Monday, April 19, 2021

Website will mark Feridun Hamdullahpur's decade of impact

A message from University Relations.

University Relations is delighted to share the Decade of Impact website with you, a space recognizing President Feridun Hamdullahpur's 10 years leading the University of Waterloo.

To recognize the indelible mark our sixth president and vice-chancellor has left on our institution, we welcome you to visit the website and submit a tribute by word, photos and/or video. You can also browse some of the existing tributes, photo gallery and page dedicated to giving in Feridun’s honour.

Please note that upon review, your submission may be shared on various public channels. 

An invitation to events honouring Feridun will be shared with campus in the coming weeks.

Registration deadline for Teaching and Learning Conference approaches

A message from the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE).

The 12^th annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference is set to take place on Wednesday, April 28 and Thursday, April 29. The conference will be held entirely online. The Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) has announced that the 2021 Conference Schedule is now available. 

The 2021 conference theme is Learning through Assessment.

To register, please visit the Conference Registration webpage.

The conference is excited to welcome Dr. Kay Sambell, Independent Consultant and Visiting Professor of Assessment for Learning at the University of Sunderland, and Dr. Sally Brown, Independent Consultant in Learning, Teaching and Assessment and Emerita Professor at Leeds Beckett University, as our returning keynote speakers. Additionally, we are thrilled to announce that Dr. Norm Vaughan, Professor in the Department of Education at Mount Royal University, will be joining us this year as our third keynote speaker. Finally, the Igniting Our Practice plenary session will feature three inspirational University of Waterloo professors – Dr. Robert Hill and Dr. Brenda Lee (Physics), and Dr. Veronica Austen (English) – demonstrating a successful instructional approach to showcase some of the excellent remote teaching happening on our campus.

The registration deadline is Sunday, April 25.

Caring and competing

(left to right) Melissa Millette poses with two of her children, Riley and Reichal, outside their new net-zero energy house.

By Brian Caldwell. This article was originally featured on Waterloo News.

After three years of hard work, members of the Warrior Home design team are hoping to do well in an international competition that challenges university students to design and build highly efficient buildings.

But regardless of the outcome in the virtual finale of the Solar Decathlon, a nine-team event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, more than 200 student contributors at the University of Waterloo already feel pretty good about it.

Their entry in the contest is a net-zero energy bungalow that has been home to an Indigenous family on the Neyaashiinigmiing Reserve near Wiarton, about two hours north of Waterloo Region, since its completion in the fall of 2019.

Students from all six faculties at Waterloo worked with members of the Chippewas of Nawash community and Habitat for Humanity Grey Bruce to custom-design the house as part of a larger, 19-home project.

The end result – a home that is fully powered by solar panels and requires less than half the energy of a standard house its size – provided homeowner Melissa Millette and her four children, including a daughter with special needs, with an affordable home close to her extended family.

“It felt like I won the lottery,” Millette says.

Gongyi Zhang, a mechanical engineering student who graduated last year, works on a home at the Habitat for Humanity project site.

Having such a direct impact added a rewarding element for the Warrior Home team, which saw members come and go as an extra year was added to the two-year contest by COVID-19.

In addition to making the house highly energy efficient with features such as an electric heat pump, an air-tight design, a heat recovery ventilator and extra insulation between extra-wide studs, they consulted with Millette to ensure it met her family’s particular needs.

“The homeowner tells us the house is performing as we expected it to - with no drafts, so they’re warm and toasty – so I think that’s a job well done,” says Gabrielle Tuck, a fourth-year civil engineering student who is senior design lead for the team.

Groups of students visited the site five times during construction to get their hands dirty working shoulder-to-shoulder with Habitat for Humanity volunteers, community members and the eventual homeowners.

“That tangible social impact was a huge part of what made our build really unique,” says Jeffrey Ren, a fourth-year planning student who is senior project manager.

Members of Warrior Home pose with other stakeholders at the building site.

“It also provided a wonderful opportunity to develop leadership skills and gain exposure to a multidisciplinary team. For me personally, the project introduced aspects of engineering that I never would have been exposed to through my planning education.”

Warrior Home won US $25,000 at an earlier stage of the contest – money it donated to the housing project – and is now up against university teams from as far afield as The Netherlands and Chile for judging in 10 categories between April 15 and 18.

“The process was rooted in the Solar Decathlon competition, but it really became much more than that for our team,” Tuck says.

“Now we get to show off our home in a way we haven’t been able to and give the whole project the closure it deserves,” says Ren.

Senate meets today and other notes

The University's Senate meets online today at 3:30 p.m. Among the agenda items:

• A motion to acclaim the membership of Senate committees and councils and the Board of Governors;
• A motion to approve a new Graduate Diploma (GDip) in Data Analytics (Direct Entry) in Management Sciences, effective 1 September 2021;
• A approve additions to the Master of Arts (MA) and Master of Environmental Studies (MES) in planning, effective 1 May 2021;
• A report on the WUSA Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Awards;
• A report on the University Appointment Review Committee, dealing with proposals for regular faculty appointments; and
• presentations from the presidents of the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA) and the Graduate Student Association (GSA).

St. Jerome's University will be hosting a Gender Pronouns and Cultures of Respect Lecture on April 28 featuring Tommy Mayberry (he/she/they). "As a self-described “academic drag queen”, Mayberry’s insights are helping to change pronoun blunders into activating an inclusive ideology for gender and sexed identities in people’s daily interactions," says the SJU article announcing the event. "On April 28^th, they bring these insights closer to home in an online presentation hosted by St. Jerome’s University’s Registrar’s Office. Registered attendees are invited to discover how to move from a grammatical and linguistic history that ignores the world’s diversity of gender, to improve pronoun awareness and create cultures of respect."

Read the full article on the St. Jerome's University website.

The next Portfolio & Project Management Community of Practice (PPM CoP) session will take place on Wednesday, April 21 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Entitled "Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Project Planning," the presentation will focus attention on the meaning, nuances and importance of incorporating EDI in organizations and projects, with a special emphasis on impact of inequities and disparities on human health. There will also be a discussion of some do’s and don’ts of EDI work and participants will brainstorm ways of incorporating EDI during project planning. Kalpita Gaitonde, health promotion and evaluation specialist in Campus Wellness, will be the presenter at this online session. Register for this event.