Organizers of Head Start, the orientation program for students entering the University in September, are excited about several enhancements to its agenda this year.

Sessions will run May 26, 27 and 29, June 3 and 5, July 28 and 29, and August 12. Every date is open to all students in any major, and will include a presentation especially for transfer, part-time and mature students.

Amber Norman, student development specialist in the Student Success Centre, is looking forward to having newcomers hear from current students.

“These student leaders will discuss the transition to University life, financial planning, and career services,” she says. “I think these mentor relationships will help to build strong ties with our incoming first-year students.”

Faculty will also have the opportunity to connect with new students. Each day, a different faculty member will present on what it takes to be successful at university. A complimentary lunch is a further chance for informal interactions, and students may take advantage of an instructor drop-in hour from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

A time-tabling tips session each afternoon will train students to register for their courses; it replaces program-specific instruction previously provided.

Check-in, a general welcome and programming for parents will run in the Toldo Health Education Centre. Other activities are set for the CAW Student Centre. Tours have been extended to encompass a wider area of the campus, including a stop at the athletics and recreation facilities on south campus.

Attendees can register using the new “University of Windsor Guides” mobile application, available for download to iPhone or any Android device from uwindsor.ca/headstart.

Buttons aid visitors in identifying eager helpers

The Student Success Centre invites all UWindsor staff and faculty to wear “Ask Me” buttons for the period of Head Start, making it easier for campus visitors to identify people who can provide them with a welcoming smile, directions or basic information.

“Ask Me” buttons are white and sport the university’s official logo. To get yours, contact Shelby Marchand in the Student Success Centre at shelby@uwindsor.ca. She asks that wherever possible, departments coordinate their requests so that all of the buttons can be sent to one contact person for distribution.

In some ways, to edit a collection of critical essays is more difficult than penning one’s own monograph, says English professor Carol Davison, because of the need to integrate widely diverse chapters.

She has edited two books scheduled for release this spring: The Gothic and Death and Scottish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (with Monica Germanà).

“To make a collection cohere is perhaps the greatest challenge,” says Dr. Davison, head of the UWindsor Department of English Language, Literature and Creative Writing. “I certainly faced that with The Gothic and Death, where I received over 80 abstracts devoted to a variety of texts.”

She says she used five key section headings to tie together its 15 chapters, but “I’ll wait to see what the reviewers have to say.”

Published by Manchester University Press, the book offers the first-ever study devoted to the subject of the gothic and death across the centuries, by way of such uncanny figures as corpses, ghosts, zombies and vampires.

Scottish Gothic, published appropriately enough by Edinburgh University Press, is an interdisciplinary exploration of the multifarious strands of gothic themes in Scottish fiction, poetry, theatre and film — from the mid-18th century to the present day. Books from Scotland listed it among its top five new non-fiction books.

Davison says gothic works probe the dark side of individuals, cultures, and nations, and remain very popular.

“In the right artistic hands, this very malleable cultural form craftily disrupts and interrogates established worldviews and ideologies,” she says. “Just turn on your television sets and you can see its infiltration in such series as Six Feet Under, Westworld, and Game of Thrones.”

Maggie Boglitch wants to be the best nurse she possibly can, and the UWindsor student got a boost Thursday from a role model: television talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.

During Thursday’s episode of the program The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Boglitch received a $20,000 gift to pursue graduate education. Currently a nurse in the special care nursery at St. John Hospital in Detroit, she received her BScN degree in 2014 and began studies in the Master of Nursing program in Fall 2016.

“You’re my inspiration every day,” Boglitch told DeGeneres. “Just to give back to people is the most amazing thing in the world.”

Sponsor Shutterfly, an internet-based image publishing service, surprised Boglitch by paying to fly her mother and sister to the taping to participate in a contest segment, and donated the cheque to help offset her grad school expenses.

Two displays in the Leddy Library celebrate National Nursing Week, May 8 to 14, with materials on the local history of nursing education.

Bulletin boards and glass cases opposite the service desk on the library’s exhibit photos and documents from the archive of the Metropolitan School of Nursing, which trained nurses in Windsor until 1974, when the province assigned those programs to its community colleges.

“The displays give a glimpse into not only the history of the Metropolitan School of Nursing, but also what it was like being a nursing student in the 1950s and ’60s,” says Helen Power, information services librarian. “I hope people will come check it out!”

Librarian Art Rhyno and history professor Steven Palmer have created an online archive to house scrapbooks compiled and annotated by Kathleen Moderwell, the school’s director from 1960 to its closing. View the archive: http://met.scholarsportal.info/.

Season tickets for Lancer football are now available from the athletics department, with an early-bird discount for purchases by June.

The campaign will kick off Sunday, August 27, when Windsor hosts the Waterloo Warriors on Alumni Field, and then it’s:

• at the Toronto Varsity Blues, Monday, September 4;
• at the Guelph Gryphons, Saturday, September 9;
• home to the Western Mustangs, Saturday, September 16;
• at the Ottawa Gee Gees, Saturday, September 23;
• home to Queen’s Gaels, Alumni Weekend Saturday, September 30;
• at the McMaster Marauders, Saturday, October 14;
• home to the York Lions, Saturday, October 21.

All games start at 1 p.m.

Season tickets for all four regular-season home games cost $50 per seat — purchase in May or June to qualify for the early-bird price of $40.  To order, e-mail Sydney Mitton at mittons@uwindsor.ca.

Find more info at goLancers.ca.

A project to replace flooring in the Dennis Fairall Fieldhouse is on track to be completed by May 22, reports Dan Wolicki, acting facilities manager in the St. Denis Centre.

“We are replacing the rubbery playing surfaces that use materials from Mondo Sport and Flooring,” Wolicki says. “The work was delayed slightly when we launched a couple of weeks ago, but we are confident we’ll be done on time.”

The affected surfaces include the sport court area and the indoor competition track, but not the hardwood basketball and volleyball courts.

Installers sanded the entire area and applied adhesives in preparation for bonding the new material. They then positioned the new surface in pieces, connected the seams and levelled it out. Finally, workers will paint lines demarcating playing areas.

“It’s a big job, but the renewal is worth it,” says Wolicki. “It will be like an entirely new floor for users, making a better space for student-athletes, whether at the varsity level or in Lancer rec programs.”

He says the high-performance Mondo product is durable and requires minimal maintenance, noting that the previous installation held up since 1999.

Collective bargaining is hard work, says UWindsor president Alan Wildeman, but it is important work.

“I know it often times means late hours, but we do appreciate the efforts of all our bargaining teams,” he said Wednesday in the Toldo Health Education Centre, as University administrators met with officials of the three campus locals of the Canadian Union of Public Employees to formally sign collective agreements reached in October 2016.

Rita LaCivita, vice-president of human resources, thanked everyone involved in the negotiations.

“I believe we have in place some collective agreements we can be very proud of,” she said.

CUPE represents campus staff in three locals: 1001, Food Services, housekeeping and grounds; 1393, trades, technical and professional; and 4580, graduate and teaching assistants.

UWindsor visual arts instructor José Seoane will display his 2015 work Gate III as part of a series of exhibitions at SB Contemporary Art on the theme “One Wall, One Work.” Each month the gallery will exhibit one large artwork.

Seoane says his piece explores an immigrant’s journey, the process of integration and re-invention.

“Living in a border city has given me the unique opportunity to witness the conflicts and tensions that are more present at the edges of any nation, which is an extension of my own experience,” he says. “Here the border is a river, but it functions as a wall in the sense that it is a barrier between two cultures even though not appearing as such.”

The work will remain on display through June 3. SB Contemporary Art is located at 1017 Church Street.