Community

Every year, our community gathers for Alumni Weekend, where alumni can reconnect with Waterloo, meet up with old classmates and celebrate their milestone anniversaries. But 2020 had other plans in store.

When we were forced to cancel this in-person event, we knew that we couldn’t let these milestone anniversaries go uncelebrated! In September, when alumni gathered virtually for Alumni Black and Gold Day at home, we took them down memory lane.

The sudden death of Mike Moser, beloved member and reigning national scoring leader of the 1974-75 Waterloo Warriors men’s basketball team, brought his teammates together in a way that will be forever remembered.

“When we lost Mike, it gave us more purpose. It really drew everyone in together. We had a commitment to win it for Mike,” says Phil Schlote (MSc ’78), a Faculty of Applied Health Sciences alumnus who played alongside Mike, both with the Warriors and at Kitchener’s Forest Heights Collegiate Institute.

Macular degeneration robbed Anne-Marie Brune of her sight. But because of a gift that she and her husband Heinz made to Waterloo, other people with the same condition may recover their vision.

The Brunes believed in the power of science to transform lives touched by disease, and they dedicated their entire estate to research that will “advance the human condition.” Their gift to Waterloo’s School of Optometry & Vision Science will further that goal by supporting research in eye and brain diseases that afflict thousands of people around the world.

For more than 20 years, the University of Waterloo community has been buoyed by the compassionate support from Lyle Hallman and the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation.

But the impact can be felt beyond the boundaries of our campus, in a mobile STEM makerspace that travels to underserved communities, an entrepreneurship program for Indigenous business, and multi-layered support for our healthcare system.

Student Emergency Support Fund puts a degree back on track

University is about discovering your potential – gaining new knowledge, mining your abilities and finding a way to share them with the world.

For young women entering the technology sector, this journey can be daunting. While they pursue their passions and interests, they are less likely than their male counterparts to meet mentors who look like them, or see themselves represented in industry leaders.

A Waterloo political science student has been named one of ten Youth Champions for Disarmament by the United Nations. Kirsten Mosey was inspired to work in global affairs after volunteering at a notorious refugee camp on the small Greek island of Lesvos.

The University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Mathematics has introduced a new course designed to help secondary school students whose education was interrupted abruptly by COVID-19 sharpen their mathematical skills ahead of commencing their post-secondary education.

The new online, skills-based course, MTHEL 199, gives Waterloo’s incoming students extra practice in six branches of mathematics: inequalities and absolute values, radicals and rational expressions, trigonometry, exponential and logarithmic functions, polynomials and introductory calculus. 

Welcome to Career Perspectives, where we share a conversation between two Waterloo alumni. In this conversation, Akailah Wilson (BA ’15) and Joanna Woo (BA ’09) discuss their experiences as Human Resources (HR) professionals in the Kitchener-Waterloo technology industry. Read on to get an inside view of talent recruitment in tech and uncover new inspiration for your own career.

Starting your first year of university is a big moment. It often means moving away from home for the first time, starting new classes and making new friends. Starting something new and unfamiliar can feel scary.

Plus, back-to-school has never looked quite like this. With most undergraduate classes happening online for the Fall Term, many students will be studying from home. Add it all together, and it’s easy to understand why incoming students might be nervous.