An event Monday in the Windsor Law Commons brought together students and members of the local Aboriginal community in an effort to break down some cultural barriers, say organizers.

“Some people have never been in contact with Aboriginal people,” said Stephanie Cox, a second-year law student and president of the Windsor chapter of Canadian Lawyers Abroad. “Today was about sparking interest in Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit culture.”

Mona Stonefish, a member of the Anishinaabe First Nation and a practitioner of traditional medicine, made a brief presentation and conducted a smudging ceremony. The Good Day Singers, a drum circle, attracted further attention from students and faculty.

Judge Joseph Donohue of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice will speak on “Dispensing justice in Nunavut,” Tuesday, March 20, at 7 p.m. in the Moot Court, Ron W. Ianni Law Building. This event is free and open to the public.

The University has declared an electric aisle stacker for sale by bid as Disposal File 868. Please click here for details.

Campus Community Police have recovered all the items stolen from a locker in the St. Denis Centre after apprehending a suspect in connection with a theft March 15.

As a result of their investigation with assistance from staff at the centre, officers also recovered items from at least one other theft.
The service reminds patrons of the St. Denis Centre to be vigilant, to refrain from bringing valuable items when using the locker areas, and to report suspicious activity immediately at 519-253-3000, ext. 1234 — or ext. 911 for emergencies.

See the full advisory on the Web site of Campus Community Police.

Winnipeg poet and critic Dennis Cooley will discuss “Regionalism and vernacular poetics” in a free public lecture Tuesday, March 20, on the University of Windsor campus.

In his essay, “The Vernacular Muse in Prairie Poetry,” Dr. Cooley actively attends to the dialogic and carnivalesque in vernacular speech, which he enlists in a class-based critique of standard Canadian English. Tuesday’s lecture, the last in the Language of Contemporary Poetry series, begins at 5:30 p.m. in the CAW Student Centre’s second-floor boardroom.

Cooley teaches at the University of Manitoba. His many books include Sunfall: New and Selected Poems, 1980-1996, and The Vernacular Muse: The Eye and Ear in Contemporary Literature. He is founding editor of Turnstone Press, and editor of Inscriptions: A Prairie Poetry Anthology.

On Wednesday, March 21, he will deliver his entry in the English department’s Distinguished Lecturer series, “A Lover’s Question: Staging Romance in Kroetsch’s The Sad Phoenician,” at noon in the Oak Room, Vanier Hall.

The Lancer women’s basketball team won its second straight Bronze Baby trophy as Canadian Interuniversity Sport champions, defeating the UBC Thunderbirds 69-53, Monday in Calgary.

Miah-Marie Langlois was named the tournament MVP for the second year running; Bojana Kovacevic joined her on the tournament all-star squad.

Windsor, seeded fourth coming into the CIS final 8, never trailed in any of its three contests.

Read more about the game and the title at goLancers.ca.

Reception to welcome home team

An informal reception Tuesday will welcome home the national champion Lancer women’s basketball team. Athletics staff encourage fans to drop by the St. Denis Centre at 8 p.m.

Marketing manager Eric Vandenbroucke says there will be more celebrations to come.

In a fast-paced society that places a premium on youth and tends to dismiss the elderly, at least four UWindsor nursing students are rethinking how they view the aged while pledging to provide seniors the respectful care they deserve once they begin practicing.

“Older people should be regarded as self-reliant individuals who are capable of making decisions about their care,” said Misan Grage, a fourth-year nursing student. “Older people need to be treated with the same respect and level of care as younger people.”

Grage was one of a class of students in nursing professor Lorna de Witt’s health issues in gerontology course assigned to write a personal philosophy on aging that could be applied to how they practice nursing. Students were asked to write about a defining moment when they realized something significant about aging, an exercise Dr. de Witt said would help students “personally connect with the aging process.”

Excerpts from some of their submissions, along with de Witt’s explanation of the value of the assignment, were recently published in Perspectives: Journal of the Gerontological Nursing Association.

For Grage, originally from Nigeria where she says the elderly are treated with far more dignity than in western cultures, her defining moment came while watching a video that portrayed negative stereotypes people commonly associate with seniors.

“I realized that older people deserve to be recognized for their distinct personalities rather than be addressed inappropriately because of their age,” she wrote.

Candice Webster said her defining moment came on placement in a local hospital. Concerned about an elderly patient who was confused, she brought up the matter with another nurse who dismissed it as a symptom of getting old. Having recently learned about delirium, she raised the issue with her professor who ordered a test which confirmed the patient was, in fact, suffering from the disorder.

“It made me think differently,” she replied when asked what the experience taught her and how it might change the way she works. “You have to be able to think independently and go with your gut. I’m going to listen to myself. If I think something is wrong, I’m going to investigate it even if people are telling me not to.”

Jaclyn McCarthy, whose work was also published, wrote about the occasion of her grandmother’s 80th birthday.

“My eyes became opened to the life that she lives, a life of success to which I also aspire,” she wrote of her meme, who is now 85. “She overcame unbelievable obstacles to get where she is today. Through examining her life, I developed values that form my philosophy of aging. These include having strong support, a positive outlook, and a deep connection with one’s spirituality.”

Adam Pawlowicz said a visit from his grandfather from Poland inspired his values regarding aging: dignity, respect and independence.

“I am determined to strengthen and add to these values to better care for older people in my nursing practice,” he said.

The quality of their work and the fact that it was published clearly delighted de Witt.

“I’m so proud of my students,” she said.

While centralization makes the campus heating and cooling system more efficient, it also makes it slow to respond to weather anomalies like the current unseasonable heat wave, says Susan Mark, executive director of Facility Services.

“We know that occupants are experiencing uncomfortably warm conditions inside some buildings,” she said Monday. “We are reviewing our system operations and can offer a few actions individuals can undertake to reduce the heat load in spaces.”

Windsor is experiencing record highs of over 20 degrees, well above the normal day- and night-time temperatures of 6 and -3 degrees Celsius.

The University’s central cooling system is scheduled to start up in late April, says Mark.

“Maintenance staff requires several weeks to prepare equipment at the Energy Conversion Centre, the Central Refrigeration Plant and all the buildings on campus to switch over the system from heating to cooling,” she says. “Once this switch is made, there is no turning back to heating mode. Based on historical data, heat will still be required during the months of March and April.”

She says the University’s central heating and cooling system offer several following advantages:

• The central cooling system has 4,800 tons of installed capacity. If each building were cooled individually, the installed capacity would rise to 6,200 tons. The central system allows for diversity, thus reducing the overall required installed load.
• It allows for the purchase of energy at reduced rates due to the larger volume.
• The low carbon footprint of the heating and cooling system reduces production of greenhouse gases, thus reducing global warming.
• Less space is required in individual buildings to house mechanical equipment dedicated to cooling, thus allowing increased space for academic programs. It also reduces maintenance costs.

Facility Services is currently completing an infrastructure upgrade to the chilled water system on campus at a cost of $4.5 million dollars over the next several years. It will increase system efficiencies, have significant energy savings, and optimize the chilled water distribution more effectively in response to an increase in demand.

Mark promises that maintenance staff will be optimizing damper settings in buildings to take advantage of the cooler air in the evening to assist in reducing the inside temperatures, and suggests that temperatures can be moderated if individuals take these steps:

• Check that the thermostat in an area is not set high.
• Turn off the lights.
• Leave doors open to improve air circulation.
• Close any blinds available in the space.
• Unplug any appliances that are not in use.
• Shut down computers and printers at the end of the day.

Finally, she acknowledges that normal temperatures for this region have changed over the past several years. As a result, her office is reviewing changing the dates of the switch from heating to cooling in the spring and back again in the autumn.

Art can take the temperature of a culture and allow us to gauge ourselves through our sensual and perceptual experiences, says Paula Gardner.

An associate professor in the Faculty of Liberal Studies at the Ontario College of Art & Design, she will discuss her approach in a free public lecture, “Making Mobile Art: Consumption and Embodied Looking from Stereoscopy to Everyday EEG,” Wednesday, March 21, at 7 p.m. in room 115, LeBel Building.

Dr. Gardner is a communication and new media studies practitioner and scholar who collaborates in the creation of critical new media projects that query science and computational logics.

Her talk is sponsored by the IN/ TERMINUS Centre for Media, Art, and Urban Ecologies, which brings together researchers and artists committed to exploring the boundaries between media, arts, science, technologies, and the built environment.

Family physician Joslyn Warwaruk will share her insights into “Everything you wanted to know about teen health” in a free public lecture in room 202, Toldo Health Education Centre, on Tuesday, March 20, at 7 p.m.

Dr. Warwaruk’s practice includes time at the Windsor Teen Health Centre -- working with teen issues including depression, anxiety, sexually transmitted diseases, sports injuries, pregnancies, acne and rashes.

The event, part of the Schulich Windsor Health Lecture Series, is an opportunity to get up-to-date information about current topics in teen health, and have your questions answered by a local expert in a safe and welcoming environment.

The series is presented by the faculty and medical students at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry – Windsor Campus. Learn more at www.swhls.com.

Workers will shut down all electricity to Phase 1 of the Centre for Engineering Innovation this weekend.

The power shutdown will affect several lab spaces and the offices of the Windsor-Essex Economic Development Commission from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, March 24 and 25.

Please direct any questions or concerns regarding this matter to manager Dan Castellan of facility planning, renovations and construction, at 519-253-3000, ext. 2164.