Friday, March 31, 2023

Inclusive Excellence in Research through Leadership workshop on April 13

A message from the Office of Research.

Waterloo researchers are invited to register for Creating Inclusive Excellence in Research through Inclusive Leadership, taking place on Thursday, April 13, 2023, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Federation Hall. This workshop will be led by Imogen Coe, one of Canada’s leading advocates for organizational change towards inclusive excellence in research, and Ana Sofía Barrows, who has co-ordinated multiple initiatives focused on advancing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and has spoken publicly about the lack of diversity in STEM and academia, privilege, and allyship.

Interactive sessions will cover systemic barriers in research and how they limit innovation, creativity and diverse approaches to complex problems. Tools and strategies for identifying and removing barriers to inclusion, creating cultures of care to attract, retaining and promoting diverse talent will also be covered.

Please register to attend as seating is limited.

Inspiring the next generation of pharmacists

By Milana Madzarac. This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Every March since 2016, students from Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy have been volunteering and visiting Region of Waterloo schools to educate the younger generation on what pharmacists do during Pharmacy Appreciation Month (PAM).

This year during PAM, 30 pharmacy students volunteered and presented to more than 400 elementary students across nine schools in the region.

Educating elementary school children

Student volunteers Victoria Nguyen (PharmD ’25), Avery Brown (PharmD ’24) and Kia Moazzami (PharmD ’24) tailored each presentation to the specific grade level of the class they presented to.

The students are focused on imparting their knowledge of pharmacy and recognize this is an approachable way to interact with the children and educate them.

A kit including giant microbe plush toys and activity sheets designed by Waterloo Pharmacy students.

“We try to make the sessions as interactive and accessible as possible by using props and kits in our presentations to help children grasp the knowledge by interacting with the items,” says Brown. “Targeting everyone’s learning abilities through visual, auditory or kinesthetic learning is important to us.”

For younger children in kindergarten to grade two, the pharmacy students reviewed how even though antibiotics may not taste great, they do help them get better. The grades three to five presentations taught children about different types of allergies, how to spot reactions and how to administer epi-pens to someone in need.

“We hope that by teaching children the importance of pharmacy we are helping them make more informed choices in the future,” says Brown.

Inspiring high school students

Pharmacy students also visited local high schools to share information about the pharmacy profession and the conditional acceptance to pharmacy (CAP) program to those who may not know it exists.

Sharing information about the program is a great avenue for high school students to learn about the opportunities available, especially for those who are ambitious and eager to get into the pharmacy field.

Thank you letters elementary school students made for Waterloo Pharmacy students who presented.

“I went through the CAP program myself and answering their questions is my way of inspiring them to dream about a future in pharmacy,” says Moazzami. “I’m able to share my own experiences and the path I took. We’re closer to their age, more familiar and approachable, which helps our interaction with them.”

Service-learning in the community

While approaches for younger elementary students and high schoolers are different, both are an opportunity to share knowledge about pharmacy with the community.

In addition to providing education for the younger students, pharmacy students gain experience from these interactions. Through this volunteering opportunity, pharmacy students learn how to tailor their communication strategies to meet the needs of different populations.

“Hosting the school presentations is a great way to connect with our local community. We strive to advocate for the pharmacy profession, make health information more accessible and foster a safe and enjoyable environment for learning,” says Nguyen.

The Waterloo Pharmacy clubs involved in the elementary school visits include the Canadian Association of Pharmacy Students and Interns (CAPSI), Pharmacy Peer Relief Network (RxPRN) and the Paediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group (PPAG).

March is Pharmacy Appreciation Month. This month, in the #PAM2023 series, the School of Pharmacy is celebrating the achievements of pharmacists and the future to come.

Sustainable innovations shine at the Velocity $5K finals

By Naomi Grosman. This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Waterloo News.

The University of Waterloo community came together to cheer on eight finalist teams as they pitched to a panel of judges and a chock-full room of attendees at the Velocity $5K finals on March 30th in the Black and Gold Room at the University’s Student Life Centre.

This flagship event is the culmination of students’ hard work — from ideation to laying the foundation of their startup.

Winning teams Trash Talk, Foodage Inc., Metacycler Bioinnovations, and Whale Safe each received $5K, in recognition of their high-quality business ideas and pitches.

The student startup teams had three minutes to pitch, and three minutes to answer questions from Judges Sarrah Lal, director of the Velocity Incubator in downtown Kitchener, Armen Bakirtzian, co-founder and CEO of Kitchener-based medical device company Intellijoint Surgical, and Lakshmi Khatri, student in the University’s Masters of Accounting program and Student Venture Fund analyst.

Four finalist teams, four unique paths to winning Velocity $5K

While their roads all led to being $5K finalists, the four teams became involved in the University’s entrepreneurship community in four different ways.

Metacycler Bioinnovations tackled their problem in the lab, with the vision of commercializing it.

The team, Nicole LeBlanc, Aranksha Thakor and Eugenia Dadzie, biology PhD students in Faculty of Science, Shirley Wong, post doc in Faculty of Science, and Jonathan Parkes, has created a strain of bacteria that can transform food waste into biodegradable plastics.

“I came to the University of Waterloo specifically for this research project, I was passionate about it and always thought about it through a commercial lens, as a tangible product to sell,” LeBlanc says, who is a PhD candidate in microbiology.

Eugenia Dadzie pitching for Metacycler Bioinnovations.

Whale Safe Fishing Gear teammates Collin Bolt, Ben Beazley, Jake Chateauneuf and Syl Yoston, mechanical engineering undergraduate students are all fourth-year mechanical engineering undergrads, graduating this spring. They pitched a business based on Yoston’s own experience as a fisherman.

Their solution is a whale safe fishing device for lobster and crab fishers.

“We are engineers by training and having the business help from Velocity was a great opportunity,” team member Ben Beazly says. “Having a great team and having found this success with Velocity $5K and now a process going forward, it’s hard to measure that value.”

Read the rest of the article on Waterloo News.

Innovate and transform through Process Mapping

A message from the Continuous Improvement and Change Management Community of Practice. 

The Continuous Improvement and Change Management Community of Practice is hosting a Process Mapping Session on Wednesday April 5 from 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. This informative session will provide an overview on a powerful tool to enable continuous improvement. The goal of this tool is to identify and eliminate inefficiencies in a process to obtain improvement results with the involvement/input of the individuals performing the process. The tool helps to provide clarity on what is currently occurring and where there are opportunities for improvement. Topics that will be covered include:

1. Process Mapping Benefits
2. Current State Process Mapping and what should be included
3. Identification of inefficiencies/challenges in a process
4. Future State Process Mapping
5. PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) – how to make the improvement happen!

We look forward to welcoming you to the session. To register for the event, please email cicm@uwaterloo.ca.

Friday's notes

The EDI-R Office Education and Outreach Unit has a number of learning opportunities available for students, faculty and staff coming up in April and May. Workshops and webinars include:

• Webinar: Disability Justice for 2SLGBTQIA+ Employees, Wednesday, April 12, 12 noon to 1:00 p.m.;
• Workshop: Building Belonging in Hiring Processes, Wednesday, April 19, 12 noon to 1:00 p.m.;
• Pathways to Addressing (with Care) Disclosures of Racism | Students, Wednesday, April 26, 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.;
• Testing Hiring Discrimination in Canada’s Blue-Collar Industry, Wednesday, May 24, 12 noon to 1:00 p.m.;
• Pathways to Addressing (with Care) Disclosures of Racism | Faculty and Staff, Wednesday, May 25, 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Several of these webinars are offered in partnership with Pride at Work and are externally facilitated.

End-of-term concerts for the Music department's ensembles continue this weekend and beyond. First is the Balinese Gamelan Ensemble Concert on Saturday, April 1 at 7:30 p.m., in the Humanities Theatre. The twenty-member Balinese Gamelan Ensemble and the Community Gamelan will perform a mix of traditional pieces and modern compositions. 

"To get a taste of this amazing music, check out this Youtube video," says the Music department. The Gamelan Ensemble Artistic Director is Dewa Suparta, who is known across Canada for his compositions and performances. There will be a chance for the audience to try out the instruments after the free concert.

On Sunday, April 2 at 2:00 p.m., the UWaterloo Jazz Ensemble will present Prime Time Jazz in Conrad Grebel University College's Great Hall (Room 1111).

"Join us for a highlight of the Winter term, the 22 member jazz ensemble concert," says a note from the Music department. "Directed by Michael Wood, the Jazz Ensemble plays a wide range of jazz standards and newer compositions. This term the ensemble is featuring the music of Hoagy Carmichael and Gordon Goodwin."

Tickets are $5 students/$10 general and are available at the door, with a reception to follow.

On Monday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m., Instrumental Chamber Ensembles will perform in the Conrad Grebel University College chapel for a free concert with a reception to follow.

"This concert is a highlight of every term," says the Music department. "Please join us for some beautiful classical music, performed by seven different student groups playing a diverse range of instruments. This Winter term features a 2 pianos, 4 hands group as well. The Chamber Ensembles are directed by Ben Bolt-Martin.