Monday, January 13, 2025

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• Whatever 2025 may bring, Waterloo is On It
• Join the Disability Affinity Program
• Campus-wide puzzle hunt Key Clues returns with "Alfred Hitchcock vibes"
• Reminder: Proposals due for the 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference
• Winter Welcome Week begins and other notes

Whatever 2025 may bring, Waterloo is On It

A message from Michael Dorr, Associate Vice-President, Marketing & Brand Strategy.

Each year, we launch a brand campaign with the goal of raising the University of Waterloo’s profile and reinforcing our differentiators among Canada’s most influential decision-makers – employers, business leaders, government leaders, and academic leaders (many of whom are parents of prospective students).  The timing of the campaign also corresponds to reputational surveys (conducted by Macleans, Times Higher Education, QS, etc.) – with the goal of raising Waterloo’s visibility and top-of-mind awareness among the audiences who shape our rankings performance.  Ultimately, the goal is to amplify the innovative and transformational work that is happening ONLY at Waterloo.

We’re thrilled to announce the University of Waterloo’s brand campaign – Waterloo is On It – launches today with powerful stories of our community members tackling the world’s most pressing challenges.  This year we’re featuring health innovations as we get ready to host the Times Higher Education's Digital Health 2025, where Waterloo will welcome the world, on April 10 and 11. 

The stories featured build on the amazing work of the forthcoming Global Futures Report and reflects a cross-section of stories featuring our six faculties, talented researchers, students, alumni, inspiring entrepreneurial ventures, the astounding impact of co-op, and more:

• Fighting cancer with code
• Stopping a stroke faster
• Eliminating stress with neurotech
• Rebuilding bones with nanomaterials
• Decoding cerebral palsy
• Helping hospitals go green
• Preventing cancer and chronic disease

Visit uwaterloo.ca/on-it to explore health breakthroughs developed at Waterloo.

Thank you to the Waterloo community, near and far, for sharing your groundbreaking work with us. It’s inspiring what we can achieve when we think differently, act with purpose and work together. And thank you to the Marketing and Strategic Initiatives team for bringing this campaign to life.

Watch for thecampaign across social media, the web, connected TV plus a series of billboards in airports, on transit shelters and on highways in the GTA and Waterloo Region.  If you happen across our ads ‘in the wild’, please share and tag @UofWaterloo on Instagram or @University of Waterloo on LinkedIn!

Join the Disability Affinity Program

A message from the Campus Accessibility Team.

Staff and faculty are invited to join the new Disability Affinity Program to connect with peers and advance accessibility and disability inclusion.

The Disability Affinity Program is a space for University of Waterloo students, staff, and faculty to seek peer support, community, and collaboration. The Disability Affinity Program comprises the Student Disability Community Network, the Employee Disability Community Network, and the Accessibility Ally Network. 

Members of the University of Waterloo community with lived experience of disability or neurodivergence are invited to attend the Student or Employee Disability Community network to seek peer support, knowledge exchange, and community. Monthly meetings will alternate between virtual and in-person.

The Accessibility Ally Network supports the advancement of accessibility and disability inclusion across our campuses by building a space for those with academic areas of expertise, accessibility mandates or ambitions, and/or lived experiences with disability to collaborate and exchange knowledge. Monthly, virtual meetings showcase educational presentations and campus projects to facilitate learning and collaboration.

Learn more about meeting times and register for the mailing list to receive virtual meeting links at Disability Affinity Program. Connect with the Campus Accessibility Team at aoda@uwaterloo.ca with any questions.

Campus-wide puzzle hunt Key Clues returns with “Alfred Hitchcock vibes”

By Fatima Rathore.

If you love escape rooms, puzzles, or doing the daily Wordle, then you won’t want to miss Key Clues. Founded in fall 2022 as a wellness activity for students from the Faculty of Mathematics, it has puzzles for everyone.

This year Key Clues will feature an immersive narrative and creative design in addition to fifteen custom-designed puzzles. Ty Ghaswala, Key Clues founder and assistant professor (teaching stream) with the Centre for Education and Computing, and his team of volunteer “enigmatologists” have been working since May 2024 to develop and test the puzzles, design, and narrative for this year’s competition. “Key Clues 2025 features the participant receiving a series of cryptic messages from The Watcher, a mysterious figure with ties to Waterloo’s forgotten past,” says Elisabetta Paiano, Digital Communications Officer for the Faculty of Mathematics and co-creative director of this year’s competition. “It’s been so fun to transform the competition from a collection of puzzles to a cohesive, cool experience. Think Alfred Hitchcock, film noir, Cold War spy vs. spy vibes.”

Attend the Key Clues kick-off event in the DC Fishbowl on January 20 and sign up as teams or as individuals for a campus-wide puzzle hunt this winter, from January 27 to February 3.

Reminder: Proposals due for the 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference

A message from the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE).

There is just one week left to submit your proposal for the 16^th annual University of Waterloo Teaching and Learning Conference!

This year’s conference—taking place in-person on Thursday, May 1—has a theme of “Disruption and Uncertainty as Drivers for Change.” We will centre our conversation around strategies for responding to disruption and uncertainty and leveraging them as occasions to innovate and improve our educational practices. How do we address challenges and opportunities that arise from crises, whether local or global, individual or collective? How do we deal with these disruptions to our carefully planned terms or programs? What are the key lessons to take into future disruptions? How do we support students and faculty and staff members? How do we partner with colleagues and other units on campus to support each other and leverage each other’s strengths? How can we use technology to limit the impact of disruptions? How do we engage with local and global communities to bridge academia and real-world challenges? What new directions are we taking?  

We invite you to submit proposals for presentations, panel discussions, workshops, alternative sessions, and posters that address these questions. We also welcome proposals from recipients of Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) grants. Again, this year, we invite proposals for pre-conference workshops and panels which will be held online on Wednesday, April 30. 

For more information check out the Call for Proposals website, and be sure to submit your proposal by next Monday, January 20, at 11:59 p.m.

Winter Welcome Week begins and other notes

The second week of term has commenced, and with it comes WUSA's Winter Welcome Week. This week will feature events like the Welcome Back Brunch, Esports Gaming Lounge, and, yes, even Sex Toy Bingo. New and returning students can find out more about getting involved on campus at the Campus Life Fair on Wednesday, January 15 and at the two-day Clubs and Societies Fair on Thursday, January 16 and Friday, January 17.

"Map the System is back!" says a note from Conrad Grebel University College. "Student teams compete in the winter term to map real-world complex problems using systems thinking."

The UWaterloo launch event will be held on Tuesday, January 14, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at Conrad Grebel University College.

"For people who haven't participated in Map the System before, the launch is a great place to start," the note from Grebel continues. "Some professors embed Map the System in their courses, community partners offer real world challenges to tackle, and teams with at least one student or recent graduate research and map the challenge landscapes."

Registration closes January 31 with campus finals in April, the national finals in Banff in May, and the global finals taking place in Oxford, UK in June.