Faculty of Arts Update 2016-17

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Strategic Initiatives: Transformational Research

  • Distinguished honours, awards, and research chairs awarded to Arts faculty and graduates, include:
    • Professor Jim Walker (history) was named Member of the Order of Canada for his influential scholarship on human rights and the role of Black Canadians in advancing racial equity;
    • John English, distinguished professor emeritus (history), was promoted to Officer of the Order of Canada for his contributions to Canada’s political heritage;
    • Professor Colin MacLeod (psychology) was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada;
    • Professor Heather Douglas was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS);
    • Professor John Turri (philosophy) was named a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, Royal Society of Canada, and also a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Cognitive Science;
    • Professor Ramona Bobocel (psychology) was named a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association;
    • Professor Linda Warley (English) won the 2016 Gabrielle Roy Prize for her co-edited book, Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives;
    • Gord Pennycook’s (PhD ’16 psychology) lead-authored paper, “On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit,” won an Ig Nobel Prize from Harvard University; and
    • Professor Chris Eliasmith (philosophy) was promoted to Tier 1 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Theoretical Neuroscience.
  • Ashley Rose Mehlenbacher (English) and Igor Grossmann (psychology) each received an Ontario Early Researcher Award.
  • Jessie Thistle MA ’16 history, supervised by Professor Susan Roy, is the first Indigenous student to win both a Trudeau and a Vanier fellowship for his PhD studies.
  • Professor Naila Keleta-Mae (theatre and performance) delivered the keynote, addressing race and gender issues in Canada, at the University’s International Women’s Day dinner.
  • Faculty and staff members in Arts collaborated with the Waterloo Aboriginal Education Centre, along with numerous Indigenous partners, to present The Mush Hole Project, a multidisciplinary performance at Canada’s oldest former residential school in Brantford, followed by a conference, Integrating Knowledges Summit, held at Waterloo.
  • Arts and the Waterloo Aboriginal Education Centre have jointly launched the Indigenous Speaker Series, with two speakers presented in winter 2017.
  • Arts collaborated with University Community Relations and Kitchener Public Library to host two sold-out public panels: Digital Dependencies: how we upload and offload ourselves in fall 2016, and Post-truth. Fake news. Alternative facts in winter 2017.

Strategic Initiatives: Outstanding Academic Programming

  • Arts continues to lead the Steering Committee, English Language Competency Initiative (SCELCI), with communications programming successfully implemented by Arts teaching staff and faculty in engineering, math, science, and in-progress in environment.
  • Arts First director and co-director are well on the way in preparing the September 2018 launch of required first-year courses (Inquiry and Communication and Information and Analysis), with a website currently focused on recruitment of multidisciplinary teaching faculty.
  • A working group of faculty and staff members developed an online quiz and related website to help current and prospective students find their best fit among the Faculty’s undergraduate programs in digital media. The fun and informative quiz has been taken 4,000+ times.
  • Arts continues to offer and introduce courses that respond to our times. Examples include the English’s Popular Potter, history’s Digital History, and sociology’s International Migration. Such courses are highly engaging while developing critical insights and understanding of current challenges, popular trends, and future employment competencies.

Amy Zhou and President Feridun Hamdullahpur socializing.

Amy Zhou (BA '17) led the Arts and Business Student Society's startup entrepreneurship event.

Strategic Initiatives: Experiential and Entrepreneurial

  • Emma Vossen, a PhD candidate in English, was one of the five national winners of the SSHRC’s annual Storytellers competition; her entry focused on First Person Scholar, a game studies website founded by Waterloo English graduate students.
  • A team of economics students, mentored by Professor Jean- Paul Lam, was among the finalists for the Bank of Canada’s Governor’s Challenge, where teams presented policy recommendations for keeping inflation low and stable.
  • A group of Global Governance graduate students presented their research insights and ideas by invitation to Global Affairs Canada.
  • A School of Accounting and Finance student and alumnus made up half the team who advanced to the finals of the Hult Prize competition for social justice and enterprise.
  • A Global Business and Digital Arts student team had their class project implemented in the real world as the redesigned Stratford Police website and mobile app.
  • Andria Bianchi, a PhD candidate in philosophy, won runner-up in the University’s Three Minute Thesis competition for her presentation on ethical considerations for those with dementia and sexual consent.

Strategic Initiatives: Teaching Excellence

  • Arts faculty members led a number of initiatives to help students and others develop critical awareness and action to end sexual assault and harassment on campus and beyond. These included:
    • the Faculty of Arts hosted a four-hour public Rape Culture teach-a-thon in September 2016 which featured 14 short lectures by professors from many departments, who addressed rape culture from their respective disciplinary perspectives; and
    • Drama and Speech Communication offered three fall courses with the shared theme “arresting rape culture;” the courses resulted in the winter term performance Unconscious Curriculum, an expert panel Gendered Violence on Campus: Institutional Policy and Practice, and an interactive art installation.
  • Professor Doreen Fraser’s (philosophy) course, Quantum Mechanics for Everyone that focuses in part on leading research at Waterloo, became a regular course offering for any Waterloo undergraduate.
  • Professor Frankie Condon (English) won the Federation of Students Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award for 2017.

Strategic Initiatives: Vibrant Student Experience

  • The Hagey Hall Hub opened in September 2016, just before Orientation Week. The three-story space represents the achievement of a critical strategic goal to enhance the on-campus experience of Arts students; it offers numerous study and social areas with comfortable seating, a coffee shop, and a bookable project room. The Hub’s official grand opening with donors present took place on February 10, 2017.
  • Global Governance Master of Arts (MA) candidate Masroora Haque was a member of the Waterloo delegation at COP22, the Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Marrakech; she presented a research paper and contributed to action planning for the Paris Agreement.
  • The Arts and Business Student Society initiated and led an entrepreneurship event specifically for Arts students called stARTup; it brought together a panel of five young alumni who are entrepreneurs to speak with current students about the ways in which an Arts education and skillset play a vital part in startup ventures.
  • The number of Arts undergraduate students participating in international exchange has doubled over five years: in fall 2011, 33 students spent their academic term studying at an international partner university by fall 2016, 64 students participated in study-abroad experiences.