UWindsor president Rob Gordon released this statement today in memory of members of the University community killed in a plane crash one year ago.

A flood of emotion swept over the University of Windsor a year ago today, Jan. 8, 2020.  We faced the terrible reality that members of our campus family had been lost when Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot down over Iran.

There was sadness, disbelief, shock and anger. Five cherished members of our University community — our colleagues, our students, our friends, our family — were returning to the University from holiday visits with their families and loved ones.

Today, we remember doctoral student of civil engineering Pedram Jadidi; biology research assistant Samira Bashiri and her spouse Hamidreza Setareh Kokab, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering; and civil engineering doctoral student Zahra Naghibi and her spouse Mohammad Abbaspour Ghadi; who were among the 176 people killed.

Their lives were filled with promise and possibility. Then, with no warning, they were caught in the middle of a needless and senseless tragedy.

The impact on all of us at the University of Windsor was devastating — for both those who knew them well and those who didn't. We all felt a bond. They represented everything that we hold dear — hope for a future of commitment and accomplishment, and the successful search for a place in life where dreams can become a reality.

But our friends and colleagues who died will not be forgotten by their University of Windsor family.

We have established a memorial scholarship to honour them, and joined with the City of Windsor to establish riverfront memorial that will serve as a tangible and permanent reminder of the lives they lived, their great and lasting impact on our community, and the unlimited potential that was lost to the world.

The University has also contributed to a collection of videos dedicated to the victims that will soon be available on this website: https://www.ps752justice.com/events/categories/ps752-first-anniversary/.

We join together with the families and friends of all of the 176 innocent individuals whose lives ended in the unspeakable and terrible tragedy over Iran and pay our respects and honour them.

The Ron W. Ianni Memorial Scholarship in Performance competition held each year by the School of Creative Arts has moved online this year. It will happen today — Friday, Jan. 8 — at 11:30 a.m. on Zoom.

The eight students performing for the scholarship were chosen based on their fall jury scores. Students recorded their performance of three compositions and submitted the videos. The competitors will select which video to enter in the scholarship competition.

The community is invited to sign on to watch the students’ performance videos on Zoom:
https://zoom.us/j/92410185508?pwd=WTJMZWZXTFJncnFCOUFibWl2dG1hZz09
Meeting ID: 924 1018 5508
Passcode: 491757

Adjudicating will be professors Bruce Kotowich, Nicholas Papador, and Jennifer Swanson.

The order of videos will be:

• Jael Hernandez, soprano
• Madeline Doornaert, jazz/pop voice
• Jefferson Hills, piano
• Tomi Xhelili, clarinet
• Carter Gaus, trombone
• Stefanie Adams, violin
• Andrew Seguin, classical guitar
• Mitchell Leyte, jazz/pop bass

Last year, clarinetist Tomi Xhelili won the scholarship performing the “Allegro” movement from the Clarinet Concerto No. 2 by composer Carl Maria Von Weber before a live audience.

The $500 annual award is open only to full-time students enrolled in a music degree program. The annual competition is a showcase of the quality of UWindsor’s student musicians. This scholarship was established by Mina Grossman-Ianni and the School of Music in 2005 to honour the late president of the University of Windsor.

—Susan McKee

Head coach Deanna Iwanicka of Lancer women’s hockey believes the addition of centre Rorie Ringor will help her team excel.

Ringor will join the squad for the 2021-22 season. A native of Winnipeg, Manitoba, she hails from the Rink Hockey Academy of the Canadian Sport School Hockey League.

“As we strive to build a championship program, it is essential that we add elite student-athletes like Rorie to our roster,” said Iwanicka. “Rorie has proven herself at a national level and will bring that level and experience to our program.”

Ringor plans a career in medicine and will enter the behaviour, cognition, and neuroscience program in the fall.

“I chose Windsor because I believe the Lancer women’s hockey program is building towards something great in the next few years, which I would love to be a part of,” she said. “I also look to academically achieve my degree in a new program that will help me to move forward into medicine.”

Read the full story, “Ringor joins Lancers for 2021-22 season,” at goLancers.ca.

Windsor Law was well-represented at the 2020 Clawbies: Canadian Law Blog Awards, which held a presentation ceremony on New Year’s Eve. In total, three projects affiliated with Windsor Law received awards: the National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP), the Legal Listening Podcast, and the Legal Writers Collective.

The National Self-Represented Litigants Project, led by law professor Julie Macfarlane, took home the big prize in Canadian legal commentary: the Fodden Award, named in memory of Simon Fodden, an Osgoode Hall law professor who started the online legal magazine SLAW. Since its inception in 2013, the NSRLP has won several Clawbies for specific streams of content including its blog, podcast, and self-help resources, in recognition of the organization’s effort in amplifying the stories and voices of stakeholders involved in the Canadian self-represented litigant phenomenon—from litigants to A2J groups to judges to lawyers.

The Legal Listening podcast, founded by law alums Zachary Battiston (JD 2020) and Karly Lyons (JD 2020), secured a spot among the Top Five Best Podcasts this year. Legal Listening features recordings of seminal Canadian legal decisions in an easy listening audio format. According to the Clawbies website, the podcast garnered nominations praising its spirit of collaboration, access to justice efforts and “staggering rate” of production. “Founders Zach and Karly and their many guest readers make the law more accessible, convenient and interesting, while providing a space for the broader legal community and students to participate!” said a citation.

The Legal Writers Collective, founded by law student Jacqueline Eboh, was awarded a spot among the Top Three Best Student Projects. The collective is a diverse group of law students committed to sharing their understanding of the law in an accessible way. Several Windsor Law students volunteer as writers, editors, and translators to create short and sweet legal summaries of criminal law cases with the hopes of making the law more understandable and accessible for everyone.

“We launched this initiative because we have recognized that a lot of access to justice issues is because of the mystification of the law,” says Eboh. “The law is hard to understand and interpret, and we wanted to help our communities by making it a little easier by demystifying the law.”

—Rachelle Prince

The University of Windsor has purchased licences for everyone at the University (students, staff, faculty, etc.) to have free access to a set of premium tools.

Workshops are being offered for anyone who wants to learn how to use these tools. You can sign up at the following link (if you cannot make the sessions next week, check back later as more will be offered): https://ctl2.uwindsor.ca/openlearning/workshops/26/.

Read&Write is a suite of software tools designed to assist in the areas of research, studying, and of course, reading and writing. Whether used in conjunction with Google Chrome or as a standalone application, Read&Write can convert spoken notes or assignments into text, as well as read text and PDF files aloud. This application is also helpful with Blackboard exams, online journal articles, e-mails, and typed assignments.

EquatIO is an ideal tool for anyone looking for digital math tools. You can take a picture of written math and convert it to digital, editable equations, or if you prefer, just handwrite in the app itself and it will convert it to digital. The screenshot function will take any math on the web and make it accessible and editable. You can even speak your equations aloud and have them created. Of course, there is also a more traditional equation editor (LaTeX is supported, too) with a prediction feature to finish your equations, chemical symbols, and more. Some additional free features include a scientific calculator, an interactive periodic table, an interactive molecular viewer, a graph creator and editor, and an online space to work with interactive shapes.

Campus partners are working to maintain a robust set of Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs).

The KBA team has compiled a digest of this week’s most-referenced KBAs to streamline student-focused questions to ask.UWindsor to support consistent communication with current and future students.

These are this week’s top-five referenced KBAs:

• How do I receive a Graduation Eligibilty Letter?
• How do I sign in to UWinsite Student?
• How do I view my offer of admission to an undergraduate program at UWindsor?
• How do I receive an Enrolment Verification letter?
• How do I apply to graduate?

Find Winter 2021 KBAs by clicking here.

Submit common questions to askkba@uwindsor.ca.