Community & Partnerships

By Victor Romao

Sometimes the most valuable lesson from a co-op placement is discovering what you do not want to do.

For many students, experiential learning helps confirm career ambitions. For others, it opens the door to opportunities they may not have known existed.

Exploring different industries, roles and workplace environments can provide valuable insight into personal strengths, interests and long-term goals.

University of Windsor alumnus Eric Parker (BASc Hons. ’18) experienced that firsthand.

For students and researchers with ideas to build businesses or not-for-profits, entrepreneurship can feel like a world apart from academic life. A new hub at the University of Windsor aims to bring the two closer together. 

For Town of Tecumseh residents, the impact of a new partnership with the University of Windsor could turn up in familiar places — along the trails they walk, in the services they rely on and in the books stacked on their bedside tables. 

The five-year partnership will create opportunities for University students and researchers to work alongside the Town on local priorities. 

By John-Paul Bonadonna

Andrea Yzeiri was supposed to become a lawyer.

As an undergraduate at the University of Windsor, she was pursuing two degrees with an eventual career in intellectual property or commercial law in mind. Then, somewhere along the way, she discovered statistics, optimization and research — and found herself increasingly drawn away from the career she had imagined.

“I kind of stumbled on it,” Yzeiri says of the path that eventually led her into artificial intelligence.

“I really fell in love with data.”

By Victor Romao

Twenty-one years after crossing the University of Windsor convocation stage as a student and young mother, Nadine Manroe-Wakerell (BA, Hons ’05) returned to the same stage for a moment she never could have imagined: presenting her daughter with her parchment.

By John-Paul Bonadonna

Sometimes the right opportunity begins with something as simple as a Date Bite.

For Lena Bidawid (BA ‘01) and her husband, Fadi, a chance encounter with Josianne Marsan, dean of the Odette School of Business, led to a new way to give back — and to help a student build a future through a simple act of kindness.

By John-Paul Bonadonna

A paid research placement at the University of Windsor has turned into something recent graduate Ashley Jun (BA '24) never expected: a first step toward a career in film production.

Just two months after Jun graduated with a BA in Communication, Media, and Film, she found herself working on the set of Plan C, a feature film produced in Windsor with a local cast and crew. What began as a production assistant role quickly evolved into a much larger responsibility — and helped clarify where she wants her career to go next.

By John-Paul Bonadonna

When Teisha Gentles (BA '02) looks back on her journey from University of Windsor student to entrepreneur, one theme stands out: the courage to start over.

Over the last three decades, Gentles has reinvented herself more than once.

She left Toronto for Windsor in search of independence, moved to Florida after graduation, returned to Canada as a single mother to rebuild her career, spent 25 years in the insurance industry and eventually launched a business in a field where she had no formal training.

By Sara Elliott

Science students are learning to create original works of art to explain scientific research.

In a new University of Windsor research-creation project, undergraduate students will explore how sculpting, painting and drawing can be used to convey research.

University of Windsor students across undergraduate programs will have a new accelerated route to medical school beginning in fall 2026 through a partnership with the American Canadian School of Medicine (ACSOM). 

The pathway will allow qualified students to move into medical education after as little as two years at UWindsor and ultimately earn both a UWindsor undergraduate degree and an ACSOM medical degree in as little as six years.