Six top co-op students are honoured

Waterloo will mark National Co-operative Education Week tomorrow by celebrating the academic and experiential achievements of six top co-op students. Among them is one who will also receive a provincial award: Siaw Yun Poi (left), a third-year actuarial science student. She is not only a Co-op Student of the Year at UW but also a student of the year for Education at Work Ontario, an agency that advances co-op education and involves co-op educators working with more than 40,000 co-op students at 37 colleges and universities.

Poi will be honoured during a ceremony to take place Wednesday at 10 a.m. in the home of Waterloo’s co-op programs, the William M. Tatham Centre for Co-operative Education & Career Services.

The award recognizes her achievements at Sun Life Financial, where she earned a reputation for original time-saving ideas for managing investments.

National Co-operative Education Week, March 23 to 27, celebrates the steady growth of co-op education programs across the country. UW issued a news release this week noting that students, employers and academic institutions have benefited from the co-op system since its launch at Waterloo in 1957. Today, this university is home to the world's largest co-op program.

Across Canada, more than 80,000 university and college students are enrolled in co-op programs. "Co-operative education is regarded as an effective means to support employers in the labour force while providing students with unique and invaluable learning opportunities," says Peggy Jarvie, executive director of co-operative education and career services at Waterloo. "The accomplishments of our six students of the year are an exceptional testament to the value of co-op. "

This year's six award recipients were chosen based on their 2009 work-term contributions, academic achievements, community involvement and overall contribution to co-op education. The winners, and citations as summarized in a news release:

“Mathematics: Siaw Yun Poi left a strong impression on her employers as an actuarial assistant for Sun Life Financial. She worked for an investments portfolio management team on multiple projects that involved processing cash flows of private deals. Noticing it typically took more than one hour to process a single deal, Poi developed a new framework that shortened the turnaround time to five minutes. The tool also eliminated many common errors of previous models. She went on to help create more time-saving frameworks, including one for Sun Life Financial's United Kingdom portfolio.”

Poi represented Waterloo in provincial and national co-op student-of-the-year contests. She won the Education at Work Ontario award and received an honourable mention from the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education.

“Applied Health Sciences: As a clinical research assistant at Sunnybrook's Odette Cancer Centre, Roseanna Presutti was involved in the patient consultation process for palliative radiation therapy. She co-led a clinical trial involving radiotherapy patients with multiple distressing symptoms. She determined that non-radiation oncology health care — nutritional counselling or psychological intervention — was often more necessary than the surgery itself. She wrote about her results in the Journal of Pain Management. Presutti has since researched radiation in bone metastases and her findings have been shared with members of the International Bone Metastases Consensus Working Party. So far, she has authored and co-authored 17 book chapters and papers. Presutti received an honourable mention from the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education.”

“Arts: Lauren Theobalds worked as an assistant to the development and outreach officer of Workman Arts, a not-for-profit professional arts company. Situating her love for theatre in a business environment, Theobalds assumed a significant role in the marketing and communications department of the company. She handled advertising and promotion of the company's annual Rendezvous with Madness film festival and increased attendance by more than 46 per cent. Theobalds assisted in representing the company to the Toronto District School Board. She also worked to increase youth enrolment in the arts program."

Engineering: Harvard Medical School hired its first co-op student, Tewodros Mamo, for a two-term position as a nanomedicine intern in January 2009. With both a science and engineering background, Mamo was involved in designing targeted nanoparticle systems for gene and drug delivery. He and his team produced results consistent with the current consensus of top biotechnology companies by proving that nanoparticles show great promise in the therapeutic treatment of cancer and other diseases. He wrote a review article on his research and design, which is to be published in the journal Nanomedicine.”

“Environment: The Royal Bank of Canada hired Sameer Shah as an environmental project management intern last spring to green the company. As co-leader of a pilot program that aimed to reduce RBC's operational footprint, Shah helped the company eliminate waste through vendor consolidation. RBC reduced its footprint by 25,000 tonnes and saved almost $500,000. He also helped create a North American-wide energy consumption portfolio so the entire RBC operation could implement energy-saving ideas."

“Science: At the Princess Margaret Hospital, Stephanie Dobson worked as a research assistant in a stem cell research laboratory. With a specific focus on leukemia and colon cancer, she identified potential genes affected by the insertion of a retrovirus in test subjects. Her team hypothesized that the integration sites of the retrovirus may be linked to the development of leukemia. The countless hours in the lab and analyzing statistics paid off — Dobson confirmed 44 unique insertions. Her results were presented at the Gordon Research Conference for Stem Cells in Switzerland.”

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Summer programs offered for youngsters

With the schools’ March break over, parents turn their attention to the summer, and the annual listing of UW summer programs for children is now available on the community relations web site. It includes the two big day camps, Arts Computer Experience and Engineering Science Quest, as well as a range of specialized activities for various age groups:

Arts Computer Experience, day camp for children aged 7 to 12, four two-week sessions (begins July 5), “hours of fun while learning exciting and interesting aspects of art, computers, drama and music combined with outdoor activities and swimming”, details on web site, information ext. 35939.

Engineering Science Quest, streams for children entering grades 1 through 9, one-week sessions beginning July 5, “explores new horizons in engineering and science”, including ExXtreme Technology camp for older students, main location in Waterloo with satellite camps in Aamijwnaag, Brantford, Chatham, Stratford and Six Nations, details on web site, information ext. 35239.

Hildegard Marsden Day Nursery summer camp for children 4 to 6, weekly sessions in July and August, information ext. 35437.

Klemmer Farmhouse Co-operative Nursery summer program for children 30 months to 5 years, weekly sessions, information 519-885-5181.

Ontario Mennonite Music Camp for students 12 to 16, runs August 8-20 at Conrad Grebel University College, details on web site, information 905-642-7070.

Quantum Cryptography School for students in grades 10 to 12, runs July 26-30, no charge to attend, details on web site, information ext. 38936.

Shad Valley Program for students in grades 11 and 12, Waterloo site hosted by Centre for Knowledge Integration, runs June 28 to July 24 at Conrad Grebel University College, details on web site, information ext. 38573.

Future Warriors hockey camp for girls ages 6 to 15 and ages 15-19, August 9-13, details on web site, information ext. 35526.

Warrior summer hockey camps for boys and girls ages 5-14, one-week sessions in August, details on web site, information ext. 32635.

Women’s field hockey camp for high school girls, August 30 through September 1, details on web site, information 519-579-1857.

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Power shutdown in April; other notes

The massive Quantum-Nano Centre, dominating the campus from its site between Math and Computer and the science buildings, is just a concrete hulk so far, but it'll come to life starting at the end of this month when utility connections are made. For that to happen, the whole campus will experience a shutdown, the plant operations department warned on Friday. The big event is scheduled for April 24-25, the weekend immediately following the end of winter term exams. Plant ops has issued a list of specific buildings, which will appear in the Daily Bulletin closer to the shutdown date, but as a generalization, the north half of campus, from the Villages to the Davis Centre, will be without electrical power, ventilation, heat and hot water from 4 p.m. on that Saturday through to 8 p.m. on that Sunday. On the south half of campus, buildings will be without ventilation and hot water, but electrical power will not be interrupted.

News from the department of chemistry, as reported by faculty member Mike Chong: "The 38th Southern Ontario Undergraduate Student Chemistry Conference was held at the University of Western Ontario this past Saturday. This conference allows undergraduate students to present the results of their fourth-year research projects or work term projects in any area of chemistry and to network with their peers from other schools. About 100 students presented talks on their work in many aspects of chemistry including analytical, biological/ biochemistry, environmental, inorganic, organic, physical/ theoretical/ computational, and polymer/ materials chemistry.  Enthusiastic presenters from Waterloo were Greg Cole, Tim Hall, Tim (Tom) Lou, T.D. MacDonald, Nootaree Niljianskul, Lay Ling Tan, and Will Thatch. Prizes were awarded for the best presentations in each section. Tim Lou won first prize in the organic section while T.D. MacDonald won second prize in the same section. Waterloo will host the 39th SOUSCC in 2011."

Here’s a somewhat apologetic note from Sarah Rodrigues of UW Graphics: “Faculty may have received an email from Graphics Courseware on Monday, detailing courseware ordering procedures for spring. Due to a technical error, you may have received an email for a course you no longer teach, or for a course which is not offered in the spring. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. Unfortunately the emails were sent based on an older term’s courses, rather than spring term’s, for approximately half the mailing list. We have taken steps to ensure this will not happen again.” The Courseware deadline was correctly published as April 9.” Anyone wishing to place a courseware order can contact Rodrigues at ext. 33996, email courseware@ uwaterloo.ca, or visit the online order form.

Ontario University Athletics announces an award given recently to a Warrior volleyball player at season's end: "Fifth-year middle Aaron Dam is the Dale Iwanocko Award winner, given for academics, athletics and community service. The four-time academic all-Canadian is currently working on his master’s degree in kinesiology. Dam currently works as a teaching assistant and volunteers as a peer mentor/tutor. He volunteers once a week at Hearty Hearts, a cardiac rehabilitation centre. Dam is also a member of a church community group known as Serve. With this group he has recently traveled to several impoverished areas to rebuild schools and homes. Dam was second in all of OUA with 82 blocks and is also a second-team all-star."

One of Waterloo's oldest traditions was observed this year as usual, Kelly Deeks reports from St. Paul's University College: "On March 5 and 6, students at St. Paul’s held the 38th Annual Blackforest Coffeehouse, featuring a variety of performers from musicians, actors, dancers and comedians. Throughout the night, funds were raised for ‘The Bridges,’ a homeless shelter in Cambridge. This non-profit charitable United Way partner, provides 40 emergency beds, three family houses and 20 transitional condominiums for people experiencing homelessness within the Tri-City area. The Bridges also provides addiction services and a walk-in program for any persons experiencing homelessness. In total the St. Paul's students raised $275 through ticket sales and food and beverage sales."

And . . . the research office in Needles Hall will be holding its second annual Pink Day tomorrow, part of a fund-raiser (and consciousness-raiser) leading up to the national Weekend to End Women's Cancers in the fall. "I am a two-time breast cancer survivor," writes Jean Zadilsky of the research office staff, noting that she'll be taking part in the big fund-raising walk in Toronto this fall "with my team, called Jean Machine. The office of research, and folks in E&CE and Arts, very generously held this Pink Day event to help. Anne Jenson and some others from E&CE are also walking, as a separate team, but we've been working together to raise the money we need." Tomorrow features the raffle of a "fabulously loaded gift basket", on display at the front desk in Needles Hall room 1043.

CAR

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