Introducing Dear First Year You

by Jodi Szimanski, Student Success Office

The first year at university can be an overwhelming transition. That’s why the Student Success Office is kicking off a new program for those who just joined us on campus for the first time or for those students with a term under their belt. Dear First Year You will give first-year students transition tips to help ensure their success at the University of Waterloo.

Upper-year students will share their stories in a series of live chat sessions through UStream. And because it’s live, they can also answer questions from viewers. These sessions can help first-year students learn how to:

• Get involved
• Look for off-campus housing
• Find a summer job
• Study for exams.

The sessions will not only provide tips, but let students know about important milestones during their winter term. We’ll also have experts on hand for the official word, including Feds President Andrew Noble to talk about getting involved, Co-ordinator, Off-Campus Living and Neighbourhood Relations, Ryan King to talk about living off campus and Assistant Professor Toni Serafini for mid-term exam success tips.

There will be a session every other Tuesday at 4:45 p.m. throughout the term starting January 15, and if students are in class at that time, they can always catch the recorded sessions on their own time.

Photograph by Jonathan Bielaski, Light Imaging.

 

Back to top

Athletics wants to pump you up

with material from Waterloo Athletics

The Department of Athletics and Recreational Services has announced a partnership with PumpUp, a mobile application that is "designed to provide users with personalized workouts that adapt to them, helping the user continuously improve and maximize their potential."

Co-founders Garrett Gottlieb, a Waterloo computer science student, and Laurier grad Phil Jacobson began the development and design of the app at the Velocity Garage. They saw a gap in the mobile fitness market and decided to pursue the idea of developing an app that would focus on giving the user and unique and enjoyable fitness experience.

With the launch of the PumpUp app, University of Waterloo students are being offered a special 60 per cent discount, which works out to $1.99 per moth for a full year's subscription. The promo code is UW2013. PumpUp is available on iTunes and an Android release is in the works.

 

Back to top

Helping in Honduras and other notes

Erin Smith from the Registrar's Office and Michelle Burlock and Steve Krysak from Marketing and Undergraduate Recruitment (right) are on a Habitat for Humanity trip in Honduras this week, working in Santa Rosa de Copan on an 11-house project.

When they're not playing with wheelbarrows, they're working with 9 other volunteers, making and laying adobe bricks for one of the homes.

Erin and Steve return to campus next week, but Michelle is visiting schools in the capital city of Honduras, Tegucigalpa, after the build is complete. You can follow along with their adventures online.

The full slate of videos from the last TEDxUW event, held on November 17 in the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre, have now been released online, including local entrepreneur Michael Litt's "Why you have to fail to have a great career," a follow-up to Larry Smith's attention-grabbing 2011 TEDxUW talk "Why you will fail to have a great career."

The Faculty of Mathematics will be hosting an information session on graduate studies for second, third, and fourth-year undergraduate students on Thursday, January 17 from 4:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in MC2066. Attendees will have an opportunity to speak with department representatives and get an overview of what graduate studies in Math is all about. Refreshments and snacks will be served.

The University of Waterloo Art Gallery (UWAG) is opening its latest exhibition with a reception tonight at 5:00 p.m. Members of the NetherMind collective - Tom Dean, John Dickson, Catherine Heard, Greg Hefford, Mary Catherine Newcomb, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Lyla Rye, and Max Streicher - have reunited after a series of exhibitions in Toronto in the early 1990s that featured "sculptural interventions" in post-industrial spaces for the showing at the university's art gallery that will include installations of new and recent works that "respond to the unique qualities of the gallery and its architecture." The exhibition is open until March 13.

 

Back to top