The international student office holds a reception each September for newly arrived overseas students. This year's event, on September 15, drew more than 400 students (undergraduate and graduate) to the Festival Room for refreshments and a chance to make connections. Among them: this quintet from, respectively, Colombia, Australia, China, Australia and Sweden.

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Students meet careers at annual fair

More than 250 employers and thousands of students and recent graduates of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, Conestoga College and the University of Guelph will come face to face tomorrow to discuss careers and employment prospects. The occasion is what’s described as “Canada’s largest post-secondary career fair of its kind”, sponsored by the four institutions and now in its 18th year. The same group organizes a Job Fair during the winter term.

The fair, which is not open to the general public, will be held at RIM Park in Waterloo from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. tomorrow. It’s free to students and alumni from the participating universities and college. A shuttle bus service will be available from all four institutions to get them to RIM Park, on the east side of Waterloo, and home again.

Students and alumni will have the opportunity to meet with Canadian and international employers and gather vital information on careers. In turn, employers get an opportunity to promote their organization to future employees and reduce recruitment costs by connecting with many highly skilled candidates on the same day in one location. Agfa Healthcare, Bombardier, the Canada Revenue Agency, Direct Energy, Edward Jones, FM Global, Google, Honeywell, and Investors Group are among the firms and agencies involved.

The event is described as "an exceptional opportunity for students to network with employers. They can use this like ‘one-stop shopping’ to ask for career information, qualification requirements, industry trends, etc. Students are so fortunate to have the largest career fair of its kind take place right here in our community. A real bonus is that transportation and admission are free to students from the partner institutions.” Students from other Canadian colleges and universities can get in by paying a $40 fee.

Shuttle buses between the main UW campus and RIM Park will leave from the Ring Road near the Hagey Hall entrance driveway every 30 minutes from 9:30 a.m. until 2:30 p.m., returning every 30 minutes from 11:00 until 4:00.

There’s a difference between tomorrow’s event and the Job Fair that will happen a few months from now, organizers say: “Career Fair is an opportunity for you to network with employers and learn about career opportunities that may be available to you upon graduation. In addition, many of the employers in attendance are currently recruiting for co-op and internships and permanent or contract positions either immediate or after graduation. At Job Fair, organizations have job opportunities available at the time of the Fair or within six months following the Fair. This Fair can encompass employers hiring for summer, co-op, full-time, part-time, permanent or contract positions.”

A "fair guidebook" is available at the Centre for Career Action in the Tatham Centre. "Decide on employers that you want to target," the experts advise students who will be attending. "Prepare a list of questions to ask." Additional information about upcoming fairs, registration procedures and a complete list of participating organizations are all available online.

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Expert tells the story of 'wellbeing' index

The senior research advisor to the Canadian Index of Wellbeing — a Waterloo-based national index measuring wellbeing that goes beyond the GDP — will give a public lecture tomorrow to share insights on its creation.

Alex Michalos, who is serving as a Hallman Visiting Professor, will be on campus to talk about the challenges of developing a national wellbeing index and give some initial insights into the full composite index that will be released in October.

“For over 40 years,” he says, “I have been engaged in, and tried to engage others in, the difficult task of constructing a comprehensive and balanced measure of the quality of life or wellbeing broadly construed of the Canadian people. Working closely with a very talented team on the Canadian Index of Wellbeing has allowed me to get ever closer to accomplishing the central goal of my life's work. I am pleased to be able to share my insights with the community.”

Michalos is one of a group of experts from the academic, private, public, and non-profit sectors who set out, more than a decade ago, to create a composite measure of wellbeing that incorporates areas of life that matter to Canadians — standard of living, health, quality of environment, education and skills, the way people use their time, the vitality of communities, participation in the democratic process, and the state of leisure and culture.

Base-line reports have been developed for each area and now have been incorporated into the first comprehensive index of wellbeing in Canada, set for national release on October 20.

“We are very pleased that Alex could join us before the national release, to give our community a sneak peek at the CIW”, says Bryan Smale, the CIW’s director and professor in the department of recreation and leisure studies.

Tomorrow’s free lecture, part of the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences Hallman Visiting Professor Lecture Series, will start at 3 p.m. in Hallman Institute room 1621. To reserve a seat, the number to call is ext. 32010.

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Busy season: major events this week

A conference begins tomorrow at Waterloo’s Stratford campus that promises to “investigate how the performing arts are pushing the boundaries of digital technologies and shaping innovative artistic experiences”. The conference, “Challenging Digital Media”, will run through Friday. A news release says that its sessions “will explore broad opportunities, limitations and challenges of arts and media from theoretical, technological, sociological, aesthetic and pedagogical lenses. This will be done through workshops, seminars, and performances integrating digital media technologies.” It says the conference will bring together “an international community of artists, creators, producers, developers and visionaries as we explore how the performing arts are pushing the boundaries of digital technologies and shaping innovative artistic experiences”. Registration for the full conference costs $125 ($50 for students). There’s one free event, scheduled for Friday afternoon: director Kat Cizek and senior producer Gerry Flahive “will walk the audience through a guided tour of the highly acclaimed web documentary Out My Window”, which deals with contemporary urban issues. The conference also includes a “tummeling workshop” by comedian, speaker and interactive solo performer Heather Gold.

Climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr., of the University of  Colorado at Boulder, is on campus this week as the TD Canada Trust Walter Bean Lecturer, and will give two public lectures. First, Wednesday at 10:30, comes a talk aimed at undergraduate students and a large contingent of high school students who will be brought in by bus to hear him. His topic: “The Excitement of Weather and Climate Science”. Pielke will touch on tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, tsunamis, earthquakes, climate change, and even “weather on Earth and on other planets”. The second lecture is scheduled for Thursday at 7 p.m. and is open both to people on campus and to the local community, alumni, donors and others. Pielke will speak on “Extreme Weather in the Coming Decades — What is the Role of Climate Change?” He promises “new perspectives being used by the climate change community to assess threats and determine how important they are relative to other social and environmental threats.” Both talks will be given in the Humanities Theatre.

St. Jerome's University will hold its annual "Feast" on Friday evening — a fund-raising dinner ($125 a plate, or $1,000 a table) in support of scholarship funds and in honour of contributors to Roman Catholic education. This year's honoured guest, the recipient of the Chancellor John Sweeney Award for Leadership in Catholic Education, is Sister Joan Cronin (left), a teacher and administrator who is a member of the Grey Sisters Community in Pembroke, Ontario. The Feast will also include a fund-raising auction, with items up for bid including electronics, travel, entertainment, and a pair of autographed slippers from the National Ballet.

More than 100 young women interested in what a future in engineering could hold for them will be on campus Saturday for the seventh annual Go Eng Girl! event. Waterloo's day-long event is part of a provincial initiative to ignite interest in engineering at a time when young girls are thinking about their future careers. Twelve other universities across Ontario will also be alive with Go Eng Girl! activities. "This event is meant to expose these talented and smart girls and their parents to the range of careers that an education in engineering can provide for them," says Mary Wells, associate dean (outreach) in the faculty of engineering. "Parents are always surprised at the importance of encouraging their daughters to continue to study mathematics and sciences in high school to ensure they keep their options open for university." The girls and the parents will have separate programming for the day, with the girls participating in age-appropriate group activities where they’ll solve enjoyable — but complex — engineering tasks. Participants must have registered in advance, and the event is already full.

Music by the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Chris Brown, Kanye West and Christina Aguilera will be included in the blockbuster “lipdub” video that a crowd of students will be creating on Saturday. The music lineup, described as “a mash-up of songs that will be around 30 seconds each”, was announced yesterday by Melissa Eapen, one of the executive producers for the project. “Each song ties together with a new scene within our video,” she said. Planned locations include the Davis Centre, the CEIT walkway, the Dana Porter Library, the arts quadrangle and the Student Life Centre. It’ll be a long day of creativity on Saturday, with volunteers being asked to show up as early as 8 a.m. Registration will start at 9:15 in the Davis Centre “fishbowl” lounge (“the first 1,200 people that register will be getting pizza for lunch,” Eapen says). Filming will begin at 10:00. There’s more information on the project online, and it’s also possible to register there.

This year's "World Religions Conference", a one-day event held in the Humanities Theatre, is scheduled for Saturday starting at 10:00. Representatives of eight faiths (from Kitchener-Waterloo and nearby communities, Hamilton and Toronto) will speak, first to introduce their tradition, then to address the 2011 theme: "Who Is God? Nature and Characteristics". This year's moderator will be local radio host Jeff Allan. The conference is sponsored each year by the Ahmadiyya Movement, a branch of Islam, and has been hosted by the university's Ahmadiyya Muslim Students Association since 2001. Admission is free.

And . . . Ian Hacking of the University of Toronto has been announced as this year's Hagey Lecturer, and will be here next week. The Hagey Lectures, jointly sponsored by the university and the faculty association, have brought distinguished visitors to Waterloo for more than thirty years. Hacking, known as a leading scholar in the history and philosophy of science, will give a major lecture October 3 under the title "How Did Mathematics Become Possible?" (Humanities Theatre, 8 p.m.). He'll also lead two student colloquia the next day, "Numbers and Race" at 1 p.m. and "The 20th Century Pythagoras" at 3:30. Details are online.

CAR

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