It was ‘cooking school’ last Thursday night, offered by food services for students who live in suite-style residences. More than 200 packed South Campus Hall for a demonstration by corporate chef David Evans of Gordon Food Services. The show menu included an edamame appetizer, black bean zucchini quesadillas, Asian noodle bowl, apple glazed chicken, and peanut butter granola bars. At the end of the presentation, students were invited to join Chef Denise Allen-McMaster of Mudie's in a hands-on cupcake-decorating session, and chef Sean Locke of REVelation to learn how to make omelettes. The students also got tips on food safety, techniques, kitchen equipment, and nutrition information from Sandra Ace, dietitian at health services.

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Taking the Waterloo story on the road

“We are in the middle of our busy visits schedule,” reports Jody Berringer, manager of liaison in the office of Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment. She’s talking about the hundreds of visits made by MUR’s liaison officers (“travellers”) to high schools across the country, bringing the story of Waterloo to prospective students.

The liaison team is pictured here. Rear, from left: Gary Abbott, liaison officer; Amelia Burton, liaison officer; Berringer; Meghan Dawe, liaison officer; Ian Sherman, liaison officer, Waterloo and SJU. Front, from left: Mirjana Radulovic, international marketing and recruitment specialist; Ashley Dietrich, manager, recruitment and admissions, SJU; Laura Gordon, liaison officer; Breanna Bigelow, liaison officer, Waterloo and SJU.

“This year we have a very comprehensive schedule booked and are excited to be able to visit so many schools in Ontario and across the country,” Berringer says, adding that the presentation has been updated and that there are now six full-time travellers out visiting — one more than last year.

The University Information Program (UIP) has begun. UIP is a travelling universities fair that brings representatives of all Ontario’s universities to cities and towns across the province for several weeks during the fall. As part of this program, Waterloo’s team has been busy lately at schools in the Muskoka - Grey Bruce and Southwestern Ontario regions.

The team expects to visit more than 500 schools in Ontario over the term, and  to take part in “mini-dialogues” with guidance counsellors in York Region and Northwestern Ontario.

Here are some of the other events in which Berringer and her team will be involved, at Waterloo and elsewhere:

• ZOOM Career Days organized by the Business and Education Partnership of Waterloo Region
• special presentation to the University Cooperative Education Program group on campus
• on-campus debating event for high school students
• Pathways to Bilingual Success Conference in Sudbury, late October
• Ontario Student Leadership Conference, November
• partnering with alumni for Family Night in Markham, late November

Out-of-province visits are also underway, with Waterloo staff participating in the Canadian University Event in British Columbia, a series of 20 fairs over two weeks, September 27 – October 9. The travellers will also visit schools and take part in student fairs and other events on the east coast and in Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

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What 8 profs are doing on their sabbaticals

Here’s a list of some faculty members who have begun year-long sabbatical leaves, from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011. The plans listed for each individual are as submitted to the university’s Board of Governors, which has to give approval for all sabbaticals.

Thomas Coleman, combinatorics and optimization: “Build and develop my research program under the Ophelia Lazaridis University Research Chair. Specifically, develop efficient and high-performance algorithms and approaches to large-scale global optimization problems. Cultivate numerous applications in areas such as engineering design, medical imaging, protein folding, resource allocation, and portfolio management. Sabbatical will be based in Waterloo with short professional trips planned to work with colleagues at Fudan University in Shanghai, Columbia University in New York, NUS in Singapore, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong.”

William Cunningham, combinatorics and optimization: “I will spend most of the time in Waterloo with possible visits to Bonn, Grenoble, and Atlanta. I plan to continue my research on exact and approximate polyhedral descriptions and algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems. I will also finish a textbook on mathematical optimization, of which I am co-author.”

Krzysztof Czarnecki, electrical and computer engineering (right): “Work on model-integrated software engineering. Among others, I will investigate ways to improve information flows within software projects through model-based integration of development artefacts, such as specification documents, code, and tests. During the leave I plan to stay in Waterloo, working with my research team and industrial partners, including Scotiabank, IBM and AMD.”

Mohamed Oussama Damen, electrical and computer engineering: “The purpose is research collaboration with Professor Belfiore at Telecom Paris Tech, Paris, France, on low complexity space-time codes, MIMO network and network coding.”

Roger Mannell, recreation and leisure studies: “Publication preparation based on SSHRC and other funded projects; start of a book on adolescence, leisure and well-being; visiting professor at the University of Georgia and Penn State University involving research collaborations and guest lectures; work with colleagues at Harvard University and University of Molise to develop an online course on evaluating mental health programs and collaboration between UW’s MPH program and Harvard’s Refugee Trauma program.”

Christine Wiedman, accounting and finance: “Will be working on at least four projects on earnings management and firm restatements, and will present my work at a number of universities and conferences. I also plan to study and develop new teaching materials for Canada’s transition to International Financial Reporting Standards. Finally, I plan to survey the funded status of defined benefit pension plans in Canada.”

There are also two 12-month sabbaticals that started August 1 of this year:

Richard Cleve, computer science: “I intend to spend the first six months (approximately) visiting the School of Informatics at Kyoto University (Japan), and the second six months (approximately) visiting CWI (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica) in Amsterdam (Holland). I intend to collaborate on projects related to quantum computing, where I have previously had fruitful research collaborations with people at both of these institutions.”

Hans De Sterck, applied mathematics: “I plan to explore two new research areas,  namely, data mining for large networks, and multilevel image segmentation, visiting researchers in Saarbruecken, Germany (at the Max Planck Institutes for Informatics and for Software Systems, and at Saarland University) for a year, and plan to update course notes.”

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Student receives posthumous degree

Paul Kokelj (left), a history student at the University of Waterloo, was 23 years old when he died on September 1, 2010. Only days earlier he had received a Waterloo Bachelor of Arts degree, a goal he had worked hard to achieve even during a prolonged fight with cancer.

A talented athlete, Paul played ball hockey as well as Junior C hockey with the Alliston Hornets and Erin Shamrocks. After his first year at Waterloo he gave up Junior C play to focus on his studies in history and arts and business co-op, but continued to play intramural ball hockey at the university.

Paul was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in October 2009. The prognosis was never good, and by summer 2010 his parents learned that Paul was not expected to recover. During his illness he continued to work toward his degree, taking courses online and writing exams at home. He was only two credits short when his time ran out.

A few days before his death, Waterloo registrar Ken Lavigne visited Paul’s room in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto to confer on him a Bachelor of Arts in History (Arts and Business Co-op). Family members, hospital staff, and the relatives of other patients filled the room to celebrate the achievement.

Other notes

From the university's Secretariat: Nominations are requested for two undergraduate student seats on Senate. One student to be elected by/from the full-time undergraduate students in the Faculty of Environment, term to April 30, 2012. For senator-at-large, one student to be elected by/from the full-time undergraduate students, term to April 30, 2011. The nomination form is here. At least five nominators are required in each case. Completed nomination forms should be submitted to the Chief Returning Officer, Secretariat, NH 3060, no later than 4:30 p.m., Friday, October 15, 2010.

The School of Optometry Clinic has won the Diamond Award for Favourite Optometrist in the annual Waterloo Region Record’s Readers’ Select Awards. The awards program lets readers nominate and vote for the top businesses and services in the region. Voting took place in August and September. Thomas Freddo, optometry's director, cites the "really wonderful public information articles that several of our faculty have written for the Record" as a profile-raiser for the school. "I encourage you to let your patients know that we appreciate their support and I would encourage faculty members to continue thinking of new topics with which to sustain this very successful public information campaign," he wrote in a memo to colleagues.

This is Nobel Week. Each day this week, a different prize is announced. The results so far: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2010 was awarded to Robert G. Edwards "for the development of in vitro fertilization" on Monday. The physics prize went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene" on Tuesday. The prize for chemistry went to Richard F. Heck, Ei-ichi Negishi, and Akira Suzuki today "for palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic synthesis." The prize for literature will be announced Thursday, and the Peace Prize on Friday.

The Ig Nobel Prizes are also awarded at this time. These prizes “honor achievements that make people laugh, and then make them think.” For example,this year Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University, UK, won the Peace Prize for confirming the widely held belief that swearing relieves pain.

CPA staff

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