January 2025 KI Updates
Please join us at the following events in 2025!
- January 31 – Reconnect at the KI Alumni Panel Seminar + Social: Our KI alumni panel will take place this year on Friday, January 31, at 2:30pm with representation from Laura Bell (2012), Evaleen Hellinga (2015), Clarice Chin (2016), Josh Dolman (2018). We’ll host our annual social afterwards from 4pm-5:30pm in the EV1 Courtyard.
- March 17-22 – Discover the Museum Exhibits (KIX) & Senior Honours Project Posters: The new theme for KIX this year is Global Futures: the five futures that the University of Waterloo has identified as key areas of impacts. As a result, students choose one of the following futures to focus on: societal, health, sustainability, technological, or economic. Students are examining how social location influences our perception of night-time safety in cities, and the mental health benefits of having a hobby we engage in regularly. For the first time, the Senior Honours Project posters will also be displayed in the St. Jerome’s gym alongside the KIX exhibits. Come check out both of them March 17-22!
- March 21 – Reception for Upper-Year Capstone Projects (KIX & Senior Honours Projects): Mark your calendars – on Friday, March 21st, we’ll be hosting a double feature reception to celebrate KI’s upper year students who have worked tirelessly on their KIX exhibits and Senior Honours Projects. The reception will take place in the EV3 atrium at 5pm. You are also welcome to join us at 2:30pm in EV2-2002 to hear the 4th-years’ flash talks before heading over to see their projects alongside the KIX exhibits. Help us celebrate the students while reconnecting with the KI community and enjoying some good food!
Noteworthy news
- After 11 years with the KI Department, John McLevey will be rejoining his family in St. John's, Newfoundland, and will be starting at Memorial University as Chair of the Sociology department in January 2025. We’re very excited for him to take on this new chapter, and will miss him dearly! John helped grow the KI program, notably by teaching the first-year course INTEG 120: Art and Science of Learning, and helping to develop KI’s Science, Technology, and Society Specialization. John also led his research out of the successful NetLab, where several KI and KI-adjacent students got their start in research. Please help us in celebrating John as we wish him well at Memorial.
- We welcomed Emily Beilby to the KI team in February 2024 as KI’s newest Undergraduate Advisor. Emily has several years of experience organizing and participating in community groups and is excited to use her skills and love for people to advise KI students.
- KI released several stories, interviews, and photos from KI faculty, staff, alumni, and students to celebrate our 15-year anniversary in March 2024. Explore our anniversary content and reminisce about your time in KI! A physical publication will be coming out in 2025 and will be available for viewing at our three events mentioned above. Thank you to everyone who participated in this project!
- KI students hosted the latest Combining Two Cultures (C2C) conference in January, on the theme of “Jack of All Trades.” Students organized working groups, workshops, panels, and networking opportunities to discuss the benefits of having skills and knowledge from multiple fields of study and experiences. Attendees from Guelph, McMaster, and Windsor University joined the KI students during this jam-packed weekend!
- For the classes of Barcelona I (class of 2014) and Amsterdam III (class of 2020), this year is a milestone reunion! Whether you travelled with this cohort, graduated with them, or would just otherwise like to connect, check out the ENV reunion website to see how we’re celebrating. We rely heavily on Class Champions to organize and connect the cohorts for reunions. If you would like to help make your reunion as awesome as it can be, please consider volunteering as a Class Champion.
What has everyone been up to?
- The second-years visited Berlin in 2024, and had a great time, including a private guided tour of the prison at the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial from the exhibit designer, exploring the city, studying museum design and getting to know one another. This year’s cohort will be off to Copenhagen in April!
- The Anti-Oppression Knowledge Integrators (AOK) hosted a panel discussion on neurodiversity and inclusion, which prompted lots of fascinating conversations. Thank you to the AOK team for continuing to identify opportunities to advance anti-oppression within and outside of KI.
- Mathieu Feagan has a new publication in Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning about co-producing knowledge systems to support how coastal cities anticipate and respond to climate change. This year, Matt launched his two-year research project, Just transitions as consciousness change: Learning with front-line communities, with community organizers seeking intersectional approaches to justice across different Indigenous, migrant, and climate justice groups across the so-called Americas.
- John McLevey spent most of 2024 on parental leave, spending quality time with his family, including his twin girls, Nora and Quinn. He met with Katie over the summer to hand off INTEG 120: The Art and Science of Learning, which Katie taught this fall during John’s leave. John also continued to publish his fascinating research on social network analysis.
- Rob Gorbet taught INTEG 210: Making Collaboration Work to a few dozen students from across campus, about half of whom are also part of the new campus-wide interdisciplinary capstone project. In 210, they learned tools and skills to manage conflict and group dynamics in those interdisciplinary groups. With his colleagues in the LASG, Rob co-led the Shadows and Whispers workshop for 15 early- and mid-career designers at Domaine de Boisbuchet, an international design and architecture research center in France. Rob also continues to serve as a UW Senator and Director of the Faculty Association, and leads the Living Dialogs podcast as executive producer, a project on which he is thankful to be working with some KI alumni. If you haven’t listened to it yet, we highly recommend checking it out!
- Vanessa Schweizer completed her five-year term as a member of the Global Young Academy last spring, an international organization that brings together early career scientists to practice skills in science advice and science communication and works to establish and coordinate National Young Academies on all continents. She also continued work on her interdisciplinary research project Robust Decision Making Using Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways for Direct Air Capture Deployment in Canada. With her team, she convened the second expert workshop for the project in October. Last fall, Vanessa and her graduate student presented a preliminary map of Canadian policy decisions for direct air capture development and deployment at the Annual Meetings of two scholarly societies: the Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty Society and the American Geophysical Union.
- Katie Plaisance continued to serve as Department Chair this year, during which time she has been working closely with Solène and Emily to ramp up domestic and international recruitment. Katie also had the opportunity to teach INTEG 120: The Art and Science of Learning, which she enjoyed tremendously! She is looking forward to adding INTEG 120 to her usual slate of courses. On the research front, Katie is leading Waterloo’s contribution to a $2.5 million project that will help graduate students build foundational skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and real-world problem solving. This project draws on much of the work that KI has been doing for years, and involves the development of a new Skills Articulation and Literacy Tool that KI students were the first to pilot. Katie also published a paper in the Canadian Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learningwhich provides evidence of just how effective one of the KI courses (INTEG 210: Making Collaboration Work) is at helping students recognize the benefits of diverse perspectives and develop psychologically safe teams. Finally, Katie was promoted to Full Professor this year – congratulations, Katie!
Share your story!
With over 15 years of KI graduates exploring the world and taking on new adventures, we want to hear from you and share your story! In particular, we’re looking to highlight alumni who have attended med school/vet school/law school/teacher’s college, entered into scientific or research fields, and/or are working in UX/UI design. Reach out to Solène Jollivet, Outreach & Administrative Manager, at solene.jollivet@uwaterloo.ca to learn more about how to get involved!
All KI alumni are welcome to contribute to our alumni post-it note wall which is growing each year. Thank you for your continued support of our KI program and community!
Stay connected!
Be sure to follow KI’s updates at @KIWaterloo on Instagram and X (Twitter), and @Knowledge Integration, University of Waterloo on Facebook and LinkedIn!
Keep connected and engaged!
Check out the many any great ways to get involved.