'We had a beautiful sunrise,' said a note on Friday morning from Michael Davenport, currently working in the information systems and technology department. He sent along the photographic proof, a view across the ring road toward University Avenue.

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Waterloo 'identity' earns a gold medal

The “institutional identity” program that has brought Waterloo new designs for souvenirs (below), letterhead, recruitment publications, posters, and — soon — web pages has earned the university a gold medal from an international organization concerned with how colleges and universities present themselves.

The medal is being presented this week in Baltimore, as District II of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education holds its annual conference. At the same event, Waterloo is receiving several awards for a program aimed at getting alumni involved in student recruitment.

CASE is an international organization for university staff who work in fundraising, recruitment, communications, government relations, and related disciplines. District II represents higher education institutions from around the world. It covers Ontario, Québec, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The top award for Waterloo this year is a gold in the Institutional Identity category, which is given to a university program “that maintains a consistent identify for the institution as a whole across all media.” The Waterloo entry, pulled together by Christine Goucher of Creative Services, summarized the recent university’s identity exercise and subsequent visual identity redesign. It included examples of that identity being applied to everything from the Ontario University Fair booth (left) to the popular multi-coloured lanyards seen around campus, as well as the usual stationery, business cards, and banners.

The documentation sent to CASE’s judges recalls that “In 2008, Vice-President (External Relations) Meg Beckel launched a Waterloo Identity Review, working with Ove Communications consultants of Toronto. After research, wide consultations, and feedback, the university’s senior administration embraced a new positioning statement, and attributes — unconventional, collaborative, risk-taking, creative, connected, innovative — that were to be the focus of Waterloo’s stories to the world.

“It became obvious that the old, heraldic-based logo did not symbolize a university ‘on the move’ at the ‘frontier of innovation’. In 2009, the university’s creative services team, working with Ove Communications, developed a visual identity system based on Gotham font, bold colours coded to the university’s six faculties and grounded by the university’s traditional black-and-gold, and a visual language of lines, applied in thin elegance or bold swashes, representing the connectivity, collaboration, and motion of Waterloo.

“The new visual identity began rolling out in July 2009 with the objective of recruiting students, faculty and staff excited by the opportunity to be building a better future; exciting and re-engaging alumni; and creating a unifying look that would set Waterloo apart in the larger international forum as an unconventional university with unique strengths and opportunities for partnership.

“The Waterloo rebranding became a national news story, and internationally blogged in the marketing community, due to a premature leak of a proposed logo using the new design elements that caused strong, mostly negative, reaction from current students. However, the ensuing social media uproar got people debating and talking about the university’s positioning and attributes, and in the end led to widespread awareness about them, and acceptance of the pillars of the design: modern, clean, colourful, with motion.”

When the award is presented in Baltimore, Waterloo will also be receiving three honours for its alumni student referral program “Can You Spot Potential?” (right): silver in the category of Best Practices in Alumni Relations, silver in Best Practices in Communications, and honourable mention in Advertising .

As previously mentioned in the Daily Bulletin, Jason Coolman, Waterloo’s director of alumni affairs, was named a CASE “Rising Star.” As well, Tina Roberts, director of undergraduate recruitment, is being honoured with a CASE Quarter Century Award for her years of service and involvement with advancement and CASE activities.

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The best thing you've learned, and more

For the past six years, the Centre for Teaching Excellence has coordinated an annual celebration called Loving to Learn Day. “To date,” says CTE’s Mark Morton, the annual LTL contests “have elicited more than a thousand thoughtful reflections on learning from students and instructors (and others) residing in a dozen countries. As well, the event has spread to six other Canadian universities and colleges.” This year’s Loving to Learn Day falls on Tuesday, February 15, and features a contest: “What’s the best thing you learned in the last year?” Winning submissions in four categories, from public school students to university people, will receive “a marvelous prize”. Says the CTE web site: “Over the last year, you’ve learned thousands of things. Some of those things might be small like a new friend’s name or how to say ‘thank you’ in Arabic; some might be big things, like how to put a baby to sleep, how to be less busy, or how to calculate the size of an exoplanet based on its gravitational effect on the star it revolves around; some might be facts, like how a certain type of clam is able to burrow a tunnel into solid rock; some might be concepts, like macroeconomics; some might be procedures like how to bake brownies or how to drive a standard transmission. Out of all the thousands of things that you’ve learned in the last year, tell us about the best one.”

Wherever you are in the world, or at least on the Internet, your computer can be identified by its Internet Protocol or IP address, which looks like an eight to twelve-digit number. For the University of Waterloo, IP addresses start with 129.97. So far so good, but trouble is looming, according to the minutes of a recent meeting of the University Committee on Information Systems and Technology: “The University has 65,536 IP addresses available, broken into 256 subnets of 256 addresses each; only 14 subnets are left (5%). We expect to be out of subnets by the end of 2011, as each new building will require several subnets. A major effort is needed to optimize use of the campus IP address space. Discussions have started at CTSC and CNAG. Technical effort is not difficult, but it can be time consuming. The process involves changing IP addresses on computers, working with end users. The cleaning up will be ongoing, this year and next. Hiring of contractors to do cleanup was mentioned as an option, but some of the committee members remarked that they would not be comfortable with this option; they would rather have their own staff do it.”

Staff from the co-operative education and career services department were in Toronto last week (yes, including snowstorm day) for the second-largest human resources conference in the world, the Human Resources Professionals Association’s annual conference and trade show. With 3,700 participants — and representation from all industry sectors — the conference “has proven an ideal venue to promote recruitment from all programs,” says Olaf Naese of CECS. Connecting with hiring managers from some of Canada’s top employers, staff position Waterloo as a top choice for co-op, summer, graduating, and alumni hiring to prospective new employers, while strengthening and deepening relationships with current employers. We’re delighted to report that proud alumni have also approached the 'Hire Waterloo' booth (photo, right, by alumnus Joanna Woo) to share stories about their time at Waterloo. In addition to promoting student and alumni hiring, CECS staff are also distributing brochures and fielding questions about Waterloo’s professional development courses and undergraduate and graduate programs.”

David Willsie, co-captain of the Canadian national wheelchair rugby team, will give a public talk on Thursday in celebration of Therapeutic Recreation Awareness Week, which is now under way. Willsie’s presentation, “Changing Minds, Changing Lives — Rehabilitation through Sport:, will focus on the Paralympic movement and athletes’ experiences with sport as a vehicle for rehabilitation, along with the many other benefits of being physically active and involved with sports. He’ll speak at 1:00 Thursday in the Sun Life Financial auditorium in the Lyle Hallman Institute building. Willsie has been in a wheelchair since 1995, after being checked into the boards during a hockey game and breaking his neck. He was introduced to wheelchair rugby by two members of the local rugby team at a rehabilitation centre. A natural at the sport, he led Team Canada to a silver medal in the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games and a bronze medal in 2008 in Beijing. Members of the audience will include first-year students in Waterloo’s therapeutic recreation program — considered the country’s leading TR degree program for more than 40 years. The purpose of National Therapeutic Recreation Awareness Week is to promote awareness of the benefits of therapeutic recreation programs and services. The week also seeks to expand leisure opportunities for those with disadvantages in health care settings and the community.

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More than 100 students showed up January 31 at a session to learn more about starting a Master of Science program at Waterloo. The who, why, how, when, and where questions were answered by Roland Hall, associate dean (graduate studies) in the science faculty, who was joined by graduate officers and current graduate students from all areas in science. Cellphone photo by Erin-Lee Bresser.

CAR

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