Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Black Graduate Archive wins 2022 Equity and Inclusivity Award

The creators of the Black Graduate Archive are Safyya Cissé (back left), Joy Adeyemi (back right), and Ola Idris Ali (front).

This article was originally published on the Faculty Association website.

Inaugurated in 2012 by the Faculty Association’s Equity Committee (then the Status of Women & Equity Committee, or "SWEC"), the Equity & Inclusivity Award recognizes a group, member, or affiliate of the University of Waterloo community whose actions have demonstrated an exemplary commitment to improving equity, inclusivity, and/or diversity at the University of Waterloo. The award has recently shifted to emphasize supporting continued equity work, rather than providing a reward for past work.  

The Black Graduate Archive (BGA) is a perfect example of an initiative that will advance Equity and Inclusivity through a specific project, and this year's award will fund this future work, in part. 

The BGA is a new group on campus that was formed to complete a singular purpose—to create a photo archive of Black undergraduate students who managed to graduate despite the difficulties of studying during the pandemic. Though the BGA does not have its own history of equity work on campus, the three students who are a part of this group— Ola Idris Ali, Joy Adeyemi, and Safyya Cissé—are all equity champions in their own way. 

Ola, Safyya, and Joy are all past presidents of student organizations—Ola is a past president of the UW Black Association for Student Expression (UW BASE), and both Safyya and Joy are former presidents of the African Student Associate (UWASA)—where they conceptualized and executed several projects designed to foster an environment of belonging for Black students on campus. Most notably, they’ve played instrumental roles in organizing and participating in “Traces” the annual talent showcase for Black students, put on by UWASA, which returned this year. They have also partnered with other equity-seeking groups on campus, such as the Black Faculty Collective and other student groups, to bring awareness and action to issues affecting Black and other racialized students on campus, and were instrumental in creating spaces for dialogue during the George Floyd protests of 2020. 

The BGA project in a way serves as a parting “love letter” from these three phenomenal students who want to highlight the hard work of their peers who managed to make it to graduation during the hardest two years for any student at the university level. It is their way of saying: we were here and we made it; you can too. 

The Equity Committee of FAUW recognizes and appreciates the work of these students, and hopes that the award can help support this important project.

The Black Graduate Archive is expected to be completed and ready to share in August 2022.

Copyright at Waterloo launches website redesign

This article was originally published on the Copyright at Waterloo website.

Our website has been redesigned to make it easier to use. The Copyright Advisory Committee welcomes your feedback; please fill out the website feedback form or reach out to Lauren Byl, copyright & licensing librarian with your thoughts.

Content has been arranged into three streams:

• Copyright for teaching
  • the information you need to make decisions about using material in either in-person or online/remote classrooms.
• Copyright for publishing
  • guidance on how the Copyright Act, Policy 73: Intellectual Property, grant funding requirements, and publisher rules and practices impact your ownership and reuse of your own work. 
• Copyright for your thesis
  • guidance on reuse of content in your thesis, from your own published work to third-party materials

We’ve also updated our Frequently Asked Questions page so it can be sorted by audience and category.

Printing with wet clay

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

The reception area of a high-rise office in downtown Toronto now features a one-of-a-kind privacy wall thanks to a research team from the Waterloo School of Architecture.

Comprised of 175 unique, interlocking bricks made of clay, the Hive project combined an ancient building material with modern digital design and 3D printing technologies.

“This approach embraces the spirit of traditional ceramic craft with robotic precision, offering new avenues for material expression and geometric complexity within this field,” team members wrote in a project description.

The showpiece at the 24^th-floor offices of Investment Management Corporation of Ontario at 16 York Street was developed after SDI Interior Design approached the architecture school.

Professor David Correa and his students have been working with clay since acquiring a 3D printer capable of making large-scale objects with it in 2018.

The honeycomb wall features variations in light and privacy as the apertures of its bricks – each one of them unique ­– gradually open and close.

"It was a great applied research experience," Correa said. "We were super thrilled when it all came together, and it worked out - even better than expected.”

Fabricating the wall required an iterative process using both digital and physical models, as well as the formulation of special clay mixes and multiple assembly mock-ups.

“While the messy and unstable nature of wet clay presents technical challenges in practical applications, these same qualities create opportunities to explore the unique aesthetic and functional possibilities offered by this fabrication process,” the team wrote.

In addition to Correa, the design and development team included alumni Ye Sul E. Cho, Ji Shi and Meghan Taylor, and graduate researchers James Clarke-Hicks and Isabel Ochoa.

Environment researcher Martine August receives Early Researcher Award in Planning

This article was orignally featured on Faculty of Environment's website.

Martine August, a professor of Planning in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo was recently granted the Early Researcher Award to help further her research on the impacts of housing financialization and its role in Canada’s housing crisis.

August, along with other eight University of Waterloo researchers, Early Research Award winners received a grant worth $1.12 million. The program, publicly funded through the Government of Ontario, aids recently appointed researchers to build their research teams.

August’s research explains the financialization of multifamily rentals and how real estate investment trusts (REITs) have grown to own 10 per cent of apartments in Canada. She and other researchers will receive $140,000 over five years plus an additional $50,000 from the University.

“I argue that neoliberal restructuring, government policy, and financial innovations created conditions for profitable reinvestment,” said August. “In each suite, tenants are exposed to the logics of finance capital, where ‘repositioning’ strategies generate profits via displacing existing tenants and treating housing like any other market good, rather than a human right.”

The selection process for this award includes criteria such as the excellence of the researcher, quality of the proposal, development of research talent and the benefits this research will bring to Ontario.

To learn more about this award visit Government of Ontario.

Researchers and Indigenous students learn about Grand River

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

On June 15, grade nine students from Six Nations Polytechnic (SNP) and the STEAM Academy program donned their waders to join researchers Charles de Lannoy, Karen Kidd and Waterloo Biology Professor Mark Servos to conduct experiments in the Grand River.

In its first year, this joint initiative led by McMaster University and the University of Waterloo, is a land-based experiential learning approach to science and engineering. The event is a pilot for a micro-credential course in which the students could eventually gain a McMaster University credit by the end of high school.

Electrofishing with Mark Servos

Decked out in their safety equipment, students waited to catch fish with nets after emitting a small electric shock to the water. Once they caught a few, they brought them back to land and put them in a clear tank. Here they learned about how to identify each fish, from where their fins were located to the markings on their bodies. 

“Experiential learning is one of the most effective ways to engage with students and people in general,” said Servos, who is also the Canada Research Chair in Water Quality Protection. “It is easy to get excited about aquatic science when you are knee-deep in a river.

“This experience allows us to have a conversation and truly communicate with each other," Servos said. "I learned a lot from the students. They are so enthusiastic and engaged.”

Engineering and science in action

“It’s a very exciting opportunity to see engineering and science in action, and it's also fun to just go into the river, cool off on a hot day, explore what these two rivers look like, discover what makes them different, and use technologies and an understanding of ecology to evaluate their health,” said de Lannoy, chemical engineering associate professor at McMaster and one of the lead organizers of the initiative.

Before beginning their work, a student laid tobacco in the water.

“We wanted to establish some protocol before conducting our investigations and environmental work,” said Chris Martin, Indigenous Program Facilitator at SNP. “Placing the tobacco in the river acknowledges where we are and lets creation know what we are about to do. It allows us to bring our minds together before the event.”

Throughout the day, students cycled through three activities.

Water Quality Monitoring and Sensors with Charles de Lannoy

de Lannoy focuses on developing technologies that can continuously monitor the health of the river remotely and make those technologies robust, adaptable and cheaper.

Students were able to use these sensors to test the oxygen in various parts of the river to determine its health. One student remarked how the sensors were like little tentacles. de Lannoy was thrilled with the curiosity of the students, how they asked great questions and devised creative hypotheses.

de Lannoy is proud of what they have accomplished with the STEAM Academy.

“What we're showcasing is that engineers and scientists can engage with First Nations Youth and they can have really meaningful experiences,” said de Lannoy. “We can really serve this community and I encourage other professors to do more activities like this.”

Bug Collection and Identification with Karen Kidd

Using nets and tweezers, students learned about bugs in the water. While exploring the river, they studied the habitat of insects and critters. Karen Kidd’s favourite thing is to see what’s living under rocks. After scooping up some samples, they perused the samples with tweezers, picking out insect larvae, crayfish, leeches, worms and more.

“It is my impression that high school students don’t get a lot of exposure to environmental sciences, especially hands-on experiences like this one,” said Kidd, School of Earth, Environment & Society professor at McMaster. “I hope they gained a better understanding of some of the challenges our waterways face, and that it will motivate some of them to pursue careers in environmental sciences.”

Kidd, de Lannoy and Servos are part of a research program funded by Global Water Futures called “Co-Creation of Indigenous Water Quality Tools,” led by Dawn Martin-Hill at McMaster. 

“With members of Six Nations, we are assessing the health of their waters, fish and wildlife.  This was another great opportunity for us to share what we are doing on the Grand River, and to teach them some of the tools we use to understand how humans are affecting our aquatic ecosystems.  If it instilled in them a better appreciation of our environment and the need to protect it, then I consider that a win.”

Adriana Johnson, Grade 9 student at SNP, was inspired by the learning and experiences. She has always wanted to get into engineering, and now she wants to focus on doing something involving the environment.

 “I remember when you couldn't even see through the water and it was so polluted, and to see now there's like so much life and it's becoming closer to what it was before colonization pollution,” she said. “It makes me want to put more effort into reviving it really.”

Joshua George, another grade 9 student, was surprised by the amount of biodiversity in the water.

“They talked about the amount of mussel species that were in the water and I found it quite interesting,” said George.

Following the field day, students used lab equipment to analyze samples collected from the river at the STEAM Academy in Brantford. Researchers had the opportunity to showcase new sensors they are developing, water testing equipment they frequently use, and digital microscopes to demonstrate fish and invertebrates’ analysis techniques. 

“I am sure I learned just as much from the students as they learned from me, added Kidd. “And it was a blast.”