UWindsor president Alan Wildeman is pleased to announce the appointment of K.W. Michael Siu as Vice President, Research, at the University of Windsor, effective December 1, 2012.

“Michael’s research accomplishments have been outstanding, and his experience in administration and development of collaborations will provide great strength to UWindsor,” said Dr. Wildeman. “He will be an excellent advocate for the research and creative activity occurring across our campus. I want to thank the members of the Search Committee for all their hard work, and for identifying Michael for this important position.”

Dr. Siu’s academic career spans more than 30 years and he will leave his current position as Distinguished Research Professor and NSERC/AB SCIEX Senior Industrial Research Chair in Analytical Mass Spectrometry at York University where he is also the Founding Director of the Centre for Research in Mass Spectrometry. His research interests span from fundamentals of mass spectrometry and ion chemistry, to next-generation mass spectrometry equipment, and to applications in proteomics and cancer biomarker discovery and verification. In 2011, Siu completed two three-year terms as associate vice president research at York University.

One of Siu’s primary goals will be to connect UWindsor’s research activities with the regional community.

“Fruits of academic research are too valuable to be kept just within the confines of university,” he says. “I look forward to working with Windsor colleagues in shaping and promoting the research enterprise at the university, and working with the external community to translate and share Windsor’s social innovation, artistic creativity and science and engineering advancement for the betterment of society.

Siu has received a number of accolades, including the F.P. Lossing Award from the Canadian Society for Mass Spectrometry (2005), Maxxam Award from the Canadian Society for Chemistry (2006), New Pioneers Award in Science and Technology from Skills for Change (2007), Distinguished Research Professorship from York University (2007), Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada (2009), and Chinese Canadian Legend Award (2012).

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are deliberately avoiding discussing their religious backgrounds in the current U.S. presidential election campaign because they’re keenly aware of the collateral damage it would cause them both, according to a high-profile political scientist from the University of Notre Dame who will deliver a lecture here next week.

“It’s a lot like the theory of mutually assured destruction that characterized the relationship between the Soviets and the U.S. during the height of the Cold War,” said David Campbell. “They know that bringing it up can cause the other and themselves a lot of damage.”

Dr. Campbell will deliver a lecture on Oct. 24 at 7 pm called Is 2012 the Year of the Stained Glass Ceiling?: Religion and the U.S. Presidential Election. Co-sponsored by the Political Science department and Assumption University, the lecture – one of the Distinguished Speaker Series – will be held at the Assumption University Chapel. It’s free and open to the public.

An expert on religion and politics, Campbell – who is often featured in such national media outlets as The New York Times, The Economist, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, NBC News, CNN, NPR, Fox News, and C-SPAN – said he will give his audience a sense of why he believes religion is being avoided in the current campaign.

He suggested Obama is avoiding the subject because of persistent but false rumours that he’s a Muslim, and because of some of the past controversy that has surrounded his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He said Romney is avoiding it because Mormonism is largely misunderstood, pointing to a recent poll which indicated that about 20 per cent of Americans wouldn’t vote for Romney because he’s a Mormon.

“If 20 per cent of the population said they wouldn’t vote for a black man for president, that would be a huge story,” he said.

Campbell, who earned his PhD in political science from Harvard University, is the founding director of Notre Dame’s Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy. He is the co-author of American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, which has been described by the New York Times as intellectually powerful, by America magazine as an instant classic and by the San Francisco Chronicle as the most successfully argued sociological study of American religion in more than half a century. The book has also received both the 2011 Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book on government, politics, or international affairs and the Wilbur Award from the Religious Communicators Council for the best non-fiction book of 2010.

The Centre for Career Education, in partnership with the Faculty of Graduate Studies, presents the seventh annual Continuing Education Fair on Tuesday, October 23.

More than 40 exhibitors from educational institutions will showcase their graduate and post-graduate programs to University of Windsor students. This year, the fair will spread across two locations in the CAW Student Centre, with exhibitors in the Commons area as well as in Ambassador Auditorium from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The goal of the fair is to provide University of Windsor students with the opportunity to interact with representatives from a variety of North American and international educational institutions, to learn about programs and application requirements, application deadlines, and new initiatives.

Find more information, including a list of schools attending, on the centre’s Web site. Direct questions to efair@uwindsor.ca.

Creating on-going opportunities to provide a secure campus environment for everyone is the impetus behind Women’s Safety Grant funding available annually through the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, says Kaye Johnson, director of the Office of Human Rights.

Applications are now available for the funds, which Johnson says have been used to provide everything from safety cameras and campus emergency phones to Welcome Week outreach programs, personal defense courses for women, and faculty research into student safety needs.

“The message is that women’s safety is everybody’s issue,” Johnson says. “So these funds are not only for women on campus, they are for our community. Everybody has a part to play in keeping the campus safe – men do, as well as women.”

Johnson says the funds, and the opportunities they provide, empower everyone in the campus community to take at look at safety concerns in their individual areas.

“It ends up creating opportunities to get people talking and looking at their own individual environments,” she says. “It certainly helps address issues that exist but it also raises awareness among people about what may be a safety concern in their own areas.”

Campus Police special constable Rosemary Briscoe helps to run the Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) program and says that funding from the Women’s Safety Grant allows RAD to be offered to women on campus free of charge.

“Funding for the program is so important because it allows students, faculty and staff to attend the sessions and the only commitment we need from them is their time,” Briscoe says of the program which has been offered since 2004. “A lot of students are strapped for money for their schooling, housing and food and if we can offer this to them at no cost, it’s a real relief to them. It takes the burden off the participants.”

Application deadline for the first round of funding is October 31, with initial awards decided by mid-November. A second round of funding will take place in spring 2013, with an application deadline of January 31. Applications are available through the Office of Human Rights, Equity & Accessibility, ohrea@uwindsor.ca, or ext. 2056.