Colleagues interested in pursuing a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project should check out the Internal SoTL Research Grant (ISRG) program, which provides funding for SoTL research. Here’s a chance to provide high-quality student training opportunities and collaborate with colleagues from different but complementary disciplines. Note that this call is open to all faculty, sessionals, lab instructors, CNIs, etc. in all faculties at UPEI.

VALUE: up to $2,000 for a two-year term.

Applications are due by December 13, 2023, by 4 pm. Please review the general information in the guidelines for eligibility considerations. Support in developing a SoTL proposal for this grant program is available through the UPEI Teaching and Learning Centre. 

Program guidelines and application instructions can be found on the UPEI Internal Funding webpage.

With no winners in the last EIGHT draws, the total pot has grown to more than $26,300 and is the LARGEST Gold Rush pot to date, with half going to the winner of the draw!

Gold Rush is a virtual fundraising initiative that raises funds for UPEI’s athletic and recreation programs. You can now select a specific team, club, or program to direct your proceeds from each of your tickets. 

Play today and every week for a chance to win! The weekly draw is held at 8:00 pm every Saturday.

This eight-week walking club will provide members with the opportunity to work with a fourth-year Kinesiology student who will encourage them throughout their walking journey and offer helpful tips including cool-down stretches. Participants can meet every Tuesday from October 10 to December 4, noon--12:30 pm, at the Chi-Wan Young Sports Centre indoor track. You can join the club even if you can’t attend Tuesdays at noon. 

Track the kilometres you walk, and for every 20 kilometres, you will earn a ballot that can be entered into a weekly draw. The club is individually based.

To register, log into recreation.upei.ca, click on UPEI LOGIN, and enter your UPEI email and password. Once you are logged in, go to the Wellness icon, then click on Walking club (UPEI Staff/Faculty only), and follow the prompts to register.

The Healthy Campus Committee coordinates these initiatives through the UPEI Employee Wellness Strategy supported by the Joint Benefits and Advisory Committee.

Google has announced the retirement of the Google Jamboard application.

From now until October 1, 2024, the Jamboard application will continue to function normally. From October 1, 2024 through December 31, 2024, the app will be placed in “view-only” mode to give you time to back up your Jam files.

While the app is in “view-only” mode, you’ll no longer be able to create new or edit existing Jams on any platform, including the web, iOS, Android, and Jamboard devices. On December 31, 2024, Google will shut down the Jamboard application, and you will no longer be able to access your Jam files. Any remaining Jam files will be deleted. 

Prior to December 31, 2024, you can export your Google Jamboard content following the instructions posted here: Export your Jams - Jamboard Help (google.com)

As an alternative to Google Jamboard, Microsoft Whiteboard is currently available for all UPEI M365 accounts.

The Search Committee for the Associate Vice-President (Students) and Registrar announces upcoming presentations by each of the finalist candidates. Since the search began in May, the committee has undertaken a comprehensive search and selected the following finalists for a series of stakeholder meetings on campus. Presentations are scheduled on the following dates and times.

Chris McGrath is the Principal and Founder of the Koru Coaching + Education Group, an organization dedicated to cultivating leadership capacity for social change, particularly for Indigenization and EDI within organizations. He held prior roles as Vice-President, Students (George Brown College), Dean of Students (Seneca College), Associate Vice-President, Student Experience and Registrar (Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College), and Assistant Dean, Student Affairs (University of Toronto, Mississauga). Chris holds an EdD (Western University), an MEd (University of Vermont), and a BA (University of Waterloo).

• Public Presentation: Wednesday, October 4, 2023, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm, AVC, Room 201A

Frances Billingsley is the Associate Registrar and Director, Student Records and Scheduling, at York University. Previously she held registrarial and student service roles at MacEwan University (Director, Student Financial Aid; Associate Registrar, Records and Registration; and Academic Advisor) and the University of Alberta (Director, Undergraduate Student Services; Recruitment Officer; Student Advisor). Frances received her EdD in Educational Leadership from Western University (2022), and an MEd (2008), a BEd (2000), and a BA (1997) from the University of Alberta.

• Public Presentation: Tuesday, October 10, 2023, 10:00 to 11:00 am, Andrew Hall, 142

Shawna Garrett is the President and CEO of EduNova Cooperative Ltd, an association of education and training providers in Nova Scotia. She has held prior appointments as a Transformation and Change Leader (College of the North Atlantic, CNA), Registrar (Mount Allison University and CNA, Qatar), and Executive Director, Enrolment Services (Acadia University). From 1999 to 2001, Shawna was the International Student Recruitment and Marketing Officer at UPEI. She holds an MEd (2007) from Acadia University and a BA (1997) from the University of Prince Edward Island.

• Public Presentation: Friday, October 13, 2023, 10:00 to 11:00 am, Andrew Hall, 142

All are welcome to attend. For any who are unable to attend, the presentations will be recorded and available afterward for viewing from a secure site. Paper copies of each candidate’s CV will be available for viewing in the Office of the Vice-President, Academic and Research, Kelley 205. Following each presentation, you are invited to provide feedback on the candidate’s suitability for the role to vpar@upei.ca. All feedback will be considered by the committee in its deliberations.

The deadline for Animal Care Protocol Submissions (new, renewal, or amendment) is Friday, November 3, for the November meeting.

Please note that as of June 1, 2020, all animal user protocols must be submitted through UPEI Researcher Portal at https://upei.researchservicesoffice.com/Romeo.Researcher/

For new protocols, select "applications," and for renewal or amendment protocols, select "events."

 UPEI ACC SOPs and Codes of Practice can be accessed through myUPEI at https://portal.upei.ca/facultystaff/administrativeservices/AVCAnimalCare/Pages/default.aspx. 

Those protocols received after the deadline will be reviewed the following month. The committee requires at least one month for processing applications.

Overview: Conflict and dispute are a natural part of life and are often found in the workplace. Conflict itself can be a healthy thing, but it also can be very destructive. How conflict and dispute are resolved can ultimately determine the success or downfall of your work environment.

The Certificate in Conflict Resolution program will provide the practical skills required to turn conflict in the workplace into a positive, instead of allowing it to decay morale and productivity. Areas such as conflict theory, managing different types of people, communication within conflict, having difficult conversations, restorative dialogue, and Indigenous approaches to conflict resolution, will be examined and discussed in detail.

At the end of the Certificate in Conflict Resolution program, participants will have the skills and confidence necessary to resolve conflict, mediate, and bring together opposite parties within the workplace.

Please note that completion of the Foundations of Conflict Resolution is mandatory in order to register for and complete any other courses within this certificate program.

Designed for: Managers, team leaders, supervisors, human resources personnel, union representatives, and anybody who works with other people.

Duration: Six (6) courses for forty-eight (48) hours

Courses:

• Foundations of Conflict Resolution
• History of Conflict with Indigenous People
• Conflict Skills: Applications and Insights
• Communication Skills for Conflict Resolution
• Handling Difficult Conversations
• Restorative Dialogue

Facilitators: Jacinta Gallant, Bethany Knox, Julie Pellissier-Lush.

For more information/register

With the release of the UPEI Review Report, the University has coordinated two confidential processes to support faculty and staff who have experienced harm from harassment, sexual violence, or discrimination at UPEI. 

Confidential third-party personal counselling:

The UPEI Health and Wellness Centre has engaged a psychologist to meet individually with faculty and staff, by appointment. Employees may email Caylin Jenkins at cbjenkins@upei.ca, indicating “Appointment required” in the subject line. Caylin will coordinate with the psychologist and confirm the time and location of the appointment with the employee. 

Making a confidential disclosure:

People have asked about the process for making disclosures of incidents of harassment or discrimination by senior executive members of the University. The University has established an independent third-party process to address any such issues with Resonance Inc., a multidisciplinary human resources firm, based in Saint John, NB, that specializes in workplace assessments. The contact person at Resonance is Trisha Perry, who may be reached at tperry@resonanceinc.ca or (506)799-0412. 

For more information, go to https://www.upei.ca/response-to-independent-review/community-support

With no winners in the last EIGHT draws, the total pot has grown to more than $26,300 and is the LARGEST Gold Rush pot to date, with half going to the winner of the draw!

Gold Rush is a virtual fundraising initiative that raises funds for UPEI’s athletic and recreation programs. You can now select a specific team, club, or program to direct your proceeds from each of your tickets. 

Play today and every week for a chance to win! The weekly draw is held at 8:00 pm every Saturday.

The 2023 Fall exam schedule has been posted. You can find the time and location of your exams on your schedule in MyUPEI as well as a full posting of the exam schedule in both the Student and Faculty Toolbox.

Exams are scheduled for the 2023 Fall term from December 9-19.

In the event of a storm day during the exam period, in-person exams held on that day will be rescheduled. Rescheduled exams are typically moved to the last day of the exam period (i.e., December 19). Communication regarding storm days and exam rescheduling will be communicated via UPEI Communications directly. Please keep an eye on your @upei.ca email and the UPEI Safe App.

Best wishes for the upcoming exam season!

- Office of the Registrar

Join the Teaching and Learning Centre’s multimedia specialist and others from UPEI’s teaching community on October 10 at 12:30 pm in the Teaching and Learning Centre to talk about ideas, obstacles, and successes in creating multimedia for your courses. This is a space to gather and talk about what you are working on, what you have created, and what you might be thinking about making. Topics will generally be about video, podcasting, visual graphics, etc. that you are using as course resources. The drop-in is open to faculty and staff in an effort to provide support, create connections, and build community around these topics. This will be hosted monthly throughout the fall semester.

Reach out to Kristy McKinney at kmckinney@upei.ca if you have any questions.

Have you ever needed to remove a background from a photo but have zero photoshop skills? Drag and drop any photo to this website, https://www.remove.bg/upload, and it will remove all the background in two seconds! It really is that easy.

Interested in learning about cloud computing, programming with R, using spreadsheets or SQL, or version control with Git? More training from ACENET for the fall is now open for registration. Sessions are online and free of charge.

If you have questions about upcoming training or ACENET services at UPEI, contact Kaitlin Newson.

Cloud from A to Z
17, 19, 24, 26 October, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic
Cloud computing provides great flexibility, allowing complete control of the computing environment. In addition, the environment can be copied, backed up, created, and recreated in an automated way. In these lessons, we will start you on the path toward making use of the great flexibility and power of cloud computing. We will be using the popular static website generator Jekyll. Prerequisite: Completion of Software Carpentry's Unix Shell, or similar experience. DETAILS & REGISTER

Introductory Programming with R
18, 25 October, 1300-1630hrs Atlantic
This is a beginner-level series that is hands-on, covering the fundamentals of R. This includes data types, functions, importing, manipulating and analyzing data, and data visualization, as well as program design, version control, data management, and task automation. The goal is to teach the practical knowledge needed to start programming, debugging, and using R in everyday tasks. You do not need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented or previous programming experience, but intermediate level experience with a computer is recommended. DETAILS & REGISTER

Using Spreadsheets for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Librarians
8 November, 1330-1630hrs Atlantic
This beginner-level workshop is the first session of our Humanities & Social Sciences Data Organization & Analysis Series. To use tools that make computation and analysis more efficient, such as programming languages like R or Python, we need to structure our data the way that computers need the data. In this workshop, you will learn good data entry practices, how to avoid common formatting mistakes, approaches for handling dates in spreadsheets, basic quality control and data manipulation, and exporting data from spreadsheets. We will focus on examples and challenges from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and library research fields, and use librarycarpentry.org materials. There are no prerequisites. DETAILS & REGISTER

SQL for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Librarians
15, 22 November, 1230-1530hrs Atlantic
This two-part session is the second of our beginner-level Humanities & Social Sciences Data Organization & Analysis Series. Many web applications, research project websites, and library and archival repositories store data in relational databases. A relational database can help you keep your data separate from your analysis, improve quality control of data entry, reduce duplication of data, and improve your ability to search across large and complex datasets. Structured Query Language, or SQL, is a powerful language used to search and manipulate relational databases. This workshop teaches participants about relational databases and SQL using SQLite. You will learn how to write queries in SQL and how to use aggregate functions to combine data. It uses examples and challenges from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and library research fields and uses librarycarpentry.org materials. There are no prerequisites. DETAILS & REGISTER

Using Git Tools to Manage File Changes and Collaborate: Version Control
21 November, 1300-1630hrs Atlantic
Version control is the practice of managing and sharing changes to documents, programming code, websites, or any other files to keep track of what’s been changed, by whom, when, and why. All previous versions of files are saved, and you can even revert to a previous version. Git-portal sites, like GitHub or GitLab, offer many useful features to facilitate collaborative development. This is a two-part series. In this beginner-level first session, we will show you how to create a repository, record changes to files, explore and restore from the recorded history, and resolve conflicts (when one member overwrites another’s changes). DETAILS & REGISTER

Using Git Tools to Manage File Changes and Collaborate: Collaboration
28 November, 1300-1630hrs Atlantic
This is the second session of our two-part series. This workshop will focus on collaborative development workflows using Git-collaboration sites like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, and will demonstrate how to work with branches, issue tracking, contribute to projects using pull-/merge-requests, code-review, run CI/CD-pipelines, and use other common features of these platforms. Prerequisite: basic experience using Git version control, participation in the 21 November workshop, or attendance at the Git lecture of a software carpentry workshop. DETAILS & REGISTER

Visualization with R
29 November, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic
When working with large sets of numbers, it is often more useful to display the information graphically using histograms, scatter plots, bar charts, box plots, and other depictions. This workshop teaches participants how to gain insights into data through visualization using R as the programming language. Participants will learn how to create simple scatterplots, histograms, and box plots; compare the plotting features of base R and the ggplot2 package; plot with ggplot2; plot time series data; and arrange and export plots. Basic knowledge of R is recommended, although not mandatory. DETAILS & REGISTER

There will be a basic biosafety training session on October 12, 2023, at 1:00 pm 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 October 10, 2022, by email (hse@upei.ca) or by phone (902-566-0901). Please provide your name, department, your supervisor’s name (if applicable), email address, and phone number in your email or voice message. Please indicate if you are a graduate student. 

NOTE: An online basic biosafety training refresher course is available for those who need it. 

The UPEI Health and Wellness Centre is providing flu and COVID-19 vaccine clinics for all students as well as faculty, staff, and their families in October. (Please note that children aged 12 and under have to go to Public Health for the COVID-19 booster, and children aged 2 and under have to get their flu shots at Public Health.) These are mass clinics (appointments are not required), and the vaccines are provided free. Please bring a provincial health card or student ID. You can receive both the flu shot and the COVID-19 booster at the same time, but it will require two injections.  

October 18: McMillan Hall, W.A. Murphy Student Centre, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm

October 19: McMillan Hall, W.A. Murphy Student Centre, 12:00 pm - 7:00 pm

October 25: The McCain Foundation Learning Commons Atrium, AVC, 1:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Webinar: Trademarks, Branding, and Protecting Your Business (virtual)

October 11, 1:00-2:00 pm Atlantic time

Description: Join SpringBoard Atlantic and special guest Erin Best, Partner and Trademark Agent at Stewart McKelvey Law, for an informative session on the proper use of trademarks as a brand protection strategy for your business. Learn why trademarks matter and how registering a trademark can give you a competitive advantage in the market!

Register: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/trademarks-branding-and-protecting-your-business-tickets-709603181217?aff=oddtdtcreator 

The Search Committee for the Associate Vice-President (Students) and Registrar announces upcoming presentations by each of the finalist candidates. Since the search began in May, the committee has undertaken a comprehensive search and selected the following finalists for a series of stakeholder meetings on campus. Presentations are scheduled on the following dates and times.

Chris McGrath is the Principal and Founder of the Koru Coaching + Education Group, an organization dedicated to cultivating leadership capacity for social change, particularly for Indigenization and EDI within organizations. He held prior roles as Vice-President, Students (George Brown College), Dean of Students (Seneca College), Associate Vice-President, Student Experience and Registrar (Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College), and Assistant Dean, Student Affairs (University of Toronto, Mississauga). Chris holds an EdD (Western University), an MEd (University of Vermont), and a BA (University of Waterloo).

• Public Presentation: Wednesday, October 4, 2023, 11:00 am to 12:00 pm, AVC, Room 201A

Frances Billingsley is the Associate Registrar and Director, Student Records and Scheduling, at York University. Previously she held registrarial and student service roles at MacEwan University (Director, Student Financial Aid; Associate Registrar, Records and Registration; and Academic Advisor) and the University of Alberta (Director, Undergraduate Student Services; Recruitment Officer; Student Advisor). Frances received her EdD in Educational Leadership from Western University (2022), and an MEd (2008), a BEd (2000), and a BA (1997) from the University of Alberta.

• Public Presentation: Tuesday, October 10, 2023, 10:00 to 11:00 am, Andrew Hall, 142

Shawna Garrett is the President and CEO of EduNova Cooperative Ltd, an association of education and training providers in Nova Scotia. She has held prior appointments as a Transformation and Change Leader (College of the North Atlantic, CNA), Registrar (Mount Allison University and CNA, Qatar), and Executive Director, Enrolment Services (Acadia University). From 1999 to 2001, Shawna was the International Student Recruitment and Marketing Officer at UPEI. She holds an MEd (2007) from Acadia University and a BA (1997) from the University of Prince Edward Island.

• Public Presentation: Friday, October 13, 2023, 10:00 to 11:00 am, Andrew Hall, 142

All are welcome to attend. For any who are unable to attend, the presentations will be recorded and available afterward for viewing from a secure site. Paper copies of each candidate’s CV will be available for viewing in the Office of the Vice-President, Academic and Research, Kelley 205. Following each presentation, you are invited to provide feedback on the candidate’s suitability for the role to vpar@upei.ca. All feedback will be considered by the committee in its deliberations.

The deadline for Animal Care Protocol Submissions (new, renewal, or amendment) is Friday, November 3, for the November meeting.

Please note that as of June 1, 2020, all animal user protocols must be submitted through UPEI Researcher Portal at https://upei.researchservicesoffice.com/Romeo.Researcher/

For new protocols, select "applications," and for renewal or amendment protocols, select "events."

 UPEI ACC SOPs and Codes of Practice can be accessed through myUPEI at https://portal.upei.ca/facultystaff/administrativeservices/AVCAnimalCare/Pages/default.aspx. 

Those protocols received after the deadline will be reviewed the following month. The committee requires at least one month for processing applications.

Join us on October 17, at 7 pm, in the Faculty Lounge of UPEI’s SDU Main Building for a lecture titled “Camping in the Backyard” by Dr. Ed MacDonald, PEI historian and professor of history at UPEI.

The historical literature on camping in the Western world has been preoccupied with the period between the mid-1800s and the Second World War. It maintains that well-heeled city dwellers camped in order to escape summers in North America’s dirty, polluted, high-stress cities and connect physically and emotionally with the wild Nature. But it was the postwar era and the gradual democratization of tourism that brought camping to the masses. And the experience on Prince Edward Island tells a different story about the motives behind, and the experience of, camping. Focusing particularly on the Island’s provincial parks, “Camping in the Backyard” will unpack the rise and fall (and rise again) of camping in terms of the Island’s tourism industry.

Dr. MacDonald's lecture is part of the Institute of Island Studies' Island Lecture Series.

Interested in learning about cloud computing, programming with R, using spreadsheets or SQL, or version control with Git? More training from ACENET for the fall is now open for registration. Sessions are online and free of charge.

If you have questions about upcoming training or ACENET services at UPEI, contact Kaitlin Newson.

Cloud from A to Z
17, 19, 24, 26 October, 1300-1600hrs Atlantic
Cloud computing provides great flexibility, allowing complete control of the computing environment. In addition, the environment can be copied, backed up, created, and recreated in an automated way. In these lessons, we will start you on the path toward making use of the great flexibility and power of cloud computing. We will be using the popular static website generator Jekyll. Prerequisite: Completion of Software Carpentry's Unix Shell, or similar experience. DETAILS & REGISTER

Introductory Programming with R
18, 25 October, 1300-1630hrs Atlantic
This is a beginner-level series that is hands-on, covering the fundamentals of R. This includes data types, functions, importing, manipulating and analyzing data, and data visualization, as well as program design, version control, data management, and task automation. The goal is to teach the practical knowledge needed to start programming, debugging, and using R in everyday tasks. You do not need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented or previous programming experience, but intermediate level experience with a computer is recommended. DETAILS & REGISTER

Using Spreadsheets for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Librarians
8 November, 1330-1630hrs Atlantic
This beginner-level workshop is the first session of our Humanities & Social Sciences Data Organization & Analysis Series. To use tools that make computation and analysis more efficient, such as programming languages like R or Python, we need to structure our data the way that computers need the data. In this workshop, you will learn good data entry practices, how to avoid common formatting mistakes, approaches for handling dates in spreadsheets, basic quality control and data manipulation, and exporting data from spreadsheets. We will focus on examples and challenges from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and library research fields, and use librarycarpentry.org materials. There are no prerequisites. DETAILS & REGISTER

SQL for Humanities, Social Sciences, and Librarians
15, 22 November, 1230-1530hrs Atlantic
This two-part session is the second of our beginner-level Humanities & Social Sciences Data Organization & Analysis Series. Many web applications, research project websites, and library and archival repositories store data in relational databases. A relational database can help you keep your data separate from your analysis, improve quality control of data entry, reduce duplication of data, and improve your ability to search across large and complex datasets. Structured Query Language, or SQL, is a powerful language used to search and manipulate relational databases. This workshop teaches participants about relational databases and SQL using SQLite. You will learn how to write queries in SQL and how to use aggregate functions to combine data. It uses examples and challenges from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and library research fields and uses librarycarpentry.org materials. There are no prerequisites. DETAILS & REGISTER

Using Git Tools to Manage File Changes and Collaborate: Version Control
21 November, 1300-1630hrs Atlantic
Version control is the practice of managing and sharing changes to documents, programming code, websites, or any other files to keep track of what’s been changed, by whom, when, and why. All previous versions of files are saved, and you can even revert to a previous version. Git-portal sites, like GitHub or GitLab, offer many useful features to facilitate collaborative development. This is a two-part series. In this beginner-level first session, we will show you how to create a repository, record changes to files, explore and restore from the recorded history, and resolve conflicts (when one member overwrites another’s changes). DETAILS & REGISTER

Using Git Tools to Manage File Changes and Collaborate: Collaboration
28 November, 1300-1630hrs Atlantic
This is the second session of our two-part series. This workshop will focus on collaborative development workflows using Git-collaboration sites like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket, and will demonstrate how to work with branches, issue tracking, contribute to projects using pull-/merge-requests, code-review, run CI/CD-pipelines, and use other common features of these platforms. Prerequisite: basic experience using Git version control, participation in the 21 November workshop, or attendance at the Git lecture of a software carpentry workshop. DETAILS & REGISTER

Visualization with R
29 November, 1300-1500hrs Atlantic
When working with large sets of numbers, it is often more useful to display the information graphically using histograms, scatter plots, bar charts, box plots, and other depictions. This workshop teaches participants how to gain insights into data through visualization using R as the programming language. Participants will learn how to create simple scatterplots, histograms, and box plots; compare the plotting features of base R and the ggplot2 package; plot with ggplot2; plot time series data; and arrange and export plots. Basic knowledge of R is recommended, although not mandatory. DETAILS & REGISTER