Science alumnus Michael Ocheje (BSc 2016, PhD 2022) is one of this year’s Governor General’s Gold Medallists for academic excellence at the graduate level and was recognized during Fall Convocation ceremonies on Friday, Oct. 14.

“When I found out I won, that was a big surprise,” says Dr. Ocheje. “There are a lot of talented people in my cohort and amongst all those people, they chose my thesis.”

During his doctoral studies, the chemistry and biochemistry graduate developed organic bioelectronic materials that can stretch and imitate properties of human skin.

“Usually when you strain electronic devices, the inorganic brittle materials will break, but my research deals with using organic materials that can stretch and still be conductive,” says Ocheje.

“Essentially things like polyethylene, or plastic bags, are stretchable but not conductive and cell phones are conductive but not stretchable. I’m trying to create conjugated polymers that are the best of both worlds.”

One of the targeted uses for these materials is medical application.

“We want to make them wearable and potentially bio-implantable,” says Ocheje.

“It has to be at least as stretchable as your skin, so you’ll barely notice it is there.”

Ocheje says he fell in love with this type of chemistry when he took an undergraduate course with Tricia Carmichael. Then he joined Simon Rondeau-Gagné’s lab for his graduate work.

During his time at the University of Windsor, Ocheje travelled to do characterizations of his materials at the Argonne National Lab in Chicago and the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He spent four months interning at the National Research Council in Ottawa. He also co-authored 25 scientific publications.

He is currently pursuing post doc studies in the Swager Research Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and says he owes a lot of his accomplishments to his Nigerian parents and to his strongest advocate, Dr. Rondeau-Gagné.

“Michael is someone who can easily adapt to any situation, who jumps into challenges and brings creativity to help move research to the next level,” says Rondeau-Gagné.

“He is focused and determined to reach excellence.”

Ocheje is the third biochemistry and chemistry graduate in four years to win the Governor General’s Gold Medal.

—Sara Elliott

The UWindsor community is invited to participate in Campus Mental Health Day on Oct. 25, organized by Student Health, Counselling, and Wellness Services in partnership with several campus collaborators.

“Campus Mental Health Day is an opportunity for the University of Windsor to come together to learn more about how we can best support campus well-being,” says Katie Chauvin, mental health and wellness co-ordinator. “We invite all members of our UWindsor community to join us for a day of connection, skill building, and learning.”

The day will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Alumni Auditorium with a breakfast and the launch of the University’s first ongoing suicide prevention program, It Matters that You’re Here. Along with a new suicide prevention website, the enterprise includes a video with nearly 80 members of the UWindsor community sharing messages of hope, encouraging help-seeking, and giving a voice to the often-unseen pain that those living with thoughts of suicide experience day-to-day. The video will be shared publicly for the first time during the Campus Mental Health Day breakfast.

“It Matters that You’re Here has been a meaningful initiative for everyone involved in its development,” Chauvin says. “We are looking forward to sharing this work with our campus and are grateful to local film producers Ken Amlin and Brilynn Ferguson for partnering with us to create an impactful outreach video.

“I’d like to encourage students, faculty, and staff to join us at the Campus Mental Health Day breakfast to view the video and learn more about It Matters that You’re Here.”

In addition to the breakfast, Campus Mental Health Day will include training sessions focused on supporting campus mental health and well-being, including:

• QPR Suicide Prevention Training (Student Counselling Centre)
• Responding to Disclosures of Sexual Violence (Office of Sexual Violence Prevention, Resistance, and Support)
• Identifying and Responding to Students in Distress (Student Counselling Centre)
• Pronouns in Practice (UWindsor PRIDE)
• Recovery Ally Training (Lancers Recover)

Registration is required to attend. To register for the breakfast launch of It Matters that You’re Here and any of the above training, click here.

Additionally, a drop-in Student Support Services Fair will be held in the student centre Commons from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., offering an opportunity to learn more about available student supports.

Throughout the day, Lancer Recreation will host fitness classes in the Toldo Lancer Centre (register here or download the GoLancers app), the Leddy Library will co-ordinate a drop-in wellness zine-making event in the Library Collaboratory from 1 to 3 p.m., and Residence Services will host an art event for residence students.

As a continuation of Campus Mental Health Day, Lancers Recover will lead a Walking Labyrinth activity outside of Leddy Library on Oct. 27 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the student centre will host a Sound Bath experience during the first week of November.

UWindsor history alumna Funké Aladejebi (BA 2007) will explore the ways in which Black women’s stories tell not only of a collective Black Canadian experience marked by sexism, separation, and racial discrimination, but also of individual actions and affirmations of professionalism and resistive pedagogical approaches that challenged assumptions about Black existences in Canada in her free public presentation “Black Women’s Oral Histories and Contestations in the Great White North,” Thursday, Oct. 20.

Dr. Aladejebi is an assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto and co-editor of Unsettling the Great White North: Black Canadian History.

“Situating Black women’s individual and collective choices, my presentation considers the processes of documenting oral herstories as a political and restorative practice in writing about Black Canada,” she says.

The event will begin at 10 a.m. in room 2100, Ed Lumley Centre for Engineering Innovation, and is presented in observance of Women’s History Month by the Department of History in conjunction with Women’s and Gender Studies in the School of Social Work.

The Athletics Department is offering DailyNews readers a chance to win gold seat tickets to watch the Lancer football team take on the Waterloo Warriors on Saturday, Oct. 22, at 1 p.m.

One lucky winner will receive a package of four tickets in the premium gold section of Alumni Stadium for the final home game of the season.

Seniors’ Day will see the introduction of the graduating players. It’s also “Windsor Minor Football Day” — youth players who wear their team jerseys will be admitted free.

The winner will be randomly selected from all correct responses received by noon on Wednesday, Oct. 19. To be eligible, identify the opponents defeated by the Lancers so far this year:

1. September 5, 28-24
   a) Ottawa Gee Gees
   b) Guelph Gryphons
   c) Carleton Ravens
    
2. September 17, 37-7
   a) Toronto Varsity Blues
   b) Carleton Ravens
   c) Laurier Golden Hawks
    
3. October 7, 33-10
   a) Laurier Golden Hawks
   b) York Lions
   c) Western Mustangs
    

Contest is open to all readers of the DailyNews. Send an e-mail with your responses to dailynews@uwindsor.ca. One entry per contestant, please.

Marium Tolson-Murtty, director of anti-racism organizational change in the Office of the Vice-President, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, has been named among Canada’s Top 100 Black Women to Watch in 2022 by Canadian International Black Women of Excellence.

The organization celebrates Black women and the advancements they have made in Canada, while connecting women from various walks of life to networking opportunities, knowledge-sharing, mentorship programs, youth career counselling, and the success stories of Black women across the country.

Tolson-Murtty says her community work centres around transforming higher education and removing barriers to post-secondary education for Black and racialized students, with a focus on equity, social justice, and anti-racism — an effort she also brings to her work as a PhD student.

“It’s challenging work but necessary work,” she says, adding that the University of Windsor is poised at the forefront of Canadian post-secondary efforts in equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism.

CIBWE was founded by Rose Cathy Handy, who came to Canada from Cameroon in 1993 and went on to found H.E.R. Consulting & Services, which offers expertise in development, empowerment, and career-building.

Handy is also president of Bilingual Link, a company that has helped more than 30,000 bilingual candidates find work and improve their lives.

Her book, Going from Homeless to C.E.O.: The No Excuse Handbook, has received extensive media interest and her personal experiences are the impetus behind CIBWE.

Handy travelled back to Cameroon following the death of her sister and was moved by stories of her efforts to help struggling women in her region.

“It dawned on me soon after that the way to honour my sister’s life would be to give back something to the women of Cameroon on funds raised by the women of Canada,” she said.

“But it wasn’t until I examined my evolution in Canada that I realized what I could do.”

In 2016 the first CIBWE gala event took place, with proceeds supporting women and vulnerable children in Cameroon, as well as establishing a sisterhood of support, encouragement, and acknowledgement for women in Canada.

Tolson-Murtty says she is honoured and humbled to be counted among Canada’s Top 100 Black Women to Watch in 2022.

“There are so many women in the Windsor-Essex county community doing amazing things and I’m happy that Windsor women are being recognized,” she says. “This also allows me to wear my African-Canadian Underground Railroad heritage proudly on my sleeve.”

Michelle Douglas was an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces when in 1989, she was discharged upon being deemed “not advantageously employable due to homosexuality.”

Her landmark legal challenge to the “LGBT Purge” ended the formalized discriminatory policy in Canada’s military and launched her career as an activist in the movement to seek legal equality for the LGBT2Q+ community.

She will discuss her personal journey and the devastating effects of this historical period of discrimination in a free public presentation, “The Accidental Legal Activist,” presented by Women’s and Gender Studies in the School of Social Work on Thursday, Oct. 20, in celebration of Persons Day.

The event will run 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in room 203, Toldo Health Education Centre. Find more information on the program website.

A partnership with the student centre and Windsor Bike Kitchen to host a sale of bicycles on Wednesday, Oct. 19, has the leadership of the Graduate Student Society excited, says executive director Austin Roth.

The sale will feature a wide selection of bicycles, many for under $250 and models that include a free lock and helmet sponsored by the University of Windsor Students’ Alliance.

“We are so excited to offer this new event to the campus community — students, faculty, and staff,” Roth says. “Partnering with the student centre and Windsor Bike Kitchen will help develop and foster a growing cycling culture at the University.”

The sale will run 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday in the student centre’s Commons area. Two bikes are available to won through a raffle for students.

Interested potential buyers can preview all the bikes in the commons starting around 11 a.m. today: Tuesday, Oct. 18.

A reading tonight — Tuesday, Oct. 18 — will feature poets laureate from across Canada and serve as the official launch of A Manor of Words, an anthology of works by more than 30 poets who have participated in Poetry at the Manor over the last 10 years.

City of Windsor poet laureate emeritus Marty Gervais and past poet laureate Mary Ann Mulhern will host the event at Willistead Manor, 1899 Niagara St., starting at 7 p.m.

Guests include Anna Yin, inaugural poet laureate for Mississauga; Richard-Yves Sitoski, poet laureate for Owen Sound; Micheline Maylor, poet laureate emeritus for Calgary; and Sarah Lewis, past poet laureate for Peterborough.

“This remains, by far, the most popular poetry event in Windsor,” says Gervais, resident writing professional in the English department. “We were the first to do this, and it is fantastic to be celebrating our 10th year of this wonderful and intimate reading, once again welcoming poets laureate who have such diverse bodies of work to share with us.”

The free event is typically standing-room only, so guests are advised to register at Eventbrite.ca and bring a copy of their ticket with them. Space permitting, walk-ups will also be accepted at the door.

The book will be available for purchase at the reading, and afterwards at BlackMossPress.com, at the Chimczuk Museum gift shop, and at Biblioasis Bookshop. A portion of sales proceeds will be donated to the United Way On Track to Success program.