Windsor Mold Group has made a significant gift to the University of Windsor in support of Place of Promise: the Campaign for the University of Windsor.

The gift will have an important and lasting impact on students in three areas — the Faculty of Engineering, the Entrepreneurship Practice and Innovation Centre (EPICentre), and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences — and will provide a solid foundation to support the University’s next generation of innovators.

“The Windsor Mold Group is proud to continue its support of the University of Windsor in many ways, the most recent of which demonstrates our continued commitment to the students in Engineering, EPICentre, and Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences,” said Keith Henry, president and CEO of the Windsor Mold Group.

Benefits of the gift include:

• Engineering will establish the Windsor Mold Group Capstone Endowment to support undergraduate engineering students. The gift will provide financial assistance to a minimum of eight capstone teams and more than 50 students on an annual basis. Capstone is the final project for fourth-year students to apply the formal knowledge they’ve gained during their studies to solve real-world problems. They focus on engineering design, fabrication, testing, and project management.
• EPICentre will use the WMG’s gift to support EPICentre’s makerspace, the Windsor Mold Group EPIC Makers’ Base, which is collaborative space equipped with high-tech tools such as 3D printers and a laser cutter as well as simple hand tools for its members to learn new skills and create prototypes. The funding will also be used to support a part-time Makerspace Lead and to deliver the Make It & Take It workshop series.
• FAHSS will provide the naming rights of two rooms in the School of Creative Arts — HCol Keith Henry 31 Svc Bn Classroom (in the Armouries) and the Windsor Mold Group 3D Print Lab (in the Alan Wildeman Centre for Creative Arts). The gift from Windsor Mold Group will assist in the development of the downtown campus and the Armouries, which has preserved a historic community landmark with a rich military history.

“Windsor Mold’s sustaining investment in arts, engineering, and entrepreneurship is both visionary and long-lasting,” interim president Douglas Kneale said. “We don’t often see such wide-ranging philanthropy. In fact, it is fair to say that this example of interdisciplinary, cross-faculty giving ‘breaks the mold.’”

Windsor Mold Group of companies provides world-class products and services for domestic and international customers in the tooling and automotive plastic molding industries.

What can a graduate student do with three minutes and a single PowerPoint slide?

We will find out today, as master’s and doctoral students compete to present their research to a non-specialist audience in the Three Minute Thesis challenge.

The winner will receive $1,000 and a chance to represent the University of Windsor at the provincewide competition, April 17 at McMaster University. The second-place finisher gets $500 and third place gets $250.

The presentations are open to the public, today – Monday, March 25 – at 1:30 p.m. in Winclare C, Vanier Hall. Find a list of the competitors and their topics on the contest website.

Americans rarely think of fascism as linked to the essence of monopoly-finance capitalism, operating under the guise of free enterprise, says historian Michael Roberto. But this is exactly where fascism’s embryonic forms began gestating in the United States, during the 1920s and the Great Depression.

Roberto will examine how the driving force of American fascism comes, not from reactionary movements below, but from the top — big business and the power of finance capital — in a free public lecture at 6 p.m. Monday, March 25, in the Performance Hall, SoCA Armouries.

Entitled “The Origins of Fascism in the United States,” his presentation is part of Humanities Week and is co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Group and the departments of political science, philosophy, and history.

Roberto is a retired professor of contemporary world history at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and the author of the 2018 book The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920-1940.

Humanities Week continues Tuesday with the lecture “The Right to the Image,” 6 p.m. in the Multimedia Studio, Alan Wildeman Centre for Creative Arts.

University Players is hosting a screening of the film 52 Words for Love as a companion piece to its stage production of Love and Information, in the Essex Hall Theatre through March 31.

Combining documentary interviews with narrative drama, 52 Words for Love offers a humorous meditation on what it means to grapple with the vagaries of intimacy. The film’s style as well as its themes served as a major inspiration for the concept of the stage production.

The screening is set for 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, in the Jackman Dramatic Art Centre’s Hatch Studio Theatre. Admission is by donation.

Filmmaker James Blokland will be on hand to talk about his seven-year journey to bring the story to the screen and answer questions about how to get an independent film from concept to reality on a shoestring budget.

Registration is now open for the University of Windsor’s biannual Teaching and Learning Conference, held May 1 and 2.

Underwritten by the Office of the Provost and the Centre for Teaching and Learning, conference registration is free for UWindsor students, faculty, and staff. Find online registration on the conference website.

The conference will focus on Crucial Conversations in Teaching and Learning. It will provide a forum for administrators, instructors, students, and others to engage in conversations exploring the forces driving change in the post-secondary sector, and the resulting tensions around purpose, pedagogy, curriculum, and evaluation.

For more information about the conference, visit https://ctl2.uwindsor.ca/tlconf/.

The Department of Athletics and Recreational Services honoured the hard work and dedication of its student staff Friday at the Blue & Gold Student Staff Appreciation Luncheon.

The luncheon highlighted all the areas within the department including the St. Denis Centre, Campus Recreation, aquatics, student managers and therapists, and the Lancer home event staff.

The event included the presentation of awards for accomplishments in more than a dozen categories. Find a full of recipients at goLancers.ca.

Exam time can be stressful and sometimes it can help to take a “Paws from Stress.”

Therapeutic Paws of Canada volunteers and their very friendly, certified dogs are coming to the UWindsor campus to provide a comforting cuddle to students.

They will be in the “Paws Room” in Salon A of the Alumni Auditorium on the second floor of the CAW Student Centre on the following days and times:

• Monday, March 25, noon to 1:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, March 27, 6:30 to 8 p.m.

This event is organized by the Senate Student Caucus; the Peer Support Centre, and the Windsor Chapter of Therapeutic Paws of Canada, and sponsored by the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance and Campus Parking Services.

The Training Advisory Committee is in the process of gathering data that will assist in the identification of learning opportunities for the annual Professional Development Calendar offered through Human Resources.

An online suggestion box has been created to engage employees in the design of the 2019-20 Professional Development Calendar, says Marcela Ciampa, director of organizational development and training.

The committee invites employees to share topics of interest in any of the following knowledge and skill development areas:

• Work Essentials, for which there is practical on-the-job application (e.g., soft skills and transferable skills);
• UWindsor or Sector Awareness, associated with University of Windsor services, processes, and systems, and issues impacting the post-secondary sector;
• Service Excellence, that support service excellence;
• Wellness, that promote employee health and wellness.

Visit the online Suggestion Box by April 5 to share ideas.

The 2017 coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird is the third and final entry in “Women in the Director’s Chair,” a series of screenings by the Windsor Film Society showcasing the works of female filmmakers.

Greta Gerwig wrote and directed the film, which tracks the turbulent relationship between a high school senior and her mother in 2002 Sacramento.

The screening is set for Tuesday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. in the Green Bean Café, located at 2320 Wyandotte Street West. Learn more on the Facebook event page.

While every minute of every day someone in Canada needs blood, many Canadians may not realize they are eligible to donate it.

Canadian Blood Services has made a number of changes to its donation criteria and invites anyone interested to check the latest information.

Blood donations are needed for chemotherapy treatments, trauma victims, cardiac surgeries, and organ transplants — procedures that all routinely take place every day. A campus donor clinic to help meet that need on Tuesday, March 26, is open to the public.

It will run 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the student centre’s Commons area. Walk-in donors are welcome, but appointments will better accommodate donors’ working schedules. To book an appointment, call 1-888-2DONATE (1-888-236-6283).

As with previous clinics, the Department of Human Resources encourages all eligible employees to participate in this worthwhile process and asks any employees who wish to donate to make the necessary arrangements with their supervisors regarding the possibility of extended lunch or break periods.