Thursday, February 10, 2022

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• Virtual Grade 10 Family Night set for February 24
• Remembering artist and professor emeritus Tony Urquhart
• Something in the water: virtual workshop explores the potential of nanotechnology in the water sector
• Representing the future of engineers

Virtual Grade 10 Family Night set for February 24

A message from Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment.

Grade 10 students and their supporters are invited to attend our virtual Grade 10 Family Night information session to learn more about applying to university and what they can do now to prepare. Our university experts will share information on topics like admissions and finances while current students will share what it was like to go from high school to university. Our keynote speaker, Dr. Trevor Charles from the Department of Biology, will share tips and advice on what students should think about before applying to university.

Grade 10 may seem a little early to be talking to students about their future plans, but they’ll soon be selecting courses for Grade 11, which will greatly influence their pre-requisites for university. This information will be helpful regardless of which universities or programs a student is interested in, and the main event will not focus on Waterloo’s faculties or academic programs, though a live Q&A is available to answer questions throughout the event.

New this year for students who do have an idea of what they might like to study, breakout rooms will be open for drop-in Q&A with representatives from all 6 faculties from 7:30 to 8:00 p.m.

Grade 10 Family Night takes place on February 24, 2022 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on MS Teams Live Events. For details and to register, visit https://uwaterloo.ca/future/grade-10.

Remembering artist and professor emeritus Tony Urquhart

Written with contributions from Joan Coutu, Jean Stevenson, and Elizabeth Rogers. This article was originally published on the Faculty of Arts website.

Tony Urquhart passed away on January 26 at the age of 87. He was one of Canada’s great artists. As a professor of fine arts at the University of Waterloo from 1972 to 1999, Urquhart is also remembered as a great teacher and a warm and generous man.

"He had a totally engaged and insightful enthusiasm for all the details of making and experiencing art,” recalls Art Green, fellow professor emeritus. “Tony got just as involved in discussing and analyzing the decisions that went into his students’ work as he would have been with his own. In this way, he modelled for them the real work of an artist in a direct and understandable way — and for me, the real work of a teacher."

When he joined Waterloo, Urquhart was one of the founding members of the Department of Fine Arts. During more than three decades at Waterloo, he taught drawing, painting, and printmaking, was department chair on three occasions, and was instrumental in the creation the Master of Fine Arts graduate program and its cornerstone Keith and Win Shantz International Research Scholarship. 

Jane Buyers, professor emerita and a former department colleague, recounts: “Tony and I had offices next door to each other, and of course many times he passed by my open door on his way to teach a class. He always wore a dark blue lab coat over his regular clothes, and he usually had papers jauntily tucked under his arm for the class. I was always struck by the look of pure delight on his face and the spring in his step as though there was nothing in the world that was more exciting to him at that moment than teaching this class. It always amazed me – here is a person who has taught legions of students over many, many years, and he is as eager and excited as though he was off to teach his very first class.”

“I gave a ‘teaching talk’ as part of my job interview back in 1996 and we spent some time analyzing a famous painting,” says Joan Coutu, professor of visual culture and art history. “Tony was so enthusiastic he almost fell off his chair as he waved his arms around mimicking lines of sight, symmetry, and other parts of the composition. That made me think, this might be a good place to work.”

Urquhart was born in 1934 in Niagara Falls, Ontario. His long and remarkable career began while earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the State University of New York, Buffalo, when he became known in the Toronto art scene as one of the first Canadian Abstract Expressionists. By 1960 he was the first artist-in-residence at the University of Western Ontario, where he continued as both a teacher and director of the McIntosh Art Gallery. During this time, he founded Canadian Artists Representation (CARFAC) which established a fee structure for the exhibition of works by artists in museums and galleries – making Canada the first to formalize artists’ copyrights and fees.

While he began his career as a painter, and later became known for his 'box' sculptures, Urquhart also filled his life and "idea books" with daily sketches, plans and thoughts. He was also involved in the Canadian literary scene, particularly with his wife — the novelist Jane Urquhart — and illustrated various books.

Three Vanishing Points. 1999-2000, oil and collage on gessoed board, 51.1 x 152.7 cm “He was ecstatic as he talked about a painting that had three paths and thus three vanishing points,” says Prof Joan Coutu, “the result is a painting that takes us on a deep journey into memory and the subconscious.

His distinguished career in Canadian art earned numerous honours and awards, including the Order of Canada in 1995. He was the recipient of the 2009 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts, and the CARFAC Outstanding Contribution Award. In 2016, he was given an Honorary Doctorate by Carleton University. Urquhart’s artwork can be found in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; the Hirshhorn Collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and the Museo Civico in Lugano, Switzerland.

“His art and his students are his legacy,” says Coutu. “Yet, for those of us who had the privilege to know him, beyond the students, the paintings, the drawings, the prints, and the boxes, there is also the image of Tony: almost always smiling, and with his glasses hanging around his neck so he can take a closer look.”

• Read the obituary for Tony Urquhart
• Read the Department of Fine Arts’ remembrance
• Portrait of Tony Urquhart’s art

Something in the water: virtual workshop explores the potential of nanotechnology in the water sector

A message from the Water Institute.

Today’s water industry faces many challenges — from addressing hard-to-remove contaminants in drinking supplies to making wastewater treatment as energy-efficient as possible, cutting costs and carbon emissions. Could nanotech hold the answers?

Sushanta Mitra, executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, believes so. “We are able to utilize the surface properties in a much, much better way than conventional technologies,” he explains. That ability to modify materials at the atomic level opens up a world of possibilities.

To explore them, the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology and the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo have teamed up with the Ontario Water Consortium to organize “Nanotechnology Innovation in the Water Sector.” This virtual workshop — to be held on February 15, 2022 — brings together researchers, institutes, end users and other stakeholders.

The 90-minute event will showcase seven researchers from the University of Waterloo who are pioneering everything from nano-cellulose systems that treat wastewater to DNA biosensors that can detect contaminants. They’ll each get the chance to pitch their innovative ideas and then discuss commercialization challenges and opportunities with industry experts.

Read the full story. 

Representing the future of engineers

By Claire Francis. This article originally appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of Waterloo magazine.

When Chekema (Keyma) Prince (PhD ’14) stood on a stage in 2016 to accept a $25,000 award for her startup, she was hopeful: “I felt that I was standing on that stage as a representation of what entrepreneurs would look like in the future.”

Five years later, she acknowledges there are “not many entrepreneurs who look like me, particularly in the technology space,” but she remains optimistic.

“I would personally love to see other entrepreneurs like me – a Black woman engineer working in the technology space. I don’t see that trifecta very often around me. It would be great, not only in Waterloo but everywhere else around the world, to see more representation.”

Prince knows there’s always more work to be done when it comes to diversity and authentic representation in entrepreneurship and STEM-related industries. She hopes to broaden the field by coaching student entrepreneurs through Concept, the University of Waterloo’s experiential entrepreneurship program.

“There were mentors who took the time to explain the challenges to be faced with growing a startup,” she says. And now, as a mentor, coach and experienced entrepreneur, Prince embraces the chance to be that person for others. “I can teach those of the next generation, so they don’t have to fall into the same pitfalls that I did,” she says.

Building ventures that save lives

Prince hopes to inspire students to tackle problems that make a difference in people’s lives. She says it’s important to provide something a consumer can truly benefit from. “How can I be impactful in the lives of the consumers who will use the products that I develop?” she says. “My work directly connects to the patient whose life is being saved. It directly connects to that clinician who will be saving that life and using the products that I will create.”

In her own journey, Prince didn’t have a role model to work with directly. A mechanical engineer by training, her own startup, Pression, uses compression technology for medical therapy and athletic performance enhancement.

As she developed her company, she often called on her own resolve in order to succeed. When facing challenges, she says: “I had to take it upon myself, each time there was a barrier, and say, ‘Okay, how do I chip away at this one piece at a time?’”

Prince wants students to understand they are “not stymied or stalled where they are. There’s always a pivot point they can follow.”

On potential role models for diverse entrepreneurs, she says: “The ‘who’ doesn’t have to necessarily be someone who looks like me. But it’s someone who I’ve identified as being knowledgeable in a particular area who could help me build stepping stones to get over an identified barrier.”

Prince encourages those who feel alone on their journey to remain determined to succeed and reach out for mentorship. “They should keep pushing. They should keep striving, keep trying to get over those barriers and there’ll be people like me there to help them.”