Survey of Canada's green campuses

The Waterloo campus as a green planetoid — that’s the image on the cover of the latest Alternatives Journal from UW’s faculty of environmental studies, marking the magazine’s annual “environmental education” issue.

The heart of the issue is a directory of “green campus life and learning”, listing programs from Trinity Western to Cape Breton, with an emphasis on programs that are interdisciplinary. (“A complete list of all environmentally focused degrees in Canada would make this version of Alternatives too heavy to fit in your backpack,” the editors write.)

“A thriving green-student movement is sizzling on Canadian campuses,” the magazine reports. “For the first time in decades, university students are getting a warm response from some administrators when they request progressive environmental policies and programs for their campuses. Students from all departments are lending their energy, skills and commitment to raise environmental awareness and reform policy, and they’re having fun doing it.”

Each campus gets a half-page in the directory, with UW’s half-page making room for a few words about environmental studies, the Sustainability Project, the food services farm market and other achievements, as well as a description of the campus itself: “Columbia Lake has trails to the Laurel Creek Conservation Area. It is home to herons, osprey and geese, and now hosts cranes, which stop by on their migratory route.”

Elsewhere in the issue, Waterloo Unlimited’s Linda Carson is the author of an article titled “Crossing the Line” which argues for the merits of a transdisciplinary approach to environmental education, as offered in the ES faculty particularly through the new Knowledge Integration program.

In another article, Nicola Ross takes the pulse of the environmental job market and finds that dawn has broken. Environment and resource studies alumni Cassandra Polyzou and Collette Spagnuolo were interviewed for the article, which is available on the magazine’s web site along with another feature of the new issue, an interview with Justin Trudeau.

The cover image, showing stylized versions of the Dana Porter Library, the Biology greenhouses and the Physics building, was imagined by assistant editor Erin Elliott and created on the screen by Joe Bevan of the Mapping, Analysis and Design unit in ES. It’s a “planetoid” of a kind that is currently fashionable in graphic design, and modeled in part on a dramatic sphere created this summer at the University of Toronto.

“It took some galactic magic to create it,” says Marcia Ruby of the Alternatives staff, and Bevan elaborates: “You can buy software just for making the spheres, but PhotoShop works just fine. The final product was actually a 180 degree pan with some extra people added as well as the library. I've done more since, using single square images repeated multiple times to create the pan and then turned into a sphere.”

Back to top

UW prof among cancer award winners

A UW faculty member who started out as an English major, and who works with policies, data and education rather than with cells and scalpels, has been honoured as one of the country’s ten top cancer researchers.

Roy Cameron of UW’s department of health studies and gerontology is one of ten recipients of a special award marking the 60th anniversary of the National Cancer Institute of Canada. NCIC is the country's longest-standing research organization dedicated to supporting cancer research and advancing cancer control.

The institute presented Diamond Jubilee Awards to the ten researchers at a special event Friday in Toronto. The Diamond Jubilee Award is a one-time honour, created to recognize researchers who have made “truly outstanding contributions” to cancer research in Canada over their careers. “The dedication and landmark achievements of the award winners,” says an announcement from NCIC, “have led to new insights and developments in the many facets of cancer research, leading the way for current and future researchers to expand on their work.”

"We are here tonight to celebrate 60 outstanding years of progress in cancer research and to honour several of the very best cancer researchers Canada has produced," said Elizabeth Eisenhauer, president of the NCIC. "In cancer research, every new finding builds on the one that came before it. Over the past 60 years, researchers have uncovered a multitude of answers to many of the most pressing cancer questions, leading to vast improvements in prevention, early detection and treatment.

“The outstanding researchers we are honouring today have laid a rock solid foundation, putting us in a position of great strength to build on. We are very grateful and proud to be here in such distinguished company."

Cameron (left) is executive director of NCIC's Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation, which is housed at UW and funded by the Canadian Cancer Society. He was honoured for his work in tobacco control, cancer control, public policy and population health.

With degrees in English at the undergraduate and master’s level, and another master’s and a PhD in clinical psychology, Cameron specializes in how to communicate and influence behaviour towards preventing cancer or supporting treatment. Says his web site: “He is facilitating the creation of a pan-Canadian network that enables research, evaluation, practice, and policy leaders to develop high impact research and evaluation programs. In essence, the goal of this capacity development is to build infrastructure analogous to a clinical trials network that is designed to support population intervention studies.”

His achievements include playing a catalyzing role in the formation of the Canadian Tobacco Control Research Initiative and the Population Health Intervention Research Initiative. His team developed the School Health Action, Planning and Evaluation System or SHAPES, which enables schools, communities and provinces to plan, evaluate, study and improve prevention programs and policies by collecting local real time data on behaviours such as tobacco use, healthy eating and physical activity. Cameron has served as executive director of CBRPE since 1995.

Said Michael Wosnick, executive director of the NCIC. "Sixty years ago, when the NCIC was founded, little was known about cancer. Today, it is a very different story, thanks to the combined efforts of our superb Canadian research community and the continued generosity of the Canadian public who make research possible. The progress in these years has been nothing short of astonishing; from a survival rate of only 25 per cent in the 1940s, to 60 per cent today. We can only imagine what research will contribute to growing this rate even higher."

The awards were presented at a dinner at the Toronto Intercontinental Hotel with the University Health Network (Ontario Cancer Institute/Princess Margaret Hospital) as sponsor.

Back to top

Notes from Monday's senate meeting

The graduate program in “tourism policy and planning”, offered until now by the faculty of environmental studies, will be a joint program between ES and the department of recreation and leisure studies, UW’s senate agreed at its meeting this week. The proposed change came from the two faculties involved (ES and applied health sciences) and senate’s graduate and research council. “Tourism is recognized by both Geography and Recreation & Leisure Studies as an important area of specialization,” the report to senate said. “Faculty in both departments who work in tourism have an international reputation.” Students who complete the program currently receive a Master of Applied Environmental Studies degree; from now on it’ll be the same degree that crowns other thesis master’s programs in ES, the Master of Environmental Studies.

Senate also approved some curriculum changes in the undergraduate pharmacy program — which doesn’t have any students yet. The first ones are scheduled to arrive in January, after completing a minimum of two years’ university study, with courses in such fields as chemistry and biology. Among the changes is a new rule that will ultimately many of those students to receive a degree in science as well as one in pharmacy. “Students who have completed a minimum of two years (at least 10.0 lecture units) of any Regular or Cooperative Science program at the University of Waterloo prior to successfully completing the BScPhm degree may be eligible to transfer up to 11.0 pharmacy units to an Honours Science BSc degree,” it says. “Students who already have a Three-year General Science degree from UW are eligible to upgrade their degree to Honours Science.”

Senate approved extensive changes to the curriculum in nanotechnology engineering, after seeing a report from the engineering faculty and senate undergraduate council asserting that the present requirements impose “excessive student load compared to other engineering programs, particularly in the 1B term. The current structure also generates situations in which the effectiveness of capital- and technology-intensive laboratories, unique to the NE program and central to the education of NE students, is limited by the need to perform laboratory exercises asynchronously to the underpinning theory.” A task force looked into these issues and others, the report said. “The proposal affects three different classes: the classes graduating in 2010 (currently in 2B), 2011 (currently on work term 1B), and 2012 (the class which just entered 1A in Fall 2007).” Among the changes: NE 100, “Introduction to Nanotechnology Engineering”, is being moved to term 1A, while NE 131, a physics course, is shifted to term 1B, and several other courses will be offered a term later than they’re currently scheduled.

The first day of classes next fall will be Monday, September 8, and winter term classes in 2009 will start on Monday, January 5. Those are among features of the academic calendar dates for 2008-09 that were approved by senate when they were presented by UW registrar Ken Lavigne. He noted that, as required, each of the terms in 2008-09 will have a minimum of 60 teaching days (exactly 60 in all three terms, in fact), and the required number of study days and exam days are also provided. Reading week in 2009 will run February 16-20.

CAR

Back to top