Bank supports centre to study retirement

A research centre supported by RBC (the Royal Bank of Canada) and taking its name from RBC’s retirement planning products is being created to carry out research about “the issues boomers will face” as they enter their retirement years.

“We believe more research is required to understand the issues,” says Ashif Ratanshi, a senior vice-president of RBC, “so that we can provide relevant advice and solutions to better prepare them to live well in retirement.”

And so RBC yesterday announced “a research partnership . . . which includes the creation of the RBC Your Future By Design Retirement Research Centre at the University of Waterloo”.

The first wave of boomers turns 65 in 2011, a news release points out, “and with this, a significant portion of the population will need advice, resources and information to help plan, transition and thrive in retirement.”

Says Ratanshi: “With boomers nearing and entering their retirement years, this strategic alliance with one of Canada’s leading universities will provide Canadian boomers with relevant information and innovative ideas to enable their retirement planning and retirement living.”

The RBC Your Future By Design Retirement Research Centre, said the release, “combines Waterloo’s insights and expertise on healthy aging with RBC’s expertise in providing Canadians with financial advice and solutions to help them succeed. The new centre will focus on research related to areas that influence quality of life in retirement including health, leisure, wellness, lifestyle, financial, economic, science, arts and technology.”

In addition to the new centre, RBC is creating an undergraduate grant program called the RBC Your Future by Design Retirement Research Undergraduate Fellowship, which will enable Waterloo students to work with researchers on projects related to healthy aging and retirement. This fellowship “is designed to develop expertise in full-time undergraduates interested in retirement and aging as it impacts Canadians, businesses, institutions and systems, and advance the understanding of retirement from health, financial, social, leisure and psychological and health perspectives”.

The bank says the centre “will complement the distinctive RBC approach that helps clients identify, plan, and realize their goals for retirement. With the guidance of RBC financial planners and investment and retirement planners, Your Future by Design helps clients create a blueprint for a successful lifestyle and financial plan for retirement based on what is truly important to them in key areas in life, including family, health, home, lifestyle, work/business, mind and spirit, and legacy.”

Meredith McGinnis, director of advancement in applied health sciences, said the new centre “will be a cross-faculty initiative”, with the majority of the research activities taking place in the Faculty of AHS.

She noted that the RBC retirement planning program helps clients “identify, plan and realize goals for retirement by providing information and answers on all aspects of retirement (e.g. health, lifestyle, mind and spirit, family etc.), not just financial.

“RBC approached Waterloo about collaborating to support innovative research investigating areas that influence quality of life in retirement. They recognize that, in addition to good financial planning, people need help in lifestyle planning if they are to age successfully, lead meaningful and healthy lives, and remain engaged in the lives of their communities.

“RBC’s Head of Retirement Strategies, Lee Anne Davies — who has been instrumental in the collaboration — holds an MA in gerontology from Waterloo (1995) and is currently completing her PhD studies with John Hirdes in Waterloo’s department of health studies and gerontology.”

Says Roger Mannell, dean of applied health sciences: “This collaborative approach is the first of its kind where our innovative academic research will assist the financial services industry in the development of practical solutions and advice for retirement planning. We are pleased to collaborate with Royal Bank of Canada, one of Canada’s leading financial institutions, to inform, engage and empower Canadian boomers throughout this significant period in their lives.”

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From the manic fans on the cover to a sober group portrait of the baseball Warriors with hands folded in their laps, Reflections of a  Warrior tells the story of the 2009-10 intercollegiate sports season. The 100-page book includes hundreds of action photos as well as a complete set of team pictures. “The concept,” says Dan Ackerman, communications coordinator in the athletics and recreational services department, “was to show the public, and mostly our athletes, what Warrior athletics is all about — the athleticism and pride our athletes have here at Waterloo.” Photographers included Steve Brooks, Jim Hagen, Carl Pawloski and Dave Rhodes. “The athletics department can be contacted if anyone would like to receive a copy,” says Ackerman, “but it was created for students.”

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Sabbaticals — from Bulgaria to Palo Alto

Here’s another list of Waterloo faculty members who are currently on sabbatical leave. The plans for each professor’s leave are as reported to the UW board of governors. All these sabbaticals began January 1, 2010.

Marcel O’Gorman, English language and literature (12 months): “This leave will allow me to complete two research/creation projects that I am documenting in my monograph on death and technology. I will also use the leave to establish a working relationship between the Critical Media Lab at UW and the Laboratoire Paragraphe at Université de Paris VIII where I will be a visiting researcher.”

Stanislav Potapenko, civil and environmental engineering (6 months): “For the time of my sabbatical leave I intend to spend two months at the University of California at Berkeley, one month at Tufts University in Boston and one month at the University of Tulsa. The primary goal of my leave is to explore several new research directions I can pursue together with my graduate students in the future.”

William Power, chemistry (six months in 2010, another six months starting January 1, 2011): “Initially, I will concentrate on writing an invited review article for Annual Reports on NMR Spectroscopy as well as conduct experiments at both IQC and the National Solid-State NMR Facility in Ottawa. Later I will travel for research purposes, including visits to Alberta and France. My sabbatical is split into two sections to accommodate departmental teaching needs in Fall 2010.”

Robert Prus, sociology (6 months): “I plan to use this leave time primarily to continue studies on a project that traces the study of human knowing and acting in Western social thought from the classical Greek era to the present time.”

Michael Ross, psychology (12 months): “I will be writing articles on the results of my SSHRC-supported research on public apologies and collective memory. I will also foster and continue collaborations on public apologies and collective memory with faculty at the University of Victoria, Cardiff University in Wales, Southampton University in England, and Université Blaise Pascal in France.”

Cecile Devaud, mechanical and mechatronics engineering (6 months): “During my sabbatical leave, I plan to pursue my research in the fields of computational fluid dynamics and turbulent combustion modelling. I will visit several research groups in Europe, CORIA (Rouen, France), University of Cambridge (UK) and University of Ghent (Belgium) and further develop collaborative work.”

Edward Lank, computer science (6 months): “The goal of this leave is to study the use of computer vision processes in the analysis of pen and camera based content captured by mobile devices. I plan to visit the Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC), furthering an active collaboration with Eric Saund. Dr. Saund has expertise in image processing and computer vision. Areas of collaboration include the cost of modes in pen-based interfaces, motion kinematics in computer interfaces, handwritten content analysis, and the design of sketch-based software applications.”

Alex Statiev, history (6 months): “I plan to conduct research in Germany, Russia and Bulgaria for two projects: a major project on the Soviet NKVD divisions in World War II and an article on Bulgarian humanities scholars under the communist regime. I will also participate in the VIII World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies in Stockholm.”

CAR

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