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Dr. Chris Houser named the next Dean of Science
Professor Chris Houser will join the University of Waterloo as dean of the Faculty of Science for a five-year term commencing 1 July 2023. Houser succeeds professor Bob Lemieux who has served as dean since July 2015.
The appointment was strongly supported by faculty and staff and has been approved by the University’s Board of Governors and Senate.
“With more than a decade of experience in relevant academic leadership positions, professor Houser is well-equipped to lead this Faculty,” said James Rush, Vice-President Academic & Provost at Waterloo. “His input as a senior member of the University administration will be highly valued, given his experience with strategic investments in infrastructure, meaningful growth in research funding, interdisciplinary collaborations, novel approaches to curriculum development, and enhancing student experience.”
Professor Houser completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. at the University of Guelph and earned his PhD in geography from the University of Toronto. He served as an assistant professor at the University of West Florida from 2004-2007, moving to Texas A&M University, College of Geosciences in 2007, where he was appointed as full professor in 2016 before joining the University of Windsor in 2016 as dean of Science and professor in the School of Environment. His service has included a variety of academic leadership roles at the University of Windsor, including as interim vice president for Research and Innovation (2022-2023) and as dean of Science for an initial term and subsequent reappointment for a second term (2016-2023), and at Texas A&M University as associate dean for Academic Affairs and Faculty Development (2014-2016) and as Global Faculty Ambassador (2012-2016).
“I am excited to be joining the University of Waterloo and having the opportunity to lead one of the strongest and most innovative faculties of Science in Canada,” Houser said. “I look forward to working with faculty, staff, students, alumni and community partners to strengthen the reputation of the Faculty of Science across Canada and globally.”
The Faculty of Science is divided into four departments - Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and Physics and Astronomy - and two professional schools - the School of Optometry and Vision Science and the School of Pharmacy.
The Faculty also has internationally renowned researchers, including Nobel Laureate Donna Strickland, two Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureates, 14 Canada Research Chairs, and multiple recipients of the Order of Canada and Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada.
WACE conference will feature keynote from David Johnston
A message from Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE).
The University of Waterloo is hosting the 23rd WACE World Conference, with a focus on the future of work, on Wednesday, June 28 to Friday, June 30, 2023. The conference will feature a keynote address from the Right Honourable David Johnston.
Organized by the World Association for Cooperative and Work-Integrated Education (WACE), the conference will bring together leaders in industry, government, academia and experts in co-operative education from around the world. They’ll present research and exchange information on this year’s theme: The future of work: engaging work-integrated learning to achieve innovation, entrepreneurship and economic recovery in an uncertain world.
As a global leader in research and innovation in co-operative education and work-integrated learning (WIL), Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE) is proud to host this important conference at the University. The timing of the conference aligns with our 65th anniversary of providing WIL experiences to our students at Waterloo.
“Co-op education has helped distinguish Waterloo as innovators. In an uncertain future, we’ve pushed to provide even better support to our students and industry partners,” says Norah McRae, CEE’s associate provost and the current WACE vice-chair, strategic operations and head of the WACE Secretariat. “WACE is an opportunity for us to share our insights and expertise, as well as an opportunity to learn and connect with a global audience of WIL practitioners.”
Conference highlights
- Keynote: The Right Honourable David Johnston will discuss the role of educators and the process of turning compassion into action—the theme of his latest book, Empathy.
- Indigenous ceremony: Indigenous elders will lead components of the conference to recognize the indigenous heritage and celebrate indigenous knowledge and influence in our community.
- Global charter signing: Attendees will sign or recommit to the Global Cooperative and Work-integrated Education charter
- Session presentations: WIL practitioners from institutions and organizations around the world will present research, case studies and best practices.
Benefits of attending
- Network with experts in co-operative education and work-integrated learning
- Exchange information and know-how
- Learn about leading research and case studies
- Understand more about the future of work and how to future-proof staff, faculty and students
- Enhance your own practice of WIL
- Build your professional network
Conference registration options include day passes ($300 CAD) or full conference passes ($800 CAD). Visit the WACE website to register today!
Celebrating Asian heritage
By Vivek Goel, President and Vice-Chancellor.
Asian Heritage Month offers us the opportunity to pay special attention to the vital roles our community members of Asian heritage play in the success of our institution, while also recognizing the important work needed to eliminate anti-Asian racism, and all forms of racism, on our campuses.
Our recent equity survey noted that close to 50 per cent of our student population had Asian heritage, and we also have a large Asian community represented within our staff and faculty. Across UWaterloo people from a wide variety of Asian cultures and backgrounds are contributing to every aspect of life in our shared community. We have a notable Asian community represented within our staff and faculty, and Asian researchers are doing world-leading work across every faculty, and many leadership positions are held by Asian faculty members and staff. Community members from a wide variety of Asian cultures and backgrounds are contributing to every aspect of life in our shared community.
Recently I travelled to the Indo-Pacific region making stops in Jakarta, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bengaluru and New Delhi. It was a chance to meet alumni across the region. What struck me most was the amazing impact our Asian international alumni have in Canada, in their home countries, and around the globe once they’ve left Waterloo. As some of Waterloo’s staunchest supporters abroad, we must deliberately create a sense of belonging for the international Asian community, while also championing Asian-Canadian excellence locally.
Our Waterloo at 100 paper contains important instruments to ensure the future health, happiness, and success of the Asian community — inside and outside Ring Road. Our vision emphasizes the need to embrace decolonization, Indigenization, inclusivity, equity, and anti-racism into our organizational culture. One of our immediate steps is to revisit our institutional values. Part of this exercise includes addressing the President’s Anti-Racism Taskforce’s recommendation to revise our institutional values to apply lenses of anti-racism and anti-oppression.
All this connects to another crucial aspect of Waterloo at 100 — “ensuring the physical and mental health and well-being of our students and employees.” From culturally informed mental health counselling to language services, to wider variety of meal options on campus reflecting the diversity of Asian diets and cultural preferences. We need to work across the institution and with community partners to welcome our international students, who often face unique challenges when they choose to make our institution their home.
This includes calling-out and addressing anti-Asian hatred wherever it is found. It also means creating the conditions where Asian communities can practice and share cultural traditions freely.
It means materially supporting the many robust Asian-led student groups on campus with safe spaces for them to gather and share experiences, and it means not allowing complex geopolitical situations to poison interactions at the University with distortions and prejudices.
It all adds up to the need to collectively respect the contributions, needs and diversity of UWaterloo’s Asian members and using it as a great strength. As we move into this important month, I urge everyone to celebrate the history, stories, and achievements of the Asian community, on our Asian Heritage Month web platform.
Register for the Future-Ready Workforce series
A message from Co-operative and Experiential Education.
The Future-ready workforce series is a series of events where we provide practical applications of leading research from Co-operative and Experiential Education’s Work-Learn Institute (WxL).
In the upcoming session, you’ll find out about the latest research from WxL on next-generation values. Attendees will also hear from a panel of past and current co-op students about their experience in their work terms.
Register now for the next Future-ready workforce series on May 10, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. and share with employers.
IST celebrates career of Tim Farrell
Longtime Information Systems and Technology employee Tim Farrell is set to retire on June 30.
"Tim will leave us having been on campus for 43 years and 28 days, at his retirement on June 30, with his last work day being June 2," wrote Dave Hinton, Manager, Infrastructure Communications and Services in a memo sent to the IST community.
Tim began his career in DCS, the Department of Computing Services, on June 2, 1980. Working in the main room, Tim has many great stories back in the early days of computing at UWaterloo with the mainframe machines. In 1985 Tim moved on from DCS to ACO, the Arts Computing Office. Tim would spend the next 13 years in the ACO immersed in the new PC world and Watstar/Polaris network administration.
Then, in 1998, Tim came full circle and returned to DCS, which was now called Information Systems and Technology (IST). Since then, Tim has been in the TIS group providing campus wide support for the Nexus Active Directory, workstation management, and numerous other campus services. As the world now moves to the cloud Tim has spent the last several years helping the University migrate SharePoint and other file services to Azure to prepare campus for the future to come.
"His ability and eagerness to be flexible with every change in technology he approached, willingly or not, is one of the many reasons his experience and personality will be dearly missed," Hinton writes. "We would love for you to save the date on Thursday May 25 from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. so that you can celebrate the years of camaraderie with Tim, and his friends and colleges."
"On behalf of everyone at the University of Waterloo who has had the pleasure of working with Tim over the years, I would like to thank him for the dedication, enthusiasm and laughter he brought to work every day," Hinton's memo concludes. "We wish you all the best in retirement Tim!"
Wednesday's notes
We are in the midst of Tim Hortons Smile Cookie Week, which runs from Monday, May 1 to Sunday, May 7 at Tim Hortons locations in DC and SLC. All proceeds from the cookie sale will be going to the United Way.
The 2023 Darcy Lecture will take place on Thursday, May 4. Dr. Alicia Wilson will deliver remarks entitled "Subseafloor Hydrogeology: Moving beyond watersheds." The special lecture is hosted by Earth and Environmental Sciences.
"The field of submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) was launched in the 1990s by the remarkable discovery, via naturally-occurring isotopic tracers, that saline groundwater was discharging to the South Atlantic Bight in very large volumes," says the talk's abstract. "Subsequent studies confirmed that saline groundwater discharges to the Atlantic Ocean in volumes that rival river discharge. All available evidence indicates that this saline groundwater is highly enriched in nutrients compared to river water, so the nutrient contributions of this submarine discharge exceed that of river discharge. These findings have been slow to find widespread acceptance, however, because it has been exceedingly difficult to confirm this flow by means other than the original isotropic tracers. This discharge does not occur near the shoreline, and no conceptual models for SGD far from shore existed. This changed recently when new studies using heat as a tracer identified clear pulses of groundwater discharge 10-15 km offshore in the South Atlantic Bight. This talk investigates this 20-year mystery and the recent discoveries that suggest that it may be time to rewrite chemical budgets for the coastal ocean."
Alicia Wilson is a professor of hydrogeology in the School of the School of the Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina. She specializes in coastal hydrogeology, with a particular focus on coastal ecohydrology and submarine groundwater exchange. A fellow of the Geological Society of America, Wilson has served as the chair the GSA Hydrogeology Division and the Director of the School of the Earth, Ocean, and Environment. She is a recipient of the University of South Carolina’s Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award. Wilson holds a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University, an MS from Stanford University, and a BA from Dartmouth College. She held a National Research Council Postdoctoral Research fellowship at the USGS in Reston, VA, and held a postdoc at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Sponsored by The Groundwater Foundation, the Henry Darcy Distinguished Lecture Series in Groundwater Science fosters interest and excellence in groundwater science and technology. It was established in 1986 and named in honour of Henry Darcy of France for his 1856 investigations that established the physical basis upon which groundwater hydrogeology has been studied ever since.
The lecture will take place from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. in EIT 1015.
Save the date: Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) will be hosting a Spring 2023 PhD graduates dinner reception on Monday, June 5 at Federation Hall from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Doctoral graduate students (including up to one guest of their choosing) and their graduate supervisor(s) are invited to attend a complimentary dinner reception to commemorate their achievements.
This event is in addition to the University-wide convocation ceremonies taking place in spring 2023.