Faculty of Arts Update 2014-15

student actress in sword fight

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Strategic Initiatives: Vibrant Student Experience

Architectural rendering of Hagey Hall addition

  • Began construction in May 2015 on an addition and renovation to Hagey Hall. New facilities (expected completion September 2016) will include social, study, and collaboration spaces for students in Arts. Included in the renovation is a state-of-the-art finance lab for students in Accounting and Finance.
  • Redeveloped Arts undergraduate orientation to engage and support first year Arts students prior to their arrival through an interactive online tool, Arts 101 Incoming Student Web Resource.

Strategic Initiatives: Transformational Research

  • Social sciences and humanities researchers at Waterloo surpassed the national average grant success rate by 10% in the major SSHRC competitions in 2014/15.

  • Three Arts researchers received a 2015 Early Researcher Award (Ian Milligan, History; Evan Risko, Psychology; David Williams, St. Jerome’s University, English), a particularly strong institutional outcome for humanities and social science fields in this highly competitive program.
  • Canada Research Chair in embodied and embedded cognition awarded to Evan Risko (Psychology) in 2014.
  • Chris Eliasmith (Philosophy) awarded the 2015 NSERC John C . Polanyi Award, one of Canada’s most distinguished awards, for his work on the world’s most complex large-scale model simulation of the human brain.
  • American Cancer Society’s Luther L. Terry Award for leadership in tobacco use control research awarded to Geoff Fong (Psychology), who was also elected to the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences in 2015.
  • Pioneering work on black history and human rights in Canada by James Walker (History) recognized with the Oliver le Jeune Memorial Award.
  • Psychology PhD student Gordon Pennycook’s research showing links between smartphone use and lazy thinking went viral with over 300 media outlets worldwide reporting the findings.

participant in a brain study

  • Researchers in Arts are joining colleagues from Environment and Applied Health Sciences in a new initiative – Community Health Environment Communications (CHEC ) – to establish a living laboratory at Stratford in 2015.

Strategic Initiatives: Outstanding Academic Programming

  • Arts will complete the standardization of academic plans across Arts' 28 majors in October 2015. This will streamline the curriculum for students, offer more course selection, make joint honours accessible to more students and make it easier for students to make changes to their academic careers. This will also strengthen staff and faculty members’ ability to support student progress, retention and graduation.
  • Arts is developing curriculum for two new first-year courses which were identified as priorities through the Faculty strategic planning process and which will become foundation courses for all incoming Honours Arts and Arts and Business students. These two courses, Inquiry and Communications and Information and Analysis, will ensure that Arts students acquire solid competencies in communications and information literacy in their first year.
  • A unique team-based interdisciplinary fourth-year course is in development in which students will address a specific global problem under mentorship from relevant experts from the private, not-for-profit and public sectors. Emphasis will be on research in practice, collaboration and multi-channel dissemination.
  • Faculty of Arts has created a new position, Associate Dean Undergraduate Programs, to provide leadership to ongoing efforts to ensure compelling and innovative curriculum in Arts.
  • Joined a consortium with several other research-intensive Canadian universities to track and understand better the career paths of Arts graduate students. This information will support the development of programs to build transferrable and professional skills.
  • A new PhD program in Applied Philosophy will soon be finalized which will feature high-level scholarship on pressing problems, research opportunities with MITAC S and will emphasize professionalization for non-academic careers.

Strategic Initiatives: Teaching Excellence

  • Arts faculty members received more University Distinguished Teaching Awards than any other Faculty, including Greta Kroeker (History) and Michael MacDonald (English Language and Literature) recognized for their dedication and teaching excellence as well as their willingness to experiment with pedagogy and curriculum; and PhD student Tommy Mayberry, (English Language and Literature) for exceptional teaching by a student.

Strategic Initiatives: Experiential and Entrepreneurial

Architecture class in Rome

  • More funds have been allocated to support field work and international study opportunities for Arts students; fundraising for enhanced experiential learning is a priority for the Arts Advancement team.

  • Arts graduate Robert Beamish (Honours Economics, Arts and Business) co-founded Anokasan inspired by his co-op experience in Hong Kong; the company fosters cultural understanding and forges business links between First Nations communities and investors in Asia.
  • Arts graduate Victoria Stacey (Honours Speech Communication, Arts and Business) founded Passion8 magazine while on co-op, which she continues to publish in addition to holding a full-time position as a digital media coordinator at a Toronto firm.
  • A design created by second year Ariana Cuvin, GBDA student won Canada’s 150th Anniversary national design logo competition.
  • All 64 of the first cohort of third year GBDA students were placed in paid summer internships with Canadian and American firms ranging from small startups to Canadian Tire, BMO, Telus, and Amazon.