Infrastructure upgrades to Essex Hall Theatre may not be visible to patrons of the University Players, but will improve learning opportunities for drama students, says professor David Court.

“We’re creating an environment that reflects what our graduates will find in the professional world,” he says. “This project has been three years in the making. I am very proud to see it coming together.”

Funded mainly by the provost’s office and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the investment made major changes to several systems: lighting, electrical, audio-visual and communications, as well as a new stage floor.

“This whole process started with health and safety concerns,” says Court. “Our student experience has been limited by what we could do safely.”

He cites the example of the stage lighting. Because the lines were accessible only on very tall ladders, the work had to be done by outside companies with liability insurance. The project replaced the fixed rigging with a motorized system that lowers lights to floor level, allowing students to hang them.

“Something that took us a week to do in labs, we did in a couple of hours,” Court says. “Now our students are getting the hands-on learning we couldn’t provide before.”

New A/V conduits under the theatre seating connect the projection booth behind the audience to the stage area, providing plug-and-play functionality for speakers and audio equipment.

“Before, we had to run cables for every show,” says Court. “Our new system gives us a flexibility for greater creativity in the staging of our shows.”

He points out that professional productions are increasingly making use of video elements during performances and hopes to introduce more of this technology into Essex Hall.

“This project doesn’t involve any huge innovations, but it does put in place all the bones we need to build on,” he says. “Hopefully providing our students with a space that’s up-to-date will be a recruiting tool.”

University Players will open its season with an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s gothic romance Jane Eyre, September 22 through October 1 in the Essex Hall Theatre. Find ticket info and showtimes at www.UniversityPlayers.com or call the box office at 519-253-3000, ext. 2808.

A UWindsor student will win free tuition for a semester by explaining the value of the humanities.

The Why Humanities? competition invites students to submit a manifesto answering the question “What do the humanities mean to you?” as a video, short essay, poem, or other form that can be read aloud in under two minutes. The contest is part of Humanities Week activities organized by the Humanities Research Group.

The entry deadline is 11 a.m. Tuesday, September 19. Find details on the competition website.

When Mehdi Kargar looks at enormous amounts of data collected from multiple databases, he envisions a seamless and fluid directory of information that could one day be organized through an algorithm for quick and easy search.

Unfortunately, this type of complicated — or structured — data is extraordinarily difficult to organize though simple search systems.

Dr. Kargar has received a $20,000 grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to craft an algorithm that could help sort structured data through a massive search tool, much like Google.

“It may sound simple enough, because people use Google and think search engines already exist to sift through any number of data types,” says Kargar, a professor of computer science.

“We propose to develop a powerful and intuitive search system, akin to web keyword search, for structured enterprise data and our system will empower non-technical users to explore enterprise databases and turn big data into actionable insight, just as Google search has empowered society to explore the web.”

The proposed frameworks would be useful for Canadian and international businesses as well as government institutions who need to sift through large pools of information which contain multiple entries about one entity.

He says the focus is to design effective and efficient methods to explore graph databases, which model structured data, to address important problems and challenges as well as to identify opportunities for improve knowledge exploration.

“None of which is easy, because of the complexity, scale and massive heterogeneity of such data,” Kargar says.

He says his team will investigate ways to identify a user’s intention when searching through structured data.

“Most of the current work in this area focuses on finding answers quickly, rather than finding more meaningful answers,” he says. “We want to improve search quality by investigating the role of keyword search.”

Kargar joined UWindsor’s School of Computer Science a year ago and says creating such a search tool is years in the making. In the meantime, the research will train graduate students in databases and data mining to help them in the academic or industrial job markets.

Members of the UWin 3D Print Club are churning out the trilliums. They plan to give out 2,500 models of the provincial flower at the Ontario150 hub during Open Streets Windsor on Sunday, September 17.

“This is a perfect opportunity to spread awareness of 3D printing as well as to promote our club,” says founder Nicolas de Cosson (MFA 2013). “We will have a booth set up to act as a space for 3D printing demonstrations and public engagement with the process. When people stop to watch, they’ll see the printing happening, and someone will get one fresh off the printer!”

Open Streets will close an eight-kilometre stretch of city streets to vehicles Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Activity hubs will feature displays and hands-on learning opportunities. The Ontario 150 hub is at the intersection of University and Bruce avenues; other UWindsor organizations will set up on University Avenue at Patricia Road.

Find details, including a route map, on the City of Windsor website.

A free workshop Monday, September 18, is the first in a series of four in the EPIC Launch Program to help young students of the University of Windsor or St. Clair College start their own businesses.

Upon completing the program, candidates may submit a business plan of five to 10 pages for an opportunity to receive a $500 stipend towards their start-up fees. It’s an opportunity for young entrepreneurs to open their own shops or make money doing what they love.

Monday’s workshop will cover the basics of starting a small business. It runs 4 to 6 p.m. at the EPIC Genesis Centre in St. Clair College, 2000 Talbot Road West.

Details, including online registration, are on the website of the Entrepreneurship Practice and Innovation Centre (EPICentre).

A new garment to help him through cold Canadian weather feels good, says Aayush Patel, and getting it free is even better.

Patel, a master’s student of applied computing, won a sweatshirt Wednesday in a draw sponsored by the Campus Bookstore. The store handed out ballots from its booth at the vendor fair held by the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance outside the CAW Student Centre.

Marketing co-ordinator Martin Deck said he was pleased to offer entrants a hoodie bearing their major of study, with a retail value of $49.95.

“These faculty sweatshirts are one of our most popular items,” he said.

Learning his name had been drawn came as a pleasant surprise to Patel: “It’s really nice to win something after just a week here in Windsor!”

International students have a new way to pay their fees to the University of Windsor.

The University has partnered with the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to accept payments through the CIBC International Student Pay secure online portal. It allows for payment in the student’s preferred currency from anywhere in the world at any time.

Details regarding the process are available on the cashier’s website at www.uwindsor.ca/cashiers/payment-options.