More than 2,400 letters flow through the University of Windsor’s distribution services facility on an average day.

But it was a letter from Narren Sivasegaran that caught the attention of interim president Douglas Kneale.

“To whom it may concern,” the Grade 5 student carefully scribed in pencil. “I am writing to you to get information about your school because I may want to come to your school as a student when I am ready.”

The letter was part of a class assignment at Derrydown Public School in Toronto where each student wrote to the university they were interested in attending.

In his letter, Narren said he’d like to study law, neuroscience, or nursing and would like to know more about UWindsor’s clubs, scholarships, and its diversity.

Along with sending Narren literature about the University of Windsor, Dr. Kneale recorded a video answering each one of his questions and sent T-shirts and stickers for the entire class.

“Here, you’re not a number. You’re part of a community of teaching and learning,” Kneale said in the video, which also featured a message from Lancer mascot Winston.

“We pride ourselves on strong and effective teaching.”

The video resonated with the enthusiastic student.

“Your package has helped me think more about my future,” Narren said in a video. “Your package is a really great reminder that I can do anything I want.”

Kofi Osei-Bonsu, Narren’s teacher, said his students were “thrilled” to receive the video, T-shirts, and stickers sent by the University of Windsor.

“This is something the students won’t soon forget,” Osei-Bonsu said. “The seed for my students to begin thinking about their educational future has been planted.”

— Dylan Kristy

They’re alive!

English and creative writing professor Carol Davison has produced three of the four books on the shortlist for the International Gothic Association’s Allan Lloyd Smith Prize for edited collections.

Awarded along with a prize for the best monograph, it’s the highest honour in the Gothic genre.

“I was told that this is a first — to have three books nominated by the same author,” Dr. Davison said. To have them all shortlisted is a real coup.

Davison’s The Gothic and Death, published in 2017, is a collection of 15 essays. It’s the first study of Gothic and death spanning the mid-18th century to the zombie and vampire fiction of today.

The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Gothic, also published in 2017 and co-edited by Monica Germanà, contains essays written by some of the top Scottish Studies and Gothic Studies authors.

Global Frankenstein, co-edited by Marie Mulvey-Roberts, was published last year to mark the bicentenary of the publication of the Mary Shelley classic.

Davison began work on the three books while on sabbatical in 2013. The volumes all contain her own chapters and she wrote or co-wrote the introductions.

The prize is in memory of the International Gothic Association’s founding president, who taught creative writing and literature at the University of East Anglia in England.

“I am very honoured to have reached this stage in the journey, especially because I knew Allan well and greatly admire his tremendous contributions to the field,” Davison said.

The winner will be announced at a conference which opens July 30 at Lewis University in Illinois.

—Sarah Sacheli

An organizing committee is working to ensure participation by University of Windsor staff, faculty, and students in the Windsor-Essex Pride Fest parade, Aug. 11 on Ottawa St.

“We want to show our support for the LGBTQ+ community,” says Ryan Flannagan, associate vice-president for student experience. “Our planning is in the early stages, so we may be modest in what we create for the parade, but I am confident we can find interesting and fun things to represent UWindsor.”

The parade will proceed down Ottawa St. starting at 11 a.m. to conclude at festival activities in Lanspeary Park.

Flannagan invites all those interested in joining the parade marchers to sign up to give organizers a sense of numbers to expect.

A team of University of Windsor and St. Clair College students is heading to California to compete in Elon Musk’s SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition.

The uWinLoop and SCCLoop duo is one of 21 teams worldwide to advance to the finals and compete July 21 in Hawthorne, California, at SpaceX headquarters.

Dozens of supporters gathered in the Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation Friday, July 5, to send off the team and watch the engineering, business, and marketing students reveal the pod they’ve been working on for more than a year.

“We’re looking forward to putting Windsor against the best on the world stage,” says third-year mechanical engineering student Stefan Sing, uWinLoop’s president and founder.

Hyperloop technology uses electric propulsion in a low-pressure tube to propel a pod above the track using magnetic levitation. This first-of-its-kind competition challenges students to build a functional, scaled-down, prototype that can propel at maximum speed and stop within 100 feet of the end of SpaceX’s vacuum test track.

“We are not as big as some of the other competing engineering schools, but I think grit, passion, and heart makes up for a lot of things and this team has all of that. I am very proud of them,” says Mehrdad Saif, dean of engineering.

The Windsor team raised more than $150,000 in donations, sponsorships, and in-kind contributions to fund the construction of its pod. Advantage Engineering Inc.’s $65,000 in-kind sponsorship made it one of the team’s largest supporters. Davis Gravelsins, the company’s director of marketing, says the Windsor-based firm manufactured the composite of the pod.

“Regardless of the outcome, our uWinloop team will make us Windsor proud, putting our college, university, city, and our country at the forefront of magnetic propulsion, which is … the way of the future,” Gravelsins says.

University of Windsor faculty advisors include professors Rashid Rashidzadeh, Narayan Kar, and Aleksandr Cherniaev.

—Kristie Pearce

UWindsor choir director Bruce Kotowich won Monday’s DailyNews trivia quiz and its prize of two tickets to see the Canadian romantic comedy Salt-Water Moon, July 11 to 13 in the Hatch Studio Theatre, Jackman Dramatic Art Centre.

Directed by acting professor Lionel Walsh and starring recent grad Sofie Jarvis as Mary Snow and James Kern as Jacob Mercer, the play tells the story of two young Newfoundlanders finding their way to love on a moonlit night.

Kotowich’s entry was drawn from all those which correctly identified the names of the main characters, Leaving Home as an earlier work by playwright David French, and the University of Windsor as hosting him as writer-in-residence in 2007.

Performances are set at 7:30 p.m. all three dates. Admission is $20, with a student and senior rate of $15. For tickets or more information, phone 519-564-3601 or email northernbrucetheatre@mdirect.net.

The University has declared 18 desktop monitor privacy filters for sale by bid as Disposal File 1013. The items allow allowing only those directly in front of a monitor to see on-screen data. Click here for details.