As appreciative as she was to receive the President’s Medal during Convocation ceremonies Tuesday, Mary Desaulniers says she couldn’t wait to get back to her seat.

“I hate being the centre of attention,” says the behaviour, cognition, and neuroscience grad. “All my friends and family were super happy for me, but I was dying.”

The medal is awarded to a graduating undergraduate who has made an outstanding contribution to campus activities while maintaining a superior academic record.

Desaulniers served as co-ordinator of the Peer Support Centre and volunteered with the Student Medical Response Service and as a member of Campus Mental Health Advisory Committee, held additional jobs as a teaching assistant and a barista, all while earning grades worthy of a place on the dean’s list.

Next in her career is graduate study in public health at McMaster University.

“I was inspired by my thesis work in Prof. Kendall Soucie’s HEAL (Health Experiences and Longevity) Lab,” Desaulniers says. “It made me want to pursue research.”

Psychology department head Patti Fritz notes that professors describe Desaulniers as a kind, thoughtful, extremely motivated, and compassionate young scholar with a zest for knowledge.

“As can be clearly seen, Mary is a promising young scholar who has significantly impacted the lives of others on campus and in our community,” says Dr. Fritz.

The UWindsor Pride Committee presents a series of lunch-and-learn sessions to promote understanding of issues important to 2SLGBTQIA+ communities.

The online workshops run through the month and follow the raising of the Pride Progress flag over campus on June 1.

Mack Park, one of the committee’s co-chairs and a master’s student of social work, was pleased with Thursday’s turnout.

“I’m really excited to see so many people show up to support this event,” they said. “It’s important for our community to come together under one banner.”

The webinars will be conducted via Microsoft Teams at noon each Monday in June. Click on the links below for details and to register:

• June 5, Pronouns in Practice
• June 12, Windsor/Detroit Queer History
• June 19, Queer Pedagogical Practice
• June 26, Queer Media

Learn more about the UWindsor Pride campaign on the committee website.

The world needs more empathy, says Anita Nowak.

Author of Purposeful Empathy: Tapping Our Hidden Superpower for Personal, Organizational, and Social Change, Dr. Nowak will bring her message of empathetic leadership to the University of Windsor on Tuesday, June 13, in a presentation hosted by the Alumni Association in partnership with Career Development and Experiential Learning as part of the Hire UWindsor program.

Nowak is a social impact coach, educator, and adjunct lecturer in the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.

Her lecture, entitled “Purposeful Empathy: Leading with Humility and Humanity,” will provide insights for organizations to strengthen leadership practices, support employees, and create a working environment for people to thrive.

The lunch-and-learn session begins at noon in the SoCA Armouries and is free for Hire UWindsor partners and the campus community. Register here to attend.

Three UWindsor graduate students won awards at the 2023 NSERC CREATE oN DuTy! program annual general meeting held this year at the University of Toronto May 9 to 11.

All the students are part of the Institute for Diagnostic Imaging (IDIR). Their supervisor, IDIR director Roman Maev, says it is great to celebrate their hard work and talents.

Graduate students competed against their peers from four universities: Université Laval, École de Technologie Supérieure, University of Toronto, and University of Windsor.

Traditionally, there are six awards given out and this year three were claimed by the UWindsor contingent:

• Danilo Stocco, PhD student in mechanical, automotive and materials engineering (MAME), received first place in Best Doctoral Presentation.
• Andrew Ouellette, PhD student in physics (now a post-doctoral fellow at IDIR), placed third in Best Doctoral Presentation.
• Vlad Tusinean, masters in computer science student, finished second in Best Master’s Presentation.

Dr. Maev says it is a prestigious and important federal six-year program to help four participating Canadian universities from Ontario and Quebec improve education in the non-destructive and materials characterization field.

Once a year, one of the founding universities hosts a meeting to disseminate the progress each student has made with their industrial partners and awards are given to the best three master’s and three postdoc/doctoral students.

“This year it was in Toronto at the Toronto University campus, and I am proud to report to the University of Windsor that my student team consisting of one postdoc, two PhD students, and one master’s student, took home half of these awards,” says Maev, a physics professor.

“This is a big achievement and obviously demonstrates IDIR’s significance at the federal level in the training of highly qualified personnel in that field.”

Consent is too low a standard for promoting ethical sex, says Nicole Jeffrey. In an article published May 29 in the Conversation, the postdoctoral fellow and adjunct assistant professor of psychology argues that focusing on consent limits the ability to create better approaches to dealing with sexual violence.

“Moving beyond the language of consent will open new possibilities for promoting truly equitable and ethical sex,” Dr. Jeffrey writes. “At a minimum, we need to teach young people how to communicate more meaningfully about sex.”

She says that comprehensive sexual health education should teach that empathy, mutual decision-making, and ongoing communication are integral components of sex, rather than preconditions that take place only before.

“We need to teach and expect boys and men to listen to women’s desires and care about their well-being,” Jeffrey says. “Prevention programs that, in part, challenge what it means to relate as women and men are some of the most effective at reducing sexual violence.”

She concludes that concepts of consent should never have played more than a supporting role in defining ethical sex: “It’s time to shift the spotlight.”

The Conversation is an online publication featuring articles from academics and researchers around the world. Read Jeffrey’s entire article, “Focusing on consent ignores better ways of preventing sexual violence.”