Friday, October 14, 2022

New leadership role in Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic

A message from the Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic.

The Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic (AVPA) is seeking to fill the new position of Assistant Vice-President Academic (AsstVPA) — Academic Leadership and Strategic Initiatives starting January 2023 for a two-year term (with the possibility of renewal).

Responsibilities:

The AsstVPA — Academic Leadership and Strategic Initiatives (AsstVPA) will report to the Associate Vice-President Academic (AVPA) and be part of the leadership team in the AVPA office. The role has three primary areas of responsibility:

1. Leading the Academic Leadership Program (ALP), which helps academic leaders (chairs, directors of academic units, associate chairs, associate deans) and aspiring leaders develop management and leadership skills and expand their knowledge of policy. This role will replace the role of Director, ALP and includes:

• Leading the ALP’s ongoing evolution to better meet the University’s needs and strategic priorities;
• Collaborating with subject matter experts as well as leadership and administrators within units, departments, and Faculties to deliver programming (e.g., workshops, lunch forums, coffee chats);
• Seeking information and staying informed about current issues relevant to academic leaders by consulting the professional literature and shared best practices.

2. Leading, on behalf of the AVPA, projects undertaken in implementation of the University’s strategic plan.
   • In year 1, this project will be redevelopment of the ALP to better suit the needs of the University and of faculty members who aspire to leadership roles. This project will include:
     1. Consultation with relevant campus stakeholders to identify areas of need;
     2. Developing onboarding/training for new Associate Deans, parallel to what is provided for Chairs;
     3. Working with other relevant units on campus, designing and implementing a mentorship program for aspiring academic leaders.
3. Serving as a designate on committees where a designate is an option and as a replacement at meetings when the AVPA is unable to attend.

Improving workplace injury compensation requires input from vulnerable workers

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Understanding the ways in which workers in precarious employment react to work injury and claims processes they see as unfair can help employers, legal representatives, physicians and others respond appropriately, according to a new study.

Precarious workers are defined as those who earn low or inconsistent wages. Often, they are uncertain how to access work compensation programs or are reluctant to speak up for fear of losing their jobs. The types of injustices faced by workers in the study included being laid off during a claim, receiving inadequate modified work or medical attention, employer claim suppression and unresponsive claim adjudicators.

“Precariously employed workers are vulnerable to unfair treatment and studies have shown that recent immigrants are over-represented in precarious employment,” said Ellen MacEachen, director of the School of Public Health Sciences and co-author of the study.

“When unfair treatment takes place, it has adverse repercussions on workers, affecting their mental health, quality of life and future success. By identifying unfairness and its behavioural and emotional effects, we can better understand the implication for workers’ compensation systems.”

For example, she said that being aware that if workers start out by being passive, it may be because they are confused about the process rather than because they don’t care about the injustice. Or knowing that being in the anger stage means that they may be motivated to fight back by pressuring those involved, taking matters into their own hands, or getting help from others. “Also, if a physician recognizes this pattern of behaviours, they can refer the worker to the appropriate resources and support at the right time.”

The findings of this study can help workers’ compensation systems communicate more effectively with injured workers about their needs during the claim process. The study identified a flowchart of reactions and emotions that occur as an employee is going through the worker compensation system, with the five emotions being: confusion, anger, unsupported, disappointed and determined. Policymakers can then use this information to address procedural unfairness in the system.

The study, which explored how injured workers in Ontario responded behaviourally and emotionally to procedural unfairness, was conducted between 2017 and 2021 with 36 adults proficient in English who had experienced a work-related injury in the last 10 years.

“This research leads to other questions to be studied: How pervasive is it for workers to quit their jobs after experiencing a work injury and procedural unfairness? What is the relationship between education about workers’ compensation and emotional and behavioural reactions of workers to perceived unfair claims processes?” MacEachen said. “Precarious workers are at risk of unfair treatment due to power and knowledge differentials between employers and workers, and there is still a lot left to be addressed.”

The study was published in the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation and is co-authored by MacEachen, Nicole Billias and Sue Sherifali, all at Waterloo.

Stacey Watson and colleagues win best paper award

Stacey Watson is a lecturer at the Cheriton School of Computer Science. After five years in industry, which culminated in a role as a senior cybersecurity engineer, Stacey returned to academia to complete a PhD at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Before joining the University of Waterloo as faculty, Stacey was at the Rochester Institute for Technology in the Department of Computing Security.

This article was originally published on the School of Computer Science website.

Cheriton School of Computer Science Professor Stacey Watson, and their colleagues Manisha Kamarushi, Garreth Tigwell, and Roshan Peiris at Rochester Institute of Technology, have received a best paper award at MobileHCI 2022. Held annually, the ACM International Conference on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction will take place virtually and in person in Vancouver this year from September 28 to October 1.

Their paper, “OneButtonPIN: A single button authentication method for blind or low vision users to improve accessibility and prevent eavesdropping,” describes the development and evaluation of a secure authentication method that allows blind and low-vision users to enter a personal identification number on a smartphone securely while preventing potential adversaries from seeing or hearing the code entered on the device.

About this award-winning research

Authentication mechanisms let users verify their identity on a device and help ensure that the sensitive data it contains remains secure. Authentication can take many forms, from entering a personal identification number (PIN) to tracing a graphical pattern on the device’s screen to using fingerprint or facial recognition to securely log into a device. To further improve security, some devices are configured to require two-factor authentication to log in, where a user, for example, first enters a passcode on the device’s screen then uses biometric authentication — facial or fingerprint identification — that are unique to the user.

“Although authentication mechanisms have improved, they still present challenges for blind and low-vision users,” said Professor Stacey Watson, a lecturer at the Cheriton School of Computer Science. 

“Facial or fingerprint identification are convenient and accessible ways to log into a device, but if compromised by sophisticated attacks they can be difficult to reset. On the other hand, a passcode can be reset easily by a user, but this authentication method is less secure especially for blind and low-vision users who rely on a screen reader to assist them when entering a code or when an attacker is peering over a user’s shoulder when the person is entering their passcode.”

Despite its limitations, a PIN code is a widely used authentication method and often used as back up when biometric authentication methods fail. If a person’s thumb is wet or a face mask prevents the device’s biometric recognition system from working, the fallback to logging in is entering a PIN.

“The goal of our research was to maximize the accessibility of PIN codes, while addressing the issue of shoulder-surfing attacks — situations where a nearby attacker watches a user enter a code on the device’s screen — so people who are blind or have low vision have a secure way to log into their mobile devices without needing to rely on biometric methods,” Professor Watson said.

The research team developed and evaluated a new authentication method they call OneButtonPIN, an interface on a mobile device to improve the accessibility and security of entering a PIN, specifically with blind or low-vision users in mind.

“OneButtonPIN uses a large on-screen button that when pressed and held triggers a sequence of vibrations,” Professor Watson explains. “The user counts the vibrations to enter each digit of the PIN code. To further increase security, we also experimented with random timings to the vibration sequence. Since a user isn’t required to move their finger on the screen and no numbers are read aloud by a screen reader, our new authentication method improves accessibility while maintaining security.”

A person using the OneButtonPIN interface. Touching and holding the HOLD FOR PIN button triggers a vibration sequence. The user counts the vibrations and releases the finger to enter the desired PIN digit.

To evaluate the usability and accessibility of OneButtonPIN, the research team conducted a week-long diary study with nine participants. 

“Overall, the authentication method we developed shows much promise,” Professor Watson said. “Using OneButtonPIN, participants entered PIN codes more quickly and with higher accuracy than with traditional PIN code entry interfaces.”

The team also evaluated the security of OneButtonPIN with nine blind and low-vision users to determine its resilience to shoulder surfing.

“In the security study, the main task required participants to guess the PIN code that was entered when using OneButtonPIN,” Professor Watson explained. “While traditional PIN entry methods often can be attacked successfully, the results of our security study showed that OneButtonPIN is exceptionally resilient to shoulder surfing attacks.”

Although designed with blind and low vision users in mind, the new authentication method could be useful to sighted people as well, said Professor Watson. “As OneButtonPIN is more resilient to shoulder surfing attacks than traditional PIN-based authentication, it could be used on-demand by sighted users in situations where they feel they are being observed.”

To learn more about the research on which this article is based, please see Manisha Kamarushi, Stacey L. Watson, Garreth W. Tigwell, and Roshan L. Peiris. OneButtonPIN: A Single Button Authentication Method for Blind and Low Vision Users to Improve Accessibility and Prevent Eavesdropping. Proceedings of the ACM Human Computer Interaction, 6, MHCI, Article 212 (September 2022).

Transform the future of work and other notes

"Transform the Future of Work is a 3-part workshop series exploring how we might foster a culture of sustainability in a hybrid work environment," says a note from GreenHouse, VERiS, Sustainable Waterloo Region, and the Faculty of Environment. "Learn and apply the basics of design thinking in the context of evolv1, Canada’s first net-positive, multi-tenant office building. Participants will collaborate with key stakeholders to share ideas to drive the clean economy."

Register for this series by October 14.

The University of Waterloo Staff Association (UWSA) is reminding its members that the electronic poll for the 2022-2023 UWSA Board of Directors is open now and will remain open until 4:30 p.m. today. There is no poll for President-elect as that position has been acclaimed.

Candidate information, voting instructions, and an online ballot are located on the UWSA website.

The Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business is celebrating a major milestone on Saturday as it marks both the 20^th intake of an MBET class and the 20^th anniversary of the Conrad School itself. Events are scheduled throughout the entire day at Engineering 7 on Saturday, October 15 starting at 9:00 a.m. and running until 8:30 p.m. Congratulations.

Benjamin Lefebvre, who works in the Centre for Extended Learning, has just released his first novel entitled In the Key of Dale. The book was published by Arsenal Pulp Press on October 11.

"In the Key of Dale is a disarming coming-of-age novel about a queer teen music prodigy who discovers pieces of himself in places he never thought to look," says the book's press release. "In the Key of Dale is a beguiling, pitch-perfect book about growing up, fitting in, and finding a way out of grief and loneliness toward the melodic light of adulthood."

There will be an in-person book launch in partnership with Words Worth Books on Saturday, October 15 at 2:00 p.m. at Trillium Church on Willow Street in Uptown Waterloo.

Here's today's Keeping Well at Work Daily Inspiration:

Commit to learning!

Take 10 minutes today to jot down your key learnings from Keeping Well at Work. Document not only what you want to do as a result of this learning but also how you will integrate these ideas into your day-to-day routine.

If you missed the event you can still benefit from the learning! You’ll soon be able to access the takeaways and some session recordings on the Organizational and Human Development Resource Zone. Log in using your WatIAM credentials.