Kevin Rampersad calls this an example of "increased security" in A Lot, but I'm not sure whose side these birds are on. Rampersad, who works in Civil and Environmental Engineering, submitted this photo of the dynamic duo, who may or may not be the same birds from last year who took to resting on car roofs.

Ann MacMillan of Co-operative Education and Career Action snapped a similar photo of the birds hopefully not soiling some unfortunate person's car on Wednesday.

I'm certainly not going to go up there and ask them to verify their identity.

I will, however, post pics of the most ridiculous places these birds find to come home and roost, if you care to submit them, but it's going to be hard to top this.

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The President's office joins the Twitterverse

If you're going to participate in that most Twitterific of rituals, Follow Friday, or #FF as it is known in hashtag speak, you could do worse than follow the Office of the President today as it started tweeting from its own @uWaterlooPres Twitter account this week.

The Office of the President joins a robust University of Waterloo Twitter community that now boasts 55 officially affiliated handles.

As the @uWaterlooPres Twitter bio indicates, the new 'handle' will highlight Waterloo news and events, and president Feridun Hamdullahpur will occasionally send out personal tweets with the signature –FH.

Welcome to the Twitterverse, @uWaterlooPres!

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Student takes first prize at Nicol competition

Emily Peat, owner of EcoPlace Organics, a local organic food delivery service, won first place at the Nicol Entrepreneurial Awards held in Ottawa, Ontario on March 26. Peat represented the University of Waterloo at the national competition after being selected in a cross-campus competition held at the Conrad Centre in February.

Emily’s win marks the first time since 2007 that the University of Waterloo has taken the top prize at the Nicol Awards. Peat is pictured above with award founder Wes Nicol and Linda Hasenfratz, CEO of Linamar.

“The Nicol competition provided me with the opportunity to discuss my business plan with successful entrepreneurs and experts in different areas of business,” said Emily. “It forced me to think through exactly what my plan is for moving forward and growing. I am grateful for the experience.”

Emily is currently completing her fourth year in Civil Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She completed a co-op term in Conrad’s Enterprise Co-op program and also took BET 300: Foundations of Venture Creations, run out of the Conrad Centre. She also recently won $20,000 at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Social Enterprise Student Competition on March 21 and was a top four finalist at the National Business and Technology Conference on March 8.

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Friday's notes

The Communitech Hub and the Institute for Quantum Computing are two of the stops on Premier Kathleen Wynne's itinerary today as she makes her first tour of the region.

Classes end on Monday, which is really a Friday, if the class schedule is to be believed. The end of classes marks the beginning of the examination period and all the stress that entails, so it's timely that CampusPerks has set up a "Crush Exam Stress and Just Dance" contest that features a couple of finalists from Waterloo. The event culminates in a "world's largest dance class" record-breaking attempt tomorrow, with dance parties at eight university campuses across the country, including Waterloo, whose event gets underway at 3:30 p.m. in the Student Life Centre's lower atrium.

More information has surfaced about the daycare centre being constructed on the university's north campus. For one thing, it has a name—Bright Starts Cooperative Early Learning Centre (BSCELC)—and the centre's board of directors president Fran Hannigan has confirmed that it will be an amalgamation of the 3 existing centres currently operating on campus, which includes Paintin' Place, Hildegard Marsden, and Klemmer Farmhouse. "The new building will allow Bright Starts to increase the number of children presently enrolled  the 3 existing daycares and continue the enrolment preference given to children of faculty, staff and students of uWaterloo," Hannigan writes. The Bright Starts board of directors is actively fundraising for the building through the Keystone Campaign (under “University Wide Projects” for “Bright Starts Daycare Area of Highest Need”) and through the 3 Centres for new equipment for the new building. "The Board is also working very hard to ensure that the 3 Centres will transition smoothly," says Hannigan. Construction is ongoing, and on Monday, the contractors will be installing a water line, which will cross the asphalt path from X lot to the east side drive beside Optometry, reports Dan Parent, major-projects construction coordinator. A temporary gravel path will circle around a small trench where the work is being done, and fencing and caution tape will be installed to direct pedestrians around the obstruction. Work will begin at 9:00 a.m. on Monday and will be completed by end of day.

Arthur Carty, executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, was recently appointed Chair of the Expert Panel on the State of Science Culture in Canada, a body that is part of the Council of Canadian Academies. Carty will work with a multidisciplinary group of experts, appointed by the Council, to address the question "what is the state of Canada's science culture?"

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