Friday, September 27, 2024

Reminder: Waterloo is a smoke-free campus

The University of Waterloo transitioned to a smoke-free campus on July 1, 2024, when the  revised Policy 29  went into effect. All University property, including the Waterloo, Cambridge, Kitchener, and Stratford campuses, are covered in this updated policy that prohibits all forms of smoking, and the use of tobacco or cannabis products, e-cigarettes, or other vaping devices.  

The use of tobacco for traditional Indigenous cultural or spiritual purposes, such as smudging, is protected in the Ontario Human Rights Code and will oftentimes be a component of celebrations or other gatherings on campus. The University will also continue to meet other accommodations (such as medical) as required under the Code.   

The Smoke-Free  Waterloo website  contains important information and frequently asked questions on the policy. It also identifies the locations of four temporary designated smoking areas , which will be in place until April 30, 2025, and other locations off campus where smoking is permitted.  

For members of our community who would like help with smoking cessation, please take advantage of the  support resources  available to you.  

If you have questions about Waterloo’s transition to a smoke-free environment, visit the  smoke-free website or contact  smokefree@uwaterloo.ca. 

Teaching and Learning Month starts next week

A message from the Office of the Associate Academic Vice President and Teaching Innovation Incubator.

Beginning October 1, Teaching and Learning Month will bring a spotlight to both the new and existing programs and workshops being offered by Waterloo’s Academic Support Units as well as other campus partners that support teaching and learning.  

Join us over the month of October as we highlight some of the work being done across campus to support teaching and learning and opportunities for you to develop your teaching practice.  

Next week at a glance 

The month starts off with a number of sessions supporting professional development, such as understanding conflict, giving and receiving feedback, and creating supporting environments to support neurodivergence.  

There are many opportunities to get involved – please don’t feel like you need to attend everything! We encourage you to find sessions that fit your schedule and identify a few that resonate most with your interests, or where you’re likely to learn something new. 

Procurement system implementation project update

A message from Finance.

We are pleased to share that the WatProcure (powered by Jaggaer) eProcurement implementation project is progressing well and remains on track with an anticipated go live of the pilot phase set for late October of this year.  

We’ve successfully onboarded 17 fully verified punch out suppliers, including notable names such as Dell Canada, Apple Canada Inc., Staples, and Amazon.ca. This means many of our high-volume suppliers have already been loaded into WatProcure and will be available for go live later this Fall to facilitate purchases mimicking a buying experience similar to that of your most familiar online marketplaces. We will continue to onboard new suppliers as they become available!  Users currently logging into a UW account with one of these vendor sites will find the experience very much the same when they begin using WatProcure for these purchases. 

We are also excited to announce that many of our system contracts have now been loaded into WatProcure and we will continue to keep onboarding more. This will streamline and consolidate the ways in which people make purchase from these contracts.  

We continue to invite Suppliers to register their businesses within our Supplier registration portal. Our Suppliers will self-manage their own Supplier details including contacts, billing and banking information. We continue to invite more suppliers weekly and eventually all suppliers will be asked to set up an account in the portal! This alone will streamline the supplier management and payment processes currently being managed internally within Unit4.  

 At this part of the implementation, we’ve engaged with approximately 30 Functional Acceptance Testers across the Finance, Procurement, IST, and Office of Research groups who have rigorously tested over 80 purchasing scenarios from all different walks of UW life. With this crucial phase of testing now almost complete, we have moved on to User Acceptance Testing (UAT) which will run until mid October, engaging approximately 60 Faculty and Academic Support Unit volunteers from across campus.  

Thank you to all of our testers, not only for your time, but for your enthusiasm!  

As we wind down final configurations, we are moving heavily into final testing and training documentation and videos to make sure the system is ready for our campus end users coming this fall. Please stay tuned for details on our upcoming virtual road shows and open house events. This will give campus an opportunity to learn about WatProcure, what training resources and supports will be available to them, and gain a better understanding of what WatProcure is, what it’s used for, and how this implementation will impact their purchasing routines.  Planned onboarding will be staged over a period of weeks in late fall. 

As always, for the latest updates on the WatProcure eProcurement System implementation, please visit the WatProcure Procurement website and the Jaggaer eProcurement System Implementation project website.  

Thank you for your continued support! 

Pow Wow tomorrow and other notes

The 21^st annual Pow Wow takes place on Saturday, September 28 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at CIF Outdoor Field 7 on the University's North Campus. Hosted by the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre (WISC) and the University of Waterloo Office of Indigenous Relations (OIR), this one-day non-competitive celebration of Indigenous heritage promises to feature vendors, dancers, and singers from Waterloo region and beyond. The event is free to attend and open to all.

The latest Chemistry seminar will feature Lingzi Sang, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta speakin on The Evolving Structure, Interface, and Performance in Metal Ion Batteries – Through the Eyes of Operando Spectroscopy. 

"ll-solid-state batteries use non-volatile and non-flammable electrolytes and are considered a safe choice to satisfy the growing demand for energy storage," reads the seminar's abstract. "Using solid-state electrolytes also eliminates the need for unit-cell packing when fabricating tandem cells, potentially enabling further enhanced energy density. To date, key challenges present for developing electrochemically stable, mechanically robust electrolytes to accommodate ultra-thin, packable solid-state batteries. This seminar will discuss the evolving chemistries at the electrode/electrolyte interface that are responsible for limited cycling performance and strategies for producing mechanically enhanced solid-state electrolytes. Multidisciplinary characterization used for investing fundamental chemistry in these key battery processes will be in focus." 

Dr. Sang obtained her BS from Xiamen University and her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Arizona. Prior to joining the Department of Chemistry at the University of Alberta, Lingzi conducted her postdoc research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The seminar takes place today at 10:00 a.m. in the C2-361 Reading Room.

Information Systems & Technology (IST) has published the latest in the Atlassian Blog series entitled Get Started with Confluence Databases.

Just a reminder that the deadline to take the 2024 Sustainability Survey is today at 5:00 p.m. "The Sustainability Office is asking students, staff, faculty, and alumni to help shape sustainability at Waterloo by filling out the 2024 Sustainability Survey," says a note from the Sustainability Office. "Results from the Sustainability Survey will be used to help gauge current perceptions and knowledge about sustainability on campus, priorities for the campus community, satisfaction with existing efforts, as well as identifying opportunities for growth." Survey respondents will have the opportunity to enter to win one of two $50 WatCard top ups.