Food Services staff will join chefs from local restaurants and hospitality businesses for the Battle of the Hors D’oeuvres, Thursday, May 26, at Caesars Windsor.

A fundraiser for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Windsor Essex Foundation, the event gives guests the opportunity to become food critics for the night while supporting youth mentoring programs.

“We can’t say what dish we will be making,” says executive chef Paolo Vasapolli, trying to maintain a competitive edge. “The theme is to use local ingredients.”

This is the event’s 30th anniversary year, and Vasapolli says it is popular with volunteers from Food Services.

“It’s not just about the food, although it does offer a chance for us to showcase our abilities,” he says. “We know that it’s a good cause. Helping these kids contributes to a better future for the whole community.”

More information, including a full list of participants and ticket details, is available on the event website.

A team employing new ways to monitor the sanitary conditions at local beaches is looking for volunteers to help.

Researchers from the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research will analyze DNA from water samples to measure the presence of potentially harmful bacteria. That’s where the citizen scientists come in, says post-doctoral fellow Subba Rao Chaganti.

“We are asking members of the public to supplement our lab’s sampling schedule by collecting beach water samples from June through August,” he says.

He is looking for daily samples from these seven beaches: West Belle River, Sandpoint, Holiday, Colchester, Point Pelee Northwest, Cedar and Cedar Island. Volunteers will receive sampling kits and training; team members will pick up their collections each week.

Dr. Chaganti hopes people living or vacationing near the sites will see the value of the work.

“In the end, the benefit is improved safety of recreational waters,” he says. “The whole purpose is to make these beaches cleaner.”

For more information or to get involved, contact Chaganti at chaganti@uwindsor.ca.

The Monster Draw workshop, May 14 in the LeBel Building, engaged talented high schoolers in the exploration of drawing media, says Myah Robillard.

“It was just a good atmosphere with all these creative kids together,” says the UWindsor visual arts student, just finished her second year. She led one of three modules that saw participants employ charcoal, felt markers and Conté crayon.

“They experimented with paper and how the different media worked with it,” Robillard says. “My role was to help them explore.”

More than 30 high school pupils attended the event, organized by School of Creative Arts instructors Lisa Baggio and Victor Romao. In each session, students drew one-third of an image and left it behind for members of the next group, so that three different artists contributed to each piece.

“Every student has their own technique and their own imagination,” says Robillard. “They were so excited at the end of the day to see the finished works.”

She says she would love to play a role in any future Monster Draw events.

“I am passionate about art,” she says. “I felt like I really connected with them and the work was phenomenal.”

An event Friday, May 20, will set UWindsor athletes flying over the city’s main drag.

The University of Windsor Athletics Club will close down the 300 block of Ouellette Avenue for Flight Night, which will pit pole vaulters—both men and women—in competition starting at 5:30 p.m.

More information on the event is available at www.WindsorNightFlight.com.

In an e-mail message sent to the campus community Tuesday, UWindsor president Alan Wildeman provided a projection of enrolment for Fall 2016 and information on a new budget model that will assign tuition revenues to faculties based on student numbers.

“This new budget model has been necessitated by … significant shifts in enrolment patterns,” Dr. Wildeman wrote, specifically a decline in domestic undergraduate enrolment coupled with increases in enrolment by international students in professional graduate programs.

He also discussed the continuing development of pedestrian corridors and the downtown campus, as well as the opening of collective bargaining.

Read the full document on the presidential communications website.

Colleagues of Sheila Cameron have launched a campaign to solicit donations for a campus bench to honour Dr. Cameron, who died in January after a career that included appointments as a University Professor in nursing, director of the UWindsor School of Nursing, and dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research.

Donors have already endowed a scholarship for undergraduate nursing students in Cameron’s memory; this latest project has been initiated by her teaching colleagues.

The bench is slated for placement near the bubbling fountain outside the entrance to Leddy Library and will bear a plaque in Cameron’s name. The fundraising goal of $1,500 will cover its installation, plaque and lifetime maintenance.

Donations may be made by credit card or payroll deduction online at www.uwindsor.ca/donations. In the “Amount” section, indicate “This is a gift in honour/memory of” and type “Sheila Cameron.” In the “Designations” section, select “Other” and type “Dr. Sheila Cameron Campus Bench.”

A class Tuesday, May 31, will help staff and faculty responsible for maintaining UWindsor websites learn the basics of the Drupal content management system.

Drupal 7 - Basic Training will focus on teaching site editors how to create pages and events, upload graphics and use menus and blocks, says instructor Rob Aitkens, web architecture, development and design lead in Public Affairs and Communications.

The class is aimed at employees with little previous experience with the system, for those upgrading their sites from version 6 to 7, or as a refresher. It will run 1:30 to 4 p.m. and is limited to 16 participants. Registration is required through this online form.

This is the last opportunity for formal training in Drupal until the fall semester.

Stress can motivate people to perform well, experiencing it over a prolonged period of time can threaten long-term health, says the May edition of Workplace Wellness E-Digest.

Published by the Department of Human Resources’ Office of Employee Engagement and Development, the newsletter offers information on how to reduce levels of stress, cope with food cravings, and manage anxiety.

With a theme of “Mental Health Awareness,” it also features material on the causes and treatment of panic attacks. Read the Workplace Wellness E-Digest.