Dr. Kathy Singfield Honoured with Educational Leadership Award

Dr. Kathy Singfield

Dr. Kathy Singfield, faculty member in the Department of Chemistry, has been awarded the Dr. Geraldine Thomas Educational Leadership Award.

In 2007, the Quality of Teaching Committee (now the Senate Committee on Learning and Teaching) established an Educational Leadership Award to recognize the long-term commitment of faculty who develop, enhance, and promote the quality of teaching at Saint Mary’s and beyond. The Committee gratefully acknowledges the support of the Saint Mary’s University Faculty Union for this Award. The Award is named for Dr. Geraldine Thomas, national teaching award winner and founding member of the Quality of Teaching Committee. Throughout her academic career, Dr. Thomas supported efforts to improve teaching and learning within the University, the Atlantic region, and nationally.

As both an educator and an administrator, Dr. Kathy Singfield has made an outstanding contribution to student success at Saint Mary’s University. Since joining the Department of Chemistry in 1997, through her work as Department Chair, and as Associate Dean of Science – Curriculum, Dr. Singfield has been guided by a single passion: to help shape and manage the experiences through which Saint Mary’s students prepare for their own life-long learning in careers, further study, and as engaged citizens.

From classroom to community, Dr. Singfield has demonstrated remarkable leadership and mentorship of both her fellow faculty and students. In the Department of Chemistry, she championed the implementation of active learning strategies, creating over fifty popular YouTube instructional videos for first-year chemistry student lab and coursework. As Chair of Saint Mary’s Department of Chemistry in 2009, she was instrumental in the development of the unit’s first strategic five-year plan.

Drawing from her commitment to staying abreast of high-impact education practices, Dr. Singfield has made significant contributions to the success of new students at Saint Mary’s. Within the Faculty of Science, she initiated and managed a science faculty-student mentor program that ran for over a decade until, under her leadership, it evolved into the PEER One Mentorship program in 2013. In recent years, Dr. Singfield has led academic orientation for all science students.

At the university-wide level, her colleagues credit her for her tremendous leadership of the Committee on Academic Planning, which spearheaded many of the initiatives that will form the core of Saint Mary’s comprehensive new first-year student experience. Following this, the conceptual framework she introduced through her role on the Community and Student Engagement (CASE) Committee, will further guide the development of this new programming.

A true scientist, Dr. Singfield believes that “change involves decision making that is supported by evidence.” Consequently, she is deeply committed to the employment of high-impact practices and developments in teaching and learning, and higher education development. She believes strongly in sharing this information with her colleagues across disciplines, because, as she is wont to say, “It is always about the students.”

Saint Mary’s Astronomer Awarded Canada Research Chair

Dr. Marcin Sawicki

Saint Mary’s University has been awarded one new Canada Research Chair and one renewal, the Government of Canada announced last week. Dr. Marcin Sawicki was named Canada Research Chair (Tier I) in Astronomy, and Gavin Fridell was renewed as Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in International Development Studies.

Dr. Gavin Fridell

Dr. Sawicki’s research explores the formation and evolution of galaxies at epochs when the universe was only a fraction of its present age. Using telescopes on the Earth’s surface and in space, including NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope set to launch in 2018, Dr. Sawicki explores how stars formed in the early universe to create carbon, iron and silicon—the elements necessary for life.

Created in 2000, the Canada Research Chair Program invests $300 million per year across Canada to attract and retain the world’s most accomplished and promising minds.

Saint Mary’s University proudly hosts a number of Canada Research Chairs:

Dr. Najah Attig
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Finance

Dr. Christa Brosseau
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Sustainable Chemistry and Materials

Dr. Gavin Fridell
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in International Development Studies

Dr. S Karly Kehoe
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Atlantic Canada Communities

Dr. Kevin E. Kelloway
Canada Research Chair in Occupational Health Psychology

Dr. Marcin Sawicki
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Astronomy

Dr. Rob Thacker
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Computational Astrophysics

Dr. Gregory Ventura
Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Petroleum Systems, Geochemistry and Reservoir Characterization
 

SMU students bring home six awards from ChemCon event

Ifenna Mbaezue, Taylor Link, Julia Killorn, Melanie Davidson, Kaitlyn Blatt-Janmatt, Kyle Awalt

Saint Mary’s Department of Chemistry took home six awards at the Science Atlantic/CIC Chemistry Conference, better known as ChemCon, held May 4-6 at Memorial University. Thirteen Saint Mary’s students took part in the annual conference, which acknowledges the research excellence of students across the Maritimes.

Saint Mary’s undergraduates won awards for both oral and poster presentations related to computational modelling and material; physical, theoretical, and computational chemistry; medicinal chemistry; and analytical chemistry. All of the students’ presentations were based on research they conducted under the supervision of researchers at Saint Mary’s University.

Winners

• Ifenna Mbaezue
  ACEnet Award in Computational Modelling and Material
  A Spectroscopic and Computational Investigation of the Rh-catalyzed [5+1+2+1] Cycloaddition Reaction
• Taylor Lynk
  Best Undergraduate Oral Presentation in Analytical Chemistry
  Green Synthetic Approaches for the Production of High Performance Plasmonic Sensors
• Melanie Davidson
  Best Overall Oral Presentation in Physical, Theoretical & Computational Chemistry
  Exploration of Surface Plasmon-Assisted Catalysis (SPAC) as a New Route for Heterogeneous Catalysis
• Kyle Awalt
  Best Overall Poster Presentation
  Utility of Iron Nanoparticles and a Solution-Phase Iron Species for the N-demethylation of Alkaloids
• Julia Killorn
  Best Overall Oral Presentation in Biological/Medicinal
  Modified Polonovski Reactions in Ionic Liquid Solvents 
• Kaitlyn Blatt-Janmaat
  Science Atlantic Award for Best Undergraduate Student Presentation
  Adventures in Ionic Thiourea Organocatalysis in Ionic Liquid Solvents

Computing and Data Analytics students win prizes, internships at Hackathon

Students in the M.Sc. in Computing and Data Analytics program at Saint Mary’s University won top prizes and internships at last weekend's Hackathon.

The top two teams comprised students from the M.Sc. program at Saint Mary’s, while a group from Acadia University won third place. The cash prizes totalled $5000, with $10,000 also available in potential internship opportunities.

The event, hosted by SMU and sponsored by the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, IBM, and the David Sobey Centre for Innovation in Retailing and Services, was open to current students and new professionals who graduated after January 2015. It took place over three days.

From Atlantic Lottery: “We believe that delving into data can unleash many new opportunities for our customers and our retailers. The goal of this hackathon is to help us identify areas where we can improve, innovate, and implement the latest technologies and service design to make positive impacts in the retail experience.”

The winning team of Reshma Gopinathan, Shahriar Mullick Swapnil, Akhilesh Kotiya, and Ross MacDonald won prizes totaling $2400.

Judges were from T4G, IBM, CGI, Government of Canada, SimplyCast, Affinio, Venor, Living Loyalty, Gartner, and Leadsift.

Saint Mary's takes Provincial Open Data Challenge by storm

Top: Sunil Udhayakumar, unknown, judge, Siddharthsenthil Thangharaj, Rasheed Andrews
Middle: Raj Sonani, Kanngi Mahajan, judge, Sanjeevi Ramachandran, Shahriar Mullick Swapnil, Bo Li
Bottom: Janice Lobo, Vivek Karunakaran, judge, Jie Pan

Teams from the Saint Mary's MSc in Computing & Data Analytics (MScCDA) program took the Provincial Open Data Challenge by storm, garnering 1st prize, 3rd prize, and the People's Choice Award.

The event, supported by the province, SIM and hosted at the Dalhousie University, was part of Open Data Day celebrations, March 4.

The challenge is focused on three main areas: 

1. Promoting tourism
2. Assisting new immigrants
3. Effective management of Nova Scotia's natural resources and protection of the environment

 Participants were expected to tackle projects involving application development, data anayis and predictive modelling.

See the story on CBC.ca.

Saint Mary’s launches Success Maps to support students

Dr. Steven Smith, Dean of Science, introduces Success Maps.

Saint Mary's has launched Success Maps, a tool to help students set goals, track accomplishments, discover new opportunities, and prepare for their post-graduation career.

Students using the site will be given guidance on their specific academic requirements and suggestions for other worthwhile activities tailored to their year and their major. They can use the site on their own, and as a tool to review their progress with academic advisors.

Saint Mary’s is the first university in Atlantic Canada to offer such a resource to its students, and only the second in Canada.

The launch was attended by Karen Oldfield, Board Chair; Robert Summerby-Murray, President & Vice-Chancellor; and Dr. Steven Smith, Dean of Science.

Kitrina Godding (BSc ’05) spoke about her experiences at Saint Mary's as being a strong foundation for her life as a geologist, offshore surveyor and accomplished SCUBA diver.

Interest in creating the conditions that enhance student learning and supporting students in their educational goals is at an all-time high at Canadian universities.

The Success Maps tool is representative of Saint Mary’s University's ongoing efforts to help students make successful transitions into university, through their academic programs, and into the larger community as knowledgeable citizens of the world.

Helping working women diagnosed with breast cancer

New research being conducted at Saint Mary’s University will help working women diagnosed with breast cancer. The Work Wellness Team led by Saint Mary’s professors Dr. Lucie Kocum and Dr. Catherine Loughlin and Dalhousie professor Dr. Lynne Robinson, is conducting workshops at Saint Mary’s this week to create interventions that will help women diagnosed with breast cancer in the workplace.

According to the Canadian Cancer Society, breast cancer is the second deadliest cancer for women. Every day, 68 women in Canada are diagnosed with breast cancer most of whom are of working age.

“Breast cancer is the cancer of the working woman,” says Dr. Kocum. “It can have devastating effects on working women that other forms of cancer just don’t seem to have. Women become unemployed after being diagnosed with breast cancer, more than any other cancer. Why is that?”

Thanks to funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Saint Mary's University and the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation community partners from across Canada came together at Saint Mary’s this week for the first of many meetings to be held over the next two years to develop and test workplace interventions.

“Our research is unique as we will meet with union members, academics, breast cancer survivors, insurance companies and disability professionals, says Dr. Kocum. “Each brings a different perspective to the issue and allows us to brainstorm and test the best practices for employers and employees to implement to better cope with illness and promote health within the workplace.”

The first Partnership for a Healthy Workplace Response to Breast Cancer meeting is being held at the Sobey School of Business Unilever Lounge on Wednesday, July 20 from 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.