Friday, February 23, 2024

It's a clean Slate for undergraduate admissions

A message from the Registrar’s Office.

In October 2023, a project team comprised of staff from the Registrar’s Office, Information Systems & Technology, and the Project Management Office was established to begin work on the implementation of Technolution’s Slate Admissions and Enrollment platform, which will deliver an integrated recruiting/admissions system for undergraduate applications and provide a tailored solution that will further enable optimization for future needs of the institution. In addition to the Waterloo project team, an external implementation partner, RHB, has been hired and began work with Waterloo this January. RHB handled the implementation of McMaster’s Slate instance, and our project is harnessing lessons learned from their depth of experience.  

With the goal of understanding the capabilities of Slate and how Waterloo can build an efficient and transparent system experience, the project team has completed the Slate-Technolutions comprehensive training. During the early months of the project, staff also worked to define project scope and relevant business processes, reaching out to partners across campus to better understand how undergraduate admissions processes affect other units and how to meet the needs of all stakeholders, applicants, and staff alike.

As we work with our implementation partner RHB to build the Slate system for Waterloo, decisions will be informed not only by a data-first approach, but with a focus on the experience of our applicants and staff, leveraging feedback captured from upcoming user acceptance testing and training initiatives.

Project background

Over 65,000 undergraduate applications for admission are received and evaluated by the University's Admissions team each year. This process often requires collaboration with colleagues from across more than 30 academic programs, representative of all six Faculties. Use of supplemental assessment tools beyond applicant grades, including interviews, questionnaires, portfolios, and Mathematics contests, aid in making an admissions determination. The Slate Implementation initiative, as well as the Holistic Admissions Exploration initiative, are two areas of focus originating from the main Admissions Process Review project, a project motivated, in part, by the need to change current supporting technology (OnBase) as well as the desire to understand and implement best practices to ensure inclusive, equitable admissions. The Admissions Process Review project was informed by the work done by the President’s Anti-Racism Taskforce and the Scarborough Charter. 

Visit the project website to learn more about the work we’re doing to enhance the undergraduate admissions process at Waterloo.

Retirement reception for Marilyn Thompson on March 14

A message from the Provost's Office.

Friends and colleagues of Marilyn Thompson, Special Advisor to the Provost on Organizational Strategy, we would like to invite you to join them for a retirement reception in her honour on Thursday, March 14, at the University Club.

Marilyn has worked at Waterloo for a decade and has been a great influence in driving excellence, continuous improvement at the University through her office and reporting areas of Human Resources, Organizational and Human Development, and change management.  

During her time as the Associate Provost, Human Resources, Marilyn lead many key initiatives for the University, including achieving Gold in Excellence Canada’s Excellence, Innovation and Wellness Standard, being recognized as one Canada Top 100 Employer over multiple years, and ensuring that Waterloo was recognized as not only one of the most innovative universities in the world, but also one of the most employee-focused. 

In the past year, Marilyn has continued her work to effect change and be a transformative force at the University through her role as the Special Advisor to the Provost on Organizational Strategy providing leadership support in planning and overseeing opportunities for process, system, and organizational improvements.

The retirement open house will be held from 3:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. at the University Club, with speeches beginning at 4:00 p.m. Please join us in celebrating Marilyn’s many contributions and achievements and wishing her well in her upcoming retirement. Please RSVP by Friday, March 1.

A funding information session is on the Horizon

A message from the Office of Research.

University of Waterloo faculty and staff are invited to an information session about Horizon Europe Pillar II funding opportunities.  

Hosted by the Office of Research, the information session with Luigi Scarpa-de-Masellis, Senior Advisor, Economic and Commercial Affairs, Delegation of the European Union will take place on Thursday, February 29. Two options are available: 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in person in the Enterprise Theatre, EC5, 1111 and 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., online via MS Teams. Each session will include a 30-minute presentation and 30-minute Q&A.

More details and registration for each session can be found on the Horizon Europe information session page.

Registration opens for University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference 2024

A message from the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

Registration is now open for the 15^th annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference taking place in person on May 2, 2024, with a day of online workshops taking place on May 1, 2024. Last year saw over 500 faculty members, staff, and students gather to learn from and with one another around the theme of embedding care and kindness into our teaching. Our 2024 conference theme is Sparking and Sustaining Engagement. We are excited to welcome Jessie Moore, Director of the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University, as our keynote speaker, as well as Craig Fortier (Professor, Social Development Studies, Renison University College) and Suzanne Kearns (Professor, Geography, and Founding Director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics), who will each recreate a successful instructional approach in our Igniting Our Practice plenary session, which showcases some of the excellent teaching being done on our campus. 

The registration deadline is Friday, April 26, 2024.  

Friday's notes

The Warriors Women’s basketball team will be taking on Ottawa tomorrow in the PAC for an OUA quarter-final game at 6:00 p.m. Buy your tickets today! 

The Spiritus Ensemble, conducted by Ken Hull, Professor Emeritus at Conrad Grebel University College, is inviting members of the University community to join them at Kitchener's St. John's Anglican Church for Bach Vespers in Lent on Sunday, February 25, at 4:00 p.m. Admission is by donation.

Finally, staring longingly at a vending machine's tantalizing offerings is a time-honoured pre-snack tradition, but some sharp-eyed students recently grew suspicious that some vending machines on campus might be staring back at them via a tiny camera and facial recognition software (whose error pop-up seen at left gave the game away). The case of the curious confection was discussed on the uwaterloo subreddit, before the story was broken by and covered in mathNEWS (followed by Imprint) and featured in local media. The latest word is that the vending machines are going to be removed. I guess you could say that, thanks to some on-campus Smarties, the milk chocolate will melt in your mouth, not in the hands of Mr. Big.

(Photograph courtesy of Anthony Chen)