Community

As part of celebrations for spring convocation, the University of Waterloo proudly welcomes a new group of honorary doctorates.

Honorary doctorates are bestowed upon exceptional people who have contributed to the Waterloo community or to the country at large. Including some of Canada’s finest artists, entrepreneurs, scientists, philanthropists and distinguished public figures, an honorary doctorate is among the highest recognitions of extraordinary service and excellence the University bestows.

Recipient of a 2023 University of Waterloo Distinguished Teaching Award, Skrzydlo uses universal design for learning (UDL) to make her courses more inclusive.

Dr. Will Percival is a primary science coordinator for the Euclid space mission, set to launch from Cape Canaveral this July.

Percival is the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Distinguished Chair in Astrophysics, director of the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics and a full professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

As Percival explains, the Euclid satellite and the mission it will undertake are designed to solve a specific problem in astrophysics and cosmology. 

Since 1975, Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest has recognized the achievements of hundreds of local women with the K-W Oktoberfest Rogers Women of the Year Awards. In 2023, multiple University of Waterloo alumni and students were nominated as exceptional women in our community. Two alumni and two current students were among the award recipients. 

A doctoral candidate in the School of Planning and a graduate educational developer with the Centre for Teaching Excellence, McDougall has first-hand experience with learning disabilities.  

On Friday, May 26, the University of Waterloo held its inaugural Celebrating Black Communities event at Federation Hall. The evening’s program featured a reception and a sit-down dinner, followed by a keynote address and a fireside conversation with the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, former 27th Governor General of Canada and current chancellor at United College.

Each year in June, Pride Month celebrates the diversity, history, contributions, and achievements of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, while also raising awareness about further progress needed for equity and justice. We acknowledge that we have a lot more work to do on campus to create a safe and just environment for 2SLGBTQIA+ students, staff and faculty, and we are committed to that work.

For those who subscribe to what’s known as the social model of disability, disability is a form of human diversity and should be thought of as an identity, just as we think of race, gender and sexual orientation as identities.

Yet disability is often thought of primarily as something that is wrong with a person or something that needs fixing through medical interventions, what is called in disability studies the medical model of disability.

Alongside her academic career, Bumbulis was a competitive swimmer. She had been swimming competitively since she was eight, and by high school, she was swimming up to four hours a day, six days a week.