Excellence have announced the recipients of the Winter 2021 round of LITE Seed Grants.

• Assessing the Effects of an Undergraduate Mental Health Literacy Course, Christine Zaza, Gitanjali Shanbhag
• Ethical Tech Development with a Text-based Game: A Small-Scale Study, Marcel O'Gorman, Mark Hancock, Jason Lajoie, Jennifer Whitson
• Incorporating the Flood Resilience Challenge Game into the Engineering Curriculum, Daniel Henstra, Evalyna Bogdan, Nadine Ibrahim
• Indigenous-Accepted STEM Instructor Resources for Indigenization, John Johnston, Mary Robinson, Michael Seymour, Elaine Lillie, George Freeman, Nickolas Rollick
• Mental Health Matters: Evaluating the Efficacy of Two Pedagogical Modules for Teaching Assistants on Supporting Student Mental Health, Kristin Brown, Kristen Archbell

A complete list of funded LITE Grant projects is available on the CTE website.

LITE Seed Grants can help you investigate small-scale teaching and learning research projects and attend activities to develop your instructional skills. Please get in touch with Kyle Scholz (kwscholz@uwaterloo.ca) or Kristen Archbell (kristen.archbell@uwaterloo.ca) to discuss your LITE Seed Grant idea. The next deadline for LITE Seed Grants is June 1.

Applications for Campus Wellness Student Advisory Committee are now open

A message from Campus Wellness.

Campus Wellness is excited to open applications for the new Student Advisory Committee.

The Student Advisory Committee will enhance client engagement and improve the quality of programs and services at Campus Wellness by:

• Providing input on/recommendations for improving or enhancing CW services, initiatives, procedures, processes, practices etc.
• Representing client perspectives about theirs and others experiences at CW, including undergraduate and graduate students.
• Supporting CW to enhance its client engagement and client-centred care practices.
• Strengthening communication and collaboration between CW clients, and students not engaging services.

There are 12 paid positions available to current undergraduate and graduate students. Interested applicants can apply by filling out the Application webform.

Banning menthol cigarettes led to a reduction in smoking, study finds

This article was originally featured on Waterloo News.

Bans on menthol cigarettes across Canada from 2016 to 2017 led to a significant increase in the number of smokers who attempted to quit, smokers who quit successfully, and lower rates of relapse among former smokers, according to a new research study from the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project) at the University of Waterloo.

Menthol is the most common flavoring for cigarettes in many countries. Menthol creates a cooling sensation, which reduces the harshness of cigarette smoke. Because of this, menthol leads to increased experimentation and progression to regular smoking among new smokers, especially among youth.

“Our study demonstrates the substantial benefits of banning menthol cigarettes,” said Geoffrey T. Fong, Professor of Psychology and Public Health and Health Systems at Waterloo, and principal investigator of the ITC Project. “The enormous success of the Canadian menthol ban makes it even clearer now that the U.S. should finally ban menthol, which the tobacco industry has used for decades to attract new smokers and to keep many of them as customers, especially among the African-American community.

“The positive effects of the Canada menthol ban suggest that a U.S. menthol ban would lead to greater benefits since menthol cigarettes are much more popular in the U.S. From our findings, we estimate that banning menthol cigarettes in the U.S. would lead an additional 923,000 smokers to quit, including 230,000 African-American smokers.”

The study conducted by Fong and his team examined the impact of menthol bans across seven Canadian provinces, covering 83 per cent of the Canadian population, which saw menthol cigarettes banned between August 2016 and October 2017. Canada was the one of the first countries to implement a ban on menthol cigarettes, and the first country where a menthol ban has been evaluated.

“The Canadian menthol ban did not lead to a high level of illicit menthol cigarette purchasing, which has been a concern by regulators considering a menthol ban,” said Fong. “Fewer than 10 per cent of menthol smokers reported still smoking a menthol brand after the ban.”

Scientific reviews conducted by the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the FDA itself, and the World Health Organization have also concluded that banning menthol would have significant public health benefits. 

The harms of menthol cigarettes in the U.S. have been much greater among African-Americans. Menthol cigarettes are smoked by 85 per cent of African-American smokers, over 2.8 times the percentage of menthols among white smokers.

A national sample of 1,098 non-menthol and 138 menthol smokers participating in the ITC Canada Smoking and Vaping Survey were surveyed both before the menthol ban (in 2016) and after the menthol ban (in 2018).

The survey demonstrated three benefits of the Canadian menthol ban. Menthol smokers were significantly more likely than non-menthol smokers to attempt to quit after the menthol ban (58.7 per cent vs. 49 per cent). 

Daily menthol smokers were almost twice as likely than daily non-menthol smokers to quit after the menthol ban (21 per cent vs. 11.6 per cent). 

Finally, those menthol smokers who had quit smoking before the menthol ban were significantly less likely than non-menthol smokers who had quit smoking to have relapsed back to smoking.

The study, Evaluating the impact of menthol cigarette bans on cessation and smoking behaviours in Canada: longitudinal findings from the Canadian arm of the 2016–2018 ITC Four Country Smoking and Vaping Surveys, was published yesterday in the journal Tobacco Control.