Thursday, May 22, 2025

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• Thank you for an amazing first UWaterloo Giving Day
• Evolving the future of Work-Integrated Learning through AI-Insights at Waterloo
• Infographics that educate and provoke from the Office of EDI-R

• Q and A with the Experts: Measles

Thank you for an amazing first UWaterloo Giving Day

A message from the Office of Advancement.

Thank you, UWaterloo faculty, staff and retirees for making our first-ever UWaterloo Giving Day an incredible success!

Your generosity and enthusiasm made all the difference — whether you made a gift, bought a cookie during the cookie campaign or shared the Giving Day message on social media, you played an important role in this milestone event. Together, we showed the true power of our UWaterloo spirit!

The impact of your contributions will be felt across campus, supporting many deserving causes. From enhancing scholarships to fueling our Warriors to funding research and academic programs, your generosity will directly benefit students and faculty, helping them to make meaningful contributions to our world.

We are still in the process of counting gifts and will share the final numbers with you soon. In the meantime, watch this short video for a message from Nenone Donaldson, vice-president, Advancement. Thank you again for coming together to make our first Giving Day unforgettable!

Evolving the future of Work-Integrated Learning through AI-Insights at Waterloo

A message from the Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic.

As we conclude our series about the three projects welcomed into the Teaching Innovation Incubator in the Winter, today’s article will look at the Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI)-insights and CEE-Faculty partnerships to evolve Work-Integrated Learning at the University of Waterloo project, spearheaded by Tonya Elliott and Judene Pretti, and how it seeks to enhance student skill-development and academic planning through the integration of the AI tool, 1Mentor, at Waterloo.

About 1Mentor

This project aims to leverage 1Mentor to provide students with tailored career and skill development pathways that align with their interests and respective disciplines to help them understand and address potential skill gaps in an ever-changing, ultra-competitive job market. 1Mentor was co-founded by Waterloo Alumni, Esteban Veintimilla, and informed by his own experiences as a Waterloo co-op student and Waterloo advisor in the BETS program at the Conrad School of Business and Entrepreneurship.

Project Scope and Timeline

1Mentor is intended to serve as a hub for students to identify workshops, professional development courses, and certificates to assist them in skills development work, with the end goal of acquiring transferable skills to strengthen their status as prospective employees.  The 1Mentor platform has been successfully piloted within the Work Experience (WE) Accelerate program and the team is preparing to ramp up usage for pre-first-work term co-op students and in targeted Centre for Career Development workshops throughout the spring and fall.  Preliminary research and stakeholder discussions about integrating the tool in academic settings are now underway. 

The ultimate goal is for the platform to help students identify curricular and co-curricular opportunities across campus as personalized pathways tailored to their respective academic interests and professional aspirations.

Part of the Waterloo at 100 vision is coordinating and collaborating within the University of Waterloo to unlock our full potential as an institution. This project is actively working to fulfill this target area by fostering connections between staff and students and actively working to collaborate with faculty as well. Preliminary stakeholder engagement has involved contacting and communicating with the faculties to gauge interest in future collaborations integrating 1Mentor into their course offerings.  We encourage faculty interesting in learning more or partnering with us to email tii@uwaterloo.ca and invite everyone to stay tuned for future engagement opportunities with the project team and 1Mentor tool by visiting the Incubator website.

Infographics that educate and provoke from the Office of EDI-R

A message from the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity, and Anti-Racism (EDI-R).

We are constantly surrounded by headlines, data, and official stories about how the world works. But how often do we stop to ask: Where do these ideas come from? Who benefits from them? What’s being left out?

That’s the thinking behind our new infographic series. Each visual guide tackles a familiar topic—how we’re governed, how accountability is dodged, how the news is told, how we understand the past, how merit is measured, or how data is presented—and invites us to look at them differently. "We wanted to create tools that don't just deliver answers but open up better questions," says Dr. Karim Wissa, Director of Policy & Programs. “There’s a lot of research on these issues, but it’s often hard to access because it takes a long time to read or use language that isn’t easy to understand. We wanted to make that knowledge easier for everyone—students, faculty, and staff—to access, so more people could have informed conversations about issues that affect their lives.”

We often think of the principles of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion as complicated and large-scale—but the work begins with small shifts in how we look at the world around us. How do we understand the issues we face, whose experiences do we take seriously, and what kinds of questions do we think are worth asking. These infographics are one way to pause, look again, and ask those questions differently—because how we frame a problem shapes what kinds of solutions we can imagine. That’s also the broader aim of our office: to show the dilemmas that affect us in clear, relevant, and non-prescriptive ways so more people are invited into the conversation and feel equipped to find approaches that work for them.

Faculty are beginning to use the infographics in their classrooms, as one professor noted, “As a department, we have taken to including these as resources in many of our online courses.  They save time on background material by introducing concepts to students in advance, allowing us to move more quickly into deeper, more in-depth class discussion. We also heard that students have often passed these infographics along to friends and family that they converse with about the ideas and critiques outlined in our classes. Overall, they are super meaningful, and we hope more are developed to continue encouraging conversations about responsible citizenship in these turbulent times.”

We invite you to explore the infographic series and see how a new perspective can spark new conversations. You’re welcome to use them in teaching, workshops, or team discussions.

Our office is currently exploring new collaborations with faculty on future infographic themes. If you're interested, please email equity@uwaterloo.ca.

Q and A with the Experts: Measles

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

Measles — or Rubeola — was eliminated in Canada in 1998, but it’s back with more than 1,600 measles cases reported in Ontario alone this year. Canada could lose its elimination status if measles continues to spread past October 2025, one year after the outbreak started. 

Dr. Zahid Butt, a professor in the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo, discusses the risks and protections.  

How bad is measles?

Symptoms of measles include fever, cough, red and watery eyes and a rash that spreads from the face to the trunk and then limbs. If you’re not vaccinated and you get measles, the possible complications are serious. You might develop pneumonia, brain inflammation, deafness, or blindness, and complications could lead to death in some cases. Measles is airborne and highly contagious. A person with measles can infect another 12 to 18 susceptible or unvaccinated people. In comparison, the reproduction number or R0 for COVID-19 is around three.

Who is most at risk from measles?

Unvaccinated or under-vaccinated individuals, children under five, adults over 20, pregnant individuals and immunocompromised individuals are at most risk of infection. Individuals who recover from measles have permanent immunity to the disease, and it is always better to get vaccinated than get the disease.   

Who should get vaccinated?

High vaccination coverage — more than 95 per cent — is necessary to stop the transmission of measles in a population. Children should receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, which covers measles, mumps and rubella. They should get one at 12 months and the second at 18 months of age. Adults born before 1970 should have one dose of MMR vaccine.

What does it mean to have an elimination status for measles in Canada?

To have elimination status means that there has been an interruption in the continuous transmission of a disease over a one-year period. Canada can retain its elimination status if we stop the transmission of the disease before mid-October 2025. Since vaccination is the best way to stop the spread of measles, it is imperative that people check their vaccination records. If they are under-vaccinated or unvaccinated, they should speak to their health-care provider or go to a walk-in clinic to get their measles vaccines as soon as possible.

(Photo credit for banner image: Natalya Maisheva/Getty Images)