More than 2,300 students will gather Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14 and 15, at the newly-opened Toldo Lancer Centre for five sessions of Convocation.

The 118th ceremonies will honour approximately 1,500 new graduands and 800 returning graduates who collected diplomas virtually in 2020 and 2021 due to pandemic restrictions.

University of Windsor president Robert Gordon says a return to on-campus Convocation is a celebration of both student achievement and a homecoming for the campus community following the hosting of the event at the WFCU Centre in the spring during the construction of athletics complex, as well as virtual Convocation ceremonies to allow for social distancing.

“Convocation is always such a proud time for students, their families, and the faculty and staff. This will be an especially memorable one for everyone,” Dr. Gordon said.

“As we celebrate our students and their many exciting achievements, we will have an opportunity to showcase the beautiful new Toldo Lancer Centre as home not only to recreational services and intercollegiate sports and varsity teams, but as a place for the community to gather, recharge, and connect — a place for all.”

Diplomas will be awarded during the following sessions:

Session 1, 9:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 14

• Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
• Odette School of Business, not Including Master of Management programs
• Faculty of Human Kinetics
• Faculty of Science, not including course-based master’s programs
• Faculty of Education
• Faculty of Law

Session 2, 2:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 14

• Odette School of Business, Master of Management programs
• Faculty of Science, course-based master’s programs
• Faculty of Engineering, course-based master’s programs in civil and environmental disciplines

Session 3, 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 15

• Faculty of Nursing
• Faculty of Engineering, undergraduate programs and research-based graduate programs

Session 4, 2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15

• Faculty of Engineering, course-based Master of Engineering in industrial, mechanical, mechanical-automotive, and materials disciplines

Session 5, 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15

• Faculty of Engineering, course-based Master of Engineering in electrical disciplines

Every session will be livestreamed on the UWindsor YouTube channel.

The University of Windsor will award honorary degrees to physician Caroline Hamm and engineering professor emeritus Philip H. Alexander during its 118th Convocation celebration this weekend.

Dr. Hamm is chair of oncology at the Schulich School of Medicine’s Windsor Campus.

More than 2,300 students will gather at the newly-opened Toldo Lancer Centre (TLC) this Friday and Saturday for five sessions of University Convocation. She is the clinical research director of the Windsor Cancer Research Group, working to enhance both local and cross border research initiatives, chairs the Windsor Regional Hospital Research and Academic Committee, and leads the Complex Hematology Program development in Windsor.

Among other honours, Hamm has received the Human Touch Award from Cancer Care Ontario for service and innovation in cancer care; the Summit Award from the Erie St. Clair Regional Cancer Program; and the Glenn Sawyer Service Award for service to the community and the medical profession from the Ontario Medical Association.

She will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree at session 1, Friday morning.

Dr. Alexander received a Bachelor of Applied Science degree from Assumption University in 1963 and a Master of Applied Science degree from the University of Windsor in 1964, both in electrical engineering. Following graduate work at the University of Michigan, he spent his teaching career at the University of Windsor, retiring as associate dean, academic, in the Faculty of Engineering.

His community contributions include serving as a founding member of the board of the North American Black Historical Museum and Cultural Centre in Amherstburg, two terms as a member of the board of trustees of the Ontario Science Centre, as an advisor to the Local Youth Network and Community Services Agency of Windsor, and on the Employment Equity Advisory Committees of the Windsor Public Board of Education and Windsor Police Services.

Alexander has been a volunteer committee member of the Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County, was vice-president and convenor for the western region of the Ontario Advisory Council on Multiculturalism and Citizenship, and served on the founding board of the Big Brother Association of Greater Windsor, and on the board of the Windsor YMCA.

He will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree at session 3, Saturday morning.

Master’s graduand in English and creative writing Jade Wallace is this year’s recipient of the Governor General’s Gold Medal. The annual award recognizes academic excellence at the graduate level.

“It was a pleasant surprise to be nominated for the medal and an even bigger surprise, certainly, to win it,” says Wallace, who uses they-them pronouns.

Wallace is receiving this honour for their creative thesis, the novel Anomia, and their accompanying critical essay, “The Limits of Gendered Language in Mimetic Fiction.”

“I have no doubt that Anomia will find a publisher,” says Wallace’s thesis advisor, professor Louis Cabri. “So everyone who wants to will be able to read it soon.”

Wallace’s poetry, fiction, and essays have been published or are forthcoming in literary journals across Canada, the U.S.A., the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, New Zealand, and India, including This Magazine, Canadian Literature, and Hermine. They are a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets, and the co-founder of MA|DE, a collaborative writing entity.

“It was a bit of a circuitous route to get to this master’s degree,” says Wallace. “I did my BA and immediately did an MA in a different subject, directly after high school.”

Then they completed a college degree because, as Wallace says, “I really like school.”

They became a paralegal and worked for several years in a community legal clinic, which they describe as very interesting work.

“I wanted to get back to writing and make a bit more time for that. One of the great ways to do that was to go to grad school, to study writing,” they explain. “Then my partner and I moved here because he’s from here originally, though we met in Toronto, and now we’re settled in Windsor. Windsor has defied many of my expectations, in a good way.”

Wallace is originally from the Niagara region and credits their new home as hosting a vibrant literary community.

“It’s been a nice place to land,” says Wallace. “When I was young, I had this totally mistaken impression that literature, that writing, were things you did by yourself. You read alone and you wrote alone. You sent it off somewhere, but there was no real social element. In reality, it’s very social, for better or worse.”

Creative writing theses are a bit different from a traditional thesis. Rather than writing a long academic text, students write a relatively short academic text and a longer creative portion.

“When it came to writing the creative portion of my thesis, the novel, I wanted it to find its own way to challenge sex and gender representation,” says Wallace. “Not to give too much away, but it’s also a novel with a regular plot. There are two people who go missing and people are looking for them and adventures ensue.

“It was an interesting attempt to balance an actual narrative with all these conceptual concerns, and I think a creative writing grad program is a really great context in which to explore that particular aspect of writing.”

Wallace praises Dr. Cabri for challenging their approach to the project.

“He would encourage me to think outside the box and not require me to follow any rules of writing, which I found common across the program,” says Wallace. “Professors were there to expand our notions of literature rather than limit them to a prescribed set of doctrines about writing, which was great. It felt like a true learning experience where you were growing your understanding of something rather than narrowing it.”

The University of Windsor will confer the title of Distinguished University Professor on four members of its faculty during Fall Convocation celebrations, Oct. 14 and 15.

The rank is awarded to senior scholars at the height of their careers who have distinguished achievements in teaching, and whose scholarly activities reflect a body of work recognized at a national or international level.

Integrative biology professor Daniel Heath is the lead investigator of the Genomic Network for Fish Identification, Stress, and Health (GEN-FISH). A former executive director of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, he conducts collaborative evolutionary, ecological, and conservation-based aquatic research involving state-of-the-art genetics methods.

Biochemistry professor Siyaram Pandey focuses his research on programmed cell death, which is central to aspects of human health. His lab group has pioneered discovery of natural extracts with selective anti-cancer activities. A former president of the Natural Health Product Research Society of Canada, he serves as academic editor for PLoS ONE.

Biomedical sciences professor Lisa Porter is the founding executive director of the WE-Spark Health Institute, reflecting her passion for engaging students and the local community in health research. She leads a team across a range of disciplines exploring new and better ways to detect and treat cancer rapidly.

Philosophy professor Christopher W. Tindale is co-editor of the journal Informal Logic and the book series “Windsor Studies in Argumentation,” and director of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric. His most recent books include How We Argue and The Anthropology of Argument: Cultural Foundations of Rhetoric and Reason.

For its next guest speaker, the Humanities Research Group welcomes Berlin-based art, film, and media scholar and curator, Cornelia Lund.

In her talk, entitled “Performing the real: when documentary practices meet audiovisual performance,” Dr. Lund will discuss her current research into a practice that combines elements of documentary cinema with live audiovisual performance. The free public presentation begins at 5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, in the Performance Hall, SoCA Armouries.

Audiovisual documentary performances incorporate sound and images performed live and in real time. These performances create an approach to documentary that challenges the viewing and listening habits shaped by traditional linear or narrative documentary structures.

Lund will discuss how audiovisual documentary performances can be situated within theoretical discourses and documentary practices, including live audiovisual performance, expanded cinema, and a newly developed focus on the senses in cinema studies in general. Finally, she will ask how these performances relate to the larger context of cinematic and performative approaches sharing similar aesthetic concerns.

Lund works in research and teaching, mainly on documentary film and practices, audiovisual artistic practices, design theory, and de- and postcolonial theories. Since 2004 she has been the co-director of fluctuating images, an independent platform for media art and design.

The SoCA Armouries is located at 37 University Ave. East in downtown Windsor. To see the complete schedule of Humanities Research Group events planned for this academic year, visit its website: www.uwindsor.ca/hrg.

University of Windsor faculty, alumni, and students will play many roles during BookFest Windsor, Oct. 13 to 16 and 22 in venues across the city.

“There are lots of UWindsor alumni as well as current students involved in the festival,” says programming chair Irene Moore Davis. “Whether as authors, moderators, BookFest Windsor planning committee members, members of the Literary Arts Windsor board, or volunteers.”

Among the highlights:

• English professor emeritus Karl Jirgens will read from his short story collection The Razor’s Edge as part of “Fiction Across Borders,” 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at the SoCA Armouries.
• Drama students will perform a staged reading of professor Michelle MacArthur’s edited play collection Voices of a Generation, 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at the SoCA Armouries.
• Alumnus Gordon Grisenthwaite (BA 2018, MA 2020) will act as moderator for the Indigenous Voices session, 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, at the Chimczuk Museum.
• Criminology professor Natalie Delia Deckard will moderate Books and Brunch, 10 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 16, at Fionn MacCool’s pub.

Find tickets and complete schedule information at literaryartwindsor.ca/bookfest.

A crowd of University and community partners, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and family members gathered in the School of Social Work’s Windsor Hall main floor Thursday afternoon to witness the unveiling of a new commissioned painting by Ojibway artist John Williams from Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Sarnia.

Elder Theresa Sims of the upper Mohawk, Turtle Clan of the Six Nations Reserve, and Beverly Jacobs of Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, senior advisor to the president on Indigenous relations and outreach, opened the event prior to the unveiling.

The commission of Williams’ artwork was made possible by a grant from law professor emeritus Donna Eansor, former Indigenous program advisor Daniol Coles, and the 2018-20 University of Windsor Teaching Leadership Chair program “Open Hearts and Open Minds: Looking to the Future in a New Way.”

The winning proposal, titled “Decolonizing Education: The Role of Indigenous Persons in Shaping the Minds and Spirits of Social Work Educators, Students, the Next Generation, and Society,” was written by associate professor Thecla Damianakis and field learning specialist Katka Hrncic-Lipovic of the School of Social Work.

“John Williams’ painting represents the important role of the arts nonverbal communication and its power to start a conversation,” says Dr. Damianakis. “Both the school and the social work profession want to be allies to social change.”

Williams has titled this painting “Crazy Star.” He hopes his art will encourage everyone to “love your heritage, your being, and things you are passionate about.”

Williams’ artwork is based mainly on his Ojibway heritage but is not restricted to it. He has been commissioned to paint several mural-size acrylic pieces for local businesses. His work hangs in the Sarnia Police Training Centre and Great Lakes High School. Williams also holds in-person painting sessions in his home community for groups.

“Crazy Star” will hang the building’s main hallway where students and community groups using Windsor Hall will see it. It will also be visible to pedestrians on Pitt Street.

“The School of Social Work has a mandate to lead decolonization in education,” says director Robin Wright. “We want more inclusivity. We want to have Indigenous representation in education and the profession.”

The unveiling event was sponsored by the Office of Human Rights, Equity, and Accessibility; the Office of the Dean of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; the Humanities Research Group; the University of Windsor Alumni Association; and the School of Social Work.

As many staff are taking part in the flexible work arrangement program, it poses new cybersecurity challenges. Individuals need to ensure their devices and Wi-Fi are safe in any location.  

“Each person's circumstance might present a special challenge. Different considerations apply to those using a dedicated workstation than those with laptops. We want the campus community to keep cybersecurity in mind no matter their location,” says Marcin Pulcer, interim executive director IT Services. 

Cybersecurity tips when working away from campus:

• If possible, bring your laptop home to use during flexible work arrangement days. This will ensure that you have the most similar work experience between work and home. Staff are required to use corporate-owned devices to work from home.  
• Use the recently updated VPN to connect to the Internet when working off-campus. This encrypts your data over a wired or Wi-Fi network. All university-owned computers must have the Global Protect VPN installed to access the campus network.  
• Protect your laptop or mobile device when in transit. Do not leave it unattended to avoid potential theft. 
• Just like on campus, it is good practice to lock your screen when momentarily leaving your computer. 
• Ensure your device is running an up-to-date operating system, is kept current with patches and software updates, is rebooted regularly, and is running licensed anti-virus software.

For more cybersecurity best practices, see the Working from Home & Campus web page.  

Led by IT Services, Cybersecurity Awareness Month efforts highlight cybersecurity issues relevant to the UWindsor community. Find more information at uwindsor.ca/cybersecurity.