Monday, May 5, 2025

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• Campus Wellness achieves zero waitlist for Counselling Services
• Roll up your sleeves and get dirty with the Sustainability Office

• Peter Bartlett to deliver distinguished lecture tomorrow

• Senate meets today and other notes

Campus Wellness achieves zero waitlist for Counselling Services

A message from Campus Wellness, Counselling Services.

Campus Wellness is excited to share that Counselling Services has reached and maintained a zero waitlist for students seeking support - down from previous wait times of up to seven months. With new evening hours, streamlined processes, and a dedicated team, students can now typically see a member of the counselling team within days of booking an appointment. Through ongoing process improvements and regular program evaluations, Campus Wellness will adapt its services to meet the evolving needs of our student community.

We offer a variety of personalized support options, including individual sessions, group workshops, and connections with counsellors who share similar lived experiences. Students can book counselling appointments by calling 519-888-4096 and selecting ‘2’ for Counselling Services.

How you can help support student well-being:

• Attend a training session: Join one of five Responding to Students in Distress sessions to learn how to recognize and respond with empathy. Spots are filling up so register soon in Portal. Two additional dates, in July and August, have been added.
• Check your mailbox: Departments received a quick-reference postcard with tips and steps for supporting students in distress. If you did not receive postcards or need more, you can request additional copies.
• Share resources: Help connect students with wellness supports to foster a caring, community-driven campus.
• Engage with Be You: Collaborate with our team to create a consistent approach to student mental health promotion.

Thank you for your ongoing support in our students’ mental health and well-being!

Roll up your sleeves and get dirty with the Sustainability Office

The Sustainability Office is looking for a few green thumbs.

There are a number of volunteer opportunities this month for people who want to make the campus a little greener.

On Wednesday, May 7 from 12 noon to 2:00 p.m. you can join the Sustainability Office in removing invasive buckthorn to support biodiversity on campus at the Buckthorn Pull event. "Students and employees are invited to help remove buckthorn shrubs and seedlings, using a variety of hand tools, while learning more about the importance of supporting biodiversity and nature on campus and in our community," says a note on the Sustainability Office's website. "Gloves, tools and light refreshments will be provided." The pulling party will meet between Village 1 - South 3 Building and the forest. There's still time to register.

From pulling to planting: you can help plant 150 native trees and shrubs across campus at the Spring Terr Planting event to help the Sustainability Office support campus naturalization efforts while explore some of the beautiful green spaces in our community. The event takes place on Tuesday, May 13 from 12 noon to 2:00 p.m. Register on ticketfi.

On Wednesday, May 21, you can join the Sustainability Office in planting native herbaceous plants in the Healing Forest understory at the Woodlot Understory Planting event. The event takes place from 12 noon to 2:00 p.m. and participants will meet between Village 1's South 3 Building and the forest. Funding for this project was provided by TD Friends of the Environment Foundation. Register today!

Peter Bartlett to deliver distinguished lecture tomorrow

A message from the Cheriton School of Computer Science.

The Cheriton School of Computer Science is pleased to welcome Peter Bartlett, Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind, for a distinguished lecture on Tuesday, May 6 at 10:30 a.m. in DC 1302 and via Zoom.

Bartlett's talk is entitled "Gradient Optimization and the Power of Large Step-sizes."

“Deep learning, the technology underlying the recent progress in AI, has revealed some major surprises from the perspective of theory,” reads the talk’s abstract. “Optimization in deep learning relies on simple gradient descent algorithms that are traditionally viewed as a time discretization of gradient flow. However, in practice, large step sizes — large enough to cause oscillation of the loss — exhibit performance advantages.”

“This talk will review recent results on gradient descent with logistic loss with a step size large enough that the optimization trajectory is at the “edge of stability.” We show the benefits of this initial oscillatory phase for linear functions and for multi-layer networks, and identify an asymptotic implicit bias that gradient descent imposes for a large family of deep networks.”

Peter Bartlett is Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind. At Berkeley, he is the Machine Learning Research Director at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, Director of the Foundations of Data Science Institute, and Director of the Collaboration on the Theoretical Foundations of Deep Learning, and he has served as Associate Director of the Simons Institute. He is President of the Association for Computational Learning, Honorary Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the Australian National University, and co-author with Martin Anthony of the book Neural Network Learning: Theoretical Foundations.

Senate meets today and other notes

The 2025 spring term begins today, with lectures, classes, and the co-operative work term kicking off.

The University's Senate meets at 3:30 p.m. in NH 3407 and on Zoom. Among the agenda items:

• a motion that Senate recommend the Board of Governors approve revisions to Policy 40 – The Chair;
• a motion to approve the amended Constitution for the Faculty of Health;
• a motion that Senate establish a new committee, the Senate Planning and Finance Committee effective September 1, 2025;
• a motion that Senate approve the restructuring of the Senate Graduate & Research Council into two separate councils of Senate – the Senate Graduate Council and the Senate Research and Innovation Council –  effective September 1, 2025;
• a motion that the Senate Executive Committee accept and recommend that Senate approve and give first reading to the amendments to Senate Bylaw 2 effective September 1, 2025; and that Senate Executive Committee recommend to Senate that said bylaw amendments be subject to Senate approval of the proposals to establish the Senate Planning and Finance Committee and the Senate Graduate Council and the Senate Research and Innovation Council;
• a motion to review a submission from a senator to amend Senate Bylaw 4 to add the president of the University of Waterloo Staff Association (UWSA) as an ex officio member of Senate;
• a motion to approve the creation of a Bachelor of Science and Financial Management (BScFM) program with three new science and three new business specializations, and, to retire the Bachelor of Science, Biotechnology/Chartered Professional Accountancy program at the same time, effective September 1, 2026.
• a motion to elect Meray Sadek as the graduate student senator to the Board of Governors for a two-year term to August 31, 2027.

Senate will also receive and discuss reports from the Task Force on Principles for Institutional Partnerships and the Task Force on Social Responsibility in Investing, and discuss the Statement on Institutional Neutrality, Institutional Restraint and Communications – Guidelines for Collective Bodies. Senate will also have a discussion about its governance process.

Monday May 5 is recognized as the National Day of Awareness for Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people (MMIWG2S), also known as Red Dress Day. The Office of Indigenous Relations and the Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Office are co-hosting Red Dress Reflections- Transforming Tomorrow today beginning at 10:30 a.m. on the BMH green. The event will then move indoors to HLTH LHS-1621 for a talk by guest speaker Cher Obediah and a screening of her short film Beautiful Disaster.

Can AI read the room? "Learn why Emotional Intelligence still matters at our next Table Talk Series," says a note from the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism. "Join Mifrah Abid, our Anti-racism Specialist, for an engaging session on how EI can help you boost morale, navigate conflict, and create a greater sense of belonging at work—through real stories and practical insights. AI may be fast, but Emotional Intelligence (EI) is what connects us- with intention." Register today!

The webinar takes place on Wednesday, May 15 from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m.