Welcome to the following new employees who joined the University of Prince Edward Island community in February 2026:

• Oliver Andrews, Facilities Management
• Ankita Bedi, Facilities Management
• Simon Bourassi, Health Management, Atlantic Veterinary College
• Robert Frankfurth, Facilities Management
• Carina MacDonald, Human Resources
• Tara Richards, Companion Animals, Atlantic Veterinary College

We are excited to have you join the UPEI team!

Researchers at UPEI are looking to understand how students, faculty, staff, and community members get to and from the UPEI campus. This will help identify ways to make it easier to get to and from UPEI with or without a vehicle. The anonymous survey will take five to ten minutes to complete, and participants who complete the survey will be eligible for a draw for one of five $50 VISA gift cards.  For more information or to complete the survey, please go to https://forms.office.com/r/Ck97PRtw4N.  For questions, you can also email the lead investigator, Dr. Travis Saunders, at trsaunders@upei.ca. This project has been reviewed by the UPEI Research Ethics Board.

We are pleased and excited to invite all to attend Alyssa MacDonald's PsyD dissertation defence presentation. Please join us in supporting Alyssa on this momentous occasion!

Date and time: March 30, 2026, at 3 pm
Location: Memorial Hall 104

Curious about how to access administrative health data for your research? Join us for a Lunch & Learn hosted by the Secure Island Data Repository (SIDR). This session will provide an overview of the types of data available through SIDR, the process for requesting access for research projects, and how researchers can access data for multi-regional studies through Health Data Research Network Canada (HDRN Canada). While faculty, students, and research staff are likely to find this session especially relevant, anyone interested in learning more about these data resources and how they can support research and policy work is welcome to attend. Come learn how this exciting new platform can support your work and ask questions about getting started.

When: March 30, 2026. 12:00 noon. Pizza will be served at noon!

Where: AVC, Room 286A

Please register with this link: SIDR Lunch & Learn Registration – Fill out form

Colleagues from Mount Allison University invite you to complete a brief survey about your teaching practices, time use (prep, grading, student support), and perceptions of how teaching is valued. The purpose of this project is to better understand how faculty allocate time to teaching, what supports are helpful, student workload, and how institutions might improve teaching environments. Participation is voluntary and anonymous. You may skip any question or exit at any time. If you wish, you can opt in at the end to a short follow-up interview (contact info collected separately from your survey responses).

• Length: 10–20 minutes
• Eligibility: Current [tenure-track, limited-term, sessional/adjunct] instructors, administrators, and students
• Confidentiality: Responses are anonymous; aggregated findings only
• Date: Closes March 29

Start the survey: Administrators

Start the survey: Faculty

Start the survey: Students

If you’re planning to hire a student this summer, we can help. Co-op students from several programs are seeking opportunities. Students are enrolled in business, computer science, analytics, chemistry, physics, environmental studies, and financial math programs. 

Contact Karen Turner, Co-op job development coordinator at klturner@upei.ca or 902-566-0794 for more details about how to get started. Visit the UPEI Co-op Program website, or submit this form to post a co-op job. You can also follow the Co-op Program on LinkedIn. 

There will be a basic biosafety training session on Wednesday, March 25, at 10:00 am. Topics will include basic biosafety principles and how they are applied at the University of Prince Edward Island, as well as biosecurity training. This session is open to everyone, including graduate students. Prerequisite training material must be completed prior to attending the session.

To attend, you must pre-register by contacting Jacky Buell by noon, Monday March 23, 2026, via email hse@upei.ca or phone 902-566-0901. 

Please provide:

• Your name
• Your supervisor’s name (if applicable)
• Department
• Email address
• Phone number
• Whether you're an employee or graduate student  

NOTE: An online biosafety training refresher course is available for those who completed basic biosafety training previously. Training must be renewed every three years. Please contact us for information on how to register for this training!

The UPEI Faculty of Graduate Studies invites the UPEI community to attend the 2026 Three Minute Thesis (3MT™) Competition. 

The Three Minute Thesis challenges research graduate students to explain their research project to a non-specialist audience in just 3 minutes, using only 1 slide. This year’s competitors represent a range of disciplines, including Education, Science, Sustainable Design Engineering, and Veterinary Medicine. 

Join us to support UPEI graduate students and learn about the fascinating and impactful research taking place across campus in this fast-paced and engaging format. 
Cash prizes will be awarded to the top three competitors, and the first-place winner will go on to represent UPEI at the regional 3MT competition. 

Audience members will also have the opportunity to play fun and supportive 3MT Bingo while watching the presentations for a chance to win a prize. 

Date: Friday, March 20, 2026 
Time: 4:00–6:00 pm 
Location: Fox & Crow, W.A. Murphy Student Centre 

Light refreshments and door prize draws will be available.

UPEI students, faculty, staff, and community members are welcome to attend.

Vagabond Presents Antigone

Ever feel like those in power have let it go to their heads? It is not a new thing. Sophocles’ Antigone dealt with the abuse of power more than a thousand years ago. Vagabond Productions presents Antigone, March 18-21, 2026, in the Theatre in the Performing Arts Centre at UPEI. Asked about the choice, director Greg Doran said: “The ideas in the play are, unfortunately, still relevant, so it seemed a good time to revisit this classic.” Doran went on to warn: “We are presenting this play from a particular perspective, so it might not be for people with a narrow view of the world order.”

The doors open at 7 pm, for a 7:30 pm curtain. Admission is “pay-what-you-can.” The play’s language is suitable for all audiences, but the play does deal with the death of several characters: all off-stage in the Greek tradition. For more information, email gdoran@upei.ca or follow us on Instagram at theatreatupei_vagabond.

New poetry collection speaks to and from the Island

In her third poetry collection, Judy Gaudet “brings us heart-deep and eye-level with Prince Edward Island’s fields, woods, and shores,” says Deirdre Kessler, former PEI Poet Laureate. Published by Island Studies Press, the book will be launched on March 24, at 7 pm, in the Faculty Lounge, Main Building Room 201, University of Prince Edward Island.

Another Landscape addresses the ordinary wonders of a life shared with her partner and their dog, where “Nothing is needed. Everything is here between us.” Though the poems grow out of this one life on the Island, Gaudet takes the long view of time. She sees at once the molecules of the red sandstone cliffs and her own, that have held together for greatly different timespans. The poems gather small but notable moments of Island life and insist we look closer, for “this is life, as long as we have it.”

Readers will recognize the “fishing boats and their bright primaries” and “that open spot where the water is moving fast enough to not freeze up.” Gaudet’s poems, writes Richard Lemm, professor emeritus in English, speak to the human capacity to be renewed and deeply transfigured by observant intimacy with nature. And they return again and again to gratitude: “What luck to spend a lifetime / seeing what things are” and to her uplifting faith that there is “good luck and gold / flying up everywhere.”

Judy Gaudet is a Prince Edward Island poet and painter whose books include Conversation with Crows (Oberon, 2014) and Her Teeth Are Stones (Acorn, 2005). She is the editor of 150+: Canada’s History in Poetry (Acorn, 2018). 

The event is free, and all are welcome. Thanks to Bookmark, books will be available for purchase. For more information, contact Bren Simmers at Island Studies Press, 902-566-0386 or ispstaff@upei.ca.

The Moodle Gradebook can be a useful tool for keeping track of grades and keeping students informed of their performance throughout the course. This session will cover the basics of setting up and using a Moodle gradebook with opportunities for instructors teaching Spring semester courses to have their gradebooks set up as part of the demonstration. This session will be held online on March 24 from 1:30pm to 2:30pm. Please register to get an invite for the online session. 

The Sir James Dunn Animal Welfare Centre (SJDAWC) at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) invites you to its three-part webinar series exploring preparing to be an expert witness for animal welfare cases. This series will explore the critical role veterinarians play in animal welfare cases--from investigation through legal proceedings.

The webinars feature Dr. Shane Bateman, Dr. Kathleen MacMillan, and Janine Kidd, and will take place on March 31, and April 7 and 14, all beginning at 3:30 p.m. ADT. Veterinarians and veterinary technicians are eligible for continuing education credit. The webinar cost is $50 per webinar, or $120 for all three.  There will be no charge for students or participants not seeking credit.

IMPORTANT TO NOTE: Participating veterinarians and veterinary technicians are eligible to earn one hour of RACE-accredited continuing education per webinar. Participants are required to attend the live webinar to earn this credit. RACE-program number: 20-1355999. 

REGISTER HERE!

Last week Faculty Focus published an article entitled Teaching Advice I Wished Someone had Told Me.  The second piece of advice is to visit the classrooms of your peers.  This offers a great opportunity to remind everyone of the Open Classroom Exchange happening this semester.  More than a dozen colleagues have generously offered to welcome you to their class or lab. It's not too late to arrange a visit!  Here's the list of hosts with the dates, times and locations of their classes. The TLC monthly newsletter always has lots of information about teaching and learning activities across campus and beyond. And if you are still looking for something, email TLC@upei.ca and we'll get back to you quickly.  

Colleagues from Mount Allison University invite you to complete a brief survey about your teaching practices, time use (prep, grading, student support), and perceptions of how teaching is valued. The purpose of this project is to better understand how faculty allocate time to teaching, what supports are helpful, student workload, and how institutions might improve teaching environments. Participation is voluntary and anonymous. You may skip any question or exit at any time. If you wish, you can opt in at the end to a short follow-up interview (contact info collected separately from your survey responses).

• Length: 10–20 minutes
• Eligibility: Current [tenure-track, limited-term, sessional/adjunct] instructors, administrators, and students
• Confidentiality: Responses are anonymous; aggregated findings only
• Date: Closes March 29

Start the survey: Administrators

Start the survey: Faculty

Start the survey: Students

The Chief Justice Thane A. Campbell Lectureship in Law will feature a presentation titled “Human-Centered Knowledge Work in the Age of AI” on Monday, March 30 at 4:30 pm at the Charlottetown Library Learning Centre in the Rotary Auditorium. The lecture will be delivered by Al Hounsell, Senior Director of AI, Innovation, and Knowledge at Gowling WLG. With more than a decade of experience in legal innovation, Hounsell leads the firm’s AI strategy and innovation initiatives, focusing on reimagining how legal services are designed and delivered through advanced technology. He combines his background in law, entrepreneurship, and software development to build AI-driven processes, streamline legal operations, and enhance client outcomes. His work spans automation, legal design, workflow transformation, and applied AI across the enterprise. Admission to the lecture is free, and more information is available by contacting artsadmin@upei.ca.

Presented by the Faculty of Arts and the Law Foundation of PEI

Join the School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences for our Ask Us Anything event on Wednesday, March 18, 2026, from 12 pm to 2 pm in Cass Science Hall, 200-level.

Whether you’re considering enhancing your degree with quantitative or computational skills or you’re a prospective student exploring your options, we’re here to help. Discover how updates to Statistics and Analytics are opening new opportunities for students across Life Sciences, Business, and Arts. You can also learn more about our full range of programs—including Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Analytics, Financial Mathematics, and Actuarial Science—and get advice on selecting the best courses for your program.

Current SMCS students can drop in to learn about new course offerings and program updates for 2026–2027, explore Honours and Co‑op pathways, and get guidance from program leads on course planning and academic progression. It’s a great chance to ask questions and make sure you’re on track for the year ahead.

Multiple-choice questions provide an efficient means of assessing a broad range of knowledge. Still, mistaken assumptions persist (such as multiple-choice tests being limited to only assessing recognition of basic facts, rather than the effective application of principles).

In this session, Drs. Scott Cassidy and Blake Jelley (both of whom have used psychometrics in high-stakes testing contexts), will discuss how multiple-choice testing can be effectively deployed within course assessments – with a specific focus on promoting psychometric effectiveness. The session, which will use examples from in-class tests, will include a general discussion regarding the construction, quality assurance, and refinement of multiple-choice questions; as well as a demonstration of how statistical information available through the Remark® software in ITSS can be used to evaluate and refine such assessments.

This lunch and learn will take place in the UPEI Teaching and Learning Centre, located in the Robertson Library Annex (RL 230) on March 18 at 11:30 am.

Register here. Registration is not required, but you will receive an event invitation.

The Island Lecture Series presents a talk by Frank Gillan, “Finding Place: An Irish Story,” on March 17, 2026, at 7 pm, in the Faculty Lounge, Main Building Room 201, University of Prince Edward Island. 

Join us on St. Patrick’s Day as Frank Gillan shares a personal story about one Irish family’s search for security. In 1953, Marion Gillan’s husband was killed piloting a private plane. Their only family income disappeared on that May afternoon, and employers were not interested in hiring a widow with five young children. But challenge was something Marion had seen before. In 1919, her father died, leaving her 34-year-old mother, Jennie McCarthy, with a 70-acre mixed farming operation and four young children, Marion being the oldest at age seven. In an era where women had few rights, both women were determined to find a way to keep the family together. Both had inherited resilience and resourcefulness from their Irish roots.

For generations, their ancestors had lived under oppressive British laws in Ireland. Their land was taken from them, and they were forced to be tenants in their own country, living under the constant threat of eviction. In addition, Irish Catholic daily lives were regulated under the stifling Penal Laws, intended to obliterate their culture and religion—and to keep them poor. The Gillan ancestors’ emigration from Ireland to PEI was a search for better opportunities. PEI offered hope, but also considerable challenges. 

Frank Gillan is a sixth-generation Irish Canadian. In 2022, he published The Gillan Journey: County Antrim to Peakes Road, and in 2025, he published his mother’s family story with They Can’t Take the Kids: the Mooney/McCarthy/Gillan Legacy. Frank and his wife Cathy are retired and live in Charlottetown. 

The lecture is free, and all are welcome. For more information, contact Bren Simmers at 902-566-0386 or ispstaff@upei.ca.

The Catherine Callbeck Centre for Entrepreneurship invites you to join our Elevator Pitching workshop on March 17 at 5:00 pm. The workshop will take place in Room104, Health Science Building.

This workshop will provide tools, tips, and tricks around executing an elevator pitch effectively, efficiently, and engagingly. This workshop is open to both Harry W. MacLauchlan Entrepreneurship Program participants as well as the general public. Sign up today!
 

Colleagues from Mount Allison University invite you to complete a brief survey about your teaching practices, time use (prep, grading, student support), and perceptions of how teaching is valued. The purpose of this project is to better understand how faculty allocate time to teaching, what supports are helpful, student workload, and how institutions might improve teaching environments. Participation is voluntary and anonymous. You may skip any question or exit at any time. If you wish, you can opt in at the end to a short follow-up interview (contact info collected separately from your survey responses).

• Length: 10–20 minutes
• Eligibility: Current [tenure-track, limited-term, sessional/adjunct] instructors, administrators, and students
• Confidentiality: Responses are anonymous; aggregated findings only
• Date: Closes March 29

Start the survey: Administrators

Start the survey: Faculty

Start the survey: Students