Campus Notices
There will be a basic biosafety training session on February 14, 2024, at 9:00 am in AVC 287N. 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.
To attend, you must pre-register by contacting Jacky Buell by the end of the day on February 7, 2024, by email (hse@upei.ca) or by phone (902-566-0901). Please provide your name, department, your supervisor’s name (if applicable), if you are a graduate student, email address, and phone number in your email or voice message.
NOTE: An online basic biosafety training refresher course is available for those who need it.
The UPEI Alumni Association is pleased to invite alumni and friends to Mill River Resort for an outdoor winter family fun day on Saturday, January 27, 2024.
FAMILY FUN
Our friends at Mill River are offering UPEI alumni and friends a 20% discount on individual and family outdoor activity day passes and equipment rentals. You can get a family pass for just $44 and enjoy all the outdoor activities at Mill River! Your pass includes tubes, snowshoes, and cross-country ski rentals. Guests must bring their own skates. Discounted passes can be purchased at the Pro Shop with outdoor activities starting at 9:00 am.
Have no fear if Mother Nature decides to skimp on the snowflakes! Mill River Resort has its own snow machine to keep the tubing fun rolling!
GATHER TOGETHER
Join us for an end-of-day campfire with s'mores and hot chocolate beginning at 3:00 pm.
Please RSVP by email to alumni@upei.ca so that we can ensure that we have enough refreshments.
MAKE IT A WEEKEND GETAWAY
Want to make a weekend of it? Mill River is offering standard rooms (two queen beds) for just $179+ tax. This is $50 off regular rates, available for the nights of January 26 and 27 only. To take advantage of this special rate, please call Mill River Resort directly at 1-844-375-3555 and mention that you are part of the UPEI alumni group. This rate is based on room availability. Please book in advance.
The Teaching and Learning Centre is setting up a series of teaching squares for the Winter 2024 semester. Teaching squares are interdisciplinary groups of instructors from a range of career stages and appointments. Participants visit the classes of their teaching square colleagues to observe and reflect on their own teaching. Participation involves three class visits to colleagues' classes, welcoming these same colleagues to your classes, and meetings at the beginning and end to discuss goals and share reflections. In addition to helpful insights from taking time to reflect on teaching practices, this is a terrific way to demonstrate your efforts to continue to grow as an instructor for tenure and promotion purposes. Each teaching square is limited to four colleagues. Please email TLC@upei.ca to indicate your interest. If you could include the days and times when you are teaching, this information will help in setting up the teaching square groups.
The next deadline for submitting biosafety applications, including new applications, renewals, and/or amendments, is Friday, January 26, 2023. These applications will be reviewed at the February 15 meeting.
All research compliance applications, including biosafety application forms, must be submitted through the UPEI Researcher Portal. Information about the Researcher Portal, including instructions for using the site, is available at https://www.upei.ca/research-services/forms.
Please contact the Research Compliance Coordinator at researchcompliance@upei.ca if you have any questions about accessing or using the Researcher Portal, or about the biosafety application, review, and approval process.
Research Ethics Board (REB) applications involving "more than minimal risk" must be reviewed by the full UPEI REB. The next deadline for submitting these protocols is Friday, January 26, 2023, for review at the February 26 meeting.
Other ethics protocol submissions, including new applications that do not involve more than minimal risk, renewals, and amendments, may be submitted at any time. They will be sent for delegated review as soon as all necessary materials are received.
All research compliance applications, including for the REB, must be submitted through the UPEI Researcher Portal (https://upei.researchservicesoffice.com/Romeo.Researcher/). Instructions for using the site are available at https://www.upei.ca/research-services/forms.
Please contact the Compliance Coordinator at researchcompliance@upei.ca for more information about the Researcher Portal, or the REB application, review, and approval process.
The Campus Peer Support Program, a pilot project funded by Health Canada, is open again this semester to serve students. Operating out of the Mawi'omi Indigenous Student Centre on the fifth floor of Dalton Hall, the service employs six students with lived experience in mental health and/or addictions who have been trained in peer support to talk to and support students who have their own concerns with these issues.
Peer support is the process of disclosing one's personal experience with mental health problems and/or addictions. It is an emerging area in the development of tools and resources to help people who are struggling with their mental health. In Prince Edward Island, the Canadian Mental Health Association – PEI division holds a contract with the provincial government to offer clinical peer support services as a part of the province’s mental health strategy. UPEI, in partnership with CMHA-PEI and with generous funding from Health Canada, is one of five pilot sites across the country to establish a campus peer support program.
Peer support is open at the following times:
Sundays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Mondays, 6:00-9:00 pm
Tuesdays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00 pm
Thursdays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Fridays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Please direct inquiries to Kate Jeffery, Campus Peer Support lead, at k.jeffery@cmha.pe.ca or James Reddin, acting director of UPEI Student Affairs, at jareddin@upei.ca.
Interested in learning about tools for high performance computing, Linux, or big data analysis? Training from ACENET for the winter semester is starting soon. Sessions are online and free of charge.
If you have questions about upcoming training or ACENET services at UPEI, contact Kaitlin Newson.
19 January, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic
Most of us have experience using a computer, whether for school, work, or entertainment, but how many of us have actually had an expert teach us how to use it? It doesn't need to be (quite) this way. This talk won't teach you how to troubleshoot everything, but will give you insight into how media, programs, and data are encoded and used by computers, so you can make more sense of why computers behave the ways they do, and solve some of your problems with greater efficiency and less frustration. We will provide an approachable overview of how a computer works by both looking at its history and breaking one down to explain individual components, before highlighting some of the trade-offs to consider when buying a computer. We will provide practical, simple, and actionable advice on digital security and show you a few "pro tips" on how to make the most of your workstation, phone, or whatever device you happen to use. Whether you have a lot or a little experience using your digital technology, if you want to learn how to use your devices more effectively, this workshop is for you!
Register for Basics of Computers
Introduction to High Performance Computing
23 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
What is high performance computing (HPC) and what can it do for me? How can ACENET help? Used by researchers across many disciplines to tackle analyses too large or complex for a desktop, or to achieve improved efficiency over a desktop, this session takes participants through the preliminary stages of learning about high performance computing (HPC) and computing clusters, and how to get started with this type of computing. It then reviews software packages available for applications, data analysis, software development, and compiling code. Finally, participants will be introduced to the concept of parallel computing to achieve much faster results in analysis. This session is designed for those with no prior experience in HPC, and are looking for an introduction and overview.
Register for Introduction to High Performance Computing
24 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
Linux is the terminal interface used to enable you to use supercomputing clusters from your desktop. It's the tool you need to get your data on the clusters, run your programs, and get your data back. In this session, learn how to create and navigate directories for your data, load files, manage your storage, run programs on the compute clusters, and set file permissions. This workshop is designed for those with no prior experience in working with a terminal interface.
Register for Introduction to Linux
Introduction to Shell Scripting
25 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
Shell scripting helps you save time, automate file management tasks, and better use the power of Linux. You’ll learn how to use the command line to carry out repetitive tasks, extract information from files quickly, combine commands in powerful ways, learn about job scripts, shell variables, and looping commands, and capture a workflow so you can re-use it easily. Save time, reduce errors, and use Linux more effectively. This workshop is designed for either new High Performance Computing (HPC) users who are familiar with working in a Linux environment, or for experienced users seeking to get more out of shell scripting. It is one of the core courses to help users get up and running on ACENET and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada systems.
Prerequisite: ACENET Basic Series Introduction to Linux, or previous experience with Linux.
Register for Introduction to Shell Scripting
26 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
The national systems use a job scheduler called “Slurm”. In this session you will learn how Slurm works and how it allocates jobs, helping you to minimize wait time by framing reasonable requests; ask for only the resources you need to improve efficiency; increase throughput; run more jobs simultaneously; and troubleshoot and address crashes. This workshop is designed for new HPC users or experienced users either transitioning to Slurm or seeking to improve efficiency with the scheduler.
Prerequisites: Completion of Introduction to Linux and Introduction to Shell Scripting, or prior experience with both.
Register for Job Scheduling with Slurm
20, 22 February, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic
Apache Spark is a user-friendly open-source platform for large-scale data processing, analytics, and parallel computing. Using Apache Spark and Python (PySpark), this workshop is aimed at analyzing data sets that are too large to be handled and processed by a single computer. With hands-on guided examples, the workshop covers the basics of Spark and Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDD) high-level architecture. The examples are mainly written in Python, hence the APIs covered are the ones available in PySpark, including Spark Core API (RDD API), Spark SQL, and Pandas on Spark. Participants learn how to import data, use functions to transform, reduce, and compile the data, and produce parallel algorithms that can run on Alliance clusters.
Prerequisites: ACENET Basics or equivalent, and how to write functions in Python.
Workshop #2 in the virtual monthly Lunch and Learn Library series supporting UPEI graduate students.
REGISTER: https://forms.gle/UtRAnc8EmL3QjD7f9 to receive the Zoom link and/or recording
Facilitator: Kim Mears, Scholarly Communications Librarian
When: Noon Atlantic, Friday, January 19 (recording available)
Where: Zoom
Description: This virtual workshop will share resources and tools available for storing, organizing, and formatting citations. The session will discuss reference management software options, how to select the best fit for your purpose(s), and how to use the option you select most effectively by developing a clear understanding of the type of information to include and input into the system.
Target audiences:
- Graduate-level students (Masters and PhD)
- Post-doctoral fellows
The Faculty of Science Graduate Studies Committee invites the campus community to the next presentation of the Environmental Sciences & Human Biology seminar series on Friday, January 19, 2024, at 12:30 p.m. in Duffy Science 204.
Kaitlin Newson, Research Consultant, ACENET, will present “Leveraging ACENET services to meet your digital research needs.”
All are welcome.
The fourth meeting of the UPEI Senate will take place on January 19, 2024, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm in Alumni Hall (Room 102), 618 University Avenue. Please note that this is a change in the venue included in the campus notice published on January 17.
All meetings of Senate are open to members of the University community, although for certain in-camera items (e.g., granting of degrees), only senators may be present. While Senate is an in-person meeting, to facilitate inclusion, under special circumstances members of the University community may request a Zoom connection by emailing senate@upei.ca when they are unable to attend in person. Only members of Senate are permitted to address the Senate unless otherwise recognized by the Chair.
The next deadline for submitting biosafety applications, including new applications, renewals, and/or amendments, is Friday, January 26, 2023. These applications will be reviewed at the February 15 meeting.
All research compliance applications, including biosafety application forms, must be submitted through the UPEI Researcher Portal. Information about the Researcher Portal, including instructions for using the site, is available at https://www.upei.ca/research-services/forms.
Please contact the Research Compliance Coordinator at researchcompliance@upei.ca if you have any questions about accessing or using the Researcher Portal, or about the biosafety application, review, and approval process.
Research Ethics Board (REB) applications involving "more than minimal risk" must be reviewed by the full UPEI REB. The next deadline for submitting these protocols is Friday, January 26, 2023, for review at the February 26 meeting.
Other ethics protocol submissions, including new applications that do not involve more than minimal risk, renewals, and amendments, may be submitted at any time. They will be sent for delegated review as soon as all necessary materials are received.
All research compliance applications, including for the REB, must be submitted through the UPEI Researcher Portal (https://upei.researchservicesoffice.com/Romeo.Researcher/). Instructions for using the site are available at https://www.upei.ca/research-services/forms.
Please contact the Compliance Coordinator at researchcompliance@upei.ca for more information about the Researcher Portal, or the REB application, review, and approval process.
The Campus Peer Support Program, a pilot project funded by Health Canada, is open again this semester to serve students. Operating out of the Mawi'omi Indigenous Student Centre on the fifth floor of Dalton Hall, the service employs six students with lived experience in mental health and/or addictions who have been trained in peer support to talk to and support students who have their own concerns with these issues.
Peer support is the process of disclosing one's personal experience with mental health problems and/or addictions. It is an emerging area in the development of tools and resources to help people who are struggling with their mental health. In Prince Edward Island, the Canadian Mental Health Association – PEI division holds a contract with the provincial government to offer clinical peer support services as a part of the province’s mental health strategy. UPEI, in partnership with CMHA-PEI and with generous funding from Health Canada, is one of five pilot sites across the country to establish a campus peer support program.
Peer support is open at the following times:
Sundays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Mondays, 6:00-9:00 pm
Tuesdays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Wednesdays, 6:00-9:00 pm
Thursdays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Fridays, 1:00-4:00 pm
Please direct inquiries to Kate Jeffery, Campus Peer Support lead, at k.jeffery@cmha.pe.ca or James Reddin, acting director of UPEI Student Affairs, at jareddin@upei.ca.
The Robertson Library invites the campus community to a candidate presentation by Abiola Ajayi for the permanent-track position of One Health and Scholarly Communications Librarian.
Abiola Ajayi earned her ALA-accredited Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Toronto. She is currently a medical librarian at the Markham Stouffville Hospital in Ontario.
Title: What can the library do to support scholarly communications at a university like UPEI?
When: Thursday, January 18, 2024, 1:30 pm
Where: AVC 287N
Interested in learning about tools for high performance computing, Linux, or big data analysis? Training from ACENET for the winter semester is starting soon. Sessions are online and free of charge.
If you have questions about upcoming training or ACENET services at UPEI, contact Kaitlin Newson.
19 January, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic
Most of us have experience using a computer, whether for school, work, or entertainment, but how many of us have actually had an expert teach us how to use it? It doesn't need to be (quite) this way. This talk won't teach you how to troubleshoot everything, but will give you insight into how media, programs, and data are encoded and used by computers, so you can make more sense of why computers behave the ways they do, and solve some of your problems with greater efficiency and less frustration. We will provide an approachable overview of how a computer works by both looking at its history and breaking one down to explain individual components, before highlighting some of the trade-offs to consider when buying a computer. We will provide practical, simple, and actionable advice on digital security and show you a few "pro tips" on how to make the most of your workstation, phone, or whatever device you happen to use. Whether you have a lot or a little experience using your digital technology, if you want to learn how to use your devices more effectively, this workshop is for you!
Register for Basics of Computers
Introduction to High Performance Computing
23 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
What is high performance computing (HPC) and what can it do for me? How can ACENET help? Used by researchers across many disciplines to tackle analyses too large or complex for a desktop, or to achieve improved efficiency over a desktop, this session takes participants through the preliminary stages of learning about high performance computing (HPC) and computing clusters, and how to get started with this type of computing. It then reviews software packages available for applications, data analysis, software development, and compiling code. Finally, participants will be introduced to the concept of parallel computing to achieve much faster results in analysis. This session is designed for those with no prior experience in HPC, and are looking for an introduction and overview.
Register for Introduction to High Performance Computing
24 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
Linux is the terminal interface used to enable you to use supercomputing clusters from your desktop. It's the tool you need to get your data on the clusters, run your programs, and get your data back. In this session, learn how to create and navigate directories for your data, load files, manage your storage, run programs on the compute clusters, and set file permissions. This workshop is designed for those with no prior experience in working with a terminal interface.
Register for Introduction to Linux
Introduction to Shell Scripting
25 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
Shell scripting helps you save time, automate file management tasks, and better use the power of Linux. You’ll learn how to use the command line to carry out repetitive tasks, extract information from files quickly, combine commands in powerful ways, learn about job scripts, shell variables, and looping commands, and capture a workflow so you can re-use it easily. Save time, reduce errors, and use Linux more effectively. This workshop is designed for either new High Performance Computing (HPC) users who are familiar with working in a Linux environment, or for experienced users seeking to get more out of shell scripting. It is one of the core courses to help users get up and running on ACENET and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada systems.
Prerequisite: ACENET Basic Series Introduction to Linux, or previous experience with Linux.
Register for Introduction to Shell Scripting
26 January, 1000-1130hrs Atlantic
The national systems use a job scheduler called “Slurm”. In this session you will learn how Slurm works and how it allocates jobs, helping you to minimize wait time by framing reasonable requests; ask for only the resources you need to improve efficiency; increase throughput; run more jobs simultaneously; and troubleshoot and address crashes. This workshop is designed for new HPC users or experienced users either transitioning to Slurm or seeking to improve efficiency with the scheduler.
Prerequisites: Completion of Introduction to Linux and Introduction to Shell Scripting, or prior experience with both.
Register for Job Scheduling with Slurm
20, 22 February, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic
Apache Spark is a user-friendly open-source platform for large-scale data processing, analytics, and parallel computing. Using Apache Spark and Python (PySpark), this workshop is aimed at analyzing data sets that are too large to be handled and processed by a single computer. With hands-on guided examples, the workshop covers the basics of Spark and Resilient Distributed Datasets (RDD) high-level architecture. The examples are mainly written in Python, hence the APIs covered are the ones available in PySpark, including Spark Core API (RDD API), Spark SQL, and Pandas on Spark. Participants learn how to import data, use functions to transform, reduce, and compile the data, and produce parallel algorithms that can run on Alliance clusters.
Prerequisites: ACENET Basics or equivalent, and how to write functions in Python.
Workshop #2 in the virtual monthly Lunch and Learn Library series supporting UPEI graduate students.
REGISTER: https://forms.gle/UtRAnc8EmL3QjD7f9 to receive the Zoom link and/or recording
Facilitator: Kim Mears, Scholarly Communications Librarian
When: Noon Atlantic, Friday, January 19 (recording available)
Where: Zoom
Description: This virtual workshop will share resources and tools available for storing, organizing, and formatting citations. The session will discuss reference management software options, how to select the best fit for your purpose(s), and how to use the option you select most effectively by developing a clear understanding of the type of information to include and input into the system.
Target audiences:
- Graduate-level students (Masters and PhD)
- Post-doctoral fellows
The Faculty of Science Graduate Studies Committee invites the campus community to the next presentation of the Environmental Sciences & Human Biology seminar series on Friday, January 19, 2024, at 12:30 p.m. in Duffy Science 204.
Kaitlin Newson, Research Consultant, ACENET, will present “Leveraging ACENET services to meet your digital research needs.”
All are welcome.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2024), cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women globally with an estimated 604,000 new cases and 342,000 deaths in 2020.
Facts about cervical cancer:
- The highest rates of cervical cancer incidence and mortality are in low- and middle-income countries. This reflects major inequities driven by lack of access to national HPV vaccination, cervical screening and treatment services, and social and economic determinants.
- Cervical cancer is caused by persistent infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV). Women living with HIV are six times more likely to develop cervical cancer compared to women without HIV.
- Prophylactic vaccination against HPV and screening and treatment of pre-cancer lesions are effective ways to prevent cervical cancer and are very cost-effective.
- Cervical cancer can be cured if diagnosed at an early stage and treated promptly.
- Countries around the world are working to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer in the coming decades, with an agreed set of three targets to be met by 2030.
If you have not been vaccinated for HPV, please contact the UPEI Health and Wellness Centre to discuss and potentially receive the HPV vaccine.
If you are sexually active and have not had a pap test in the last two years, contact the UPEI Health and Wellness Centre (healthcentre@upei.ca; 902-566-0616) or SHORS PEI (Sexual Health, Options and Reproductive Services, call toll free: 1-844-365-8258).
The call for proposals is open for the Active Learning Network's Global Festival of Active Learning until January 26. The theme for this year is "Back to the future–looking ahead for active learning." The festival, which is online and free to attend, will take place from March 11 to 15, 2024, with two one-hour slots each day.
Looking to get out of the cold and go for a walk/run inside? UPEI staff and faculty have free access to the indoor track at the Chi-Wan Young Sports Centre. To register weekly, log in at recreation.upei.ca or through the new Panther Recreation app with your UPEI email address and password. Click on the wellness icon and then on walking track access. Participants must register to gain access. For all staff and faculty who have already completed this step, you do not have to do it again. Access to the track will expire on October 3, 2024. Please contact Angela Marchbank, Fitness and Wellness Coordinator, for assistance and/or questions. Access to the track is provided through the Healthy Campus Committee.
