Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Waterloo will celebrate the career of Dennis Huber next week

The University of Waterloo will celebrate the 36-year career of Vice-President, Administration and Finance Dennis Huber with a series of events next week.

Dennis Huber with fellow Plant Operations directors Rudy Molinary and Dave Churchill atop a truck in 1992.

Dennis Huber, the University’s longest-serving vice-president, will retire on December 31, 2022. Huber joined Plant Operations in 1986 as Manager of Systems and Records and later served as Director of Business Services. In 1996, he was appointed Associate Provost, General Services and Finance, with responsibilities that covered Plant Operations, financial services and budgets, purchasing and Central Stores. In January 2001, after an organizational review of the University’s leadership structure, his role was expanded and renamed to Vice-President, Administration and Finance.

Dennis Huber with a costumed Dean of Engineering Pearl Sullivan in 2019.

There will be an invite-only farewell reception on Wednesday, December 7 in the Black and Gold Room in the Student Life Centre. The reception will feature remarks by President Vivek Goel, Vice-President, Academic & Provost James Rush, President Emeritus the Honourable David Johnston (via video), Dean Emeritus Jean Andrey, and Allan Shapira, the University’s consulting actuary on pension funds.

In addition, in the days following the formal reception there will be a number of drop-in events scheduled for members of units who report to the Vice-President, Administration and Finance, including:

• Drop-in coffee and pastry event for Plant Operations shops and office staff, Thursday, December 8, 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., GSC 107.
• Finance, Procurement & Contract Services, David Johnston Research + Technology Park and Central Stores, Thursday, December 8, 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., East Campus Hall 126. Pizza will be served.
• Plant Operations, on-shift and evening staff, Friday, December 9, 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., Needles Hall 3407. Pizza, coffee and cake to be served.

Please join us in thanking Dennis with a gift to the Waterloo Fund 

This fund allows our senior leaders to provide responsive approaches to current, often time-sensitive priorities. This flexibility makes the Waterloo Fund a cornerstone of the student experience, just as Dennis has been throughout his tenure.

Make a gift today.

Teaching Assessment Processes: Fall 2022 update

The Teaching Assessment Processes (TAP) office continues to consult, innovate, and support the campus community through the administrative changes and cultural shift required to adopt a holistic approach to teaching assessment. This update offers a summary of current activities, including TAP's work supporting the University’s work towards equity, supporting Faculties, and conducting ongoing research and development activities, in addition to a note about the University of Waterloo in relation to its peers.

Supporting the University’s work towards equity

Collaborating with the Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-racism and the Office of Indigenous Relations to support marginalized instructors. These connections are of primary importance for the TAP office because equity is a driving force behind Waterloo’s commitment to a holistic model of assessment. 

Analyzing SCP data through the lenses of gender and race. With the winter 2022 launch of the new Student Course Perception (SCP) survey, the TAP office has been tasked with regularly reviewing results to determine how well it performs, and in particular to consider whether there are important differences in results depending on instructor characteristics irrelevant to teaching performance. Analysis of data from winter 2022 SCP data looked at mean differences in ratings assigned by students to male and female instructors and found that differences in scores (with a very small number of exceptions) were not statistically significant (p>.05). Moreover, the difference was close to 0 in almost all cases explored. These results suggest that gender bias is endemic to the instrument itself. While this is good news, this of course does not mean that sexism does not exist, nor does it mean that it does not affect SCP scores—especially as this is just a one-term study. As noted, the TAP office will continue to examine SCP results in future terms. A research report presenting the winter 2022 results will be posted on the TAP office website soon. Note: gender-related data are gathered through Human Resources.

The TAP office remains committed to analyzing and monitoring SCP results with respect to race, but a low response rate for Waterloo’s Equity Survey (together with the already small number of faculty members in some racialized groups) means that we will need more than one term’s worth of data to gather meaningful results. This analysis will be repeated as needed, in addition to the ongoing collection of data that will eventually illustrate multi-year trends. Processes and survey items will be adjusted where necessary. 

Preparing to conduct a qualitative analysis of responses to open-ended questions. In many cases, our most vulnerable instructors are victimized by abusive comments. This research will determine the extent to which marginalized instructors are exposed to inappropriate comments from students. The goal of this analysis is primarily to inform decisions with respect to: (1) How to best screen comments to protect instructors, and (2) development of instructional material for students about what sorts of comments are helpful and appropriate. 

Supporting Faculties

Extending support to Faculties updating documentation for Annual and Biennial Performance Reviews. Administrative documents will need to be revised to match the new Student Course Perception survey. If you would like support for this adjustment, please reach out to Kathy Becker at kabecker@uwaterloo.ca. 

Consulting with Faculties to design Faculty-level SCP questions grounded in Faculty-specific teaching & learning priorities. Once these questions have been crafted, piloted, and finalized, similar work will be undertaken at the department level. Only core institution-level questions will be included in summative assessments. 

Working with Faculties to establish consistent Peer Review of Teaching processes. These processes, based on recommendations from the Complementary Teaching Assessment Project Team and endorsed by Deans and Senators, will take into account factors like timing and frequency of peer reviews. 

Ongoing research and development

Launching (1) a working group to establish guidelines for the use of data from SCPs and other TAP methods for summative purposes and (2) an advisory committee that will guide the ongoing work of the TAP office. The groups’ Terms of Reference have been drafted. Next steps include identifying subject matter experts who have capacity to support this work. 

Considering the work of the Task Force on Graduate Supervision and how the quality of student supervision might be assessed. These guidelines will create a space for Faculty who regularly supervise Waterloo students to have their contribution to student development assessed and recognized. 

Continuing to revise the Student Course Perception survey user guides based on input from both administrators using them for assessment and instructors bringing concerns to the TAP office. Please continue to provide feedback. Enter instructor feedback. Enter administrator feedback. 

A note about the University of Waterloo in relation to other institutions

Many institutions use survey questions that are not based on best practices, inspiring a number of publications with inflammatory headlines about gender- and race-based bias within student surveys. 

The good news is that most of these articles recommend mitigating the impacts of bias with SCPs by incorporating additional mechanisms for assessing teaching – such as peer review and teaching dossiers, both of which are being implemented at Waterloo. 

We – the TAP office and the Waterloo instructors who take the time to provide constructive feedback supporting this massive culture shift – are making great strides to change the culture around teaching assessment, with the ultimate goal of creating a fairer and more equitable system of teaching assessment. Waterloo’s work and progress toward this goal is recognized by our colleagues at other U15 institutions who look to Waterloo’s work and the institutional culture shift that is underway as both guidance and inspiration for their own work in this field.  

Listening to our elders about leisure

A message from the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies.

The Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies is proud to present the Shaw-Mannell Leisure Research Award Lecture featuring 2022 recipient Dr. Karen Fox, professor emerita at the University of Alberta. Titled “Listening to our elders about leisure,” the talk will use intertwining stories and theory to wander through types of leisure often overlooked or dismissed that help us see life as it is, how to be at home with oneself and others, and how to accept and celebrate life’s journey of living and dying.

The Shaw-Mannell Leisure Research award recognizes international career contributions to the study of leisure, broadly defined, and influence on leisure scholarship at the University of Waterloo. The award is named in honour of retired faculty members Sue Shaw and Roger Mannell to recognize their outstanding individual career achievements. 

Josef Pieper developed a substantial oeuvre about the meaning of leisure, because he saw leisure in modern society undercut with the overwhelming emphasis and value on work, commodification, and capitalism as detrimental to the “essence” of leisure. In this presentation, Dr. Karen Fox turns again to Pieper’s concept of leisure to reconsider the breadth of his scholarship and insight for today’s world and Frank Ostaseski’s “Five Invitations: Teachings on Death and Living Fully”. Intertwining stories and theory, Fox wanders through types of leisure often overlooked or dismissed that help us see life as it is, being at home with oneself and others, as well as accepting and celebrating all of life’s journey of living and dying.

The event takes place in person and online this Friday, December 2 from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Please register in advance.

The Canadian Accessibility Network broadens call for membership

By Mary Lynne Bartlett.

The Canadian Accessibility Network (CAN) is a national collaboration to advance accessibility. The University of Waterloo has been a collaborator with this network since 2019. Under the leadership of the READ Initiative at Carleton University, CAN connects organizations and individuals, from all sectors, across Canada to bring about timely, real and lasting change for persons with disabilities. 

As CAN collaborators, accessibility subject matter experts nationwide exchange knowledge and resources, reinforce each other’s commitments, advocate for cultural shifts and take collective action. 

The CAN vision is to be:

Canada’s cross-sectoral, national platform to empower persons with disabilities; improving socio-economic and health outcomes; and changing mindsets and behaviours for a more accessible and inclusive Canada.

The CAN is running communities of practice addressing: Community Engagement; Education and Training; Employment; Policy; and Research, Design and Innovation.

What are some of the ways the CAN vision is reflected at UWaterloo?

Access to employment makes up one area of focus within CAN. Jennifer Woodside, director of the Centre for Career Action (CCA), was until this term the university’s voting member on the CAN since its inception in 2019. This engagement supported CCA’s and CEE’s ongoing iterations toward increasingly accessible services and processes. In 2016, these efforts had grown from a case consultation into a rich partnership between AccessAbility Services, CCA and Co-op called WatCAT or the Waterloo Coop AccessAbility Team. In 2018,WatCAT created the Co-operative Education Self-study Guide with funding from a grant provided by the Government of Ontario. The Guide is a comprehensive resource for supporting post-secondary institutions, namely senior representatives supporting co-operative education, career services, disability support, human rights, equity, and similar services.

Also a key member of WatCAT, Waterloo’s AccessAbility Services is a powerful agent of change within the University community and beyond. AccessAbility services’ work aligns with the CAN vision through their work to ensure students have tools to access and participate in their education by removing barriers to facilitate success. Removing barriers and creating positive accessible change happens across campus in various aspects of the student experience.

Joyce Barlow, associate director, disability inclusion, has focus on supporting Waterloo’s efforts to create a more accessible and inclusive environment for persons with disabilities, including co-op and careers. Barlow’s role includes the facilitation of developing Waterloo’s Multi-Year Accessibility Plan. Through engagement with the Accessibility Committee, liaising with the disability community through the Accessibility Advisory Panel, and supporting the mandatory employee accessibility training, Barlow connects with multiple departments and faculties on campus to support disability inclusion in all of Waterloo’s workings. All of her work has touch points in the co-op and career services offered to Waterloo students.

As of October 2022, Jennifer has passed the torch over to Joyce, who will now be the University’s CAN voting member.

If you are an employee of the University of Waterloo and interested in becoming a CAN member at large, please fill out the Member Information Form. There is no limit to the number of employees who may participate in CAN’s various communities of practice or subscribe to its monthly newsletter.

Innovative work-readiness program delivers results for first-work term students

*According to students who participated in experience survey

By Matthew King.

How do you find work without having work experience? It’s a conundrum often faced by first work-term students. The Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE) unit at the University of Waterloo wanted to tackle this problem, among others, facing first-work-term students. So, we created an innovative work-readiness program called Waterloo Experience (WE) Accelerate.

WE Accelerate students undergo:

• 60 hours of career training.
• 100 hours of skills development with an industry collaborator.
• approximately 120 hours of real-world work experience over five weeks.

Upon completion of the program, students earn a flexible work term credit and have the in-demand skills and experience many employers seek.

“I remember when I got my interview the employer saying, ‘Oh, wow, we didn’t think an engineer would apply to this job’,” says Aseel Osman, an Engineering student who completed WE Accelerate. “When they saw my resume, they were happy with all the experience that I ended up getting from WE Accelerate.”

To date, 937 students have completed WE Accelerate since the pilot in spring of 2021. Over two-thirds (67.2 per cent) of students who have gone through the program, and filled out the program experience survey, say they feel ‘somewhat or completely prepared’ to find their next job.

“WE Accelerate helped me identify what skills I was missing, and it helped me develop those skills,” says Shaili Khadiki, an Engineering student who completed WE Accelerate. "When it came time to apply for jobs in my next work term, I could more confidently say, I meet most of these requirements, and I feel like I have a good shot of getting that job. I think that's what sets apart the difference from last time and is why I have a job.”

Students who participated in the pilot offering of WE Accelerate in spring 2021 had a 93.8 per cent employment rate in their next work term. Comparatively, students who were unemployed in spring 2021 (and did not participate in WE Accelerate) have an employment rate of 88.5 per cent.

“Those early numbers are extremely encouraging,” says Norah McRae, associate provost of Co-operative and Experiential Education (CEE). “The outcome all along has been that these students go into their next co-op work term with experience and extra skills under their belt and that they are more successful when seeking their next work term.”

Thanks to donor-funded awards, WE Accelerate students have also benefited from financial support. Although WE Accelerate is an unpaid first-work term opportunity, CEE raised a total of $50,000 last year to create new awards for WE Accelerate students. These include awards that recognize outstanding students and awards to help pay for tuition the following term.

“I study chemical engineering and getting an award from Enbridge, it means a lot to me.,” says Dhruvi Shah, an award recipient in Spring 2022. “Getting recognized like this feels kind of important because I feel it's necessary to acknowledge women in STEM.”

The University of Waterloo has received a research grant funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) to analyze whether engaging in WE Accelerate helps students to be more successful in their following work terms.

“Before WE Accelerate, I would just lay low. But afterward, I feel like I put myself out there more,” says Harshminder Sidhu, a Planning student who completed WE Accelerate. “I am showing more initiative, reaching out to my managers and asking for help when I need to. I feel like I’ve gained more confidence and feel like I make a difference with my skills.”