Mika Tomac does not have a one-size-fits-all attitude, say the students she works with. Her support and encouragement was cited as reasons for her nomination for an award recognizing her first-class service.
A clinical therapist in the Faculty of Nursing, Tomac received a “Going the Extra Mile” (GEM) award at a luncheon Thursday to honour the contributions of staff in Student and International Affairs.
In nominating Tomac, a student wrote that she “literally changed my life.”
“She has made me believe in me and reminds me to be kind to myself, which sends me off with such a breath of fresh air into the busy world I struggle in every day,” said the letter of nomination.
In addition to the student-nominated category, awards went to Career Development Services secretary Hoda Skaff and Student Disability Services secretary Joy Lesperance for their work with faculty and staff, and to Paolo Vasapolli, assistant manager of satellite operations for Food Services, as a partner working with the Student and International Affairs team.
Dean of students Clayton Smith said it is important to take time to recognize staff members who go the extra mile to enhance the UWindsor student experience.
“These staff demonstrate through their actions sincere empathy and support for our students throughout their university years,” Dr. Smith said. “We are so proud of their many acts of giving!”
Michael Holmes and Yasina Somani pose with the trophies they won in the UWindsor’s Three Minute Thesis competition.
University researchers don’t have enough opportunities to present their research to the general public, says Yasina Somani, which is why she welcomed the chance to participate in the Three Minute Thesis competition.
“If you want your research to get acknolewdged, you have to be able to present it in a way people can understand,” says the master’s student of kinesiology. She will represent the University of Windsor in the province-wide competition at McMaster University on April 24.
“You need to be able to translate your work to be relevant to real life,” Somani says.
Her presentation, “Getting a grip on high blood pressure with a novel treatment,” described her work in professor Cheri McGowan’s physical activity and cardiovascular research (PACR) lab.
“We have determined that training with an isometric handgrip can reduce blood pressure,” she says. “Now we are trying to identify who will respond best to this treatment.”
She says she was very happy to represent the Faculty of Human Kinetics in the competition, which saw her finish atop a field of 28 contestants.
“The environment in my lab is very supportive; it fosters growth and creativity,” says Somani.
Michael Holmes, a doctoral candidate in chemistry and biochemistry, earned runner-up honours and was voted people’s choice in Monday’s UWindsor finals. The Three Minute Thesis competition challenges graduate students to make their research intelligible to a general audience using just three minutes and a single slide.
Ali AbdulHussein says he wants to build collaborative relationships between the faculties of business and engineering.
Lots of engineers have great, innovative product concepts, but may lack the business acumen to develop them into marketable goods. A lot of business students have great marketing skills, but might not have access to solid creative product ideas to promote.
Enter Ali AbdulHussein.
“I’m trying to build a formal link between engineering and business and get them to speak the same language,” says one of the newest faculty members on campus. “We want to create something more concrete that can turn into real ventures.”
AbdulHussein joined the university this year and one of his primary objectives is to foster a more collaborative environment between the faculties of business and engineering.
A self-described risk taker and creative thinker, AbdulHussein earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering at the University of British Columbia in 2008 and an MBA at Simon Fraser University in 2011.
Both while a student and after graduation, he’s been involved in a number of new ventures in everything from marketing analytics to telematics and says he’d like to utilize his experience with start-ups to help introduce innovative products to market while creating an interactive learning environment for young entrepreneurs.
“I hear about new ideas every day,” he says. “It’s become very cheap to start a company, and there are a remarkable number of opportunities in this area. And there are a certain number of these students who can make for great entrepreneurs.”
Cross appointed to both faculties, AbdulHussein says he’ll be paying very close attention to fourth year engineering capstone projects to watch for marketable concepts, while working closely with the people at EPICentre, a new initiative that aims to enhance and cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit on campus.
Anita Bondy won this week’s DailyNews quiz contest and its fabulous prize of a beautiful Lancers sweatshirt.
Anita Bondy, program development officer in the Centre for Executive and Professional Education, won this week’s DailyNews quiz contest and its fabulous prize of a beautiful Lancers sweatshirt.
Bondy’s entry was drawn from all those which correctly listed a series of Juno award-winning singles in order of their release: Sugar Daddy by Patsy Gallant in 1977; Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins in 1980; Black Velvet by Alannah Myles in 1989; Beauty and the Beast by Celine Dion in 1991; You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette in 1995; Complicated by Avril Lavigne in 2002; and Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen in 2011.
To help celebrate the University of Windsor’s 50th anniversary, DailyNews will run a contest at the beginning of each week, offering a prize donated by the University Bookstore. This week’s prize, a hooded sweatshirt with bearing the words “Windsor Lancer,” is available for purchase from the Bookstore kiosk in the CAW Student Centre at a cost of just $34.95.
What could be more fun than 42 ball-launching robots? Teams from high schools across Ontario, Michigan and Ohio will descend on the St. Denis Centre fieldhouse this weekend for the Windsor-Essex Great Lakes Regional FIRST Robotics tournament.
Contestants have built robots for a skills competition, dubbed a varsity sport for the mind. The event is a program of a US-based organization, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.
Irek Kusmierczyk, director of robotics and youth programs for WEtech Alliance, says it attracts the brightest science, technology, engineering, and business students.
“In less than a year we have gone from one high school team in Windsor and Essex participating in FIRST Robotics to 13,” he says. “This program will provide our young people with the tools to succeed in a knowledge economy.”
The tournament is open to the public Friday and Saturday. For more information, including a schedule of events, visit its website, http://www.windsoressexfirst.org/.
To accommodate the competition, the St. Denis Centre fieldhouse will close April 2 to 5, re-opening at noon Sunday, April 6. Dan Wolicki, acting athletics and facilities services manager, thanks patrons for their patience and apologizes for any inconvenience.
Chemicals called PBDEs are commonly used as flame retardants in things like televisions and computers and may have harmful effects on the environment, according to a visiting scientist who will lecture here Thursday.
A wide variety of chemicals used in household goods ranging from furniture to fabrics might be effective at preventing fires, but new types of “replacement” flame retardants are being released into the environment and their long term consequences are still unknown, according to a scientist who will deliver a guest lecture here Thursday.
Robert Letcher
“It is a conundrum,” said Robert Letcher, a senior research scientist and adjunct professor at Carleton University. “It’s just a fact of living in a modern society. It’s not to say that all these chemicals are toxic, but at this point we just don’t know what they’re capable of doing if they get into the environment.”
A former assistant professor in the University of Windsor’s chemistry department who worked at theGreat Lakes Institute for Environmental Research in the early 2000s, Dr. Letcher will deliver a keynote lecture called Emerging Flame Retardants in the Great Lakes Birds: Linking Source Pathways, Exposure, Fate and Effects Using an Adverse Outcome Framework, at GLIER’s annual research colloquium this Thursday.
A two-day year-end event, the colloquium is a showcase of GLIER's up-and-coming young scientists, many who study how aquatic ecosystems like the Great Lakes respond to such stressors as exotic invasive species, toxic chemicals, habitat alteration, climate change, and overexploitation, all which jeopardize clean water, healthy fisheries, and sustainable agriculture.
Letcher’s lecture will focus on environmentally “emerging” flame retardant chemicals that are mixed in with plastics and other materials used to make everyday items like telephones, televisions and furniture. Known in the industry as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, these older brominated flame retardant formulations were proven to be toxic, persistent and bioaccumulative, and many were either carcinogenic or had endocrine disrupting properties, he said.
Although recent and limited, scientific evidence is beginning to show these “emerging” chemicals are entering the environment, either by being released in to the atmosphere, or leaching into the ground water when they’re disposed of landfills, Letcher said. Over the last 15 years, industry has developed new replacement flame retardant chemicals and formulations, which tend to be heavier molecules with more bromine atoms, and include PBDE-plus type chemicals. Of about 75 new known brominated flame retardants currently in use, a weight of evidence is showing that many are chemically and environmentally unstable despite industry claims to the contrary, he said.
“It’s these substances that are emerging in the environment, and we’re just beginning to understand if they’re present in the environment and whether they will pose any harm to exposed animals and humans,” he said.
Letcher will deliver his talk on April 3 at 9 a.m. in Room 250 at GLIER, located at 2990 Riverside West.
His lecture will kick off two days of student research presentations, and for the colloquium’s first time, students from visiting schools like the University of Guelph, McGill, and the University of Waterloo will also deliver talks on their work.
Leddy Library is inviting patrons to share a secret on its Secrets Wall.
Do you have a secret? Do you want to know a secret?
As a way of letting off some end of semester stress, Leddy Library is inviting patrons to share a secret on its Secrets Wall on the main floor of Leddy’s West Building. Just go on over, grab a post-it note, and let the wall cart your cares away.
The Secrets Wall will remain on display from April 1 to 18.
UWindsor will be the centre of the manufacturing and production engineering world April 28 through May 2 when the University’s Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Centre plays host to the International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP) in back-to-back conferences. Pre-registration for attendees is required before April 21 and space at the conferences is limited.
The 47th annual Manufacturing Systems Conference, Managing Variety in Manufacturing, will take place from April 28 to 30 and will focus on product innovation from design to retirement to recycling—the entire product and manufacturing systems’ life cycle. The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario), will speak at the 8:30 a.m. opening session on April 28.
The manufacturing conference will be followed immediately by CIRP’s sixth annual Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems on May 1 and 2.
“It is a real honour to be selected to host these two conferences for the first time in Canada as it is an international recognition of the excellence of the research carried out in our Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Centre,” says conference organizer Hoda ElMaraghy, Canada Research Chair in Manufacturing Systems. “Manufacturing is particularly important for the economic prosperity of this region; it directly contributes about 11 percent to Canada’s gross national products (GDP) and employs close to 1.8 million Canadians.”
The four-day event will gather more than 200 manufacturing and production experts from around the world and will feature 12 keynote presentations from top international professors and industry executives.
CIRP is the world leader in production engineering research and is at the forefront of research and innovation in manufacturing engineering, machines, industrial systems and production management. The organization is open only to individuals and organizations with demonstrated research excellence. It represents approximately 600 academic and industrial members from 50 countries.
A reception Saturday celebrated the participants in the Connecting4Success program, which pairs mentors with first generation students—the first in their families to attend university.
Throughout their first year, students meet one-on-one with their advice gurus and attend monthly meetings that focus on common first-year academic, social and personal challenges. In 2013/14, more than 172 students volunteered as gurus to almost 200 protégés, says program coordinator Christina Alcena.
Guest speaker Yvonne Pilon, a UWindsor grad (BComm 2007) and vice-president of WEtech Alliance, said she was really impressed with the program and its participants.
“From time to time, you meet students who are both willing to learn and eager to be engaged, but what’s really rare is when you meet a whole room of them,” she said. “Since the event I have already received a number of follow-up emails and tweets from students wanting to connect and learn more about career and volunteer opportunities in Windsor-Essex.”
The reception also saw the conferring of several awards: mentor Colleen Broaderip received the “Making a Difference” award, based on a nomination from both her protégés; four protégés were recognized for making the most of their experiences—Nicole Bourdkane, Aché Knight, Ayodeji Owojori and Regina Yuen.
Tickets are now available for the Celebration of Excellence in Medical Education dinner, celebrating the graduating class of 2014 from the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry–Windsor Program.
The event, at the Caboto Club on Monday, April 14, begins with a reception at 5:30 p.m. and continues with dinner and a formal awards program at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 per person or $400 for a table of 10, available online through April 7 or by contacting Gia Abraham at 519-253-3000, ext 1411.
The Caboto Club is located at 2175 Parent Avenue at Tecumseh Road.
The GEM awards luncheon Thursday fêted honorees Hoda Skaff, Paolo Vasapolli, Mika Tomac and Joy Lesperance.
