Researchers who received distinguished awards and honours during 2010 and 2011 were recognized at a reception held November 16 at the University Club. Mark Zanna, psychology professor and 2011 Killam Prize winner, celebrates with John Thompson, associate vice-president, research operations, and a founder of the Waterloo Awards Committee. The committee was established in 2009 to promote and facilitate nominations of uWaterloo scholars for prestigious awards and distinctions. The committee has also published Celebrating research excellence, a catalogue of award opportunities available in the areas of health sciences, humanities and social sciences, science and engineering, and general interest awards. Congratulations to all of Waterloo’s 2010 and 2011 award recipients.

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Athletics director receives "Taylor's Award"

with material from the Taylor Hooton Foundation

The Taylor Hooton Foundation, a widely acknowledged leader in the advocacy against substance abuse in sports, announced today that the second ever “Taylor’s Award” will be presented to Bob Copeland, the Director of Athletics at the University of Waterloo. The award was presented yesterday at the Ontario University Athletics Football Summit being held in Toronto.

Taylor’s Award is presented to an individual who has made a major impact on the effort to educate and protect young people from the dangers of anabolic steroids and other appearance and performance enhancing drugs (APEDs).

Only one previous recipient has received this honor; Commissioner Bud Selig of Major League Baseball was presented with this award in May 2010 for the outstanding work that he and MLB have done in helping educate young people about the dangers of these drugs.

Taylor’s Award is presented in honor of Taylor Hooton, a 17-year old honor student and promising high school baseball player. On July 15, 2003, Taylor committed suicide as a result of anabolic steroid use.

“I’m extremely proud to present Taylor’s Award to Bob Copeland. As a result of Bob’s leadership, and that of the University of Waterloo, the performance enhancing drug problem in university sports is now being addressed in a much bigger way across Canada.” said Don Hooton, President of the Taylor Hooton Foundation. “It is my hope that the changes that are being implemented in Canada will find their way into university sports in the US and many other countries,” he added.

Copeland chaired the Ontario University Athletics Performance Enhancing Drugs Task Force, which set out to review current Performance Enhancing Drug (PED) educational programs offered to student athletes and implemented a groundbreaking survey of athletic directors and senior university administrators to determine the scope of education, practices, and opinions surrounding PEDs. He was also a member of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport's Task Force on the Use of PEDs in the Sport of Football. The two task forces reported their findings in the summer and called for standardized educational programs and a national strategy to combat the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

“In today’s world of university athletics, most leaders are prone to jump into a defensive mode by taking steps to protect their athletic programs from criticism at all costs, even if it puts the lives and health of their athletes at risk...Bob has shown tremendous leadership in addressing this issue within university sport in Canada including key roles as a member of a National Task Force as well as his role as Chair of the OUA Performance Enhancing Drugs Education Task Force; on his own campus, several promising new initiatives have been developed to better address policy, education, and testing regarding APEDs.”

“As a result of Bob’s advocacy and the support of his university’s senior administration, the way this problem is being handled across Canada is changing in some very, very positive ways,” Hooton said. “Improved education programs are being implemented for both athletes and coaching staffs, and much more thorough testing regimens are being implemented to monitor this drug usage,” he added.

Formed in 2004, the Taylor Hooton Foundation is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to educating North America’s young people about the dangers of anabolic steroids and other appearance and performance enhancing drugs.

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Kinesiology Lab Days underway

a news release from the media relations office

Imagine being able to propel an electric model car around a classroom using only the electrical signals from your muscles. That’s just one of the intriguing health and movement lab applications that more than 1,000 Ontario high school students will experience at the University of Waterloo's Kinesiology Lab Days taking place weekdays from December 7 to 16.

Hosted by the university’s department of kinesiology, the Kinesiology Lab Days program serves as an educational resource to hundreds of exercise science and biology teachers across the province. This year, Grade 12 students from 47 schools will learn about a wide range of human health and movement-related topics in mini-laboratory sessions.

“Kinesiology Lab Days is our way of introducing the next generation of university students to the exciting science and practice of kinesiology,” said Jim Rush, chair of the department of kinesiology. “Participating in these hands-on labs helps them discover how they can apply their interest in science and health to make a difference in people’s lives.”

The program was established 38 years ago as an introduction to the then relatively new field of kinesiology — the science of human movement. Since then, the University of Waterloo has established itself as an international leader in kinesiology research and education. In July 2007, the Ontario government passed Bill 171, a landmark decision that officially made kinesiology a regulated health profession in this province.

Student visits begin at 10:15 a.m. each day with an introductory presentation on the science of human movement, taking place in the Sun Life Financial Auditorium in the Lyle S. Hallman Institute for Health Promotion. Afterwards, students will be introduced to equipment and techniques used in many of the kinesiology department's state-of-the-art research and teaching labs at the institute and neighbouring B. C. Matthews Hall.

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Holiday party safety tips; farewell UW-ACE

"It is that time of year again when thoughts are turning to seasonal and holiday celebrations," says a memo from the provost that has been distributed to all departments. "Whether these celebrations are large or small, it is important that we take proactive steps to ensure the health and safety of our employees who attend office parties or other celebrations whether on-campus, off-campus, or at your private home."

"Please take steps to ensure our employees have a safe and enjoyable event," says the memo, signed by provost Geoff McBoyle, which references university policy 21, Alcohol Use and Education. The memo also offers the following options to assist in office holiday planning:

• Consider having an alcohol-free event.

• If you provide alcohol, do not provide an open and unsupervised bar.

• Close the bar an hour or more before the party ends.

• Monitor employees’ alcohol consumption. Be prepared to keep track of how much guests are drinking.

• Consider utilizing a ticket system to limit the number of drinks an employee or other guest may have during the party.

McBoyle notes that the university "will allow staff members to expense alternative transportation for returning home from celebrations that are University approved by department heads."

For the past five years, instructors have been sharing how they have enhanced the learning experience for their students by incorporating activities into UW-ACE. The UW-ACE user group is about to become the LEARN user group with the transition to the new course management system. Today's "Goodbye UW-ACE" workshop will provide an opportunity to see examples of innovative ways that instructors are now using LEARN on campus.

Computer science professor Prabhakar Ragde will focus on his use of discussion forums and web page management in a first-year "advanced" CS course . Linda Carson (Knowledge Integration) has rebuilt an online quiz for an anatomical drawing course that is more complex that a previous version used on UW-ACE. She says “…I did have a couple of adventures that cost me a lot of time, some of them while students were actually taking the test. Let me save you from having the same adventures."

The Centre for Teaching Excellence's Katherine Lithgow will show how LEARN's e-portfolio was used in Dr. Jennifer Roberts-Smith's Drama 101A to support an activity that helped students demonstrate their developing skills in critical thinking and academic research and integrity. Students uploaded, classified, and provided scholarly citations for pieces of evidence they referred to in analyses of theatrical experiences.

The workshop begins at 10:30 a.m. today in the Dana Porter Library's Flex lab.

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