Tuesday, October 25, 2022

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• Global Skills Opportunity information session on Thursday
• Open Access Week Series: Opening Up Perspectives for Visualizing Future Cities
• Open Access Week Series: Civil Engineering students create eBooks
• It's Now or Never for sale prices this week in the SLC
• Board of Governors meets today and other notes

Global Skills Opportunity information session on Thursday

A message from Waterloo International.

Universities Canada recently launched the Global Skills Opportunity to provide post-secondary students with international study and work experiences, strengthening their global skills and competencies. In particular, this program is designed to encourage low-income students, students with disabilities and Indigenous students to participate in study and work abroad programming.

Institutions are only able to submit one proposal so Waterloo International is seeking input from University of Waterloo units on whether there is sufficient interest to prepare an institution-wide submission or whether Waterloo International should issue a call for proposals from units across campus. Units interested in providing input into this decision are invited to attend a 30-minute information session on Thursday, October 27, 2022, at 2:30 p.m. Please RSVP to Aisha Shibli or send us an email with your input. Additional details on this opportunity can be found here.

Open Access Week Series: Opening Up Perspectives for Visualizing Future Cities

Members of the NATURA Thematic Working Group on Urban Informality consulting with community members in Bogotá, Colombia.

By RJ McArthur. This article is one of a series celebrating open scholarship during Open Access Week. It is brought to you by the Open Scholarship Committee.

How do we plan our cities in an equitable and just way for a future affected by the massive upheavals of climate change? For the contributors to the Visualizing Future Cities project, to answer this question we must first examine the very tools that have conventionally been used to both inform and express these answers in academic spaces.

The group is made up of Mathieu Feagan, Assistant Professor in the Department of Knowledge Integration at the University of Waterloo, Ananth Udupa, BS in Architecture from Arizona State University, and Duván López, President of RECNET (Recycling the City International Network). The three members are all at different points in their professional careers working on urban sustainability issues.

 Through their affiliation with the Visualizing Future Cities project, they are working to find ways “to help early-career scholars learn to use visuals that are going to centre justice in a larger context,” as Feagan puts it. Feagan notes that “using visuals is an accepted and important challenge in understanding cities and sustainability” in academic disciplines.

However, the group realized that there are “patterns around how visuals are used that amplify justice, while others work against it.” While some uses of visualizations have reinforced existing systems of power and established interests, like those of colonializing powers and property owners, others have been used to “map environmental injustice” and even to “reclaim” Indigenous place names from colonial erasure.

A team member from the NATURA San Juan project conducts an interview with a community member.

Given this contested history, the key question for the group is, as Feagan notes: “How do we visualize knowledge from those already marginalized in visualizing future cities?” Udupa, who came to the project through time spent as a fellow with the NATURA (Nature-based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene) Network in San Juan, Puerto Rico, specifies that their project seeks to “prioritize the lived experience of community members, especially those disenfranchised and affected by climate change.”

Working from this principle of prioritizing the experiences of those most directly affected by climate change, López notes that “visualization can support a participatory process, a social process to open the window for different kinds of knowledge into the decision-making” around how to plan for climate change. A video put together by RECNET illustrates one particular strategy for “approaching the territory” to bring in different kinds of knowledge through “local labs” in various neighbourhoods in Bogotá, Colombia.

On the other side of the equation, the group aims to also provide easy and open access to this knowledge for the wider public. To that end, they hosted a recent episode of the Future Cities podcast, which features guests providing “insights on…how to use visualizations and what to avoid.” The podcast is freely available on the internet. They are also planning to host a webinar for the NATURA Network, as well as a working group of students in Bogotá next summer.

The ultimate message of the project, Feagan notes, is that technical expertise, such as visualizations, is not neutral, and that it can tend to privilege certain perspectives over others. The project asks those working with these kinds of expertise to “practice a new kind of awareness of our own positionality” in relation to the kinds of knowledge represented and taken into account.

Udupa echoes this sentiment, noting that the public-facing aspects of the project emphasize “accountability and reflection,” which can prompt those working in and studying data science to “examine issues around equity,” ultimately leading to a more equitable and just response to the effects of climate change.

Open Access Week Series: Civil Engineering students create eBooks

By RJ McArthur. This article is one of a series celebrating open scholarship during Open Access Week. It is brought to you by the Open Scholarship Committee.

In the spring term of 2020, as the disruptions caused by COVID-19 began to seem both more enduring and more daunting than had initially been thought, Dr. Nadine Ibrahim wanted to provide a “glimmer of hope” for her students in CIVE 230: Engineering and Sustainable Development. During that “very dark” term, Ibrahim came up with the idea of producing a collaborative project with her students as a means of combatting the growing sense of disconnection and isolation. For the first online offering of the course, Ibrahim asked her students to submit a short report on an example of a “sustainability success stor[y]” in a city anywhere in the world. These examples would then be compiled in an e-book, which would be returned to the students at the end of the term as a “souvenir or takeaway” of the course. In addition, the text would be published as an Open Education Resource (OER) for other students or instructors to draw on.

Despite the challenges of navigating the newly-online course environment, the student response to this project was very positive. Ibrahim reports that students were excited about their chosen cities. In addition, there was not a single late submission, nor was there a single submission below standard. Encouraged by this strong response, Ibrahim has carried on the project with each new offering of the course, where the positive trends continued. While the overall themes have varied depending on the focus for that particular term, in every online section of CIVE 230 students have contributed to an e-book providing a “compilation of sustainability success stories for and by students.” While the e-book does not take the place of a textbook, it does provide examples for the students in the course and, through its open availability, to others as well. Beyond their intellectual and personal investment in their chosen topics, students were also encouraged to see the project as a professional opportunity. Students have linked to the resource through their LinkedIn profiles, and they are provided with a template for a citation to list on their resumes or CVs. For Ibrahim, the level of student investment was pleasantly surprising: “I didn’t know how much passion they would put into it,” she recalls.

Ibrahim also remains enthusiastic about the project. In addition to continuing to make it a part of the CIVE 230 syllabus, she would like to see the collaborative project eventually expand to include interactive materials, if possible. Despite the enrolment for the course—a core course for second-year Civil Engineering students—being consistently over 100, she notes that a key takeaway of the experience is that you “can leverage a [large class] to really put something meaningful together.”

All three of the OER produced by Dr. Ibrahim’s CIVE 230 students can be found at https://www.oercommons.org/groups/canadian-engineering-education-association-ceea-ac/4016/8043/4701/. The Sustainability Contribution Project (2020) and Connecting Sustainable Cities for the Future (2021) are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 license. The Engineers of Tomorrow Showcase Global Sustainable Cities (2022) is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

It's Now or Never for sale prices this week in the SLC

A message from Print + Retail Solutions.

On Wednesday, October 26 and Thursday, October 27, the Now or Never Sale takes place in the Student Life Centre, Multi-purpose Room, daily from 10 am to 4 pm.

W Store will launch brand new items that are exclusive to this in-person event. Limited-edition UWaterloo- and Warriors-branded clothing and accessories are featured at $40, $30, $15 and $10 each. These items will not be available for purchase online, so shop early for the best selection. Items are available while quantities last.

Board of Governors meets today and other notes

The University's Board of Governors has its final meeting of 2022 today at 1:30 p.m. in NH3407. Among the agenda items:

• A motion to approve administrative leaves and faculty sabbaticals, as well as administrative appointments;
• A motion to approve the new Agreement between the University of Waterloo and CUPE 793, effective immediately;
• A motion to approve the new Memorandum of Agreement between the University of Waterloo Staff Association and the University of Waterloo, effective immediately;
• A motion from the Board's Audit & Risk Committee to reappoint Ernst & Young as the university’s external auditors for the fiscal year ending 30 April 2023;
• A motion from the Board's Buildings & Properties Committee to approve the granting of an easement to Waterloo North Hydro of approximately 139.77m2 (0.034 acres) required for the replacement of primary electrical feeders 1 and 2;
• A motion from the Building & Properties Committee to approve a $1,790,000 (5 per cent) increase to the project budget for the Innovation Arena, Health Sciences Campus;
• A motion from Building & Properties to approve the award of a stipulated-price contract (CCDC2) for the Innovation Arena, Health Sciences Campus to Melloul Blamey Construction for $29,270,000 (excluding HST);
• A motion from Building & Properties to approve a revised budget of $110 million for the design and construction of the proposed Math 4 building project;
• A motion from the Board's Finance & Investment Committee to approve the Velocity Fund II as an investment manager for the University of Waterloo endowment, subject to confirmation of the completion of additional due diligence and drafting of appropriate agreements by university administration and the Finance & Investment Committee, with said confirmation anticipated to occur subsequent to the 25 October 2022 meeting of the Board of Governors; and
• A motion from the Finance & Investment Committee to approve investment governance documents for the University's endowment fund and for the IQC trust fund

The Board will also hear several reports and presentations, including a presentation by fourth-year Civil Engineering student Adrian Simone entitled "Showcasing an Innovation in the Construction Supplies Industry," A Strategic Plan accountability update report, A Campus Housing update by Associate Provost, Students Chris Read, an annual report to the Board from the Sexual Violence, Prevention, and Response Office by Amanda Cook, Director of Sexual Violence Prevention and Response. Director Cook will also give an update on Policy 42, Prevention of and Response to Sexual Violence.

Vice-President, Research and International Charmaine Dean will deliver a research report to the Board, and Vice-President, University Research Sandra Banks will provide an update on Communications and Marketing Strategies.

Waterloo International is calling all campus colleagues interested attending the first meeting to discuss strategies and next steps as a recent member of the Scholars at Risk network happening on Thursday, October 27, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Email for meeting link.

Waterloo International is also seeking units, departments, faculties and student groups interested in hosting events for International Education Week 2022. Please contact Aisha Shibli before November 16, 2022 to register your interest and to be included in the calendar of events.

Today marks the 238^th anniversary of the Haldimand Proclamation of 1784. On October 25, 1784 Frederick Haldimand, then Captain General and Governor in Chief of the province of Quebec and Territories, on behalf of the British Crown, issued and signed a decree granting the Haudenosaunee a tract of land 10km wide on both sides of the Grand River from its source to Lake Erie in recognition of the Six Nations allyship to the British Crown in the American Revolution. Waterloo's Office of Indigenous Initiatives has more information about the Haldimand Tract and its history (PDF).

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

Too much to do!

Feeling like you have too much to do? Watch this 7-minute LinkedIn Learning course for tips and tricks to manage your long to do list! What to Do When There's Too Much to Do (getAbstract Summary) (linkedin.com)