24 Hours of Waterloo 2014 winner named

Thousands of photo ‘likes’ came in to the UWaterloo Life Facebook page, but there can only be one winner.

Arts and Business student Giovanna Ngai took the top spot in the 24 Hours of Waterloo photo contest, garnering more than 830 likes for her photo featuring her rez room door.

Sixteen finalists were selected to compete in the Facebook photo contest. Giovanna’s photo helped her win a $500 shopping spree to Retail Services. You can read more about Giovanna and her prize-winning photo on the UWaterloo Life Blog.

Thank you to all members of the Waterloo community for sending in their photos and videos during 24 Hours of Waterloo. More than 900 photos were received throughout the entire day. We look forward to seeing your involvement in October 2015!

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Staff members to vote on Board representative

Staff members will be voting on Thursday, October 16 to elect a representative to the University's Board of Governors.

Brief campaign statements are available online for the nine candidates who are contesting the position:

• Tobi Day-Hamilton, Institute for Quantum Computing;
• Tom Dean, Department of Chemical Engineering;
• Jacqueline Hanley, Office of the Vice-President, Advancement;
• Brendan Lowther, Federation of Students;
• Trenny McGinnis, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering;
• Liam Morland, Information Systems & Technology;
• Gregory Smith, Information Systems & Technology;
• Jeremy Steffler, Co-operative Education & Career Action;
• Kate Windsor, Safety Office.

Ballots will be mailed to full-time union staff members and full-time non-union staff will receive an email prompt to vote electronically.

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Research lab makes architecture fashionable

A collaboration between a team of professors and students from the University of Waterloo and radical fashion designer Iris van Herpen mesmerized critics at Paris Fashion Week.

Waterloo’s Hylozoic Architecture research lab contributed to 10 dresses in van Herpen's new collection entitled Magnetic Motion. The team of architects and designers is led by Professor Philip Beesley from the School of Architecture, along with Professor Dana Kulic from the Department of Electrical and Chemical Engineering, Professor Rob Gorbet from the Department of Knowledge Integration and Professor Matt Borland from the Department of Systems Design Engineering.

Supported by advanced computational modeling and industrial design, the group’s innovative designs combine precisely detailed polymer, crystal and leather components into interlinking three-dimensional fabric structures with striking qualities of flexibility, sparkle and transparency.

Professor Beesley and his collaborators’ new engineered fabrics bridge the gap between couture and ready-to-wear. One piece uses delicate thermoformed acrylics connected by silicone links. Another involves a hybrid pleat inspired by Mariano Fortuny, the early-twentieth-century designer, and expanded into a corrugated meshwork that combines leather, transparent polymer links and crystalline inclusions.

This long-standing partnership has been growing in momentum with Iris van Herpen’s launch of ready-to-wear lines of clothing that translates the radical experiment of her haute couture explorations into comfortable, highly finished form-fitting clothing. Suzy Menkes of Vogue magazine described the work as the most powerful fashion mix of nature and technology she has ever seen.

Students from the School of Architecture at Waterloo and recent grads were also involved with creating the Magnetic Motion fabrics, including Valerie Arthur, Laura di Fiore, Stephane Gaulin-Brown, Marta Kubacki, Andrea Ling, Julia Nakanishi, Jordan Prosser, Alice Song, Andjela Tatarovic and Alex Willms.

The fashion show took place at Paris' Pompidou Centre on September 30.

Details of the collaboration are available at www.philipbeesley.com and www.irisvanherpen.com.

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Course draws on student workplace experience

by Kaitlyn Holbein.

This fall, a new entrepreneurship course entitled Essentials of Entrepreneurial Behaviour (BET 100) is being offered. The unique course design encourages students to draw from their experiences in the workplace to develop a more entrepreneurial mind-set.

According to Larry Smith, adjunct associate professor with the department of economics, and the lead BET 100 course instructor/designer, students at Waterloo are especially well positioned to profit from this type of approach:

“Our one secret sauce that other universities can’t duplicate, and that helps students profit from workplace experiences, is our co-op program. Unlike every other institution, we have 5,000 employers hiring every 12 months. As a result you can put six random students in a room and between them they can easily have 15 job experiences. If they share insights from their various work environments, a richness of knowledge becomes available to both co-op and regular students.”

In fact, BET 100 is designed to have students gain value from that exact arrangement. They research real-world problems on an individual basis for the first half of the term, and are then assigned into groups for the second half of the course. By banding together and sharing insights and knowledge gained in the workplace, students collaborate to propose innovative solutions to problems.

This format works to develop a more entrepreneurial outlook for students. It also encourages them to get more out of each of their future work experiences.

“Too many students only see the value of their work and co-op experiences from a skills-based perspective,” says Smith. “They get to learn and practice skills, and then document these experiences on their résumé. But this course encourages students to go beyond that, to look for problems and things that they can fix.”

By reflecting on and identifying real-world problems, students can then work towards developing solutions to these issues. Learning to look for and seek solutions to problems will help students to become entrepreneurial employees, or could even lead to an independent business venture. The course is equally applicable to co-op and regular students.

The theories supporting this course emerge from research on entrepreneurship conducted here at Waterloo. While the course is led by Larry Smith, the construction and delivery is also supported by: Geoff Malleck, lecturer with the department of economics; David Rose, lecturer at the Conrad Centre; Wayne Chang, lecturer and Enterprise Co-op program co-ordinator at the Conrad Centre; Pia Marks, online learning consultant at the Centre for Extended Learning (CEL); and Mark Stewart, OTC/DEV at CEL.

The course is intended to be interdisciplinary and has already attracted students from all faculties. As of winter 2015, it will be delivered exclusively in an online format, offering students engaging and cutting-edge multimedia content.

For more information on BET 100, view the course webpage.

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Wednesday's notes

The electronic poll for the 2014-2015 University of Waterloo Staff Association (UWSA) Board of Director positions is now open and will remain open until 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 23.

Candidate information, voting instructions, and a link to the online poll are located on the Staff Association's website.

The Registrar's Office has announced that the fall 2014 final examination schedule is now available online.

Carrie Snyder, a lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature, has been named a finalist in the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for her novel Girl Runner. The novel tells the story of Aganetha Smart, who won a gold medal for Canada at the 1928 Olympics in track, but who is now 104 years old and confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home. Says the prize citation: "In plumbing the depths of Aganetha’s story, Snyder has this incredible woman whisked away on one more adventure, during which she brilliantly explores the twin natures of memory and loss. Girl Runner is a witty, poignant, and finely plotted novel that offers us a character possessed of the wisdom that arises only from a life well-lived."

The grand prize is $25,000, and each finalist will receive $2,500.

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