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Waterloo named one of Canada's Healthy Workplace Month Great Employers
Excellence Canada and Canada Life have honoured the University of Waterloo as one of the 2019 Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month® Great Employers for its investment in workplace wellness.
Waterloo, along with twenty-two other organizations, are being celebrated for their planning and actions to foster physically and psychologically safe and healthy workplaces, striving to continually improve across four main areas of focus, namely:
- Healthy Lifestyles - helping employees develop and maintain healthy lifestyle practices.
- Mental Health and Workplace Culture – creating a culture reflects values that support mental health, such as trust, fairness, respect, diversity, inclusion and teamwork.
- Physical Environment - continually addressing matters of occupational health and safety
- Corporate Social Responsibility - The interrelationship with community, often seen as voluntary, going above and beyond what is legislated or required.
As part of the four areas of focus, Waterloo is receiving this award primarily for the coordination of the annual “Keeping Well at Work Day” conference in October during Healthy Workplace Month, the support work of the Healthy Workplace Committee, and the Healthy Workplace Statement endorsed by the President.
Waterloo’s investment in workplace health and wellness began as part of its commitment to be certified with Excellence Canada under the Excellence, Innovation and Wellness (EIW) standard as a framework for organizational improvement.
The press release from Excellence Canada and Canada life is available on the Healthy Workplace Committee website.
Waterloo 2020 photo calendar now available
A message from the W Store.
Our multi-season Calendar Photography Contest, run in partnership with the Marketing and Strategic Initiatives department, has finally come to a close. We received dozens of incredible photo submissions from UWaterloo students, staff and alumni. After much deliberation, and the help of our Instagram followers, we were able to decide on the twelve winning photos to be included in the calendar, along with the grand-prize-winning photo featured on the cover.
The official University of Waterloo 2020 calendars were printed on-campus at W Print and are now available for purchase at all W Store and W Store Essentials locations. It is available as both a wall calendar ($8.99) and a desk calendar ($4.99).
Dean of Mathematics stepping down in January
Stephen Watt, dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, will be stepping down from his administrative role for personal reasons as of January 21, 2020.
Vice-President, Academic & Provost Jim Rush made the announcement in a memo circulated to campus yesterday.
Professor Watt joined the University of Waterloo in 2015 as dean and professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. Professor Watt attained his PhD in computer science at the University of Waterloo in 1986. He previously held the title of Distinguished University Professor at Western University where he served for periods as Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra.
"On behalf of the university community, I want to thank Stephen for his leadership as dean and we look forward to his ongoing contribution as a faculty member," the provost writes. "I will appoint an interim dean after consultation with the Faculty of Mathematics and will communicate on this in due course. Meanwhile the normal process to appoint a new dean is well underway under the guidance of the nominating committee."
Campus prepares to go into hibernation
'Twas the weekend before Christmas, and all through the campus,
Several creatures were stirring, those calm and those anxious.
It is the last weekend before the holiday break, and though the last working day is Monday, December 23, University operations are already beginning to wind down.
It’s payday for employees on the monthly pay schedule, so if you’ve been holding out on your Christmas shopping, now’s the time. Human Resources has posted the pay dates for 2020.
Students will be writing the final few final exams on the exam schedule today and tomorrow.
The ECEC children’s program closes today at 12:00 p.m. and will re-open on Monday, January 6, 2020 with regular hours.
Several Food Services operations have closed down already, including CEIT café; Chatime, DC Byte; Eye Opener Café; FRSH Vegan, Starbucks AHS; H³ Café; LA Café; ML Diner; South Side Marketplace; Williams Fresh Café; and REVelation. Food Service locations that are shutting down today include:
- The Market, CMH (closing at 8:00 p.m.);
- Brubakers, SLC (closing at 5:00 p.m.);
- Tim Hortons, DC (closing at 7:30 p.m.);
- Tim Hortons, ML (closing at 3:00 p.m.); and
- Browsers, DP (closing at 7:30 p.m.)
Mudie’s in Village 1 will be closing at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday, December 21.
The Turnkey Desk in the Davis Centre (Turnkey Desk @ DC) will close for the term on Saturday, December 21, reopening on Friday, January 3, 2020.
IST service desks will be closing down over the weekend. The Dana Porter Service Desk will be closed from Sunday, December 22 to Sunday, January 5, 2020, with regular hours resuming on Monday, January 6, 2020. The Davis Centre Service Desk will be operating under reduced hours from December 22 onwards.
Check the Daily Bulletin on Monday for a full listing of openings and closings on the last day and the holiday break. For those of you who managed to get Monday off, have a merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays!