Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs announces new Director

A message from Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs.

On Monday, October 5, Marianne Simm began her role as the Director, Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs. Marianne joins the University of Waterloo from Brescia University College where she most recently held the position of Vice-Principal, Students. Brescia is an affiliated campus at Western University. Her portfolio covered recruitment and admissions, Registrar's Office, academic advising, student life and housing, campus ministry and communications.

“I’m delighted to welcome Marianne and am pleased to have her join the senior leadership group in GSPA” says Jeff Casello, associate vice-president, graduate studies and postdoctoral affairs. 

Over the course of her tenure at Brescia University College, Marianne has travelled extensively internationally in support of recruitment and partnership development for the university. She is thrilled to be joining the University of Waterloo team and to work with such a diverse and culturally rich student population. She brings a deep appreciation for the student experience and is looking forward to working with the GSPA and University of Waterloo team to further its mission supporting our graduate students and the overall postdoctoral experience.

New Waterloo sign installed at University Avenue

A message from the Campus Wayfinding Program.

It may have been a while since you last came to the Waterloo campus, but the next time you visit via the University Avenue entrance, you will be greeted by a new welcome sign. The towering three-piece structure is fashioned from aluminum and glass and creates a unique aesthetic and signature look.

The welcome sign is part of the Campus Wayfinding Program (CWP) and its shape, colours and materials provide an eye-catching first contact with the visual language used on a multitude of sign types across campus. The program includes maps, trail markers, location and building signs as well as directional signs.

Designed to improve the arrival and navigation experience, the CWP considered many facets including functionality, visibility, legibility, accessibility, branding, visual attractiveness, consistency, ease of maintenance, cost and adaptability.

Waterloo’s program takes a multimodal approach, integrating pedestrian and vehicular wayfinding, public transit, cycling and public parking. Future phases of the program are to include interior and digital wayfinding.

Development involved input from all campus communities and was supported through an advisory group, that represented students, all faculties, alumni, key user groups and experts. Assisting the project was Entro Communications, a firm with extensive experience in wayfinding programs.

For more information on the CWP visit uwaterloo.ca/wayfinding/.

Get your (free) ticket to join the inaugural CEE Employer Impact Awards ceremony

Each year, University of Waterloo co-op employers provide quality learning experiences and growth opportunities for more than 20,000 students.  

We are celebrating the exceptional impact they make through the inaugural Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE) Employer Impact Awards. This event will honour CEE employers that made an impact on their co-op students, their industry, our larger campus community and beyond. The ceremony, which will include feature videos and guest speakers, will be held virtually at 12:00 p.m. ET on October 8.

“It’s an honour to work with our global network of employers to create rich, quality learning experiences for students,” says Norah McRae, associate provost of CEE. “Collectively, we future-proof our economy by developing adaptable, resilient and talented students with a strong desire for lifelong learning.”

We’ll be announcing the winners of the following awards:

• Impact in Sustainability
• Impact in Innovation
• Impact in Interdisciplinary Recruitment
• Impact in Research
• Impact in International Excellence
• Impact on Student Experience (voted by students)

Ross Johnston, executive director of Co-operative Education, says that employers enable students to be ready for the future workforce. “Every co-op experience creates a space for our employers to harness the power of students’ enthusiasm, academic knowledge and interest in learning,” he says. “Through such supportive and inclusive co-op experiences, our students find meaning and purpose.”

You can register for the Employer Impact Awards here. We hope you can join us as we celebrate these outstanding employer partners.

Pharmacy co-op program participants rise to pandemic challenges

By Alana Rigby. This article was originally published on Waterloo Stories.

Anthony Miller has put in many long days in the seven months since COVID-19 first hit Canada. He’s the experiential learning coordinator for Waterloo Pharmacy’s co-operative education program and along with the experiential team, particularly Sarah de Waal and Professor Nancy Waite, he’s overcome many hurdles to ensure Pharmacy students continue to experience safe co-op work terms.

COVID-19 has impacted 2020 co-op work terms in the winter, spring and Fall Terms, with some jobs being cancelled and others created on very short notice.

“I’ve been so impressed with how resilient our students have been,” Miller says. “All of our students on co-op in March were on their very first work term so were very junior students. Some were working in health-care institutions that were caring for COVID patients during those early outbreaks. Many others were in front-line positions in community pharmacies. Despite these challenges and the constant uncertainty, our students remained professional and adaptable.”

For some students, the pandemic caused a dramatic shift in job duties. In hospital sites, students were no longer allowed on patient floors and instead took on new roles in different parts of the hospital or worked remotely. In a few cases, work terms unfortunately came to an end a few weeks early. To navigate all these changes, the School’s experiential team connected with students, having one-on-one conversations to assess their situations and determine if additional actions were required. A “command center,” made up of everyone on the team and led by Waite, met daily to go over the previous day’s updates.

“Our co-op employers were fantastic partners through all of the chaos,” Miller says. “Logistically, many employers were spending more money to have all the right protective equipment which was in very short supply. Sites had to change processes, puts up barriers, add deliveries and more.”

Many pharmacies saw a decrease in customer traffic or faced uncertainty over what would happen next.

“Even still they kept students employed and commented on how helpful it was to have students at that time,” Miller says.

As the Winter Term came to an end, the experiential team was already ramping up for spring work terms. Twenty jobs were cancelled due to the pandemic at the last minute, leaving 20 students potentially without work. Miller and his team worked hard to connect with the students, seeing what their interests and preferences were for a job and then reached out to employers to see if they might be able to hire.

“It was a whirlwind, identifying 20 jobs again as we were also recruiting for the fall 2020 term. We had to do additional recruiting, application process, interviews and hiring at the last minute,” Miller says. “We typically have more jobs than students, but to fill roughly $200,000 of co-op jobs was indeed a task!”

The team was able to secure additional jobs within two weeks for all 20 students, with many faculty, community and hospital partners stepping up to hire.

Norah McRae, associate provost of Co-operative and Experiential Education at Waterloo, says the fact that the co-op program remained so strong is a testament to how appreciated this option is for students and their employers — especially since this is the only pharmacy co-op program in Canada.

“The efforts of the pharmacy team to secure Spring 2020 work terms demonstrate an outstanding level of care and dedication to our co-op students,” McRae says. “Waterloo students have skills that are especially relevant and applicable in this global pandemic, and we’re grateful for our employer partners who recognize and leverage their talents.”

Over the spring 2020 term, pharmacy students have been combatting COVID either on the front lines in community pharmacies and hospitals or supporting the health-care system through other organizations like the government, insurance and pharmacy industry.

“Both students and employers have dealt with new stresses — the need for personalized protective equipment (PPE), the fear of contracting the virus and infecting loved ones, the drastic ebbs and flows in workload,” Miller says. “But through collaboration, we’ve been able to ensure that our students gain valuable work experiences that very few pharmacy graduates will ever receive. We’re grateful to all our partners for their support in these challenging times.”

There has never been a better (or more affordable) time to hire a co-op student! We’ve increased our flexibility to help you tap into the best available talent from more 120 programs at Waterloo. And with unprecedented federal funding opportunities, you can subsidize and sometimes completely cover the cost of your hire, regardless of your business size. There’s still time to hire for the Fall 2020 work term—contact us today.

Library Week a real marvel and other notes

"Each year during Canadian Library Month, the Library takes the opportunity to give back to the students, faculty, staff and alumni that we serve daily," says a note from the Library. "Due to our primarily virtual environment, the Library has expanded festivities into a week-long event from October 5 to 9. All University of Waterloo community members are invited to participate in any of the fifteen activities happening throughout the week."

Avengers assemble! Are you ready for a week of fun and educational Avengers-themed events? There are many chances to win prizes and learn about library resources along the way! Be sure to tune into the Library’s social media accounts on Friday for the announcement of the “Every hero has a story” writing contest, along with a special “Marvelesque” recap video of the week (hint: watch for the bonus scene).

There are important changes coming to Open Data API, according to a notification from IST.

"The legacy Open Data API, version 2, is currently running with critical issue support only; future development or fixes will not be implemented," says a note from IST. "At the end of 2020, the underlying infrastructure will no longer be supported by the vendor. Version 3 of the Open Data API is live with a subset of existing data sets. As we have committed to serving authorized and authoritative data, not all version 2 endpoints will be replaced."

You are encouraged to test and make the switch to version 3 as soon as possible. Version 3 will add several additional endpoints for which authoritative data exists, including news, events, and blogs. Read the full update notice in the Open Data Confluence Space or follow the blog/news space for updates.  

Anyone with questions and concerns can submit a query through the GitHub Open Data repository.

The Registrar's Office has posted the Fall 2020 final examination schedule. The final examination period for fall term runs from December 9 to 23, 2020.