AHS dean: the word is 'transdisciplinary'

Waterloo’s “can-do attitude” was the big attraction, says Susan Elliott, when she came from McMaster University in Hamilton to become dean of Waterloo’s faculty of applied health sciences, effective July 1.

She’s still in the process of moving, with seven graduate students completing their degrees at Mac in the next few months. Two others will make the move to Waterloo to undertake PhD degrees here, once they’ve finished their master’s work at Mac. While she gets up to speed on the dean’s job, she’s also keeping a high profile on research projects that she began at McMaster. She was in Montréal earlier this fall for a major announcement about progress on a study supported by both Health Canada and AllerGen, the Allergy, Genes and Environment Network, a federally funded “network of centres of excellence” based at Mac, in which she is a key figure.

“From cell to society” is a tagline used by AllerGen, one that Elliott (right) quotes to sum up the scope of research both in her own work and in the faculty that she’s now heading. “The broad range of experiences I have enjoyed in both research and administration has allowed me to learn to think across the continuum of research,” she says, pointing to the mixture of bench-level (“basic science”), clinical and societal work that characterizes AHS.

It is, she said, “a transdisciplinary faculty that focuses on health, as opposed to medicine”. That key word, “transdisciplinary”, came up repeatedly in Elliott’s description of what she does and why she wants to do it at Waterloo. Her original academic discipline is geography, a field that in this university is based in the faculty of environment. At Mac, where she was director of the school of geography and earth sciences, it’s in the faculty of science. Most recently at Mac, she served as dean of the faculty of social sciences, the largest Faculty on that campus.

“I think one of the tremendous advantages of being in the health faculty at Waterloo is the tremendous emphasis on just that: the health of populations,” she said. She does stress that the McMaster health sciences faculty, a partner at Waterloo’s Kitchener campus, is “incredibly innovative and exciting” and a world leader in research and health care, but her own interest definitely aligns more with population health.

For example, there are the allergy studies (which have found strikingly different allergy rates in different regions of Canada and across a variety of vulnerable groups) and the search for “a healthy community” with respect to the built environment. Her research has also involved work on the “walkability index” for neighbourhoods, a measurement that has been linked to rates of chronic disease. Along those lines, one of the grad students who will be moving to Waterloo is involved with the allergy research; the other is working on issues of how to alter behaviour in the face of environmental risk, such as climate change.

She will lead the AHS faculty (which contains three academic departments: kinesiology, recreation and leisure studies, and health studies and gerontology) from her office in Matthews Hall, and notes that there’s also an initiative in development to create a new School of Public Health and Health Services. And as her predecessor Roger Mannell pointed out at the end of his deanship, “half the mass” of the AHS faculty is in research centres rather than academic departments: the Schlegel-University of Waterloo Research Institute for Aging, the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact, the Murray Alzheimer Research and Education Program, and others. “They essentially function as departments,” Elliott comments, and part of her responsibility is to keep research, teaching and service integrated across those multiple units.

She says she intends to remain an active researcher, with multiple graduate students and research work across the areas of physical environment (water and health), built environment (neighbourhoods and health) and socially-constructed environment (risk and risk perception around newly emerging environmental risks such as food allergies).

She also intends to be back in the classroom, she adds, as she “truly misses” interacting with undergraduate students. As for how she handles the workload of a researcher, a dean and potentially a teacher: “Honestly, I get up very, very early in the morning.” It probably doesn’t hurt that she hones her physical stamina as well. “I’m a very good endurance runner,” she said, and on the day of the interview was getting ready to circle the ring road in the AHS Homecoming Fun Run.

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The town hall, and other Tuesday topics

Today brings the semi-annual "town hall meeting" with the university's president, Feridun Hamdullahpur, and provost, Geoff McBoyle (and chaired by vice-president, external relations, Meg Beckel). The agenda, as outlined on an invitation that was e-mailed across campus, includes “Student Success, Engagement and Retention — Working collaboratively to transform the student experience in and out of the classroom” and “Excellence in Research and Scholarship — Advancing Waterloo’s position nationally and around the world”. A fair number of questions were submitted by e-mail ahead of time to be answered during the session, and (time permitting) questions can also be asked right there in the Humanities Theatre. Today's meeting will start at 3 p.m., and all staff and faculty are invited.

Mary Jane Jennings (left) has officially been named director of the university's institutional analysis and planning office. That's a senior position that includes membership on executive council, the committee of top administrators. Provost Geoff McBoyle said in a memo that Jennings was recommended by a nominating committee "following an internal and external search". She's been serving as interim director since June 1, when former IAP director Bob Truman retired. "I am very pleased that Mary Jane has agreed to take this important leadership position," said McBoyle's memo. "I look forward to working closely with Mary Jane in her new role."

Some things are being done "to decongest traffic and parking and buses in front of the Davis Centre", says Tom Galloway of the plant operations department. "It's become a bit of a transportation hub," he said: a busy area for both vehicles and pedestrians, and busier since it's been adopted as a waiting zone for taxis operating in this part of Waterloo. New signs will sort out stopping places for some of the services — in particular, passengers will find the GO buses in a slightly different location — and for the future, planners are looking at "a bus platform, maybe". Most strikingly, a taxi stand is now being designated along the "chemistry road" that runs off the ring road under the Davis Centre overpass beside Engineering 3.

Opening tonight at the Design at Riverside gallery, in the Architecture building in Cambridge, is “Master Works” — a juried exhibition of thesis projects by recent Master of Architecture graduates. The exhibition is selected by an advisory committee that this year, for the first time, picked two projects instead of one. “Ecstatic City” by Tara Keens-Douglas and Lisa Rajumar-Maharaj and “Jerusalem/Sarajevo — in-between cities” by Lejla Odobašić and Liana Bresler will be exhibited separately but simultaneously. “Ecstatic City” focuses on the festival of Carnival as it is envisioned and experienced in Trinidad. The exhibition “considers the relationship of the festival to personal architecture, space and urban form” with “a vivid and dynamic display of interpretive works including paintings, costumes, photographs, and film”, Meanwhile, “Jerusalem/Sarajevo — in-between cities” shows a pair of cities that are “split by religion and nationalism, caught between a rich, diverse and tormented past and a contested future. They are often spoken of, but normally seen only through the eyes of the media, far removed from the human experience. This exhibition is envisioned as a comparative journey highlighting specific points of cultural overlap, where myth and reality meet.” The show runs through November 14; tonight's opening reception starts at 6:30 p.m.

The second annual "staff recognition reception" is to be held on November 11, says Diana Rau of the human resources department. This event is one of the successor programs to the old Staff Recognition Fund. The stars are (non-union) staff members reaching their anniversaries in UW’s employ: 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 30th, 40th and 45th. And yes, 25th and 35th are missing from that list quite deliberately; staff (and faculty) who reach 25 years at UW become members of the 25-Year Club, which holds a posh reception and ceremony each spring, and recognition of 35-year veterans is also part of that occasion. Next Thursday's reception is an invitation-only event, and a list of staff members who are reaching those round-number anniversaries during 2010 will be posted on the human resources department’s web site. Next Thursday's event will run from 4 to 6 p.m. in the Festival Room, South Campus Hall.

Things are happening today with SharePoint, an online service that’s used by more than 300 groups in various parts of the university. (“The best known example,” says Stephen Markan of information systems and technology, “is that SharePoint is used to host the course notes for the SEW courses.”) What’s planned is a migration of the Waterloo SharePoint server from the current Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) version to the latest SharePoint Foundation 2010 version. Says Markan: “We need to remove templates that cannot be migrated. The majority of SharePoint sites have been cleaned of these templates. We aware there may still be some sites with possible template issues. We will assist in restoring access to the data on any problem sites.” A full backup of WSS will happen today, and this evening some eight templates will be deleted. “All SharePoint site admins are asked to review their sites and report any problems after the templates are removed (please send details of the problem to request@ ist.uwaterloo.ca). Our expectation is there will be some minimal problems with layout and formatting, but that all data will remain available. On November 8 the SharePoint Team will review how the WSS sites have been impacted by the template removal and set a date for the switching from the old WSS server to the new SharePoint Foundation 2010.”

The season is over for some fall sports, and year-end awards are being announced by Ontario University Athletics, the league that includes Warrior interuniversity teams. Among the honours: "coach of the year" status for Jay and Leslie Shaw, first-year mentors of the women's rugby squad, which posted a 4-1 regular season record. Four members of the team have been named to the OUA all-star squad: Caitlin Martin, Sam Eyles, Briana Cunningham and Renee Woodhouse. Meanwhile, in field hockey, the Warriors' Jessica Lawson has received the Gail Wilson Award as "the player who makes the most outstanding contribution". A news release explains that Lawson "was a member of the Warriors Team-Up Youth Outreach Program for the past three years and was asked to design a field hockey specific program where youth can learn skills and tactics of the game. She is also adamant on umpiring and coaching various levels of field hockey within the area including high school and competitive teams of all ages." Teammate Kara Moro was named an OUA all-star in field hockey for 2010.

CAR

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