Wednesday, June 7, 2023

You're invited to celebrate the career of Tina Roberts, Waterloo's biggest fan

A message from Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment.

Tina Roberts (BSc ’80) is one of Waterloo’s proudest, loudest and biggest ambassadors and a dedicated, high-energy member of the campus community. Her career spanned more than 40 years on campus, where she made a significant impact on the University’s marketing and recruitment efforts.

You can read more about Tina’s achievements in this Waterloo News article.

Celebration event info

Tina has recently retired and the Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment team, alongside the Registrar’s Office, is hosting a career celebration in her honour. All campus community members are welcome to join us on Tuesday, June 20, 2023, at 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in GEDI (EC5 2^nd floor) to celebrate with her.

To plan for numbers, we ask that you register for the event through this form, but you are welcome to join without registering in advance too. All are welcome.

Special request

Co-workers of Tina can also fill out a card with a fun memory or a recipe that has meaning, that she can read, to note your special time working with her. You can fill out a card in person by visiting the Centre, located on the first floor of Needles Hall. Cards will also be available at the event. 

Can’t fill out a card on campus or unable to attend the event? Not a problem – you can fill out a message in the registration form.

Tina was a phenomenal force on campus, and we hope you can celebrate her long and distinguished career with us on June 20.

IT Asset Management tool, Assets, now available

A message from Information Systems & Technology (IST).

Information Systems & Technology (IST) has implemented a new IT Asset Management (ITAM) tool, Assets, for the management of their department IT assets. Access to and use of this Atlassian-based tool is now available for campus.  

Assets is Jira Service Management’s native asset and configuration management tool. Assets provides features such as asset discovery, inventory tracking, software license management, and IT asset lifecycle management. It also integrates with other Atlassian products, such as Jira Service Management and Confluence, to provide a more comprehensive IT service management solution.

Learn more about Assets

• View the recorded IT Asset Management PDAG seminar.
• Review the Assets service catalogue entry to learn more about this tool.
• Submit a request to get started with Assets.

Questions about this tool can be submitted to our Atlassian support team.

Convocation needs you

A message from Community Relations and Events.

There’s still time to join the growing group of convocation ambassadors who will bring the celebration to life. With 14 ceremonies taking place from Tuesday, June 13 to Saturday, June 17, we need over 200 ambassadors to help make it a success for our graduates.

Become an Ambassador

There are still positions available and we would appreciate your involvement on our ambassador team.Visit the convocation website to learn more about the roles and sign up.

Understanding and changing how we see ourselves

By Elizabeth Rogers and Zoe Tipper, Faculty of Arts. This is an excerpt of an article originally published on Waterloo News.

Throughout our lives, our experiences shape how we view ourselves and the world around us. These views, known in psychology as schemas, can negatively impact our mental health and be difficult to change.

Now, a new model of how we understand these schemas opens doors to new and innovative therapies in mental health treatment.

This model of schema change was developed by Dr. David Moscovitch, professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Waterloo. and outlines how schemas get updated in the brain by integrating evidence-based findings from the fields of clinical psychology and cognitive neuroscience. 

As a faculty member and clinical psychologist with the Centre for Mental Health Research and Treatment, Moscovitch’s research involves working directly with people who are struggling with their mental health and developing evidence-based psychological treatments to improve their quality of life. His long-time collaborator – and father – Dr. Morris Moscovitch is a renowned expert in memory and professor emeritus in neuropsychology at the University of Toronto. With Dr. Signy Sheldon, a Canada Research Chair in cognitive neuroscience at McGill University, the trio combined their expertise and developed the new neurocognitive model that promises significant advances in the conceptualization and treatment of psychological disorders.

“As we began working together it became clear that the world of cognitive neuroscience and the world of clinical psychology have a lot to learn from one another,” said Moscovitch. “We based our ideas on extensive reviews of the scientific literature, my own professional expertise in clinical disorders, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and social anxiety, and my collaborators’ knowledge of memory and the brain, all of which we integrated into our new model.”

Advancing therapeutic approaches

Individuals struggling with mental health – such as those with anxiety and depression – often have negative self-schemas that impact how they view themselves and their relationships with others. These negative schemas can go on to create patterns that reinforce harmful beliefs, such as “I am unlovable” or “social interactions are threatening.”

Moscovitch and his collaborators propose that psychological therapies can most effectively treat mental health problems by simultaneously strengthening positive schemas and weakening negative schemas. While past models have focused on weakening negative schemas, Moscovitch’s new model views these processes as complementary and equally essential. Integrated together, these processes create the Schema-Congruent and Schema-Incongruent Learning model, abbreviated as the SCIL model.

Read the rest of the article on Waterloo News.

MFA thesis work on display and other notes

The Fine Arts department will be exhibiting the MFA thesis work of student Brent Garbett along with a presentation of Shirin Fahimi's work in partnership with CAFKA23: Stay With Me. CAFKA stands for the Contemporary Art Forum of Kitchener and Area. Both exhibitions will be at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery in East Campus Hall.

Brent Garbett - New Day. New Painting.

"Wherever I am, I see paintings," Garbett writes. "My approach is observational, a way of being in my body and in the landscape. It is not only about what I see, but also how it feels, and how I move within it. New Day. New Painting. explores my day-to-day life and the landscapes that have surrounded me as a graduate student. The exhibition is organized into four groups: my home, the campus, my research trip to Charleston, South Carolina, and the walk to my car—an experience that was interrupted when a stand of trees that seemed almost familial were unexpectantly cut down."

Brent Garbett was born in Toronto and raised in Scarborough, Puslinch, and Guelph, Ontario. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from NSCAD University in Halifax and is currently completing his MFA at the University of Waterloo. He is the recipient of the Keith and Win Shantz International Scholarship and has work in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Guelph.

Shirin Fahimi - II0I  I0I0 (Umm al Raml tracing the dots)

II0I  I0I0 (Umm al Raml tracing the dots) is an immersive single-channel video installation that renders visible the absence of female prophets within Islamic literature and explores its challenges. This work juxtaposes the spiritual journey of four Iranian women practicing mysticism in Toronto against a mesmerizing digital landscape generated through the divination method known as the science of sand. The driving question for this project, “Where are the female prophets?” serves as the catalyst for generating narratives. By reviving the 7^th-century Islamic method of divination, the science of sand, this project builds on narrative possibilities generated through divination. It decolonizes the linear narration of time by blurring the line between present, past and future. This research is its own living archive, holding the interviewees’ stories, dreams and prophecies.

Shirin Fahimi is a digital media artist based in Ontario, born in Iran. She investigates the colonial dichotomies of rationalism and superstition, as well as the ways in which women negotiate visibility in the political and celestial realms. Her research is influenced by Islamic mysticism and magic in Iranian society and diasporic communities. She uses divination as a form of archiving, storing knowledge, making accessible visible and invisible worlds, and documenting the past, present and future.

An opening reception will take place on Thursday, June 8 from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. The exhibitions run from Thursday, June 8 to July 22.

Every Wednesday during the spring term, UW Food Services has partnered with a variety of food trucks to bring a delectable array of culinary delights from some of the region's most sought-after mobile mess halls. "With a variety of flavours and cultural cuisines, there is something for everyone," says a note from Food Services. The trucks will be parked in the Arts Quad from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. WatCard, cash, debit and credit will all be accepted. This week's parked purveyors of panache include Passado Brasil and El Milagro.