A new project out of UWindsor’s Psychological Services and Research Centre offers help for hospital workers in distress.

Staff at Windsor Regional Hospital and Hotel-Dieu Healthcare can get free counselling from students working under the supervision of registered psychologists. The program will focus on concerns that can be addressed in single, 90-minute sessions, but clients will be eligible for three additional 50-minute sessions. Those requiring further help will be referred to the Canadian Psychological Association, which offers free counselling for front-line workers through its Psychology Works for COVID-19 program.

Called Caring for our Caregivers, the UWindsor program is the brainchild of doctoral candidate Sanya Sagar.

“It’s a labour of love,” she said, explaining the project is not part of her studies or dissertation. “It’s an extra — an important extra.”

Sagar approached psychology professor Josée Jarry (pictured at right) about the idea and together they designed the program with three other graduate students — Healey Gardiner, Ashley Howard, and Noam Simon. In all, 25 upper-year students will be involved, under the supervision of Jarry, Annette Dufresne, Dana Ménard, and Andrew Taylor.

Practicum opportunities for students have nearly vanished because of the current pandemic, so there’s a symbiosis to the program, Dr. Jarry explained. “It provides a service to the community and a training opportunity for the students.”

The program will have a research component, as well. Clients will be asked to participate in a survey before and after the intervention. Students will do the same. The data collected will become part of the research centre’s archive.

Single-session therapy is an established model in psychology, Jarry explained. “The idea is brief intervention… We try to get people good to go in one session.”

The therapists will try to identify an immediate concern that can be improved now. It may not be the most severe concern, but one that can be addressed quickly.

Workers in crisis will be referred to an emergency service.

Jarry said hospital workers, whether they provide direct patient care or support those who do, face unprecedented stress in their jobs. That stress often manifests itself in feelings of depression and difficulty sleeping.

Healthcare workers not only worry about the real possibility of contracting the virus that causes COVID-19 and becoming ill or dying, they are concerned about causing harm to the people around them, Jarry said. Those on the front lines are required to go into quarantine when not working, leaving them isolated from their families.

“These are very, very difficult conditions.”

Sagar said it is important to offer a community-based service. Other telehealth programs can’t guarantee the therapist offering service is familiar with the community or hospital where the client is from.

The project is funded through UWindsor’s Office of the Vice-President of Research and Innovation and the WE-Spark Health Institute, a research partnership involving the University of Windsor, Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, and St. Clair College. It is one of 21 local COVID-related projects WE-Spark is supporting through its COVID-19 Rapid Response grant program.

—Sarah Sacheli

When education professor Clayton Smith set out to teach the undergraduate course Learning Organizations: Management and Leadership, he found no textbook encompassed the material he wanted students to have — so he wrote one.

Together with master’s student Carson Babich and Mark Lubrick, learning specialist in the Office of Open Learning, Dr. Smith has published Leadership and management in learning organizations as an open educational resource (OER) through eCampus Ontario, with support of an Office of Open Learning OER ACE (Adopt, Create, Extend) grant.

The format allows instructors anywhere in the world to freely access the book and repurpose it for their students, as long as they republish the modifications.

“It makes for better teaching, makes for better learning, and certainly reduces the cost to students,” says Smith. “The downside is it takes a lot of time to develop.”

He estimates the team spent eight to nine months on this book, but adds that making enhancements and modifications will be easier than with a printed text.

“I’m already thinking about producing another OER next year,” he says. “The idea is that we need to do more to make our resources open to the world and this is a pathway to that.”

The course and this text address understandings of leadership and management, learning principles and ethical implications, teamwork, and building a cohesive nature through diversity. The class is required to earn the minor in organizational learning and teaching, which is directed at undergraduate students in majors other than education.

“Learning organizations can be schools and post-secondary institutions, but they can also encompass corporate training, coaching, or human resources,” says Smith. “Any organization whose primary purpose is transmission or creation of knowledge.”

Babich had taken the course and was inspired to pursue further study in education; he is now working toward his M.Ed and has received a Research Stimulus Fund grant to assess the impact of OERs on student affordability and teaching and learning effectiveness.

“This minor program enrolls students from across the university who are seeking more knowledge and skills related to educational topics — they can be in psychology, human kinetics, or business,” Smith says. “They’re just finding they should be thinking about the principles and theories of pedagogy before they find themselves in a managerial position overseeing this type of work.”

In high school, Amanda Gatto had a keen interest in math, logic, and rational thinking, as well as a love of art. In trying to decide on a career path, she found the perfect blend of all her passions: architecture.

Her journey to become an architect began in her hometown of Windsor by enrolling in Visual Arts and the Built Environment (VABE), a joint program between University of Windsor and University of Detroit Mercy. She received her three-year visual arts degree through the VABE program and completed a fourth year at University of Detroit Mercy to receive her Bachelor of Science in Architecture.

Gatto said the VABE program offered many advantages, as she had the opportunity to learn architecture from both Canadian and American perspectives, establish connections in each country, and work with clients in Detroit helping to revitalize communities.

“They really focus on community engagement,” she said. “A lot of our design projects were based in Detroit, working with people on areas that were up-and-coming.”

After completing her fourth year, she decided to get a Masters of Architecture degree from the University of Detroit Mercy. For her final thesis project, she designed a new teaching and learning building for the University of Windsor.

She was inspired to take up the subject while completing an Outstanding Scholars internship, working on a space audit for the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) with Veronika Mogyorody, VABE founder and professor emerita in the School of Creative Arts.

“Veronika and I would talk about all the possibilities, like imagine if we could have this on our campus, or how amazing would that be, and so it just made me really excited and want to continue working on it,” Gatto said. “Eventually, it evolved into my thesis.”

Dr. Mogyorody would serve as her external advisor, meeting weekly throughout the research and design process.

“Amanda's research on active learning and learner participation propelled us into examining learning spaces of the future and how social engagement and mobility are an important part of human-centred architecture,” she said. “It was this collaborative effort in identifying problems in existing learning environments, and proposing multiple design solutions for the future, that made our working together so enjoyable and memorable.”

While Gatto designed the building as a home for the CTL and Office of Open Learning, she said she incorporated other elements to increase the suitability of this building for construction some day.

“Prior to the temporary shift to online instruction, there had been growing recognition of larger incoming first-year classes, so I included a 500-seat classroom as well as a faculty lounge and multiple spaces for students to meet and study,” she said. “I see it as a hub of learning with a strong educational development component.”

Gatto said she hopes her work can become a starting point for a structure to be built, showcasing how necessary this space is for campus and its value, but recognizing the final form will probably not end up looking like hers.

“Although it will likely look different, I do hope that a teaching and learning building on campus is possible and provides a place of innovation and connection on campus,” she said.

Gatto got an appreciation for the things one needs to consider when creating a well-designed building and how much work goes into running a university, she said.

“In school, we can design these really cool structures, but it is generally for a hypothetical client,” she said. “When you're designing for an actual user, you need to be thinking realistically about the use of that space in order to make it as functional as possible as well as aesthetically appealing.”

Gatto’s work has not gone unnoticed: the American Institute of Architects awarded her with the Henry Adams Medal, a medal of excellence given to a graduating Masters student with the highest academic standing in an accredited school of architecture in North America.

Her thesis project also reinforced her love of education. While she most likely will go back to school one day, for now she will be working at the international architectural, engineering, and planning firm SmithGroup, headquartered in Detroit.

To see the plans of the new building, as well as Gatto’s process, visit the CTL’s new blog.

—Peter Marval

UWindsor researchers will soon be able to track and precisely measure cancerous tumours in real time.

Biomedical sciences professor Munir Rahim received a $150,000 NSERC RTI grant, along with a $20,000 UWindsor Research Stimulus grant and $5,000 in funding from the Department of Biomedical Sciences, to purchase a specialized instrument capable of high-resolution imaging by luminescence or fluorescence inside (in vivo) or outside (ex vivo) of an organism.

“This would be the first in vivo imaging machine of its kind in Windsor-Essex,” says Dr. Rahim. “Having an imager that can track  fluorescent and luminescent cells is absolutely essential to the success of many research and training programs at UWindsor — from cancer and stem-cell research to monitoring drug delivery.”

The imager allows researchers to monitor multiple whole, living animals and plants as well as tissue. The researchers can tag specific cells with a fluorescent or luminescent dye. This makes the cells fluoresce, or light up, so they can be monitored at the cellular level, in real-time, in a range of colours.

Rahim says the non-invasive in vivo imaging lets him visualize cellular functions that would ordinarily be impossible to see. His research focuses on developing immune therapy by looking at how immune cells can recognise cells that are cancerous or that have been infected with viruses. He says this instrument will be most helpful in his cancer research program where he investigates ways to make tumours more visible to the immune system.

“Previously we had to use a caliper to manually measure a tumour. This method can be error-prone and tedious, and it was limited to tumours visible to the naked eye,” says Rahim. “Use of fluorescence and luminescence imaging allows us to label and track cells internally, make far more precise measurements, see how fast a tumour is growing, and follow the growth of that tumour over time.”

The instrument will benefit diverse areas of scientific research across campus. Rahim says it will prove most beneficial to stem-cell and cancer researchers, along with those studying drug delivery.

“Many of us were limited without an instrument like this one, especially those of us studying cancers as well as the biochemists who need to accurately track the precise path a drug takes after injection using various targeted drug delivery systems — this is going to be very useful for a lot of us.”

Further down the line, it could also prove useful to computer science, physics, and chemistry research as well. This equipment will enable comparative studies for development of new and improved imaging equipment in the Faculty of Engineering.

“I am grateful for the support we’ve received from the University in the form of a Research Stimulus Fund, my co-applicants who have supported this application, and many researchers who have shown interest in the machine,” says Rahim. “It is really a collective effort to acquire this instrument.”

—Sara Elliott

The Entrepreneurship Practice and Innovation Centre (EPICentre) last week welcomed its summer 2020 cohort of seven teams to the RBC EPIC Founders program, an intensive 12-week startup accelerator.

Participants will explore their business ideas supported by a $6,000 stipend as seed funding, as well as mentorship, workshops, and other tools and resources. On Aug. 6, they will present their pitches to compete for cash prizes worth a total of $4,500.

The teams represent a variety of industries and academic disciplines:

• Nia Thompson of Lyric Symone & Co., a subscription box service dedicated to providing a platform for small businesses.
• Gagneet Kaur and Parneet Singh of Dignity, a platform for family members to track, monitor, and check in on the wellbeing of seniors in the care of agencies and other service providers.
• Jaydee Tarpeh and Nyasha Kapfumvuti of Xenia Education Inc., an online learning platform to help institutions train international students on integrating to their new environments.
• Michael Lucenkiw of the Environment Machine Shop, a social enterprise leveraging open-source strategies to develop the capacity for citizens to participate in environmental monitoring.
• Richa Singh Madnawat and Dhrumil Patel of EdBot, a software application used by academic institutions to conduct online chat conversations.
• Brauntë Petric, Adam Dunn, and Oliver Balmokune of Vectorgaze, a company that uses real-time rendering to provide animations and motion graphics with live and immediate feedback.
• Sana Channar of Communicare, an emergency care app connecting volunteers to vulnerable people who need help delivering essential items to their homes.

Find more information on the EPICentre website.