Recognizing excellence among faculty, staff and students
Ladiges wins Engineering scholarship
Julie Ladiges, working on a Master of Engineering Science degree in digital signal processing and hearing science, has won the 2010 AMEC Master’s Scholarship in Engineering.
Along with the $10,000 scholarship, she will receive an all-expense paid trip as a guest to the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation’s Annual Awards Luncheon in Vancouver May 28.
“The award is conditional on me giving two outreach presentations about engineering,” says Ladiges. “I plan to do one presentation in London and one in my former high school in Almonte, Ont. It will be an interactive demo where I make live recordings of the students playing instruments or singing/whistling and we look at and listen to the recordings to see how changing the sample rate affects the sound.”
New lessons in evolution
A team of the Biology Undergraduate Society (BUGS) won a national competition for helping to teach evolution to elementary school students.
To mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of “The Origin of Species” and Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, The Vancouver Evolution Festival organized a competition designed to educate students in Grades K-12 about evolution.
Prior to making their competition submissions, BUGS tested their teachings on four classes of Grades 6-8 at two local schools, and developed an online evolution simulator.
BUGS submitted five proposals and won a first- and two third-place awards, totalling $750. A portion of the earnings is being donated to BUGS for future evolution outreach endeavours.
View the simulator at www.evolutionapplications.com.
Engineering student gets research travel ‘voucher’
Mechanical and Materials Engineering graduate student Brian Vermeire has a little more travel money thanks to a scholarship dedicated to supporting his studies abroad.
Vermeire is a recipient of the 2009 Canada Graduate Scholarships – Michael Smith Foreign Supplements provided by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to Canada Graduate Scholarship holders.
This scholarship supports high-calibre Canadian graduate students as they pursue exceptional research experiences at institutions outside of Canada.
There are 250 supplements available each year, valued at up to $6,000 each to help offset the cost of studying outside of Canada for a three- to six-month period, including travel, tuition and accommodation.
Student, faculty member receive nursing awards
Joyce McInerney, a professor at the Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, has received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Council of Ontario University Programs in Nursing (COUPN).
The award adds to an already long list of teaching awards garnered over 30 years, for her impassioned teaching that is supported by practical experience in midwifery, intensive care, acute care, general surgery and community nursing.
In addition, at the student level, COUPN presented the Award for Excellence in Professional Nursing Practice at the Undergraduate Student Level to Deivi Gaitan for establishing the Latin American Nursing Student Initiative at Western to facilitate community development and promote global health education.
COUPN, an affiliate of the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), works in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities to deliver the highest quality nursing education to prepare students for practice and to support the province in meeting its human health resource needs.