What a Rush for Waterloo hockey player

Excerpted from a news piece on the Athletics website.

Keaton Hartigan always knew he could play hockey at a professional level. Thanks to his role in the Warriors' Cinderella run to the University Cup tournament, the rest of the hockey world knows now, too.

Hartigan, who completed his illustrious 5-year CIS career with the Warriors in March, has signed a contract with the Rapid City Rush of the Central Hockey League, based in Rapid City, South Dakota.

"The deal came together rather quick," said Hartigan via email. "Their head coach Joe Ferras contacted me a few weeks ago and explained his current goalie situation. He explained that he lost both goalies this summer to overseas contracts, (and) he felt there was an opportunity here for me to play a fair amount of games. After doing some research on the hockey club and Rapid City in general, I felt that the program and the hockey-oriented city would be a great fit for me."

The 6'1" Kitchener native played 93 games in his career at Waterloo. Hartigan's best season with the Warriors was 2009-10, when he won the OUA goaltender of the year award, was named to the OUA first all-star steam, and was named a second-team CIS all-Canadian. However, the best hockey Hartigan played in the black and gold was undoubtedly this past spring – he posted a 7-3 record, a 2.60 goals-against average and .932 save percentage during the Warriors' playoff run. And according to Hartigan, that postseason success played a large role in his decision to go pro.

"I feel the playoff success of our team definitely had a large impact on Rapid City even knowing who I was," said Hartigan. "Any time a team has the success we had last season, it raises the awareness of not only the players on it, but the program and the university itself."

Read the full piece on the Athletics department's website.

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It's D-Day for Venture Fund Finalists

The Great Hall of the Student Life Centre will be abuzz with biz today as the VeloCity Venture Fund Finals and Demo Day events take place from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

The festivities kick off at 11:00 a.m. with Demo Day. Waterloo student finalists will pitch their ideas to a panel of three judges for a chance to win one of three $1,000 prizes. The seven competing teams that emerged victorious from two Pitch Night events held earlier this month are:

• Closet Explorer
• Diggos
• Flow
• Neverfrost
• Shocklock
• StudyMe
• tl;dr

The Demo Day judges are Ali Asaria, Wayne Chang, and Ian McDonald. The teams will have booths set up for attendees to check out their pitches.

At 1:00 p.m. the VeloCity Venture Fund Finals will get underway, with student teams vying for a piece of the $100,000 in Venture Fund prize money. Ten finalists are competing for a $25,000 share of the grant funding and the opportunity to build their businesses within the VeloCity program.

The VeloCity Venture Fund was established in March 2011 after Ted Livingston, a VeloCity residence alum and high-tech entrepreneur who founded Kik, an instant messaging application, donated $1 million to the student startup incubator.

The startup finalists are:

• Blacktree Health
• GoPexo
• Kite
• LibertyBit
• PlanLeaf
• Redro
• SesameIO
• SoundBrush
• tessoll
• Wriber

A panel of four judges—Ted Livingston of Kik, venture capitalist Karam Nijjar, Mike Stork, president of Stork Holdings, and Communitech Executive-In-Residence Cameron Hay —will hear the teams’ pitches.

“The VeloCity Venture Fund Finals & Demo Day showcases University of Waterloo students with innovative ideas who seek support from the Waterloo community to turn their ideas into viable businesses,” says Mike Kirkup, Director at VeloCity and host of the event. “It also attracts the attention of big businesses and strategic investors who are looking for the next big idea.”

The event will be streamed online. Social media users can also follow along online and post to the event’s Twitter Wall by using the hashtags #DemoDay, #VVF, and by following @uwvelocity.

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Thursday's notes

The UW Farm Market will be taking place today from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the Student Life Centre's lower level. The farm market, which sells local baked goods, produce, and other market fare, is a collaboration between Waterloo students and Food Services and is open to all students, faculty, staff and members of the public.

Be sure to swing by Conrad Grebel's Great Hall for Shad Valley Waterloo's Open Day today, which runs from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Participants in the high-school enrichment program will be showcasing their design projects that answer the question posed by this year's theme: "How might we improve the safety and convenience of Canadian, all-season, human-powered commuting?"

The Centre for Teaching Excellence has opened registration for a number of Spring 2013 courses for instructors. The courses include:

CTE705 LEARN Refresher

• Session 0001: Monday, August 19, 2013, 10:00 to 11:30 a.m.
• Session 0002: Wednesday, August 28, 2013, 2:00 to 3:30 p.m.

CTE601 Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW)

• Session 0015: Tuesday, August 20, Wednesday, August 21, Thursday, August 22, and Friday, August 23, 2013 (9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. each day: total 24 hours)
  
  

CTE656 Getting Started with LEARN

• Session 0051: Thursday, August 29, 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Registration procedures are available on the CTE website.

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