The Centre for Teaching and Learning is calling for nominations for two awards recognizing contributions by graduate and teaching assistants to the University's learning environment.

Nominations for the GA/TA Award for Educational Practice and the GA/TA Award for Educational Leadership must be submitted no later than April 13.

“These awards help us to honour exemplary GAs and TAs on campus,” says teaching and learning specialist Michael Potter. “They are intended to provide incentive and encouragement for GA/TAs who are committed to scholarly educational practice and leadership while contributing to student and faculty pride in teaching and learning at the University of Windsor.”

Details—including criteria, eligibility, and nominations forms—are available on the centre’s Web site. Questions and comments may be directed to Michael Potter at pottermk@uwindsor.ca.

Paul Moffatt is the winner of the 2011 GATA Award for Educational Leadership; Melanie Santarossa won a 2011 GATA Award for Educational Practice.

The School of Music is offering DailyNews readers a chance to win two free tickets to the Spring Choral Concert “From the Sacred to the Profane,” in Assumption University Chapel on Sunday, March 25, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 general admission, $5 for students, available at the door or in advance by phone at 519-253-3000, ext. 4212; or online at www.uwindsor.ca/music.

To enter the contest, just identify the composer of each of these pieces from the concert program. The winner will be randomly selected from all correct responses received by 4 p.m. Thursday, March 22.

1. Chantez À Dieu
2. The House of the Lord
3. The Maid on the Shore
4. Prošnja (The Prayer)
5. Still I Rise

1. Eleanor Daley
2. Stella Goud
3. Jens Hanson
4. Damijan Močnik
5. Rosephanye Powell

Contest is open to all readers of the DailyNews. Send an e-mail with your responses to uofwnews@uwindsor.ca. One entry per contestant, please.

As a kid growing up in Chatham, Morgan McNaughton spent most of his summers playing competitive soccer. Looking back now, he realizes the chance to play his favourite sport in an organized league was something of a luxury.

“I knew people who weren’t able to play sports like hockey just because registration and equipment was so expensive,” said the fourth-year kinesiology student. “It’s unfortunate that some people can’t play because everyone wants us to be physically active. It’s a shame to miss out on those opportunities because your family can’t afford it.”

As president of the university’s Human Kinetics Society, McNaughton has the chance to do something about that. He’s playing an integral role in organizing the society’s seventh annual Tri4Life event, all the proceeds of which will go to a local charity dedicated to making sure that no kids are left out of organized sports because their families can’t afford to register them.

The event, which begins at the St. Denis Centre on April 1 at 8 am, will see participants swim, bike and run for 15 minutes in each activity. Participants pay a $35 registration fee and collect pledges on top of that. All of the proceeds will go to ASSIST – Putting Kids in Sports, an organization that helps financially vulnerable families by providing bursaries to offset the costs of registering their children in local sports leagues. Since it began in 2008, they’ve helped more than 100 children play sports.

“We were thrilled when we heard the kinesiology students were going to help us out,” said ASSIST board president Mike Dugal. “Our association is all about promoting physical activity for everyone, so having participants in an indoor triathlon supporting us seems like such an obvious fit. We’re extremely grateful for the help, which will allow us to help a lot more families.”

McNaughton said the event typically draws about 60-80 participants. He said some people enter as teams and are more competitive, but stressed that the event is open to anyone who just wants to participate and help support a great cause. And as an added incentive, McNaughton said there will be registered massage therapists on hand to rub down those aching muscles after participants are finished.

“A lot of people come out just because it’s a really fun environment,” McNaughton said.

For more information or to register, visit the event’s Web site.

The University Chamber Choir will premiere a new work by UWindsor alumna Shelley Marwood (BMus 2004) at the Spring Choral Concert on Sunday, March 25.

An emerging composer based in Toronto, Marwood has had works performed by the Vancouver, Winnipeg and Windsor symphony orchestras. Her composition, Elements, is based on a poem of the same name by her grandmother Ruby Mulcaster.

“Born into a farming family in the early 20^th century, Ruby was unable to pursue a formal education past the age of 14,” says Marwood. “From that time forward, her personal studies were focused on the Bible and her poetry. Although Elements does not have an overly religious tone, it portrays the awe Ruby felt when she observed the wonder of God's creation.”

Sunday’s concert, set for 7:30 p.m. in Assumption University Chapel, is titled “From the Sacred to the Profane,” and promises works by Johannes Brahms, George Handel, John Rutter, Carl Orff and Eric Whitacre, along with songs from the spiritual tradition.

Besides the University Chamber Choir directed by Richard Householder, it will feature the University Singers under the direction of Bradley Bloom.

University Wind Ensemble to conduct galactic tour

Also on the calendar this weekend is the Wind Ensemble Concert “To Infinity . . . and Beyond!” on Friday, March 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Banwell Community Church.

The program features the Mars movement from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” Lullaby from a Distant Star by Richard L. Saucedo, and the Canadian premiere of James Dooley’s The Mars Underground. The ensemble, directed by Ric Moor with guest student conductor Colin Michano, boasts more than two dozen musicians.

Banwell Community Church is located at 2400 Banwell Road, one block north of Tecumseh Road.

Tickets for either of these concerts are $10 with a student rate of $5, available at the door or in advance by phone at 519-253-3000, ext. 4212; or online at www.uwindsor.ca/music.

The LeBel Building will be a beehive of activity Friday, March 23, as receptions celebrate the opening and closing of several student exhibitions.

Artists Sarah M. Robbins, Jessica Terpstra and Ashley Washburn-Hayden present Memory ... Reality? Miriam Brathwaite, Diane Dosen, Dongni Li and Veronica Murawski have collaborated on A Visual Dissection. Both shows are displayed in the School of Visual Arts Project gallery. Friday public receptions starting at 7 p.m. will celebrate the exhibitions’ closing.

Trophy Case Gallery by the Art Base Camp collective of Michael Ngo and Sierra St. Louis explores creative practices outside of the studio and in the great outdoors. Fittingly, its installation extends to the building’s back lawn. Its reception takes the form of a fundraiser and will serve s’mores and hot dogs.

Cogeco cable 11 will air the Canadian Interuniversity Sport women’s basketball gold medal game between the Windsor Lancers and UBC Thunderbirds at 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 22, and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 24.

The CIS named Lancer guard Miah-Marie Langlois its female athlete of the week after she led her team to the national championship.

The third-year business major recorded a game-high 10 assists in a 94-46 quarter-final win over No. 5 Acadia, was chosen Windsor game MVP in an 81-71 semifinal victory over No. 8 Calgary after she led all scorers with 21 points, and capped off her remarkable weekend with a 17-point, 10-rebound double-double in a 69-53 gold medal win against No. 2 UBC on Monday.

The campus chapters of UNICEF and Engineers Without Borders invite the UWindsor community to consider the relationship between food security and access to fresh water during their observance of World Water Day in the CAW Student Centre on Thursday, March 22.

The student groups will set up a booth with information on everything from how much water is used to grow crops to the ways that growing competition for scarce resources can affect food security. The student engineers will have on hand a treadle pump, which uses human power to irrigate fields.

A display in the lobby of the Leddy Library through the end of the month also provides education for patrons on these issues.

For more information, see the event page on Facebook.

What kind of film gets into the Toronto International Film Festival? There’s an easy way to find out, thanks to the Windsor International Film Festival, which will hold a special screening of Canada’s top 10 short films at the Capitol Theatre on Friday, March 23, at 7 p.m.

“I think it’s really important for students who make short films to see which short films make it in to the big festivals,” said communications professor Kim Nelson, one of the organizers.

The screening is divided into two programs of five films each.

Program A

• ORA by Philippe Baylaucq
  An unprecedented, game-changing 3D visual-art trip uses thermal imaging technology to capture contemporary dance choreography.
• Hope by Pedro Pires
  A dying General’s final moments on the battlefield lead to a visceral and stunningly visual journey into death in Pedro Pires’ phenomenal follow up to his award-winning Danse Macabre.
• We Ate the Children Last by Andrew Cividino
  A futuristic - but believable - surgical transplant involving a pig’s digestive system leads the human population to a drastic gastronomic crisis in this adaptation of Yan Martel’s story.
• Choke by Michelle Latimer
  A deeply moving visual poem about a young man’s trip into the city after leaving his First Nations reserve, and the thread that permanently ties us to where we are from.
• Doubles With Slight Pepper by Ian Harnarine
  Winner of the Award for Best Canadian Short Film at TIFF2011. A father’s request of the son he left behind in Trinidad reveals deep wounds in this heartfelt immigrant story.

Program B

• No Words Came Down by Ryan Flowers, Lisa Pham
  Thomas, a good-looking but awkward young man, is set up on a blind date with Mary, a middle-aged woman.
• Rhonda’s Party by Ashley McKenzie
  A party for Margaret’s 100th birthday takes an unexpected turn when it suddenly becomes a funeral. A short film with a tonne of heart, Rhonda’s Party is both a statement on friendship and aging, and a celebration of life.
• The Fuse: Or How I Burned Simon Bolivar by Igor Drljaca
  Using personal home video footage, this documentary traces young boy’s fear that his efforts to avoid poor mark on a school assignment in 1990s Sarajevo may have contributed to the civil war.
• La ronde by Sophie Goyette
  Twins deal with their father’s imminent death: Alexandre feels the need to stay; Ariane has an uncontrollable urge to leave.
• Trotteur by Arnaud Brisebois, Francis Leclerc
  A young outcast pits himself in a race against a raging locomotive. Fantastic visual effects add to this powerful tale of man versus machine.

Tickets $10 at the door and $5 for students with valid student card. The Capitol Theatre is located at 121 University Avenue West.

Notions of class have been rooted at least in part in physiology, says Kevin Siena.

An associate professor of history at Trent University, he will explore the contributions of medical literature to that process in his free public lecture, “Rotten Bodies: Plague, Fever, and the Plebeian Body in Early Modern England,” Friday, March 23, at 5 p.m. in the Oak Room, Vanier Hall.

Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century plague and fever tracts commonly connected epidemics with poverty, Dr. Siena says.

“The policing of beggars and the targeting of poor neighbourhoods for urban hygiene projects and quarantine efforts are well-established elements of early modern plague experiences,” he says.

His talk will explore physicians’ theories about why poor bodies seemed especially susceptible to plague.

“Those ideas had a very long shelf-life, as they continued to frame discussions of impoverished bodies straight through to the dawn of the nineteenth century,” Siena says. “The unique biohazard of the plebeian body represented a pervasive cultural force in the eighteenth century.”

Siena is the editor of two essay collections, Venereal Disease, Hospitals, and the Urban Poor: London's “Foul Wards,” 1600 to 1800 and Sins of the Flesh: Responding to Sexual Disease in Early Modern Europe. His lecture is part of the Medical Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities series, sponsored by Steven Palmer, Canada Research Chair in the History of International Health; Reason, Rhetoric, and Ethics in the Human Sciences (RREHS); and Stephen Pender, Research Leadership Chair in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Canada’s young people are overweight, and poor eating habits are a major reason why, says Rhona Hanning.

An associate professor in the  School of Public Health and Health Systems at the University of Waterloo , she will deliver a free public lecture entitled “Promoting Healthier Diets for Kids: Can Schools Make a Difference,” at noon on Friday, March 23, in room 145, Human Kinetics Building.

Dr. Hanning is a fellow of Dietitians of Canada. Her main research interests involve food and physical activity behaviour and determinants of Canadian schoolchildren and school-based interventions that support healthy eating.  She has developed and validated tools for dietary intake assessment, including a unique web-based food behaviour questionnaire.