Engineering Badge Day for Girl Guides

This article originally appeared on the Engineering Science Quest (ESQ) blog

On Saturday, March 31, the very last day of National Engineering Month, University of Waterloo Engineering was taken over by 112 Girl Guides and their leaders! The girls came from Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, New Dundee, Ayr, Baden and Stratford to participate in our Engineering Badge Day for Girl Guides.

The entire day was focused on introducing girls to the world of engineering. Coming into the event many of the girls did not even know what an engineer was, let alone that they could become an engineer themselves. Spending the day with UW Engineers allowed them to learn firsthand what engineers do to make the world a better place.

The groups of Girl Guides were led around campus by enthusiastic female engineering students, and spent the day doing hands-on engineering activities, touring labs, and interacting with female engineers. Some of the highlights included designing and making their own buttons while learning about simple machines, seeing a 3D printer in action when learning about tools engineers use, and learning about chemical reactions by making ice cream with liquid nitrogen!

By the end of the day the girls had fulfilled all of the requirements for the Engineering Badge, which were presented by the Dean of Engineering, Adel Sedra.

This event was made possible with the support of The Ontario Network of Women in Engineering.

Photograph by Marie-Claude Pelchat

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Connect changes coming

An email message from Information Systems and Technology (IST) was recently sent to everyone on campus with a Connect Exchange account. On the evening of Tuesday, April 10, Connect will be switched over to use Nexus for authentication. What this will mean is that your Nexus ID and password will now be used to log on to your email and calendar on Connect.

This change will affect those who:

Don't know their Nexus passwords. Nexus accounts exist for all users with a Connect account, so for many, the password will be the same as their current password on Connect. A web page has been developed that will allow you to verify your Nexus password.

Use mobile devices to access Connect email and calendars. If the device used is a BlackBerry phone, there are no changes required. All other devices, including the BlackBerry Playbook, will require a change to their configuration. A separate email will be sent by IST to those with affected mobile devices. Any changes that need to be made should not be done in advance of the April 10 changeover.

Use Outlook 2011 for the Mac. Configuration changes will be necessary, but it is as simple (or as difficult) as changing the account's "User Name" setting in account preferences - replacing the "ADS\" prefix with "NEXUS\". A new password may need to be specified.

If you are in an academic support area and use Outlook, you will be prompted for your password when you launch Outlook. When entering your username and password, enter "NEXUS\" in front of your username. If you log in to a Nexus computer and use Outlook, you will no longer be prompted for your password. If you log in to a home computer or laptop that is not in the Nexus domain or network, you will be prompted for your password and will need to enter "NEXUS\" in front of your username.

Happily, examples of all these tweaks will be available on IST's website to walk you through the changes. The helpdesk memo reminds you not to make any changes to your software or mobile devices until after the update on April 10.

All this talk about Nexus makes me want to watch Blade Runner again.

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Tuesday's notes

The Annual Matthews Golf Classic sold out in a single day. "That is a record," writes Sheila Hurley from the Safety Office, who had been accepting registrations. "The response was great!" Hurley is still taking names on a waiting list and encourages those who are interested to sign up.

The Centre for Teaching Excellence reports that there is a drop-in session for the LEARN course management system today at 1:30 p.m. in EV1 242.

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