Kayleigh Platz, the university's social media specialist, gives her workshop last week at the Stratford campus. If you follow @write_girl on Twitter, that's her.

Stratford campus hosts lectures, workshops

“It was a busy summer here,” says a message from Tobi Day-Hamilton at the university’s brand new Stratford campus, a 40-minute drive west of Waterloo.

Says Day-Hamilton, who is director of advancement for the Stratford branch and for the Faculty of Arts: “We have completed the renovations of our space at 6 Wellington Street, which will be home to the campus until the new building opens in 2012. Our space now has two classrooms, offices, meeting rooms and direct connections back to campus thanks to the fibre infrastructure in the city. We are currently installing the latest digital media equipment including a digital editing suite and a wall of Christie MicroTiles. By the end of this month, our space will be fully equipped and ready for a busy fall term.”

She notes that the first public event in the new space was an open house September 20: “Close to 200 people enjoyed the interactive displays and activities. Guests included environment minister and local MPP John Wilkinson, Stratford mayor Dan Mathieson, Open Text chairman Tom Jenkins, Open Text CTO Eugene Roman, and a special appearance by former Global National anchor, Kevin Newman.

“Colin Ellard’s virtual reality beach tour was a definite highlight, along with displays from the Critical Media Lab, Open Text, MBET and Modevation Media’s green screen demonstration. The Open House was a great opportunity for the local and university community to experience the space and play with a few of the digital media tools available.”

The Stratford campus has launched an e-mail newsletter, which reminds readers in its first issue that “We're not just programming for university students.” Some details:

• “Last year the Waterloo Stratford Campus started free monthly lectures in partnership with the Stratford Public Library. The ‘Waterloo Lectures’ consist of Waterloo faculty visiting the local library to present on varying topics of interest, find out how Waterloo faculty are impacting society today and ask questions about their work. In September, the Waterloo Lectures started again, with Tim Kenyon discussing political correctness.”

• “The Digital Media Series is another free series open to the public. Held in the new space at the Waterloo Stratford Campus, this particular series gives members of the community the opportunity to learn from leading thinkers and discover which fields are innovating using digital media including government, marketing, computing and community building. Aimee Morrison will kick off the series October 27 to deal with privacy issues.”

• “The Smart Start Series consists of two-hour workshops focused on digital media. Kayleigh Platz, our University of Waterloo social media expert, kicks off the series with a workshop on Business Focused Social Media October 13. In another workshop she will cover online privacy and how to keep social media fun and safe. Stratford’s own Bob Telfer will also lead a Smart Start workshop in November about trends in software services for smart companies. The fee for each workshop in the series is $20.”

• “Tony Chapman, founder and CEO of Capital C, was one of our keynote speakers at Canada 3.0, and will be returning to Stratford to start our Ideas Start Series. Tony’s session on October 13 is a half-day workshop called Surviving the Perfect Storm. The series focuses on social media and marketing, creativity and technology, and entrepreneurship and allows attendees to learn about the newest innovations from proven experts. The fees for these workshops vary.”

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Federal funding to speed electric cars

Peter Braid, the Member of Parliament for Kitchener–Waterloo, came to campus Friday morning and announced $3.6 million in new funding over five years for research by the Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR).

Industry Canada says the money, under its Automotive Partnership Canada initiative, “will help address the challenges hindering widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Research will focus on reducing environmental impacts while accelerating fabrication of Canadian-made electric vehicles and related systems.” The project is headed by mechanical and mechatronics engineering professor Amir Khajepour, who serves as Canada Research Chair in Mechatronic Vehicle Systems.

"Our government recognizes the importance of leadership and vision in the automotive industry and created Automotive Partnership Canada to help the industry make greener, better-performing vehicles," Braid said as part of ceremonies in a Davis Centre laboratory. "This initiative will create jobs and strengthen the economy for future generations." It was one of four projects under Automotive Partnership Canada to be announced on Friday.

Altogether, Automotive Partnership Canada is a five-year, $145 million initiative that includes such efforts as reducing vehicle weight by using more plastic parts in engines, improving the efficiency of transmissions, and advancing the state-of-the-art longer-range electric vehicles.

Khajepour and his colleagues say electric cars are increasingly recognized as the most promising road transportation solution to the global energy crisis and increasingly stringent requirements for environmental protection and vehicle safety. But electrification of automotive systems presents radical challenges, especially for drivetrain systems, chassis design and layout, multidisciplinary power management and optimization, system integration, and vehicle dynamics and safety.

Says a research backgrounder: “Meeting those challenges, along with others related to various control systems, will ease development of technologies that will not only enable Canadian production of next-generation electric automotive systems, but will also satisfy high demands on vehicle performance, safety and environmental sustainability. The investigation calls for comprehensive research programs in order to have an impact on the electric vehicle commercial market.

“Such programs require significant financial support and highly integrated research teams, with experts drawn from universities and industry.”

With the latest $3.5 million, the Waterloo researchers will undertake a four-year project, in collaboration with General Motors of Canada and Maplesoft Inc. The project is to complement and extend research on electric vehicle system development done by the researchers under an $8 million Ontario Research Fund project entitled Green Intelligent Transportation Systems that was announced last spring.

The plan is to speed up development of new highway-capable electric vehicles, developing key components and systems, including thermal management, health monitoring and charging control devices for Li-ion batteries, in-wheel motor concepts, and vehicle stability and control technologies.

Says the backgrounder: “The research team will use advanced multi-disciplinary design and control optimization methodologies and model-based design techniques to develop a specialized software platform. The new software will permit concurrent optimization of vehicle components and power management systems, which streamlines the development process.

“The team's inclusion of full-vehicle instrumentation and testing phases will ensure that modelling and design/ optimization results are not only validated but are also ready for the market.

“The focus of the research will be in four main areas: model-based design of electric vehicles and components; vehicle stability, control and software; multi-disciplinary design and control optimization; and evaluation, prototyping and testing.”

Vehicles equipped with new devices and algorithms will first be tested and fine-tuned on a 1.5-kilometre track, and then undergo full evaluation in GM test facilities.

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Senate approves grads, and other notes

The university senate will hold its monthly meeting today (4:00 in Needles Hall room 3001) and give official approval to the list of hundreds of students who will receive their degrees at fall Convocation this Saturday. It'll also "authorize the chair, the registrar and the associate provost, graduate studies to add to, or change the lists of candidates", because invariably there are last-minute special cases — somebody finishes a lost piece of paperwork or turns an "incomplete" into a mark for that final course. Senate is the university's top academic governing body, though the approval of degree candidates is really a formality, relying on the associate deans and registrar's staff to assess who's met the requirements for graduation.

Also on the agenda for today's meeting will be a report on "undergraduate student retention issues" and a closely related report from the "working group" that's been looking at how to replace the associate provost (student services) who retired last winter. That report, as it appears in the agenda, calls for the appointment of a senior administrator with a simplified title: associate provost (students). That person would take over the existing portfolio, from athletics to health services, as well as residences, the new "student success office", and a multitude of other activities. The proposal comes to senate "for information"; there's been no public word yet on how the university's senior administrators like it.

In other news, here's a proud memo from the school of accounting and finance: "Close to 600 Ontario graduates trying to complete their Certified Management Accountant designation (CMA) qualified to write the CMA Case Exam this past August. This year, 16 MAcc graduates from the School of Accounting and Finance at University of Waterloo challenged the case exam with an outstanding first-time writer pass rate of 100%. The CMA Case Exam assesses the candidate’s competence in a wide range of crucial areas, including strategic thinking, analysis, integration, judgement, and written communication. By successfully completing this exam all 16 MAcc graduates are eligible to complete the last step in their CMA designation known as the CMA Ontario’s Application Phase of their Strategic Leadership Program. The total pass rate including first-time and repeat writers for Ontario was 89% and 88% for the National pass rate."

And . . . Friday's Daily Bulletin misspelled the name of a key staff member in the Faculty of Environment. He is Steve Krysak.

CAR

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