Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Register for Thursday's online Research Talks with Michaelle Jean

A message from the Office of Research.

Join Research Talks on Thursday, February 17 from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. for a special event celebrating Black History Month. Featuring The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Chancellor, St. Paul’s University College and former Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada, “Black History is World History: From Moment to Global Movement,” is sure to inspire you.

Please register to receive a link to take part in this presentation and discussion.

Research Talks is supported by the Research Support Fund.

President, provost provide update on winter term past February 28

"In the last week we have seen our campuses come alive once again as we made our return to in-person learning," wrote President Vivek Goel and Vice-President Academic & Provost James Rush in a memo circulated to campus Monday night. "We hope everyone who got to experience the campus last week felt some of the energy of having our spaces occupied by students learning and working together."
 
"We were pleased to see our community remaining vigilant and respecting the need to wear masks and maintain distancing where it is required. Thank you for doing your part to keep the people around you protected. We remind you to complete the daily Campus Check-in and to stay away if you are sick. We also encourage all members of our community to get their booster vaccine as soon as you are eligible."
 
"Last week, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health confirmed the encouraging news that the peak of the Omicron wave has passed. Today, in light of improving public health indicators the government announced it is accelerating the timelines for lifting restrictions over the coming weeks."
 
"These are encouraging signs that indicate our current plan to cautiously return to more in-person experiences is on an appropriate trajectory."
 
"We will continue to follow the government’s roadmap to reopening in the coming days and weeks to guide the public health restrictions on campus. This means some facilities and services – such as dining and non-spectator areas of recreation facilities – will operate without capacity limits from February 17."
 
"Other elements of our existing plan for our gradual return to regular levels of in-person activity, as indicated in our message on January 21, will remain unchanged. Additionally, our proof of vaccination requirement will remain in place at least for the duration of the Winter term. We will continue to review the government regulations as they become available and provide more information when we are able."
 
"Since February 7, some large classes have temporarily remained online to help manage our overall campus density. We are confirming today that many of those classes will change to in-person delivery as of February 28, while some, depending on local circumstances determined on a case-by-case basis, may remain online for the remainder of the term."
 
"Overall, we expect most classes that were originally planned to be in person for this term to return to in-person activity after Reading Week. Students in the affected classes can expect to hear from their instructors by the end of this week on Friday, February 18. We will continue to share details on the COVID-19 information website."
 
"Thank you again for everything you are all doing to keep one another safe as we get back to doing what we are all here to do: giving students the best education to set them on a path to shaping a new, exciting future for all of us," the president and provost's memo concludes.

Environment alumnus among Canada's top 30 under 30 sustainability leaders

This article was originally published on the Faculty of Environment website.

Kris Kolenc is a 2016 graduate of Environment and Business at the Faculty of Environment. As part of his undergraduate degree, he completed co-op work-terms with the City of Brampton, Footprint, Mondelēz International, and Suncor Energy.

Kris was a Community Coordinator at the University of Waterloo Housing and Residences prior to joining the Real Property Association of Canada (REALPAC) where he has spent six years as sustainability professional specializing in commercial real estate.

In his current role as the Manager of Research & Sustainability at REALPAC, he advises over 130 Canadian commercial real estate companies on ESG best practices.

His work focuses on net-zero carbon, climate risk, energy, water, waste, green leasing, ESG reporting, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Kris also works with all levels of Canadian government to shape policy that is productive for the environment and the real estate sector.

He received a Corporate Knights Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leader Award in November 2021.

Q and A with Kris Kolenc, Bachelor of Environmental Studies 2016

How do you feel about the award and recognition?

I am very thankful for the Corporate Knights Top 30 Under 30 Sustainability Leader award. It shows that I have made a significant contribution to sustainability in Canada through my work.

It also demonstrates the importance of young professionals pushing and innovating sustainability in the real world. I am lucky to be amongst such an esteemed cohort of young sustainability leaders.

Since I am a green building professional, my recognition also emphasizes the importance of buildings as an important element to Canada’s sustainable future.

In all, it indicates that there is lots more work to be done to mitigate the climate crisis. This award is a milestone in my career and sustainability journey, but there is still a lot more I, and we as a collective, need to accomplish to ensure Canada’s sustainable future.

How did your experience at Waterloo influence your career path and development?

I started my undergraduate degree in 2011, the same year Waterloo’s Environment3 (EV3) building opened. Learning and working in the campus’s first LEED-platinum building really boosted my interest and passion for green buildings. I subsequently focused many of my course research projects on green buildings to learn more about the topic.

Waterloo gave me so many opportunities to get involved and develop my interpersonal and leadership skills. I was quite involved in Residence Life throughout my undergrad, including as an Environment Living Learning Community Peer Leader at St. Paul’s University College, and later as a Don and Community Coordinator at University of Waterloo Place (UWP). I was also the Communications Director for the Environment Students Society (ESS).

Waterloo was also the first time I got to be amongst so many like-minded peers who were also passionate about sustainability and the environment. It was great learning from and alongside so many like-minded people and developing great friendships. It is funny how today, many of my friends and former classmates also work in sustainability so we can bounce ideas off each other and go to each other for project and career advice. Back at school, I used to joke with my friends that today we are classmates in university, but later in life we will be colleagues around a boardroom table making executive decisions on sustainability. That is starting to play out [laughs].

Read the rest of the Q&A on the Faculty of Environment website.

Study suggests six steps to improve our water quality

Nitrogen fertilizers are critical for growing crops to feed the world, yet when applied in excess can pollute our water for decades. A new study provides six steps to address nitrogen pollution and improve water quality.

Since nitrogen persists for so long, management efforts may seem futile and unattractive because it can take a long time to see results. The study from the University of Waterloo appearing in Nature Geoscience provides a roadmap for scientists, policymakers, and the public to overcome the challenges associated with this legacy nitrogen for faster improvements to our water quality. 

“We have to think about the legacy we leave for the future in a strategic way from both the scientific and socio-economic angles,” said Nandita Basu, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Civil and Environmental Engineering at Waterloo and the study’s lead author. “This is a call to action for us to accept that these legacies exist and figure out how to use them to our advantage.”

The study recommends the following six steps:

• Focus research to quantify the length of time the nitrogen stays in our ecosystems to adjust our expectations for conservation timelines.
• Find ways to use the legacy nitrogen as a resource for growing crops instead of adding new nitrogen fertilizers to our ecosystems with already high levels of nitrogen.
• Target conservation strategies to get the maximum water quality improvement instead of a widespread blanket approach.
• Combine conservation methods that reduce the amount of nitrogen that has already left the farm fields, such as in wetlands, with methods that harvest nitrogen from past legacies accumulated in the soil.
• Monitor water quality at both large and small scales so that short-term results can be seen at scales like a farm field and long-term results downstream at river basins can also be tracked.
• When assessing the economic impacts of conservation strategies, incorporate both short- and long-term cost-benefit analyses.

Nitrogen legacies are different around the world depending on the climate and historical land use, and land management patterns. While theoretical knowledge of these legacies has existed for decades, measurements and monitoring have not yet been widespread enough to understand these differences and support water quality policies, where there is still an expectation of short-term water quality improvement.

“It’s time we stop treating nitrogen legacies as the elephant in the room and design watershed management strategies that can address these past legacies,” said Basu. “We need to ask ourselves how we can do better for the future.”

The study, Managing Nitrogen Legacies to Accelerate Water Quality Improvement, was recently published online. 

Participants needed for Optometry survey

A message from the School of Optometry and Vision Science.

Dr. Elizabeth Irving is leading a group of researchers at the School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Waterloo. This group is interested in how the public wants to receive health information.

The researchers are interested in your opinion and are hoping that you would be willing to complete a short (approximately 5-10 minutes) survey.

All responses are anonymous. The survey is available online using the link below:

https://redcap.link/EyeCareLiteracy_survey

This study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through a University of Waterloo Research Ethics Committee (ORE# 41998). 

If you have questions for the Committee contact the, Office of Research Ethics, at 1-519-888-4567, ext. 36005 or ore-ceo@uwaterloo.ca.

If you have any other inquiries regarding this project, you may contact Dr Elizabeth Irving at Elizabeth.irving@uwaterloo.ca  or +1 (519) 888-4567 x 35529. 

Networked Feminisms event series continues; other notes

The next entry in the Networked Feminisms: Activist Assemblies and Digital Practices series takes place today at 5:30 p.m. "Networked Digital Identities and Communities" will explore networked digital identities and communities focusing on the roles of digital counterpublics and artifacts for fostering solidarity.

Speakers include:

• Ace J. Eckstein, who received an MA in Rhetoric and Culture from the University of Colorado Boulder. He currently works as the teacher librarian at Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette, CO.
• Adan Jerreat-Poole is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Disability Studies at X University. They are a white settler in Canada who lives with chronic pain, depression, and anxiety. They study disability, digital media, and popular culture and their work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, and Game Studies.
• Elizabeth Nathanson is Associate Professor of Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College. She is the author of Television and Postfeminist Housekeeping: No Time for Mother (Routledge, 2013). Her scholarship on postfeminism, “women’s work,” and popular American media has appeared in such journals as Celebrity Studies and Television and New Media, in the anthologies Cupcakes, Pinterest and Ladyporn (University of Illinois Press, 2015) and Gendering the Recession (Duke University Press, 2014) and in online publications, Flow, Antenna and Cinema Journal/Teaching Media.

Hosting the event will be Shana MacDonald, Associate Professor in Communication Arts and the current President of the Film Studies Association of Canada, and Brianna I. Wiens, a postdoctoral researcher in Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. Dr. MacDonald and Dr. Wiens are co-directors of the qcollaborative (qLab), a feminist design lab dedicated to developing new forms of relationality through technologies of public performance.

Register for the event on Eventbrite.

The next WISE Public lecture webinar entitled “Decarbonization Strategies in Canada: Challenges and Future Prospects,” will take place on Friday, February 18 from 11:00 a.m. to 12 noon on Zoom. Presenting will be Dr. Sohrab Zendehboudi, Associate Professor, Department of Process Engineering from Memorial University.

"High concentration of Greenhouse gases, particularly CO₂, in the atmosphere leads to adverse environmental impacts such as high temperature, precipitation, and risks of forest fires," says the talk's abstract. "Thus, it is vital to employ efficient carbon management technologies such as carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) to mitigate CO₂ emissions in the atmosphere. This talk provides statistical data and effective strategies on CO₂ emissions and control in Canada."

Check out the event link for the Zoom information.

University of Waterloo grads John Webster (Philosophy '87) and Sammy Damaren (Peace and Conflict Studies '18) started a podcast, Let's Be Well Together. They explore wellness and intertwined categories, such as mental, physical, spiritual, economic, environmental, artistic, intellectual and social.

"There are discussions and interviews aimed to remind people to think about wellness and make it a priority," says a note from John Webster. The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, etc., and on the episodes page of www.letsbewelltogether.com.

Employers hosting Virtual Employer Information Session (VEIS) this week include RJC Engineers, FDM Group, and Thomson Reuters. Make sure to register through WaterlooWorks and check the calendar for any updates.