October 12 Newsletter

A reminder: The CEAB Accreditation is fast approaching. The dates for the visit are Sunday, October 21 to Tuesday, October 23.

If you are a course instructor for a core course and haven’t already done so, please remember to drop off your textbooks with Kevin in the Office of Student Services. If he is not around, leave them at the front desk. Please make sure you note which course the textbook is for.

Scholarship Announcement:

The Brikh Bhan Goyal Award is a $5,000 scholarship to be offered to a second year international graduate student (MASc or PhD) supervised by an assistant or associate professor in the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering. The scholarship recipient will be selected according to the following selection criteria:
* Academic excellence (40%)
* Research ability or potential (40%)
* Communication, interpersonal, and leadership abilities (20%)

We will be accepting nominations from supervisors until the end of the day today (Oct 12). Please nominate your eligible students by sending their name to Michael Godwin at civ.gradprograms@utoronto.ca  in the Office of Student Services.

We would like to present “The First Workshop on the Urban Genome” on Friday, November 2nd from 10am-4pm. This is a research project supported by the School of Cities, our website is https://urbangenome.utoronto.ca/. It is being held at the Daniels Faculty  (DA 200, 1 Spadina Crescent). The event will be an introduction to the work being conducted in the Urban Genome Project, which is chiefly concerned with developing and understanding a science of cities. How and why do cities emerge, coalesce, transform, and dissolve? What are the underlying recipes or routines that produce both their common structures and their local distinctness?  To pursue these questions, we adapt core evolutionary concepts in which life itself is an experimental learning process.  In this view, cities too are complex overlapping experiments in creating environments that sustain intense and dynamic possibilities for interaction.  Our goal is to characterize these experiments, understand how they turn out, and to help cities themselves to learn from the results. 
This event is open to all Faculty, Staff and Students–lunch is provided. 

Upcoming Seminar:

The Problem with Persistence: PFAS as Extreme Emerging Water Contaminant

Per and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) comprise a large group of industrial chemicals that have become pervasive environmental contaminants. Among them, long-chain perfluorinated alkyl acids are now recognized as extremely persistent, bioavailable, and bioaccumulative substances. Growing concern regarding their toxicological effects has led to (largely voluntary) phaseouts in the US and Europe. Short-chain acids were suggested as immediate drop-in replacements because they do not bioaccumulate and are therefore considered less toxic. Yet emerging data on the potential toxicity of even very low levels of certain PFAS is driving regional “action levels” in drinking water in the part per trillion range.

At the same time, a wide variety of “alternative PFAS” have increased production to fill market demand. Thousands of different PFAS, with a variety of chain lengths, degrees of fluorination, and functional groups are now used in industries ranging from firefighting to industrial processing to personal care products to food packaging. Very little is known about the bioaccumulation potential and toxic effects of these replacement compounds.

In this seminar, we will explore why current risk assessment paradigms and water treatment approaches fail to adequately capture or mitigate the risks posed by PFAS and discuss strategies for addressing this pressing global contamination problem.

Attention Grad Students

Gradlife presents:

Grad Connections

Fridays (Bi-Weekly), 2:00-3:30pm
SGS Lounge, 63 St George St.

Take a break and connect with other grad students at our bi-weekly chat forum. Share your experiences in an informal setting, talk about your

challenges and life as a graduate student. An expert staff facilitator will be available to answer questions related to each week’s theme.

Coffee and tea will be available. Register: bookit.studentlife.utoronto.ca Space is limited to 20 students.

Upcoming Chats:

Friday, October 12

Students with family responsibilities (Facilitator: Family Care office)

Friday, October 26

Feeling like an Imposter in Grad School (Facilitator: Academic Success)

Upcoming GCAC Workshops

This workshop offers strategies for writing a strong grant proposal, a genre that is often unfamiliar to graduate students. Special emphasis will be placed on SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR and OGS proposals, but the principles covered in the lecture will be relevant to other kinds of proposals as well. We will discuss how to pitch your proposal to the appropriate audience and examine strategies for balancing the need for clarity and accessibility with the need for specificity. We will also look at the basic structure of research proposals, with special attention to writing a strong opening paragraph.
 
When: Monday. Oct 15,  4:30 to 6:00 pm                          
Where: Bissell Building, 140 St. George Street, Rm. 205
Instructor: Dr. Daniel Newman
 

This workshop will be jointly led by Dr. Freeman, Director of GCAC, and Jeff Newman, College Librarian, New College. In the workshop we will consider strategies for note-taking during lectures and in response to written texts, the varying benefits of different formats for note taking (by hand, in Word, and/or in a citation management software), and strategies for using spreadsheets to compare what you read in a range of articles. We will explore ways in which a citation management package like Zotero or Mendeley can be used to take, store, organize and manage notes and related materials for a variety of academic tasks. Using electronic tools can both solve and create problems, as can other formats of note taking. In the workshop we will encourage you to reflect on which of your current note-taking habits are serving you well and what new strategies might help you at your current stage of study.
 
When: Tuesday, Oct. 16,  4:30 to 6:00 pm
Where: Bissell Building, 140 St. George Street, Rm. 205
Instructor: Dr. Jane Freeman and Jeff Newman

For more information CLICK HERE.

Winter 2019 TA Positions Announced!

Opportunity for Grad Students:

Award Announcement

Attention International Students