Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Campus to celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day tomorrow

Two young boys in traditional regalia attending the annual St. Paul’s pow wow.

A message from the Shatitsirótha’ Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre (WISC).

Shatitsirótha’ Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre (WISC) will be hosting the first ever on-campus event to celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21^st. The event is co-sponsored by the four affiliated and federated institutions, all six UWaterloo faculties, and the office of Human Rights, Equity, and Inclusion. National Indigenous Peoples Day is a day for all people in Canada to recognize and celebrate the uniquely diverse cultures and outstanding contributions of First Nation, Métis, and Inuit peoples.

Celebrations will take place “across the creek” at St. Paul’s new ceremonial fire ground area. Shatitsirótha′, pronounced sa-di-gee-row-da, means to “reignite the flame” and this is exactly what we will be doing. The permanent ceremonial fire ground space has been in the process of development for over two years and is finally ready for its inauguration. June 21^st will mark the official re-ignition of the sacred fire.

“National Indigenous Peoples Day is a celebration when we, as Indigenous peoples, have an opportunity to showcase what we want to share with the rest of Canadians," says Lori Campbell, director of WISC. "WISC is very excited to invite the broader UWaterloo community to come out and join in the cultural festivities and visit our ceremonial fire ground.”

Come and learn about the sacred fire, enjoy a free barbecue at noon, and enjoy our line-up of entertainment, featuring a presentation by an Inuk alumnus, Métis jigging lessons, a Haudenosaunee dance demonstration, and a community hand drum circle. A handful of vendors and information booths will be present and children’s activities have been planned.

This free public event takes place from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Thursday 21 June 2018. Follow the signs, look for the balloons, and join us at the big tent!

Stepping forward, making progress for Waterloo's future

This is the latest post on President Feridun Hamdullahpur's blog.

Our community took a significant step forward this past Monday at the Bridge to 2020: A Look Back, A Look Ahead strategic plan event. After a morning of discussion and sharing at the event, it is clear to me that we have an engaged and passionate community ready to add their experiences and their voice to guide our institution forward.

The event was the kick-off of our consultation phase of the planning process. It was also an opportunity for us to share the progress of our strategic plan evidence gathering phase and also collect feedback from our University community on seven issue papers that were developed on the following topics:

• Empowering People 
• Graduate Studies
• Internationalization
• Learning Environment
• Leveraging Resources
• Research Excellence
• Undergraduate Learning

Advisory groups made up of representatives from the Faculties, academic support units and student representatives each developed an issue paper on their corresponding topic. You can now read each issue paper and discover the challenges and opportunities our institution faces as we move forward into the future.

The most exciting part of sharing these issue papers at the Bridge to 2020 event was our opportunity to talk and discover what matters to you, our University community. It was the first and definitely not the last opportunity for you to have your say as to what the University of Waterloo should dedicate our time and resources to in our next strategic plan. This event was only the beginning.

Where We Go From Here

From here we will head directly into the Consultation phase of the planning process. This phase will take place over the next several months and will involve a series of in-person, online and digital processes to gather input from Waterloo’s community stakeholders. This includes faculty, staff, students, alumni and our broader community.

These consultations will leverage the information gathered from the Summative Report of our previous Strategic Plan as well as the seven issue papers. It is important to remember that we are not limited to the themes of these issue papers.

A great deal of care and dedication were put into these valuable documents, they are excellent jumping off points that can help guide our discussions but we must also remember that we are not limited by them.

This plan can be whatever the University of Waterloo community thinks it needs to be to take our institution forward into the next decade and grow as one of the most innovative universities in the world.

It will also be an active plan. It will not sit on a shelf and be a symbolic checkmark. We will not only make implementation of the plan a priority, but also regular progress updates and ongoing re-evaluation of our tactics to reach our plan targets once it is in place.

Stay Engaged

As our Consultation phase progresses, I urge you to stay engaged and informed. We have created a central Bridge to 2020 website that is a hub of information that will let you stay up-to-date on the entire strategic planning process including hosting all seven issue papers that were highlighted at the event this week.

You can provide feedback on each issue paper through the website and read about all of the upcoming consultation activities that you may be able to take part in. The planning starts here with all of us and expands to include the Board of Governors, Senate, senior administration, and many other parts of our diverse community. This plan will be ours and that’s because of you and your involvement.

Join me in driving the University of Waterloo forward into a new and exciting future.

Waterloo partners with Sorbonne for bio-hackathon

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The University of Waterloo has joined with two French universities to support a biomedical engineering summer school program in Paris, France.

The French-Canadian BIOMEDInnov Summer School is taking place from June 18 to 22 and has been organized by Sorbonne University, the University of technology of Compiègne, and the University of Waterloo.

The summer school program is engaging students who are designing innovative new technologies for health and medicine. The program focuses on needs-driven design to develop clinically relevant biomedical technologies. Travelling to France to attend the summer school are 22 students (from all participating universities) and 6 researchers from the University of Waterloo who were involved in the international exchange.

The program is supported by a 130,000 EUR FormInnov grant to the researchers at the Sorbonne University (UPMC), UTC, and Centre d’études littéraires et scientifiques appliquées (CELSA) and the University of Waterloo. 
 
The five day program consists of research presentations, workshops, lectures and seminars by professionals, French and Canadian biomedical start-up companies, and industry sponsor Medtronic.

Waterloo's participation in the summer school program is sponsored by the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology through an International Research Partnership grant. Mitacs has awarded some students from Waterloo Globalink research awards that will accommodate their travel for their research experience in France, including the summer school.

Stakeholders including clinicians and patients are invited to share their experience, define their needs and issues, and will engage with students as they work together on an innovation project in a hackathon format.  Workshops will cover engineering design and design thinking, agile methods, prototyping, technology acceptance, standards, regulations, economics, entrepreneurship, and legal and ethical aspects of biomedical devices.

The event will conclude with a bio-hackathon competition that puts into practice the knowledge and skills learned through the week.

Update on FORE decommissioning process

The Financial Online Reporting Environment (known as “FORE”) was the end user reporting tool associated with the University’s legacy Oracle financial system. The University has been live with Unit4, the new financial system, since May 1, 2017 and all reporting beginning with the 2018 fiscal year (with balances from April 2017 for comparison) is available directly within Unit4.

As reported in the April 6 memo from Dennis Huber, Vice-President, Administration & Finance and Bruce Campbell, Chief Information Officer, FORE will be decommissioned as of June 30. Users will no longer be able to log into the reporting tool to access historical financial data as of that date.

Finance and IST have been working to make historical data accessible to certain user groups using the MSBI reporting tool. HR’s Detailed Salary and Scholarship Reporting has been delivered using MSBI since Unit4 went live on May 1, 2017. Like the detailed salary reporting, access security for the historical data will be modelled after the Unit4 reporting access down to the org unit level (i.e. anyone with org unit level reporting or above in Unit4 will have access to the comparable historical data in MSBI).

Further updates will be shared as information becomes available. Questions regarding the transition can be directed to rt-fin-general@rt.uwaterloo.ca.

Wednesday's notes

The next IST Portfolio and Project Management Community of Practice session will take place on Wednesday, June 27 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. in EC5 1111. The session is entitled "Procurement and Project Management" and will be facilitated by Leah Gibson of Procurement and Contract Services.

No registration or previous portfolio or project management training is required to attend the session. Join the "PPM CoP" mailing list to receive updates and event details. Membership is open to all staff, faculty, and students on campus who have an interest in this area. To join the mailing list please send an email (with no content in the email body) to Ppm-cop-request@lists.uwaterloo.ca with the word 'subscribe' in the subject line. Your request will be approved by the list administrators.

Please note: there will not be a session in July or August. PPM CoP sessions resume in September.

Anyone with questions is invited to contact Pam Fluttert  at fluttert@uwaterloo.ca or Connie van Oostveen at connie.vanoostveen@uwaterloo.ca. For more details about this month’s session visit the June session website.

Employers on campus next week hosting employer information sessions include Radix Trading. Visit the Employer Information Calendar for more details.