Arts, Ed and FIMS plan Research Day 2012
Three Western faculties – Arts and Humanities, Education and Information and Media Studies – will come together next week for one celebration of their collective work at Research Day 2012, scheduled for 3-5:30 p.m. Monday, March 19 in The Great Hall, Somerville House.
Arts and Humanities will showcase more than 50 research projects covering a wide array of topics ranging from Horror Studies to Ancient Rome to Digital Humanities.
Laurence De Looze from the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures will present his poster, How the Alphabetic Letter Has Conditioned the Western View of the World. From the classical Greek alpha/omega to the modern-day Helvetica typeface, he argues our alphabet and how we express ourselves through the formation of letters has a strong influence on our cultural viewpoints.
Education will present 75 projects featuring a number of topics.
Professor Kathy Hibbert and a team of interdisciplinary scholars will present their poster, The Quest for Effective Interdisciplinary Graduate Supervision: A Critical Narrative Analysis, which describes how supervisory relationships unfold and what systems of support facilitate interdisciplinary graduate supervision. Hibbert’s team aims to enrich faculty expertise in graduate supervision to better support the next generation of scholars.
Information and Media Studies will feature a number of research posters relating to contemporary technology and information issues.
Professor Victoria L. Rubin, along with Library and Information Science PhD students Niall Conroy and Tatiana Vashchilko, will present posters that demonstrate their research into pinpointing the objective cues distinguishing truth from deception in language. If such cues are identifiable, an algorithm could be created allowing a computer to determine whether a complaining email that came from a customer is sincere, or contains deceptive elements.
Research Day 2012 is supported by the Office of the Vice-President, Research.
Mental Health Week events planned
Western is gearing up for Mental Health Awareness Week, March 19-23.
Among the activities planned are:
- Mental Health Fair, Monday, March 19-Friday, March 23 in the University Community Centre (UCC) Atrium;
- Stand Up for Mental Health, 8 p.m. Wednesday March 21 in the Mustang Lounge, UCC;
- Dan Savage, It Gets Better Project, 7 p.m. Thursday March 22 in Alumni Hall;
- The Jack Project, 1 p.m. Friday, March 23 in the Mustang Lounge, UCC;
- Western Wears Green For Mental Health, Friday March 23;
- Margaret Trudeau, 5 p.m. Thursday, March 29 in Alumni Hall.
King’s Players want you in the Know
The King’s Players present The 50 Things You Were Never Supposed to Know, written by former Western student Brenden Hobin and directed by King’s student Nicolas Hobin, a dark comedy that follows the misadventures of a group of bumbling academics after the accidental murder of one of their members. The play takes place 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, Saturday and Sunday, March 31 and April 1 in the King’s University College Vitali Lounge. Tickets are $5, and available by emailing the50things@gmail.com or in the King’s cafeteria. Call 519-859-1030 for information.
Bringing old Rome to Western
Students at the Don Wright Faculty of Music are prepared to bring Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, an opera about the political and personal tribulations of Rome, to the stage at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Paul Davenport Theatre, Talbot College. Tickets are $15 adults, $10 students, seniors; cash at the door.
“It is sex and intrigue like you’ve never seen before,” director Theodore Baerg said. “We think of sex and intrigue with later opera, but it all started here. It’s one of the first great operas ever written and it remains widely performed.”
The cast of 16 graduate students is backed by an orchestra with music director Mark Payne at the harpsichord.
Men’s track sprint to CIS title
For the first time in school history, the Western Mustangs men’s track and field team earned a Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) championship, hurdling from fifth to first on the final day of competition to defeat Guelph by 13 points.
“Our guys never gave up and used the momentum from event to event to carry us to the victory,” said Western head coach Vickie Croley, who was named CIS men’s coach of the year. “It is pretty emotional as Western has a lot of history.”
The Mustangs were led by Scott Leitch, who captured the 600m event; Matt Diston, who finished second in the pole vault; and Drew Welch, who earned a silver medal in shot put.
Western was second in the 4x400m relay and third in the 4x200m relay, and received points from Jose Belfast-Kum and Carl Shen, who were fourth and fifth place, respectively, in the triple jump.
Western’s women’s team, meanwhile, finished with a bronze medal at this year’s CIS championships.
