Finding your tribe, honing your edge at TEDxUW

by Christian Aagaard

By video feed, live-stream or seated in the auditorium of the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre, nearly 1,000 people took part in TEDxUW Saturday.

Pictured above are the event's organizers.

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) events run on a format of short talks that are meant to start conversations leading to change. The theme of this year’s TEDxUW was “edge,” with each speaker sharing something about their experiences that contributed to personal or entrepreneurial success.

Denise Donlon, former music journalist and recording company executive, was host. TEDxUW set up a satellite venue in the Davis Centre.

“Be yourself. Don’t let anybody tell you there are no options for people who don’t fit in,’’ said Heather Dale, one of 12 speakers at the second annual event.

Ignored by mainstream radio, Dale focused on touring science-fiction and fantasy conventions to get her music heard. She gradually built a large fan base among people with similar interests in the courtly virtues of the Middle Ages.

“I call it finding your tribe,’’ she said.

All the speakers have ties to the university. Throughout the day, they talked about finding their edge by taking risks, recovering from failure or turning dark family secrets into open family history.

For Andrew Wong, a Waterloo student who talked about his passion for the Arctic, edge comes out of the urgent need to act on climate change.

“Dream big, be daring and have courage,’’ he said. “And remember: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick. . .”

TEDxUW challenges its audiences to keep discussing the ideas heard through the day, said chair Prashanth Gopalan as the event closed. The crowd in the auditorium gave Gopalan and his seven directors a standing ovation.

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The care and feeding of campus co-ops

By Brooke Bondy.

Do you hire co-op students? 220 co-op students will be working for the university next term. Do you have one on your team? Here are a few tips to make the experience a terrific one:

• Set up for success: email your new students before the work term begins to set clear expectations, including start and end date, salary, dress code, regular business hours, and any special instructions for the first day;
• Get started: launch the term with an orientation session, walking tours, team member introductions, a welcome team lunch, a handbook containing key information, and senior leader introductions to help your new employees integrate into the team;
• Be a leader: provide clear guidelines, initiate regular feedback, establish regular one-on-one meetings, conduct midterm evaluations, and connect the co-op students with an experienced mentor to help develop their full potential; and
• Develop talent: offer students interesting work and challenging assignments; give them ownership of a project from end-to-end and work that promotes valuable skill building and they’ll be excited about the job

Pictured above are a number of co-op students who spent the Winter 2012 term working for Co-operative Education and Career Action, wearing t-shirts in promotion of national co-op week.

Last week’s poll results: 34 per cent of you guessed correctly; small companies (those with fewer than 100 employees) account for 50 per cent of total employment in Canada. Congratulations to last week’s draw winner Fred Cheng, civil and environmental engineering student.

This week’s question: It should come as no surprise that interesting work is the most influential factor in a job offering; what is cited by 58 per cent of students as the second most influential factor? (Hint: check out these Millennials in the Workplace survey results.) Take a guess and enter to win a CECA mug.

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Gerontology prof recognized as mentor

Professor Paul Stolee of the School of Public Health and Health Systems was named the latest winner of the Evelyn Shapiro Mentoring Award by the Canadian Association on Gerontology (CAG). Stolee received the award at the Canadian Association on Gerontology Conference in Vancouver on October 20.

"Dr. Stolee has made outstanding contributions to mentoring students and new scholars in our field of gerontology," said CAG's executive director Anthony Lombardo (at right, pictured speaking as Professor Stolee receives his award). "We at the CAG are pleased to join other organizations such as the Ontario Research Rehabilitation Advisory Network and the University of Waterloo which have likewise recognized Dr. Stolee’s achievements in mentoring students in the field of gerontology."

The Evelyn Shapiro Mentoring Award is awarded once every two years to a CAG member who has demonstrated his or her role as a mentor over a substantive period of time, and who is recognized by members of the association as a mentor.

Professor Stolee's research interests include geriatrics, long-term care, home care, health information systems and databases, health outcome measurement, and the integration and use of knowledge and information in practice.

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Emergency text message testing this week

Faculty and staff members whose mobile phone numbers are in the myHRinfo database will receive a test message relating to emergency notifications on Thursday afternoon this week as Information Systems and Technology (IST) performs a test of the emergency text messaging system.

The message, which will be sent to approximately 1,000 faculty and staff members, will read "This is a test text message from the University of Waterloo." Only faculty and staff who have updated their mobile phone information in myHRinfo will receive the text.

Text messages are a component of the university's overall emergency warning system, which includes pop-up messages appearing on university computers, voicemails sent to office telephones, and an emergency webpage that takes the place of the university's regular homepage.

To receive emergency text messages, faculty and staff can list their phones in myHRinfo (Self Service>Personal Information>Phone Numbers). Students can do the same, using Quest, but are not being included in tomorrow's test.

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Wednesday's notes

A reception for Waterloo's members of the Royal Society of Canada is being held today in the boardroom of the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre today at 3:00 p.m. The event celebrates the scholarly organization's 130th anniversary while recognizing the local faculty members named to its ranks over the years. Remarks will be delivered by George Dixon, Vice-President, University Research, Feridun Hamdullahpur, President and Vice-Chancellor, Marie D’lorio, the president of the Academy of Science, Royal Society of Canada; Keith Hipel, professor in the department of systems design engineering, and Professor Claudio Cañizares of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who was named a Fellow of the Royal Society in September.

Members of the university community are invited to a History Faculty Showcase taking place today from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the Waterloo Bookstore, located in South Campus Hall. This event provides attendees with an opportunity to hear history professors discuss their latest publications. Speakers include James Blight, Janet Lang, Dan Gorman, Geoff Hayes, Greta Kroeker, Doug Peers and John Sbardellati. Refreshments will be available. More information about the event can be found online.

A Lunch and Learn event is scheduled for Friday, November 23 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. in St. Paul's University College's MacKirdy Hall. The featured speaker is Professor Prateep Nayak, whose talk is entitled "Tracking Environmental Injustices with the Fishers of India's Chilika Lagoon." Nayak is a Banting post-doctoral fellow at Waterloo whose research interests include "understanding human-environment connections using conceptual elements from social-ecological systems, complex commons, environmental justice and political ecology." Lunch will be served at the event, so registration is required.

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