Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Connecting at CANECT

By Clare Flood.

As the number of students enrolled in co-op increases, so does the demand for relevant, credit-worthy work terms. Each year, Co-operative Education & Career Action (CECA) secures and retains employment opportunities for Waterloo students (co-op, graduating, alumni, and other).

One approach we use to find new employers is to attend conferences and trade shows that feature industry leaders in various employment sectors.  At the end of April, CECA attended the Canadian Environmental Conference and Tradeshow (CANECT). As a co-op student working in Communications and Marketing within CECA, I was part of the booth team at the conference.

Many conference attendees were potential student employers for co-op, graduating, and summer students, as well as alumni. They approached us to learn about how to hire a Waterloo student and the benefits of hiring one of our students. As a co-op student, I talked about my co-op experience and answered employer questions from a student perspective about job satisfaction and job type for my program.

As a result of attending CANECT, I gained a better understanding of how CECA secures job opportunities for students. With an ever-growing number of students studying at Waterloo, I found CECA’s dedication to find student employment opportunities both important and impressive. As one of those Waterloo students, I am glad I could witness it first-hand.

Health Services director retiring

Health Services Medical Director Dr. Barbara Schumacher is retiring on June 30 after 39 years of service to the campus community.

“Since 1976, Barbara has been providing medical services to students at the University of Waterloo and she has been the Medical Director since 1987,” writes Director of Campus Wellness Walter Mittelstaedt. “It is hard to see her as anything but the face of Health Services. In addition, she has wholeheartedly embraced her role as the ‘university physician’ providing medical advice regarding a range of topics beyond student health.”

Schumacher has been a lead contributor in areas such as sexual harassment, pandemic planning, and occupational health. Her contributions, based on sound evidence, have taken the form of policy and practice, innovative programs in response to changing times, and in the case of the new Health Centre, highly visible improvements to health infrastructure on campus.

“Barbara’s committee connections are too numerous to list, but suffice it to say she has provided the University of Waterloo with a much-needed health perspective on virtually every aspect of university life.” Mittelstaedt writes. “Barbara’s vision, along with her persistence in seeking support to ensure that the vision materialized, has left the students of Waterloo with a state of the art facility that is easily one of the best in this country.”

Members of the campus community are invited to a retirement celebration in Dr. Schumacher’s honour that will be held on Tuesday, June 23 from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in the Health Services main floor foyer. Please RSVP to Jeanette Gascho at retirement.rsvp.uw@gmail.com by Tuesday, June 16.

LITE grant winners will facilitate campus cultural integration

by Kristina Overbeek and Keely Cook.

The University of Waterloo has awarded a Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) Seed Grant to three Waterloo personnel in Renison University College for their project, “Facilitating Cultural Integration and Reflective Learning through Intercultural Collaboration”. Emiko Yoshida, a Lecturer in Social Development Studies; Keely Cook, Assistant Director, English Language Centre and BASE (Bridge to Academic Success in English); and Elizabeth Stankiewicz, an undergraduate student in Psychology, have received funding from May 1, 2015 to April 30, 2016 to facilitate their research project.

LITE grants

LITE grants provide support for experimenting with and investigating innovative approaches to enhancing teaching that aim to foster deep student learning at the University of Waterloo. The program is composed of two kinds of grants: LITE Seed Grants and LITE Full Grants.  One-year Seed Grants fund projects of up to $5,000 and funding for two-year Full Grants may be up to $30,000. The grants are funded by the Office of the Associate Vice-President, Academic and administered by the Centre for Teaching Excellence.

The importance of facilitating cultural integration

Yoshida, Cook and Stankiewicz seek to facilitate the cultural integration of international students and Canadian students through collaborative learning strategies as well as encourage students to engage in reflective learning throughout their coursework.

While building a psychological connection with Canadian students is expected to foster international students’ motivation and confidence in their academic skills, there is not much research on what will motivate Canadian students to become involved in these intercultural activities despite the many opportunities to participate in intercultural activities on Canadian campuses. On-campus events that promote diversity are attended mainly by international students, indicating a lack of two-way cultural interaction on the part of Canadian students (CBIE, 2014). This project examines how establishing a psychological bond and working with international students can foster everyone’s interest in cultural involvement.

The project

In order to facilitate cultural integration, Yoshida, Cook and Stankiewicz paired up students in PSYCH 349R, a Cross-Cultural psychology course, with BASE students by determining their shared interests in order to build a sense of connection between individuals.

Bridge to Academic Success in English, or BASE, is a pathways program designed to enable academically qualified applicants from around the world who do not meet Waterloo’s English language requirements to be admitted to an undergraduate program based on their successful completion of BASE. BASE was created to help these otherwise qualified applicants attend the University of Waterloo and succeed at an undergraduate level by strengthening not only their language skills but also their familiarity with North American teaching styles and Waterloo’s academic and social culture.

During the winter 2015 semester, the psychology and BASE students met a minimum of five times and shared cultural knowledge and experiences during their conversations.  The PSYCH 349 students then connected their course materials to what was learned from each meeting and documented their reflections in an ePortfolio. The BASE students also reflected on what they learned related to cultural knowledge as well as the actual peer interaction and documented their reflections in recorded audio files.

In order to examine the impact of intercultural interaction on students’ attitudes and learning, students from PSYCH 349R in spring 2015 will be examined as a comparison group. These students will not collaborate with international students but they will complete the same ePortfolio assignments.

Proposed outcomes

After the completion of the project, BASE students are expected to experience a sense of increased belonging as well as experience increased motivation and confidence in their academic skills. Students in the winter 2015 class of PSYCH 349 are expected to develop increased cultural sensitivity and be less reliant on cultural stereotypes in comparison to the spring 2015 PSYCH 349 cohort.

The research findings will be compiled sometime in fall 2015. Hopefully this project will lead to an ongoing program and will continue to facilitate cultural integration for future international and Canadian students at Waterloo.

Keystone Picnic this Friday

The weather forecast says warm and sunny for the Keystone picnic this Friday, June 5 on the Davis Centre Quad from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Lunch will be served at 11:45 on a first-come, first-served basis. Don’t forget to bring your food ticket (e-mailed to you yesterday), which also serves as your ballot for some exciting door prizes.

For evening staff, a second event will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. in the Student Life Centre.

This year’s picnic features live entertainment, burgers, cotton candy, popcorn, and the ever-popular dunk tank. Check out the dunkee lineup:

• Chris Bertoia, Waterloo Football head coach;
• Gordon Cooledge, executive chef with UW Food Services
• Erica Voisin, manager, liaison with the Registrar’s Office

If you’re on Twitter or Instagram, share your experience using the hashtag #keystone15.

For details, go to our website or contact keystone@uwaterloo.ca.

Wednesday's notes

As part of the regular maintenance of IST services, Microsoft patches will be applied to SharePoint servers today. The process will begin at 8:00 p.m. and will take several hours for the updates to run.

These updates will impact both mySharePoint.uwaterloo.ca and SharePoint.uwaterloo.ca services.

During the update, SharePoint service will be briefly interrupted during the updates as servers are rebooted after the patches are applied. In some instances, users may be prompted to re-authenticate.

Anyone with questions or concerns can contact the IST Service Desk by emailing helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or by calling extension 44357.

The Centre for Teaching Excellence has updated its offering of workshops, including: 

• CTE743: What’s up with IF-AT?, Wednesday, June 10, 2015, 1:00 to 2:00 p.m.
• CTE601: Instructional Skills Workshop scheduled August 18-21, 2015.  This is a limited enrolment 24-hours workshop. Another section of CTE601 is scheduled for December 15-17, 2015.
• CTE656: Getting Started with LEARN, Thursday, August 27, 2015, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.

Check out the events page for the full listings of workshops and for instructions on how to sign up.

Today is Camp Day at Tim Hortons across Canada, and all the campus locations will be participating in donating proceeds from coffee purchases to the Tim Hortons Children's Foundation.

Children who attend one of the Foundation's six camps are selected from within the communities where Tim Hortons are located. Camp programs are designed to change the way young people from low-income homes think about themselves and the opportunities that exist for them. In 2013, the Student Life Centre's Tim Hortons contributed more than $900 in coffee sales alone. Additionally, more money was donated through ‘Rent a Tent’, ‘Rent a Cabin’, and the ‘Round it up’ donations other cash donations by customers and staff.

More information about Camp Day can be found on the Tim Hortons website.