Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Welcoming new Warriors to Orientation

A message from the Student Success Office.

Tomorrow, we begin welcoming more than 9,600 new undergrad and grad students to Waterloo. Here are the highlights:

• August 29 to August 31: International students get settled and learn about life in Canada at International Orientation
• August 29 to September 1: Campus residence move-in days
• August 30, 31 or September 1: Parent and Supporter Orientation runs in the Village 1 (V1) Great Hall
• September 1: Waterloo Orientation kicks-off for all undergraduate students with Warrior Welcome
• September 2 to 3: Faculty programming begins
• September 3: Graduate Orientation welcomes grad students in Physical Activity Complex (PAC), Student Life Centre (SLC), Health Expansion Building (EXP), and Graduate House (GH)
• September 4: Drop-in events continue for new undergraduate students as classes begin; and
• September 7: Orientation wraps up with an action-packed Black and Gold Day
• September 7: All Waterloo students are invited to the first on-campus concert event in over a decade. Tickets on sale now for WUSA x UWaterloo presents Dillon Francis

If you stumble upon a student looking a little lost, or if you’re curious about what’s planned for the week, take a peek at the open Orientation schedule in Portal.

Orientation at Waterloo is a partnership between the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association (WUSA), the Graduate Student Association (GSA), the Student Success Office (SSO) and all six faculties.

United College golf tournament a hole-in-one for outdoor amenities project

By Rebecca Wagner.

Alumni and friends recently teed-off in support of the 15^th annual United College golf tournament at Springfield Golf & Country Club, raising a record amount in support of the College’s outdoor amenities project. 

Construction of the outdoor amenities, which will include an outdoor pavilion with a fire pit and barbeque, a basketball court/pickleball court/skating rink, is expected to wrap up mid-September, in time for the incoming cohort of students to enjoy.   

Funds raised at the tournament will enhance the amenities and the student experience by allowing for the purchase of furniture and equipment such as Muskoka chairs, pickleball equipment, picnic tables, skates, and ice rink equipment, making the United College Green an even more inviting place for students across the University to build lasting connection and community.

Thank you to the approximately 150 alumni, staff, students, and friends who came together to make the golf tournament a huge success.  Thanks to their hard work and generosity, United College is approximately $28,000 closer to turning the outdoor amenities dream into reality and shaping the College’s next 60 years of student success, social connection, and community.       

See you on the United College Green. 

Following curiosity in different directions

By Karen Kawawada. This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared on the School of Optometry & Vision Science's website.

Dr. Trefford Simpson’s career in optometry didn’t get off to the most promising start. As a teenager in Johannesburg, South Africa, his primary interest was playing soccer. He applied to optometry school, among other programs, just because it seemed interesting. And, initially, he didn’t get in.

Then, as he was trying to decide on next steps, Simpson got a telegram saying a vacancy had arisen in the optometry program at the Witwatersrand College for Advanced Technical Education.

It was the beginning of a long and productive career in which Simpson would eventually be cited more than 10,000 times, ranked among the top two per cent of most-cited scientists and named a Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO).

A professor at the University of Waterloo School of Optometry and Vision Science for more than 30 years, Simpson is winding down his full-time career at the end of August. He leaves a varied legacy of scholarship as well as a reputation for superb teaching and mentorship.

As a young man, though, Simpson didn’t love optometry school. In fact, he briefly considered leaving. After graduation, he completed his compulsory military service, partly as an “okay” military optometrist. Then, to forestall going into private practice, he went to the University of Houston in Texas for a master’s degree.

“The University of Houston changed my life,” says Simpson. “The notion that I could actually have a career as a vision scientist was astounding.”

Dr. Trefford Simpson in his lab.

To fulfil the conditions of his student loan, Simpson returned to South Africa after his master’s. However, it was a tumultuous time. Pressure was building internally and externally to do away with apartheid, but the government was digging in its heels. As opponents of apartheid, Simpson and his wife decided they couldn’t stay, so they returned to Houston for Simpson to do a PhD.

Following his PhD, Simpson and his young family – by this time, he had twin sons – went to the University of Toronto for a postdoctoral fellowship. Then, in 1994, he came to the University of Waterloo, initially as a research assistant professor.

One discovery Simpson made outside the lab: he was born the same day as the University of Waterloo, on July 3, 1957. It must have been meant to be.

Over the years, Simpson has followed his interests into varied fields of vision science. As a PhD student, he initially researched the aging of the human retina. However, for various reasons, that project didn’t work out, so he had to pivot. His new topic became how humans judge direction.

“The way you judge direction from one eye isn’t the same as the way you judge direction from the other eye, so the brain deals with that by putting the ego’s centre right between your two eyes,” explains Simpson. “That’s not a new insight. A seminal paper was published in 1792 and I did my thesis defence in 1992. What I did was work on empirically demonstrating these rules and how the eyes work together to coordinate vision.”

During his postdoc, Simpson worked primarily on visual neuroscience – specifically, the effects of multiple sclerosis on the visual system.

When he came to Waterloo, Simpson initially researched how binocular vision – how the two eyes work together – affects contact lens wear. It was in one sense a homecoming – when he was an undergraduate optometry student, Dr. Desmond Fonn taught the class about contact lenses. Fonn later founded the Centre for Contact Lens Research, now the Centre for Ocular Research and Education (CORE), at the University of Waterloo.

Read the full story on the School of Optometry & Vision Science's website.