A panel of current students and graduates will discuss the value of engaging in research, Tuesday, March 22, to open the 10th annual Kinesiology Research Day.

The day’s program will feature:

• current and former kinesiology students Natalie Heeney, Nathalie Kirby, Paul Leuty, Alex Pennetti, Alison Schinkel-Ivy and Jennifer Neilson, discussing “What kinesiology research can do for you;”
• speed poster presentations by graduate students Laura Chittle, Ashley Duguay, Adam Goodwin, Taylor Imeson, Elizabeth Vandenborn and Alaina Zvric;
• a keynote address by alumnus Sefu Bernard (BHK 2000), assistant coach for player development with the Washington Mystics of the WNBA; and
• a poster display of student research, followed by an awards presentation.

Dean of human kinetics Michael Khan calls Kinesiology Research Day “a highlight of our academic year” that highlights the breadth of research conducted in the faculty.

“Research underpins our excellence in teaching and community service,” he says. “It’s nice to have a chance to showcase the diversity of our research disciplines—from sport psychology to ergonomics, from cardiovascular physiology to motor behaviour.”

Events are divided between the Human Kinetics Building’s room 140 and the adjacent atrium. Find a schedule on the UWindsor calendar of events.

Members of the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance approved a proposal to provide Transit Windsor passes at a reduced rate paid through their student fees, according to initial results of a referendum conducted March 16 and 17.

The unofficial vote count was 1706 yes to 1329 no, with totals still to be ratified by the alliance’s board of directors.

Under the U-Pass deal, the transit company promised service improvements, including late-night buses between main campus and the Via Rail station on Fridays and Sundays, and downtown on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Graduate students will conduct their own referendum on April 4 and 5.

In other results, Moussa Hamadani was elected president, Matthew Dunlop vice-president for student advocacy, Daniel Popaj vice-president of student services and Vuk Zubic vice-president finance. Representing the full-time undergraduate student body on the UWindsor Senate will be Amber Shaheen, Chase Tribble and Ahmed Khalifa.

See a full list of the election results on the alliance website.

Award-winning poet Jordan Abel will appear on the UWindsor campus in events Tuesday and Wednesday sponsored by the Aboriginal Education Centre and the Department of English Language, Literature and Creative Writing.

Professor Susan Holbrook calls Abel one of the most important contemporary writers in North America. His first book, The Place of Scraps, revolves around Marius Barbeau, an early-20th-century ethnographer who studied many of the First Nations cultures in the Pacific Northwest, including Jordan Abel’s ancestral Nisga’a Nation. It won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the BC Book Prize for poetry.

For his subsequent books Un/Inhabited and Injun, he intervenes in the texts of 91 “Western” pulp novels.

“Visually all Abel’s books are stunning, but in performance they are even more striking and moving, as he ‘plays’ them, and furthers the project through inventive work with a soundboard,” says Dr. Holbrook.

Abel will perform his work for the public at 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 22, in room 202, Toldo Health Education Centre. He will also deliver the free public lecture “Distant Reading Indigenous Poetry in Canada” at 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 23, in room 354, Dillon Hall.

The contest aimed at renaming both stretches of Sunset and Patricia avenues which have been remade into pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares is closed, but students, faculty and staff can still participate in the process.

The University is now seeking volunteers interested in participating in the review of the entries and selection process. This process will be done online and will require a time commitment of approximately one hour.

Students, faculty and staff interested in joining the Street Naming Selection committee are invited to complete the online Committee Interest Form by Wednesday, March 23. Individuals who have submitted entries to the renaming contest are not eligible to serve on the committee.

The names are scheduled to be unveiled Friday, April 1. Winning entrants will each receive a $250 gift certificate from the Campus Bookstore.

Any adolescent can have a hard time balancing home life and social life, says Ashlyne O’Neil: now imagine the additional stresses facing those adjusting to a new culture.

The doctoral candidate is one of a number of graduate students in psychology who will be discussing mental health with local refugee youths in a workshop Wednesday, March 23, organized by Windsor Women Working with Immigrant Women.

About a dozen teens are expected for the event, which O’Neil takes care to explain is educational in nature: “no services will be administered.” Instead the students, members of the Community Action Group, will focus on three areas:

• recognizing signs and symptoms of distress;
• strategies to identify and cope with mental health issues; and
• accessing available resources for more help when necessary.

The students—besides O’Neil, they include Eva Keatley, Ashley Mlotek, Dragana Ostojic and Kristin Schramer—intend their workshop to be interactive, responding to the issues raised by participants.

“This is a great initiative, as it allows us to apply the skills we have learned as PhD students in psychology, and also provides a service to our community,” O’Neil says.

It’s a sentiment shared by professor Ben Kuo, who is supervising the group and teaches a clinical practicum course in multicultural counselling and psychotherapy with refugees, in which doctoral students in clinical psychology programs provide therapy on campus through the Psychological Services and Research Centre.

“This group is a seriously under-serviced population, not just locally, but across Canada,” says Dr. Kuo. “If people are in distress, they cannot be fully integrated into the fabric of Canadian society.”

Kuo and his students will present on a second occasion, during the April 19 Health Access Day organized by the Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County at the Caboto Club.

“These psychoeducational workshops reflect the Department of Psychology’s proactive effort to service the growing needs of the refugee community in the Windsor area,” Kuo says.

Watch for more information in a future edition of DailyNews.

Patrons of the Campus Bookstore will find some seasonal treats awaiting them Tuesday, March 22—staff will distribute free chocolate eggs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and customers may draw a plastic egg containing a coupon worth a discount of up to 20 percent off their purchase.

Some conditions apply: the discounts are not applicable to textbooks, computers, class rings, custom orders or discounted merchandise.

According to Ontario’s ministry of health, alcohol is the most commonly-used drug among the province’s youth, and alcohol-related trauma is a significant and preventable cause of death among young Canadians.

That is reason enough for the University’s residences to host I Clover Sober during the week of St. Patrick’s Day, says Lynn Charron. Team lead for Residence Life, she says the project provides opportunities to have fun that don’t include alcohol, and educates students about staying safe if they do drink.

“Our residence population consists mainly of underage students and students who have recently become of age,” Charron says. “Regardless of your age, it never hurts to learn more about safer drinking practices.”

Each evening leading up to St. Patrick’s Day, activities in residence building lobbies included safer drinking trivia contests, board game nights and cookie decorating. On Thursday, residents were invited to join non-drinking activities, including photo booths, face painting, life-sized Hungry Hungry Hippo, skills challenges and video game competitions.

“We are proud to be able to provide our students with an alternative to drinking while providing them the opportunity to get in on the fun and wear their Irish green,” says Charron.

It is the sixth straight year for the I Clover Sober event, held in partnership with the Substance Education Team.

An event in the CAW Student Centre will combine a complimentary ice cream bar and live demonstrations of the arts on Tuesday, March 22.

The Ice Cream Social will showcase student talents, says organizer Sandra Riccio-Muglia, director of programs for the centre.

Music by the Lancer band, live model figure drawing, and a dance performance will take place between noon and 2 p.m. in the Commons area.

The installation of a new server to accommodate the Blackboard learning management system will make it unavailable on the morning of Thursday, March 24.

The state-of-the-art server will improve performance and storage capacity for users. Its installation will take about six hours—from 6 a.m. to noon.

“We recognize that maintenance during peak operating hours will be inconvenient,” says Susan Holiga, assistant director of Information Technology Services. “However, we have made every attempt to identify a time that has the least impact on our users.”

March 24 is designated a study day, so no classes, labs, tests or exams will take place outside the Faculty of Law. It is also the day prior to the Easter holiday weekend.

Holiga says the LMS team considered these factors when selecting a date to reduce the inconvenience to users.

“We apologize for any inconvenience resulting from this outage of service,” she says.

Whether you’re a frequent visitor to Europe or just an armchair traveller, the stories Gaston Dorren tells in his book Lingo: Around Europe in Sixty Languages will forever change the way you think about the continent, and may even make you want to learn a new language.

Dorren spins readers on a whirlwind tour of European languages and dialects—including some you may never have heard of, like Shelta (British Isles) and Karaim (Lithuania)—sharing quirky moments from their histories and exploring their commonalities and differences.

The Campus Bookstore has reduced the price of Lingo as its book of the week. Regularly selling for $34.50, it’s just $31.75 through March 27.