Monday, December 5, 2022

Community represents a driving force for new Associate Director, Indigenous Relations

By Matthew King.

Nurturing Indigenous voices, identities and community within Waterloo’s work-integrated learning model takes first-hand experience. Bryanne Smart, Associate Director, Indigenous Relations at Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE), has the passion and experience to help create change.

Smart is a member of Six Nations of the Grand River and an Indigenous professional with more than 15 years of extensive work with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities and organizations across Canada. She is an advocate of successfully foregrounding Indigenous voices across multiple industries, including education.

Smart accepted her role as the newly created associate director of Indigenous Relations in September 2022. She is excited about the prospect of aligning her Indigenous community and work experiences in this role.

“The University of Waterloo is really moving forward intentionally in their work. To be a part of that from the beginning to evoke change collectively and to build indigenous relations is a great opportunity,” says Smart. "It was a perfect alignment to the collective experiences that I've had. My desire is to be in this space, make that change and move it forward.”

As a unit, CEE has built a framework for equity, diversity, inclusion and anti-racism (EDI-R) as well as indigenous relations (IR) into its strategic plan. Hiring Smart is one of many steps the unit is undertaking to move these initiatives forward.

“We want to Indigenize our unit to better support our Indigenous students, team members and communities as best we can,” says Norah McRae, Associate Provost, Co-operative and Experiential Education. “Bryanne’s experience is vital to do this. As she builds relationships, the hope is we will be able to further develop our model of collaboration, consultation and partnerships - on and off campus.”

Smart’s portfolio falls in CEE and she co-reports to McRae and Jean Becker, associate vice-president, Indigenous Relations.

“Having Bryanne report to Norah is essential because she's embedded in that unit and her mission is all around the CEE unit,” says Jean Becker, Associate Vice-President, Indigenous Relations. “She needs the professional support from CEE. She really needs to be embedded there to understand the unit itself. That way she can maximize her contributions and be critical in helping to Indigenize that unit.” 

Building a strong foundation with intention behind the work is an early priority for Smart. This, she believes, comes from listening to what people are already saying.

“Listening is important to identify the gaps in the services being provided,” says Smart. “From there, we can identify areas to incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing and doing for the benefit of all CEE stakeholders, implement change from an Indigenous lens, and learn to better serve our Indigenous students and allies.” 

An opportunity to listen and address questions raised by the CEE community comes in December. Smart will take part in a fireside chat at the CEE business meeting alongside:

• Dr. Norah McRae, Associate Provost, Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE);
• Jean Becker, Associate Vice-President, Indigenous Relations;
• Dr. Christopher Taylor, Associate Vice-President, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism; and
• Colleen Phillips-Davis, Associate Director, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Anti-racism

“It’s important feeling okay with what you don't know when it comes to Indigenous people, or colonialism,” says Smart. “Let's create a space where you can come in and ask about it. I want people to know that it's okay not to know.”

Helping students appreciate their cultural and intersectional identities

By Tracelyn Cornelius. This article originally appeared in the Catalyst e-newsletter. Sign up for the Catalyst today.

Born in Mexico, Dr. Sandra Lopez-Rocha has been working in the field of intercultural learning since the mid 1990s, at a time when the field experienced exponential growth. Since then, she has accumulated a wealth of both professional and academic knowledge on the subject matter. After completing an MA in Intercultural Communication and a PhD in Language, Literacy and Culture at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, she ambitiously pursued a second PhD in Social Anthropology in the United Kingdom. 

“I’m intrigued by the exploration of cultural identity and how identities are interlinked,” Lopez-Rocha says. “As I worked on my own research and engaged with people, I expanded my understanding of why people think or behave in certain ways, why they seek to preserve and transmit elements of their own backgrounds, and why they feel forced to hide some elements of their culture.”  

Asked why she felt compelled to pursue two PhDs, Lopez-Rocha acknowledges that although she has accrued a wealth of knowledge on the subject matter, intercultural learning is continuous. She explains that intercultural education requires expanding knowledge, adaptation and understanding of how actions and inactions create a ripple effect in society.  

As an intercultural learning specialist at the University of Waterloo, Lopez-Rocha supports students to better understand and appreciate their own cultural and intersectional identities, while identifying ways to engage respectfully with others with different experiences, at the university, and beyond. A key component of her work involves building students’ intercultural competencies, which are transferable across contexts and spaces, encompassing where they live, study, and work. 

A recent initiative reflecting this involves an open-access program supported by a grant from eCampus Ontario. The modules for Advancing Intercultural Competence for Global Learners allow learners around the world to engage, at no cost, in interactive activities at their own pace, while they learn about culture, reflect on their own perceptions, expand their perspectives, and use strategies to develop global skills. 

“The underlying message here is that creating self-awareness, understanding the diversity of experiences, and valuing people as individuals with intersectional identities leads to meaningful engagement and to creating a sense of belonging,” Lopez-Rocha says. 

As the University continues to advance on commitments to ensure that everyone feels like they belong, Lopez-Rocha looks forward to increased engagement via face-to-face and virtual activities that highlight histories, cultures, traditions and contributions from the University community, and beyond.  

Lopez Rocha encourages engagement with the Latin American community on campus to ask questions about cultures, to understand cultural similarities and differences, to deconstruct stereotypes and to share to experiences and perspectives. 

She looks forward to future opportunities to create space for understanding how racism is experienced by different marginalized, underrepresented, or excluded groups and how to dismantle it. She also hopes that Latin American heritage is celebrated throughout the year, beyond the spotlight during the month of October. 

Read more about anti-racism work on campus

Our anti-racism newsletter, The Catalyst, showcases the many staff, faculty and students who are engaged in anti-racism work each day on campus. Subscribe to receive each issue directly to your inbox.

Putting pieces of a puzzle together

By John Roe. This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Engineering and health experts at the University of Waterloo are collaborating on research that may lead to breakthroughs in preventing a serious, all-too-common injury — broken bones. 

Their findings could prove especially important to elderly people typically more prone to falls and hip fractures. In fact, understanding the mechanics of how bones weaken over time could help serve the needs of the aging population in many parts of today’s developed world. 

“We’re trying to put pieces of a puzzle together to understand the fundamental fracture mechanisms of bone and how these mechanisms degrade in aging and disease,” explained Dr. Thomas Willett, who applies engineering principles to the human body. “How does bone fracture? How does it resist fracture? How does this change with aging and disease?” 

As one piece of a complex picture, Willett and other members of the research team, including PhD students Daniel Dapaah of engineering and Daniel Martel of kinesiology, and collaborator Dr. Andrew Laing, a kinesiology professor, recently developed an innovative testing method to simulate the impact a real fall would have on the fracture behaviour of human bone tissue.

Most previous studies into bone fragility haven’t done that. Conducting tests as true to life as possible enabled the team to better understand the actual toughening mechanisms that inhibit or slow the growth of cracks that lead to bone fractures. 

Part of an ongoing project by researchers in systems design engineering and kinesiology and health sciences at Waterloo, the study looked at the micro-damage process zone, which forms around cracks in bones. It’s the role of the micro-damage process zone to inhibit or slow the growth of cracks that might result in actual breaks when the bone is loaded in a fall. 

The researchers extracted specimens from the thigh bones of five human male cadavers and cut razor-sharp notches in them to approximate what happens when a crack exists. Half of the sections went through a conventional slow-loading rate test. The other half were subjected to a higher rate of loading to mimic what the bone tissue might experience in a fall. 

Understanding the 'mechanisms of disease'

The results were revelatory, yielding a much clearer picture of the significant impact on bone cracks and the likelihood of breaks when people fall. The size of the micro-damage process zone was 42-per-cent smaller in the group subjected to a higher loading rate than in the other group. This dramatically smaller size was associated with brittle, unstable fracture behaviour and reduced resistance to possible breaks. 

“When we understand the mechanisms of disease or greater bone fragility, then we can propose ways to detect, prevent and treat fragility, and maybe prevent some fractures,” Willett said. 

The research was funded by the University of Waterloo Network for Aging Research and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Register for an Extended Reality (XR) Community of Practice (CoP) event on December 13

A message from the Centre for Extended Learning and the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

The Centre for Extended Learning and the Centre for Teaching Excellence organize termly events to raise awareness about extended reality (XR) technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). We invite you to register for the upcoming XR CoP event.

Topic: The metaverse, social virtual reality platforms, and experiences (CTE7511)

Description: In this panel presentation, researchers at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business will provide an overview of their current research directions related to XR technologies, reflecting on questions about how social and physical interactions are mediated by virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. Findings across our research raise important questions for the imagined metaverse, ranging from studies that identify barriers to participation to studies that strive to better understand physical and psychological experiences across XR platforms.

The session will also include an update from the Director of the Waterloo Student VR club.

Attendees might be interested in watching, prior to the session, this optional 14-minute YouTube video about the Metaverse. 

The event, which takes place Tuesday, December 13 from 11:00 a.m. to 12 noon, is open to everyone in the campus community and will be hosted virtually through Microsoft Teams.

Registration information.

Nothing but net in New York and other notes

President Vivek Goel was holding court in New York City Friday as he presented the game ball at the Toronto Raptors vs Brooklyn Nets matchup at the Barclays Center. President Goel was in New York meeting with Waterloo alumni and co-op students for a networking event. Sadly the Raptors lost.

There's still time to register for tomorrow’s virtual information session about the C2C Program: "University of Waterloo faculty members are invited to an information session presented by Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI) and NSERC Alliance where you will learn about the Collaborate 2 Commercialize (C2C) Joint Program," says a note from the Office of Research. "If you have an industry problem you want to solve and are interested in applying your research to a real-world challenge, join the virtual event on Tuesday, December 6, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and find out if this program is right for you. Please register to attend."

The December Holiday Laboratory Shutdown Memo was sent to faculty health and safety coordinators for distribution to all lab users last week. Due to winter weather conditions, utilities (especially electricity) may be affected. It is a general rule that all laboratory processes be designed to safely survive a service failure. Please review the memo for more information and contact the Safety Office with any questions.