Thursday, June 9, 2022

2021 Outstanding Performance Award recipients announced

The Office of the Vice-President, Academic & Provost has announced the winners of the 2021 Outstanding Performance Awards.

Arts                                                                             

Katherine Acheson; Ramona Bobocel; Jennifer Clary-Lemon; Tara Collington; Martin Cooke; Tara Cooper; Michael Dixon; Anna Esselment; Riemer Faber; Myra Fernandes; Steve Fortin; Andrea Jonahs; George Lamont; Shana MacDonald; Emmett Macfarlane; Patricia Marino; Nicole Nolette; Abigail Scholer; Imre Szeman; Nancy Vanden Bosch; Paul Wehr; and Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme.

Engineering

Hossein Abouee Mehrizi; Marc Aucoin; Kankar Bhattacharya; David Clausi; Kamyar Ghavam; Robert Gracie; Parsin Haji Reza; Carol Hulls; Marc Hurwitz; Bruce MacVicar; Jane Mah Hutton; Stewart McLachlin; Sarah Meunier; Christine Moresoli; Kevin Musselman; Mohammed Nassar; Siva Sivoththaman; Scott Walbridge; Zbigniew Wasilewski; Christopher Wilson; Wei-Chau Xie; Alfred Yu; and Jeffrey Zarnett.

Environment

Richard Kelly; Brendon Larson; Leia Minaker; Markus Moos; Stephen Murphy; Su-Yin Tan; Andrew Trant; and Michael Wood.

Health

Jack Callaghan; Mark Ferro; George Heckman; Ellen MacEachen (Stothers); Monica Maly; and Katie  Misener.

Math

Andrew Beltaos; Sue Ann Campbell; Benoit Charbonneau; Robin Cohen; Khuzaima Daudjee; Ian Goldberg; Kevin Hare; Jesse Hoey; Florian Kerschbaum; Emily Kozlowski; Jimmy Lin; Eduardo Martin-Martinez; Stephen New; Martin Pei; John-Paul Pretti; Victoria Sakhnini; David Saunders; Alexander Schied; Sean Speziale; David Tompkins; Stephen Vavasis; and Changbao Wu.

Science

Monica Barra; Nandita Basu; Karen Cummings; Jean Duhamel; Andrea Edginton; Richard Epp; Laura Hug; Laura Ingram; Sarah MacIver; Will Percival; Cynthia Richard; Rebecca Rooney; Sarah Ruffell; Andre Stanberry; and Christopher Yakymchuk   

"I am very pleased to announce the award recipients for 2021 and would like to take this opportunity to congratulate them for their outstanding contributions to the University of Waterloo," wrote Vice-President, Academic & Provost James Rush in a statement released last week.

Effective May 1, 2005, in accordance with the 2003 Faculty Salary Settlement, the University of Waterloo established an Outstanding Performance Fund to reward faculty members for outstanding contribution in teaching and scholarship.

Donna Ellis named president-elect of International Consortium for Educational Development

A message from the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

Centre for Teaching Excellence Director Donna Ellis has been announced as the next President-Elect of the International Consortium for Educational Development. She recently sat down with a colleague in the CTE for an interview about this new position.

Donna, you’ve just been named as the President-Elect of the International Consortium for Educational Development. Congratulations and tell us about that organization.

The International Consortium for Educational Development  — ICED (pronounced i-ced), for short — is a kind of “meta” organization. Started in 1993, it supports collaboration among educational development networks around the world. For example, Canada’s STLHE is a member, and so is the POD Network in the US, SEDA in the UK, and INCATHE in Israel. In total, there are 27 member networks from all around the world. The members of these networks share resources and learn from one another. 

How do its member networks support each other? 

One main way is the biennial ICED conference where there are lots of workshops, research sessions, and networking opportunities. In fact, I just returned from the 2022 conference in Aarhus, Denmark, where I co-facilitated a workshop on human resources management in teaching centres. Another way is through its publication, the International Journal for Academic Development.  

So ICED is a consortium for educational development – and what’s educational development?  

Essentially, educational development (ED) is about helping post-secondary institutions become the best teaching and learning communities they can be.  To do this, those in teaching centres work at different levels — individual, departmental, and institutional — to promote capacity building, community building, and an institutional culture that promotes and enables effective teaching and meaningful learning. The heart of the work revolves around individual and institutional change. 

What drivers influence educational development? 

Educational developers always strive to address instructors’ needs by providing guidance and resources that fit with learning science and with institutional priorities, which are influenced by evolving societal contexts. But how those priorities manifest themselves around the world can look different. For example, in Canada they currently include equity, diversity, inclusion, Indigenization, anti-racism, and sustainability. Elsewhere, equitable access to learning technologies might be a priority, or the quality of education, or engagement with democracy and human values. The consistent aspect is that we’re always adapting our programs, services, and resources to help instructors teach effectively and prepare their students for contemporary issues and challenges. Just like instructors and students, we too are constantly learning! 

Why did you decide to pursue this leadership role with ICED?  

For me personally, it’s such an exciting growth opportunity! I look forward to having a lot of my professional assumptions challenged, and learn more about how educational development is done in other parts of the world. I believe I bring significant experience and skills to the role, too. For example, when I was POD Network president, I put a lot of emphasis on increasing the flow of information to, from, and amongst members to enhance transparency, inclusion, and engagement. ICED's member networks’ needs are evolving, and I am committed to helping the organization make changes to meet those needs. I’m also confident that I’ll glean ideas from this experience that can inform future directions for teaching and learning here at Waterloo. So, all in all, I’m eager to give back to the broader community of educational developers, to learn more from them, and to use that new learning to help make Waterloo an even greater place to teach and learn.  

Donna will serve as President-Elect of ICED till summer of 2023 and then as President until 2025. Her candidate statement for this position is available online.

Summer cohort now open for Mental Health Literacy Program

A message from Campus Wellness.

In 2021, Campus Wellness launched the Mental Health Literacy Program for faculty and staff, in response to recommendations from the President’s Advisory Committee on Student Mental Health. Over the course of six-modules, the program encourages discussion and reflection on mental health through an equity-focused lens and empowers participants to build a supportive community of care, concern, and compassion.

The program is underpinned by 12 competencies needed to create a baseline level of mental health literacy, which in turn, helps reduce stigma and encourages help-seeking behaviours. These competencies fit within 6 categories that include: responding to a person in distress, accessing resources and supports, understanding the barriers to mental health, self-management, self-advocacy, and communication.

UWaterloo employees that have completed the program thus far have commented that it is comprehensive and easily applicable to their work. It provides a safe space for mental health conversations while prompting critical thinking about UWaterloo culture and systems. Participants will also walk away with strategies for incorporating self-care when supporting others​.

If you’re interested in signing up for the summer cohort or learning more about the program, please visit Campus Wellness’ training page.

Computer Science researchers win three awards at NOMS 2022

This is an excerpt of an article published originally on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

The 18^th IFIP/IEEE Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS 2022) held in Budapest, Hungary explored network and service management in the era of cloudification, softwarization, and artificial intelligence as its main theme.

Several systems and networking researchers from the Cheriton School of Computer Science along with their national and international colleagues attended the week-long symposium to present their research, winning three awards in total — a best dissertation award, a best student paper award, and a best paper award.

NOMS 2022 Best Dissertation Award

Shihab Chowdhury received the NOMS 2022 Best Dissertation Award for his PhD titled “Resource management in softwarized networks.” Shihab conducted doctoral studies in the Systems and Networking group, under the supervision of Raouf Boutaba, Professor and Director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science.

NOMS 2022 Best Student Paper Award

PhD student Soheil Johari received the NOMS 2022 Best Student Paper Award for “Anomaly detection and localization in NFV systems: an unsupervised learning approach,” research he conducted with his doctoral advisor Raouf Boutaba and colleagues Nashid Shahriar, Massimo Tornatore and Aladdin Saleh.

NOMS 2022 Best Paper Award

Muhammad Sulaiman, Arash Moayyedi, Mohammad A. Salahuddin and Raouf Boutaba from the Cheriton School of Computer Science, along with Aladdin Saleh from Rogers Communications Canada, received the NOMS 2022 Best Paper Award for “Multi-agent deep reinforcement learning for slicing and admission control in 5G C-RAN.” 

Read the full article on the Computer Science website.

Thursday's notes

A Retirement Open House for Linda Beaulieu, who has served at the University for 23 years, will be held Thursday, June 23, 2022 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. in E2-1772.

As part of the Institute for Quantum Computing's 20th anniversary Quantum Perspectives: A Panel Series, IQC will be hosting the next installment, Quantum Perspectives: Communication on Tuesday, June 21 at 12 noon on YouTube.

"Communication networks are an essential part of our world today, used in transactions from banking to education, global business exchanges to defence," says the talk's background. "What happens when our private information is no longer private? Powerful quantum computers will have the ability to crack the encryption of public keys that we currently use to secure our data, putting our privacy at risk. Through the study of quantum communication, researchers are developing quantum-safe cryptography protocols along with ultra-secure communication channels and global quantum networks."

Panelists include:

• Katanya Kuntz, Research Associate, IQC and QEYSSat Science Team Coordinator
• Sara Zafar Jafarzadeh, Research Fellow, IQC and Cryptographer, Synopsys Inc.
• Dave Touchette, Professor, Institut Quantique, Université de Sherbrook

Join the conversation online on Tuesday, June 21 at 12:00 p.m. live on YouTube.