Current students

After being told by a high school teacher that she wasn’t smart enough to pursue a post-secondary engineering education, Amy Tai has proven him wrong. In a big way.

With a cumulative average of over 98 per cent, the newly minted engineering graduate was the top student in her management engineering program for every term and has already started a master’s degree at Waterloo.

The University of Waterloo is proud to announce that three of its students will receive one of Canada’s highest honours in academia — the Governor General’s Gold Medal.

Passionate about sharing his Indigenous heritage, an adjunct architecture professor named a new course after the ceremony his ancestors have used for thousands of years to welcome visitors to their homeland — At the Woods Edge.

This semester, William Woodworth, also known as Elder Bill, started teaching the course focused on the relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers from the 16th century to today, and how those associations have affected both engineering and architecture.

It is so exciting to welcome our graduates and our alumni back to campus for the Spring 2022 Convocation and special alumni convocation celebrations. It is my honour, as the president and vice-chancellor, to participate in these events. 

Tyson McGavin (BGBDA ’22) is fostering community among game players and embracing the emerging digital marketing landscape of TikTok. He recently surpassed the 500K follower milestone for Big Blue Bubble’s My Singing Monsters account.

Trisha Cho is not only a powerhouse on the ice, but an excellent student who embodies leadership and hard work. A varsity hockey player who is graduating this spring with a BA in Recreation and Sport Business and a minor in Event Management, she joins 587 Faculty of Health students at this term’s convocation celebrations. She will return in the fall to begin a master’s in Recreation and Leisure Studies. 

It’s fair to say that Sana Ahmad (BSc ’22) was always planning on attending the University of Waterloo. Afterall, she practically grew up on campus as a child of two Waterloo alumni from the Faculty of Engineering and saw her older sister also graduate from Engineering in nanotechnology. The only hiccup was the subject matter Ahmad was to study. Although the Cambridge, Ontario native showed an inherent interest in STEM and engineering, Ahmad was really interested in rocks and had accumulated an impressive rock collection early on in life.

Pests and diseases are one of the top issues facing farming today. Using pesticides is a major recurring expense but is necessary to maintain economically viable yields and healthy crops. Every year, 20 to 40 per cent of global crop yield is lost due to plant pests and disease. A loss that cost the global economy around $290 billion annually, according to the United Nations.

Yesterday, many of us across Ontario exercised our democratic right to vote in the provincial election. It can be easy to take this simple, recurring action for granted, but in recent years we have been reminded just how precious this fundamental right is and the importance of our civic duties.

You may have noticed that at University of Waterloo events, we begin with a land acknowledgement that recognizes that much of our work takes place on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples. We also highlight that our main campus is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land granted to the Six Nations that includes six miles on each side of the Grand River. I often expand upon the acknowledgement by personally encouraging attendees to deepen their own understandings of Indigenous cultures and histories.