Daily Bulletin, November 26, 2010

Kids' Lego tournament comes to campus

It’ll be wall-to-wall Lego in Engineering 5 building all day Sunday, as 21 teams of youngsters aged 9 to 14 meet for the “WE-Connect First Lego League Waterloo Qualifier”, a tournament that is the culmination of eight weeks of research and design.

They’re among some 17,000 teams in more than 50 countries competing in hundreds of tournaments. The challenge will test problem-solving skills, creative thinking, teamwork, competitive play, sportsmanship, and sense of community. Four teams from Waterloo will move on to a provincial tournament in January, and can hope they’ll be chosen to participate at the First Lego League World Festival, to be held in April in St. Louis.

Working within this year’s theme of “How Engineering Meets Medicine”, the kids have been building and programming their Lego Mindstorms robots to accomplish up to 13 missions on a specialized mat —things like bone repair, rapid blood screening, bionic eyes, and nerve mapping. Teams will also present projects related to how engineering mixes with traditional biological and medical sciences to advance healthcare.

Krista Gordon, a Grade 3 teacher at Suddaby Public School in downtown Kitchener, will bring three teams to the event. Since she started FLL at Suddaby three years ago, she says, the response from students has been overwhelming. This year more than 85 students applied to take part, and parents from other schools even called to see if their children could join.

Maud Gorbet, a faculty member in systems design engineering, not only coaches an FLL team, but for the last three years has spearheaded increased local involvement in the program. This is the first year a regional qualifying FLL tournament is held at the University of Waterloo. “This program is fantastic for kids with science and engineering minds,” says Gorbet. “It gives them a chance to sharpen their skills and to shine in an area of strength.” The regional tournament is sponsored by Waterloo Engineering, RIM, and the Province of Ontario.

FIRST — the initials stand for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — also sponsors a robotics competition for high school students each spring. Its FLL competition is judged in four areas: project presentation; robot performance; technical design and programming of the robot; and teamwork.

First Lego League was created in a partnership between FIRST and The Lego Group in 1998 to get children excited about science and technology, and to teach them employment and life skills. Using Lego Mindstorms technologies and Lego Education materials, children work alongside adult mentors to design, build, and program autonomous robots and create an innovative solution to a problem as part of their research project.

After eight intense weeks, the competition season culminates at high-energy, sports-like tournaments. As with any other organized sport, teams also fundraise, create a team identity, and go on field trips.

Math innovator gives Hagey Lecture Monday

[Mighton at blackboard] Innovative mathematician John Mighton (left), who founded Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies, will be the speaker for this year’s Hagey Lecture, to be given Monday evening under the title “The High Cost of Intellectual Poverty: How Myths About Intelligence and Talent are Slowing Human Progress”. Mighton is the author of The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematical Talent in Every Child.

"We are very excited to welcome John Mighton, and feel that his visit will engage and enrich in equal measure," says health studies and gerontology professor John Mielke, chair of the Hagey Lecture committee. "Providing a forum to introduce thought-provoking work to our community continues to be the goal of the lectures. Dr. Mighton will help us to accomplish our goal by discussing how the inability to properly recognize and nurture intellectual potential presents great costs to Canadian society."

The lecture will be given Monday at 8 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre. Admission is free and no tickets are required. Then on Tuesday morning, Mighton will address a student colloquium with a talk entitled “The Open Mind: Why we should develop an educational system that allows students to succeed in and appreciate both the arts and the sciences”. It begins at 10 a.m. in the Douglas Wright Engineering building, room 3518.

In his national best-selling book, Mighton describes his successes with JUMP, and how anyone can learn and teach math. After almost failing first-year calculus at the University of Toronto, Mighton recovered and gained a love of mathematics. It was his belief that everyone has great mathematical potential that led him to found JUMP as a kitchen-table tutoring group in 1998.

At present, Mighton volunteers his time and expertise at JUMP as the lead curriculum developer for math student workbooks and teacher's manuals. In May 2007, he released a follow-up book to The Myth of Ability called The End of Ignorance. All proceeds from the publications are donated to JUMP.

Mighton is also an award-winning playwright whose plays have been performed across Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States. He says there are more connections between the arts and the sciences than people generally think, adding that scientists and mathematicians are often led by a sense of beauty or elegance, and describe their work in artistic terms.

Mighton did his PhD in mathematics at U of T and was awarded an NSERC fellowship for postdoctoral research in knot and graph theory. He is a fellow of the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and has taught mathematics at Toronto. Mighton also lectured in philosophy at McMaster University, where he received a master's degree in philosophy.

Waterloo's premier invitational public lecture series since 1970, the Hagey Lecture — named after Gerry Hagey, the university's first president — is co-sponsored by the university and the faculty association. Hagey lecturers are expected to have distinguished themselves in some scholarly or creative field; previous lecturers have included Nobel laureates in various disciplines, internationally renowned scholars, architects, peace activists and well-known artists.

United Way near goal; other notes

It’s down to a final couple of days for the on-campus United Way campaign, which began on October 1 aiming to raise $200,000 for local agencies and charities. (The contributions and money raised by university staff, faculty and retirees go toward the larger Kitchener-Waterloo United Way, which is in the process of raising $6 million for the community this year.) “We have reached 517 donors and 98.9% of our goal!” says a happy message from the on-campus organizers — and the calculation was done several days ago, meaning that the total amount ($180,259 in personal donations and $17,546 raised by special events) is surely past the 200-grand mark by now. It adds: “The United Way office will continue to accept pledge forms until November 30, after which donations should be made directly to the K-W United Way.”

The staff association’s annual craft sale is into its final day today, running from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Davis Centre “fishbowl” lounge. As always, the merchandise is handmade by Waterloo staff members and retirees; and as always, 10 per cent of the proceeds are donated to the Senate Scholarship Fund and the staff association’s own student award. “Why not come out and purchase a few Christmas gifts?” the flyer asks, and adds a list of genres and temptations that I always enjoy: “Christmas sewn crafts and ornaments; knitted/crocheted items; numerous wood crafts and tole painted items; homemade chocolates; scented/aroma bears; candles; seashells; custom jewelry, cloth snowmen/santas/angels; quilted and felted items; stained glass/original paintings; pressed floral art, handmade cards, fleece blankets… plus much more.” Oh, and there are “many raffle prizes (all monies from the raffle go directly to the scholarship funds).”

Also under way today is the first Federation of Students’ Arts Symposium, running from 10:00 to 5:00 in the Student Life Centre. The symposium, organizer say, “is a place for Waterloo students to showcase their artistic skills by selling their personal creations or by hosting a workshop.” According to Feds vice-president (internal) Nikki Best, “We hope to make it an annual event. The university has so many talented artists that use varied media, and we wanted to give them a chance to showcase and share their work. We have everything from workshops put on by Waterloo’s swing dance club and a glow-sticking act to henna to resin jewelry.”

Marta Bailey, communication manager in the graduate studies office, sends word that Waterloo representatives are currently in Beijing attending a Canada China Roundtable on Partnership in Graduate Studies. Objective of the roundtable is “to improve the mutual understanding of graduate studies in Canada and in China, to share ideas on how Canada and China should move forward to engage in more graduate studies”. The Waterloo delegation includes Lei Xu of civil and environmental engineering, Martin Laforest of the Institute for Quantum Computing, Jeanette Nugent of the grad studies office, and Shoufa Lin of earth and environmental sciences. Bailey adds that most of the Waterloo group will stay in Beijing for an extra couple of days to attend a two-day PhD workshop.

And from the same source: “A Saudi Students Academic Fair was held in Toronto on October 30 and 31 for Saudi students. This exhibition provided Canadian universities with a unique opportunity to meet many of the 12,000-plus Saudi Arabian scholarship students already in Canada who are seeking admission into graduate, ESL and undergraduate programs in Canadian universities. The event was organized by the Saudi Cultural Attaché in Canada. Currently, Waterloo has over 100 Saudi students. The fair was very successful, boasting a high attendance with extreme interest in Waterloo. Three current Saudi students and one Saudi alumnus assisted us.”

[CAURA conference logo] The university’s office of research will welcome about 200 university administrators from across the province at the annual Canadian Association of University Research Administrators Ontario conference on Monday and Tuesday. Activities are centred at the Waterloo Inn on King Street North. The program includes sessions on the kinds of things that research administrators do: tri-agency program updates (that means the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research); designing and evaluating large-scale international research programs; and writing and submitting grant proposals. Keynote speaker is Lionel Laroche of consulting firm MCB Solutions, talking about “The Impact of Cultural Differences in Canadian Universities”. Delegates will also get an evening of entertainment that includes music by Waterloo’s Lost Faculties ensemble.

The registrar's office (including financial aid) and the student accounts office in Needles Hall will open late Monday morning, at 9:30, because of a customer service training event. • Faculty and monthly-paid staff can look for their December pay on Thursday the 23rd, the last working day of 2010, rather than waiting for the usual date of "the last Friday in the month". • The official opening of Waterloo's Summit Centre for the Environment, the new outpost in Huntsville, Ontario, has been postponed from the original December 1 date and will be held January 21.

CAR

Friday, November 26, 2010

Kids' Lego tournament comes to campus

Math innovator gives Hagey Lecture Monday

United Way near goal; other notes

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