For Alumni & Friends
CENTENNIAL EDITION • 2011
inspiring lives of leadership and purpose
Celebrating 100 years of academic excellence.
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contents
History One hundred years
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With the help of historian Andrew Thomson, we look at six pivotal moments amid a century of growth and change.
Great moments in the life of a university
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A lot can happen in 100 years, as our crowded centennial timeline attests.
Departments 5
President’s Corner
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Great minds, bright ideas
Alumni News
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We check in with a few of the great thinkers who are helping us to shine in research.
Campus News
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Great teachers
Homecoming News 56 Centennial Update 62
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Academics
Editor’s Note
LAURIER CAMPUS Centennial Edition 2011
Academic excellence isn’t just about making grand discoveries – it’s also about passing that newfound knowledge on to the next generation of scholars, as these great Laurier mentors know well.
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contents
Campus life 30
The ongoing moment Fencing on the roof of Willison Hall. Rawking the Hawk at Homecoming. Watching the rock band Rush perform in their early days. A photographic tour of the university of days gone by.
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Fond memories Our days on campus may be long past, but the memories remain strong. Five alumni share fond recollections from their Laurier years.
sports 38
Hawk of ages From small-school upstarts to established national players, our Golden Hawk athletes have never ceased to amaze and inspire us with their winning ways.
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Golden years A brief look at five great Laurier sports dynasties.
Today & Tomorrow 44
Burgeoning Brantford When the university’s Brantford campus opened in 1999, there were just 39 students, three full-time staff and one cat. Since then, the campus has blossomed into a thriving, 2,300-student institution that’s having a big impact on the city – and on Laurier.
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The next 100 years With the help of Laurier’s senior administrators, we look at a few of the key changes the university is making to lay the groundwork for a stellar second century.
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What’s in a name? 1911-1924 Waterloo Lutheran Seminary
1924-1960 Waterloo College
1960-1973 Waterloo Lutheran University
1973-today Wilfrid Laurier University
For Wilfrid Laurier University, it’s a 100-year-old legacy of inspiring lives of leadership and purpose. In 100 years from now, what will your legacy be? Help Laurier ignite the minds, spirits and hearts of our communities for another 100 years by leaving a charitable bequest in your will today. To find out how, please contact Cec Joyal, Development Officer, Individual & Legacy Giving at cjoyal@wlu.ca or 519.884.0710 ext 3864.
Editor’s note
One hundred years and counting
Volume 51, Number 1, Centennial 2011 ISSN 0700-5105
Laurier Campus is published by the Department of Communications, Public Affairs & Marketing (CPAM) Wilfrid Laurier University 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 Publisher: Jacqui Tam Assistant Vice-President: Communications, Public Affairs & Marketing Editor: Nicholas Dinka Writers: Mallory O’Brien ‘08, Sandra Muir, Justin Fauteaux, Natalie Gallo Design: Erin Steed Photography: Tomasz Adamski, Dean Palmer Researchers: Erin Klassen, Samantha Dzikewicz, Sara Lawrence Send address changes to: Address Updates, Development and Alumni Relations Email: alumaddress@wlu.ca Phone: (519) 884-0710 ext. 3176
It may be impossible, in a single ephemeral publication, to do any kind of justice to a story as rich and varied as that of Laurier’s last hundred years, but we’re giving it our best shot. This special commemorative issue of Campus magazine features a third more pages than a regular issue, and is divided into five tent-pole sections – history, academics, campus life, sports, and the future – to ensure we cover as many facets of the story as possible. We hope you’ll enjoy what follows, and perhaps learn something new about your alma mater in the process. (Did you know about the theology and ethics professor who developed his own electric car in the early 1980s? See page 20 for more.) The stories that follow were a hundred years in the making, and there’s no need to hurry through them in a single sitting. While we think we’ve been quite comprehensive in our coverage, you may be surprised by a notable gap on the alumni front. An alumni magazine that avoids mention of prominent alumni might seem like an oxymoron, but there’s method to our madness. This fall,
the university will be announcing its centennial 100 Alumni of Achievement list, which recognizes 100 of Laurier’s most brilliant, innovative and accomplished alumni. With that in mind, we’re keeping our powder dry, in anticipation of a big burst of celebration this fall. In addition to a gala dinner in honour of the 100 selectees, the university will be issuing a special publication detailing the lives and accomplishments of these impressive and inspiring grads, to be packaged with the upcoming Winter 2011 issue of Laurier Campus. We hope that the break in alumni coverage will help to whet your appetite for what’s to come. In the meantime, we invite you to enjoy our current look at the past, present and future of a great university on its hundredth anniversary. Congratulations, Laurier – and many happy returns.
Nicholas Dinka
Publications Mail Registration No. 40020414 Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: CPAM Wilfrid Laurier University 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 We welcome and encourage your feedback. Send letters to the editor to ndinka@wlu.ca. We reserve the right to edit all submissions.
Laurier Campus (circ. 61,000) is published three times a year by CPAM. Opinions expressed in Campus do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or the university’s administration. Visit us online at www.wlu.ca/publicaffairs
Questions, comments, rants or raves? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at ndinka@wlu.ca.
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PRESIDENT’S corner
A remarkable year for a remarkable institution It has been a remarkable year for a remarkable institution. Wilfrid Laurier University, which traces its roots to the opening of the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary of Canada on Oct. 30, 1911, has been enjoying an exuberant, yearlong centennial celebration that began last fall. From the festive banners that adorn campus buildings in Waterloo and Brantford to the many concerts, conferences and special initiatives that have been held to date, the Laurier community has been celebrating its centennial with the kind of engagement, creativity and passion that typifies this extraordinary university. Our recent spring convocation ceremonies were infused with the centennial excitement, from the colourful banners that framed the stage to the extraordinary lineup of honorary degree recipients, including Senator and LieutenantGeneral (retired) Roméo Dallaire; former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour; musician Raffi Cavoukian; children’s rights advocates Craig and Marc Kielburger; scientist and academic leader Arthur J. Carty; Lutheran Bishop Michael Pryse; medical doctor and humanitarian Neil Arya; and business leaders and philanthropists Linda Hasenfratz and H. Fisk Johnson. In June, we also announced the largest-ever capital contribution in the university’s history — a $72.6-million investment by the Ontario government to establish the $103-million Global Innovation Exchange on the site of the former St. Michael elementary school at the Waterloo campus. This four-storey, state-of-the-art education facility will house Laurier’s business, economics and mathematics programs. It will have a transformative impact on Laurier, expanding our ability to deliver leading-edge programming and enhancing our physical presence with a signature building on University Avenue.
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This substantial government investment during Laurier’s centennial year is a recognition of our long history of academic excellence and our ongoing track record of educational innovation. The design of the Global Innovation Exchange, and the communications technology within it, will allow Laurier to engage with partners and students at the local, national and international levels. As a university community, we certainly have much to celebrate. Over the past 100 years, this institution has fostered a distinct culture that combines academic excellence with a unique sense of community, leadership and engagement. Our students, alumni, faculty and staff continue to excel personally while putting their education, skills and experience to work for the good of others and the betterment of society. We truly are a community that inspires lives of leadership and purpose. In the months between now and our 100th anniversary on Oct. 30, the Laurier family will have many more opportunities to celebrate the centennial, including Homecoming, the unveiling of a new statue of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and a concluding weekend that promises great music, food and fellowship. I encourage you to join in the fun and help make Laurier’s centennial a celebration to remember.
Dr. Max Blouw President and Vice-Chancellor Wilfrid Laurier University
ALUMNI news
Celebrating 100 years of alumni excellence WLUAA 2011-13 Executive President Tom Berczi ’88, ’93 Vice-President Megan Harris ’00 Vice-President Marc Henein ’04 Treasurer Marc Richardson ’95 Honorary President Dr. Max Blouw Past President Steve Wilkie ’82, ’89
Board of Directors Bruce Armstrong ’72 Peter Batson ‘69 Scott Bebenek ’85 Thomas Cadman ‘87 Marie-Helene Colaiezzi ‘07, ‘08 Sourov De ‘05 Paul Dickson ‘03 Peter Gobran ‘99 Paul Maxwell ‘07 Michelle Missere ‘06 Andrea Murik ‘96 Kiran Nagra ‘02 David Oates ‘70 Priya Persaud ’98 Karen Rice ‘87 Chris Rushforth ‘80 Shirley Schmidt ‘86, ‘09 Kelly Schoonderwoerd ‘03 Maeve Strathy ‘10 Cynthia Sundberg ‘90
Board of Governors Representatives
Spring Convocation was another great success with Laurier now exceeding 79,000 alumni in its centennial year. A welcome address to our new graduates was delivered at each of the 12 ceremonies by Alumni Association directors and a member of the GTA West Alumni Chapter. The Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Association (WLUAA) Board will welcome six new directors in September. Four spots were filled as a result of regular director turnover. We will also be increasing our Board size by two to provide additional support to our Communications and University Advancement committees. I would like to acknowledge the outstanding service of one of our departing directors, Chris Pehlke (BBA ’00). He has served on the Alumni Association Board for nine consecutive years, including the past three as treasurer. Chris’s commitment to WLUAA and to Laurier has been exceptional. Thank you, Chris, for your dedication and service. Our GradVantages Committee has been busy finalizing a number of affinity agreements this spring. We have added Premier Fitness to
our list of GradVantages partners, which gives all Laurier alumni the opportunity to purchase discounted gym memberships at any Premier location. We also renewed our credit card agreement with BMO MasterCard, our partner for the past six years. Approximately 525 alumni and 365 students currently carry the Laurier-branded credit card and we hope to see these numbers increase significantly in the next few years. The MasterCard program offers great value to those who use it and a portion of all purchases help fund our many student awards, alumni event programming and capital support for the university. This year’s Homecoming will feature a very special centennial event sponsored by the Alumni Association: the Centennial Alumni Celebration, honouring our 100 Alumni of Achievement and centennial reunion classes, to be held Saturday, Oct. 1 at Bingemans in Kitchener. It will be a great opportunity for us to meet and learn about the many exceptional graduates who have had such a lasting impact on Laurier and the world.
Tom Berczi ’88, ‘93 President, WLUAA tberczi@wlu.ca
Tom Berczi ’88, ‘93 Tim Martin ‘92 Steve Wilkie ‘82, ‘89
Senate Representatives Susan Lockett ‘99 David Oates ’70 John Trus ’90
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campusnews Province invests $72.6 million in Laurier
Funding for Global Innovation Exchange is largest capital investment in university’s history He may not have tied it up in ribbons and bows, but when the Hon. John Milloy revealed the provincial investment that he jokingly called “Laurier’s 100th anniversary present” on June 20, it was met with the kind of surprised enthusiasm someone might express upon opening a gift they’d never dreamed possible. Milloy, Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, committed $72.6 million to the Global Innovation Exchange (GIE) facility at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Waterloo campus. The announcement represents the largest single capital investment in the university’s history. “Laurier produces a steady stream of graduates key to our local and provincial economies,” Milloy told a large crowd of Laurier community members and supporters in the Senate & Board Chamber. “This announcement builds on the excellence that Laurier has built for 100 years. This facility is dedicated to developing young minds.” The signature GIE building will be located on University Avenue between Hemlock and Hickory streets, and will become home to Laurier’s School of Business and Economics (SBE) and Department of Mathematics. The total project cost, which includes renovations to the Peters Building, is $103 million. Laurier has accelerated its fundraising efforts to raise the remaining $30 million. “This major investment in Laurier is an investment in the prosperity of the region and the province and the
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tremendous potential of our students,” said Max Blouw, the university’s president and vice-chancellor. “Government support during Laurier’s centennial year recognizes our history of academic excellence and innovation and fosters our purposeful growth into Laurier’s next century.” Housing SBE and Mathematics together in the GIE will enhance the synergies between Laurier’s business and applied and financial math programs and serve as an iconic representation of the leadership role Laurier plays in Canadian business and Waterloo’s technology industry. “This new facility, and the people and programs within it, will enable the university to meet the growing demand for enrolment in Laurier’s business and math programs and support Canada’s future business leaders,” said Deb MacLatchy, vicepresident: academic. “The GIE will expand Laurier’s ability to deliver integrated and engaged learning opportunities across our campuses to students at the local and global levels.” Laurier’s Faculties of Arts, Science and Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies will also benefit directly from the GIE, as the new facility will create opportunities through the increased available space in the Arts, Bricker Academic, Schlegel and Peters buildings. In his remarks at the announcement event, Blouw said the GIE will allow Laurier to show a new, forward-looking face in Waterloo, with a bold presence on University Avenue, and also nationally and globally through Laurier’s programs and partnerships. “If it is possible for a building to represent a philosophy and a culture, then the Global Innovation Exchange does that. The partnerships that created it, and the future partnerships it will foster, truly inspire lives of leadership and purpose,” said Blouw. For detailed information about the GIE facility, including frequently asked questions, artist’s renderings and media coverage, visit the GIE website: www.wlu.ca/GIE
campus news
Max Blouw appointed to second term as Laurier president Reappointment
Laurier’s Board of Governors has appointed Max Blouw to a second fiveyear term as president and vice-chancellor of the university. His current term began Sept. 1, 2007 and runs until Aug. 31, 2012; his second term will run from Sept. 1, 2012 to Aug. 31, 2017. “As Laurier celebrates its centennial, we are pleased and fortunate that Dr. Blouw will remain as president and vice-chancellor for another term to lead the university forward into its next century,” said John Ormston, chair of the Board of Governors. Blouw joined Laurier as president and vice-chancellor after a distinguished career at the University of Northern British Columbia and St. Francis Xavier University. A biologist with a keen interest in research, Blouw is active in national and provincial academic affairs. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and its Standing Advisory Committee on University Research. He is also on the Executive Committee of the Council of Ontario Universities and serves as co-chair of the CollegeUniversity Consortium Council. “Laurier has an extremely bright future ahead of it, thanks in large part to its vibrant sense of community and the many talented faculty, staff and students who work so hard to make this university one of the best in Canada,” said Blouw.
People at Laurier Farouk Ahamed has been named chair of Laurier’s Board of Governors for a two-year term. Ahamed is president of ADF Invescap Inc. and a former partner at Ernst & Young with over 30 years of financial experience. A Laurier graduate (BBA ’80), Ahamed is serving his second term on the Board of Governors. He is also a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the School of Business & Economics. Laurier’s Board of Governors has appointed Jim Butler to a third fiveyear term as vice-president: finance and administration. Butler’s next
term will run from Sept. 1, 2012 to Aug. 31, 2017. He joined Laurier in August 2002 after a 14-year career in university administration at the University of Windsor, where he also taught in the Faculty of Business Administration. Laurier has appointed media scholar Abby Goodrum to the role of vice-president: research, effective July 1. As vice-president: research, Goodrum will lead Laurier’s Office of Research Services, providing vision, strategy and support for Laurier’s overall research endeavours. Goodrum previously held the Velma Rogers Graham Research Chair in News,
Media and Technology at Ryerson University, where she also served as associate dean for Research in the Faculty of Communication & Design. Laurier has named Nick Coady as dean of the Faculty of Social Work and reappointed Joan Norris to a second term as dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies. Norris will begin her second term in January 2012 following a research sabbatical. Coady will take over the role of dean of the Faculty of Social Work from Susan Cadell on July 1. Cadell, who has served as acting dean since January 2010, will be taking a sabbatical to focus on research and graduate student supervision.
LAURIER CAMPUS Centennial Edition 2011
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campus news
Centennial excitement at spring convocation
convocation 2011
The celebratory spirit of Laurier’s centennial filled the 2011 spring convocation ceremonies with added excitement for the nearly 2,500 graduates and their families who gathered on the Waterloo and Brantford campuses in mid-June. The excitement was heightened by a lineup of well-known honorary degree recipients that included Senator and Lieutenant-General (retired) Roméo Dallaire; former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour; musician Raffi Cavoukian; children’s rights advocates Craig and Marc Kielburger; scientist and academic leader Arthur J. Carty; Lutheran Bishop Michael Pryse; medical doctor and humanitarian Neil Arya; and business leaders and philanthropists Linda Hasenfratz and H. Fisk Johnson. The convocation stages at both the Waterloo and Brantford ceremonies were framed by long, vertical centennial banners, and each graduate received a commemorative centennial tote bag. As well, each ceremony was streamed live via the Internet. “Celebrating the academic success of our students is a moment of great pride for our whole community,” said Registrar Ray Darling. “Many of our students will treasure the milestone of convocation for years to come, especially because they are graduating in Laurier’s centennial year.” For the first time in Laurier Brantford, a bagpiper led graduating students through the downtown as they moved in procession from the Research and Academic Centre to the Sanderson Centre for the Performing Arts, where the convocation ceremonies were held. “It made it a celebration for not only the students and their accomplishments, but also the City of Brantford,” said Kevin Klein, external relations coordinator for Laurier Brantford. Raffi Cavoukian
Development Day
Dragons’ Den co-star talks business with Laurier alumni How successful you are all depends on you. That was just one of the life lessons successful entrepreneur and co-star of CBC’s Dragons’ Den and ABC’s Shark Tank Robert Herjavec told a packed auditorium at Laurier Development Day May 6. In his speech, Herjavec entertained the crowd with stories of his family, including a touching tale in which he bought his father, who’d often struggled to make ends meet, a much-loved Cadillac. He also talked about how he overcame great odds to become a successful serial entrepreneur, amassing a personal fortune worth over $100 million. “I love being Canadian. And I love being Canadian because this is truly the land of opportunity,” said Herjavec. “You have only one person to blame if you’re not successful on
your terms in this country. And you look at that person in the mirror every day.” Herjavec, the son of Croatian immigrants, arrived in Halifax with his family at the age of eight after escaping communism in Yugoslavia. In the early 1990s, he waited tables at a posh restaurant in Toronto’s Yorkville area and by night launched BRAK systems, which soon became Canada’s top provider of Internet security software. Herjavec sold BRAK to AT&T in 2000. He then helped negotiate the sale of another technology company to Nokia for $225 million. After a three-year hiatus, he formed The Herjavec Group (THG), which is one of Canada’s top security companies. “It’s not about where you came from. It’s about what did you do with the 24 hours you got today over the person next to you,” he said. Laurier’s Development Day, coordinated by the university’s Development and Alumni Relations Department, is an annual event that features personal and professional development sessions. This year it also featured a keynote speech by learning and communication whiz Brian Thwaits.
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Leave your mark. LITERALLY.
Artist’s rendering
Thanks to your generous donations and a dollar-for-dollar matching gift up to $10,000 from the WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION, we have nearly reached our goal to bring Sir Wilfrid Laurier to campus. But, we still need your help! There’s still time to donate. With your gift of $100 or more, you will help bring a new landmark to campus and receive a rare opportunity for public recognition of your support. It’s your chance to be part of something special – the creation of a new campus focal point for future generations. Learn more about the project or donate now:
LAURIER100.CA/STATUE
campus news a notable move
David Docherty named president of Mount Royal University Laurier political scientist David Docherty, widely known for his expertise in federal and provincial affairs, has been named president of Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. Docherty takes up his new duties at Mount Royal on Aug. 1. “David has made many outstanding contributions to Wilfrid Laurier University as a teacher, scholar, administrator and colleague,” said Max Blouw, Laurier’s president and vicechancellor. “His experience, passion and good humour will be missed.” Docherty received his BA from Laurier in 1984 and went on to earn a master’s degree from McMaster University and a PhD from the University of Toronto. He returned to Laurier as a professor of political science in 1994. Docherty has held a number of senior positions during his time at Laurier, including chair of the Department of Political Science and dean of the Faculty of Arts. Most recently, he has served as senior advisor, multi-campus initiatives, and played a lead role on the President’s Task Force on Multi-Campus Governance. He has also been an active member of the Canadian Political Science Association and helped to organize the association’s first stand-alone annual conference, held at Laurier May 16-18, 2011. “I am going to miss everyone at Laurier,” Docherty said. “I have been here as a professor since 1994 and have made many lasting friendships. I am grateful to the university and the many individuals who made coming to work each day such an enjoyable experience.”
Brittany Shaw named Outstanding Woman of Laurier
Female athletes honoured
Student athlete Brittany Shaw was named the 2011 Outstanding Woman of Laurier (OWL). Shaw, co-captain of the Laurier swim team, received the award at a luncheon at the Waterloo Inn Conference Hotel. “I’m proud to be here representing Laurier women, not only as successful students, but also as successful athletes who somehow find time to volunteer in our community,” said Shaw. “I’d like to thank my classmates and teammates. Together we represent a community at Laurier that strives for excellence.” Shaw is a fourth-year biochemistry and biotechnology student from Kitchener, Ontario. She has been a member of the women’s swim team since her first year at Laurier and became captain in her third year. Shaw accepted her award in front of more than 300 people attending the awards luncheon. Thirteen women competed for the prestigious award this year, including two who joined Shaw as finalists: Hanna Burnett, a third-year arts student who plays on the women’s lacrosse team, and Samantha Schmalz, a third-year kinesiology and physical
Centennial Fanfare
education student and member of the varsity women’s rugby team. The event also featured a keynote address by Canadian figure skater and Olympic bronze medalist Joannie Rochette. Rochette spoke about the discipline and determination one needs to become an Olympic athlete. One of the keys to her success, she said, was to set small, attainable goals – something anyone can do in daily life. The university launched the Outstanding Women of Laurier award in 2006 to recognize female students who combine athletic and academic achievement with an active commitment to the community through volunteerism. This year’s event raised approximately $20,000 for women’s athletics at the university.
Laurier toots its own horn
The winning composition of the centennial Fanfare Competition by alumnus Kerry Roebuck (BMus ’95) was unveiled earlier this year at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Kitchener as part of the university’s 100th anniversary celebrations. Trumpets, tubas, trombones, French horns, cymbals and a snare drum brought to life a piece that will be played at convocation and other university ceremonies throughout the centennial year and into the future. “I think Laurier’s centennial is all about pride. It’s about celebration,” said Laurier President and Vice-Chancellor Max Blouw. “This music is very much about celebration. It’s a beautiful piece.” In a nod to Laurier’s birthday, the one-minute composition is in the key of G-Major, because a low G measures approximately 100 Hz, and is set to a tempo of 100 beats per minute. “A lot of the inspiration for me came from the history of Laurier, which had a lot to do with the Lutheran university,” said Roebuck. “So I built it around the rose because I thought the rose had so many facets.” The piece was performed as part of a larger centennial celebration organized by Laurier’s Faculty of Music. Roebuck studied clarinet while at Laurier. He has lived in Montreal since 2002 and now enjoys a successful career as a music teacher and conductor. LAURIER CAMPUS Centennial Edition 2011
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Academics
Great Minds,
IDEAS By Mallory O’Brien
At their very core, universities are places of teaching, research and scholarship. Faculty members explore the boundaries of their academic disciplines, and pass their newly unearthed knowledge on to their students, so that the next generation can push even further out into the unknown. While Laurier has long been known as a great teaching university, it has hosted many great researchers, too, and has done so since its early years – pioneering researchers such as Ulrich Leopold, Canada’s first musicologist, and Grace Anderson, an anthropologist who devoted her life to the advancement of the social sciences. With 15 research chair positions and 21 research centres and institutes, today’s Laurier is a place where research is more important than ever.
The following are just a few of the great thinkers who are helping us to shine in research, a critical area for the university, and for humanity.
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Music for the soul
Great moves For Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education Professors Quincy Almeida (pictured above) and Stephen Perry, research isn’t just about discovery: it’s also about making a difference in people’s lives. In 2005, Almeida opened the Sun Life Financial Movement Disorders Research and Rehabilitation Centre to help individuals suffering from basal ganglia diseases such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and progressive supranuclear palsy. The centre’s goal is to understand the brain dysfunction associated with these disorders and to translate that knowledge into inventions and rehabilitation strategies that improve patients’ movement control. Many of Almeida’s patients have experienced remarkable results. Take Connie Gilbert, for instance, who initially arrived at the centre wheelchair-bound and unable to speak, and who, a year later, walked on her own to a podium to hold forth at an event celebrating the centre’s work. Meanwhile, Perry has been working hard to gain a better understanding of the control of human movement, specifically the effects of injury- or age-related damage on a humble but crucial body part: the foot. Over the past 10 years, he and his colleagues have developed an insole called the Sole Sensor that alerts seniors when they are in danger of losing their balance, reducing the number of fall-related injuries. Recently, Perry and colleagues from the University of Guelph tickled the feet of astronauts returning from the space shuttle Endeavour and Atlantis missions. The research, designed to measure the influence of space travel on foot sensitivity, will provide important information about the links between hypersensitivity, balance control and the aging process. One small step for mankind!
When it comes to music research, Laurier is striking a unique chord. The university is home to the Manfred and Penny Conrad Institute for Music Therapy Research, not to mention Canada’s first and only graduate program in Music Therapy. Earlier this year, Laurier held its third International Music Therapy Research Conference, which focused on new and innovative ideas in clinical improvisation, a process through which therapists and patients use music to communicate. Founded in 2003, the institute promotes healing for victims of trauma and abuse and also assists patients with developmental, behavioural, mental health and communication challenges. Children with autism can benefit from music therapy, as can patients who require critical or palliative care. Since 2005, Heidi Ahonen, the institute’s director, has worked with the Sun Life Financial Movement Disorders Research and Rehabilitation Centre to study how music therapy can help patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Her own clinical observations show that low-frequency sound-wave therapy has a calming effect on people with Alzheimer’s disease. Ahonen is now planning to work with the Department of Psychology to study the brain waves of patients with neurological disorders, to explore how music can help improve their speech and brain processes. That will be music to their ears.
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The big chill The cold and mountainous regions of the world may be just that, but lately they’ve been generating a lot of heat in the media, as the research team at the university’s Cold Regions Research Centre can attest. Founded in 1988 by Kenneth Hewitt, the centre brings together an array of leading experts on the northern, Arctic and mountainous regions of the world. One of those experts is Brent Wolfe (pictured at right), who has spent much of the last decade solving some of the biggest environmental mysteries in northeastern Alberta. Lately he’s been looking at lake sediment in the Peace-Athabasca Delta, a large inland delta downstream from the Alberta oil sands near Fort McMurray, amid widespread concern that oil pollution in the delta is to blame for high cancer rates in the nearby First Nations community of Fort Chipewyan. William Quinton is another leading researcher at the centre. His work examines the hydrology of the Northwest Territories, where the presence of snow and ice above and below ground impacts how water moves through its natural cycle. Using field studies, remote sensing and numerical modeling, Quinton is fine-tuning our ability to predict the cycling of water in northern landscapes, which in turn helps to predict the future availability of northern water resources in the face of climate warming and human disturbance. Oil sands development, northern climate change, and the future of our water supply: all are topics of major concern these days. Thankfully, researchers like Wolfe and Quinton are determined to get us the cold, hard facts.
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Brain games Cognitive neuroscientist Sukhvinder S. Obhi has a passion for exploring the very organ that allows us to study the world in the first place. An active member of Laurier’s Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and the principal investigator of the Cognition in Action Lab, Obhi conducts experiments on everything from social identity and mimicry to consumer behaviour. His research has a wide variety of applications, from assisting people with brain disorders to understanding the inner workings of consciousness. Obhi’s team recently determined that causing subjects to think “socially,” by showing words like “together” and “integrate” while displaying an action on a video screen, increased activity in the motor system of the subjects’ brain. Causing them to think independently, with words like “alone,” reduced activity. Obhi speculates the technique could one day be used to help people with disorders affecting social cognition, like autism, to process social information more successfully. Currently, he is conducting experiments on actions performed in a social environment, a scenario known in his field as “joint action” – what fans of Sesame Street may remember as good old-fashioned co-operation. Obhi and his team recently demonstrated that working on a joint-action task with another human results in a sense of agency for the outcome (a feeling of having caused the outcome) but working with a computerized, nonhuman “partner” does not. Tech junkies be warned: if a sense of accomplishment has been eluding you lately, it may be time for some human-on-human interaction.
Off the beaten track Cities have been a hot academic topic in recent years, and it’s no wonder: since 2008, for the first time in the world’s history, more people live in cities than anywhere else. But Brenda Murphy’s research goes against that grain, exploring small towns and remote rural communities, and the unique challenges that people in these areas face. A decade ago, Murphy and fellow researcher Holly Dolan made their names with a study of the town of Walkerton, where agricultural waste had been allowed into the town’s water supply, harming about 2,500 people and killing at least seven. Their research found that 97 per cent of the people they surveyed had experienced adverse emotional effects, including nervousness, stress and sleep disorders, while 79 per cent reported physical impacts like diarrhea, cramping and headaches – frightening numbers that underscored the severity of the tragedy. Since then, Murphy has been busy with studies on how rural communities deal with blackouts, tornadoes and nuclear waste. She’s also been tackling another heavy subject with a surprisingly sweet aftertaste: the future of maple syrup. With fellow researchers Annette Chrétien, a Laurier Brantford humanities/indigenous scholar, and Laura Brown, a physical geographer at the University of Guelph, Murphy is working on an interdisciplinary study of maple syrup and climate change. A declining sugar maple tree population could leave the mostly Canadian industry in the lurch, but the team believes that adaption and preventative strategies could help save the tastiest part of the Canadian identity. Murphy hopes the research will provide small communities with resources not only to help mitigate climate change but also to adapt to it. It might also satisfy their sweet tooth.
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Congratulations On Your th 100 Anniversary ! Your foodservice partner
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Great
Teachers Michael Moore
Big money In May of this year, the high-profile conviction of hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam for securities fraud and conspiracy rocked Wall Street. Illegal insider trading isn’t rare, but getting up to 25 years in prison for it is. The rules governing stock trading by company insiders are simple: don’t buy shares based on information that hasn’t been announced to the public, and always report the trade to the provincial securities commissions. Ensuring that people adhere to those rules, however, is far from straightforward. That’s where the work of stock market sleuths and Laurier finance professors William McNally (above, centre) and Brian Smith (above, right) comes in. Recently, they’ve been combing through two years worth of trades by insiders at companies on the TSX, looking for signs of suspicious activity. The study is still in the works, but one thing they’ve already concluded is that the current system for financial reporting is prone to delays and errors, making the work of sniffing out financial fraud far harder than it needs to be. In another recent outing, the two researchers teamed up with Laurier Finance Professor Andriy Shkilko (above, left) to look into the thorny problem of broker tipping. That’s when a stockbroker tells a client to buy or sell based on another client’s actions, as in Martha Stewart’s case. On the strength of their work, Smith and McNally were invited by the Canadian Securities Administrators to discuss real-time public stocktrade reporting as a means of tracking broker-tipped trades. Financial crimes tend to be more abstract than violent ones, but on a societal level they’re every bit as damaging to the common interest. It’s a good thing these guys are on the case.
Michael Moore has been an English professor at Laurier since 1979, specializing in Victorian literature and pedagogy. He has won a 3M Canada Teaching Fellowship, an Ontario Laurel Award, and the WLU Outstanding Teacher Award. Moore retires this year after more than three decades at the university. “Michael taught me Romantic Lit. – EN356, as I recall. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8:30 a.m. Yikes! What’s romantic about a kid in his pajamas stumbling in at quarter to nine? But aside from the actual material that Michael taught, he really made me feel like you could write whatever you want. He was a strict guy when it came to marking essays and things – as evidenced by my transcript – but I really got the feeling if you researched what you were doing and you articulated your thoughts, he wasn’t hung up on it being a formal piece of writing. If you articulated your thoughts properly you got out of there with your life.” Chuck Tatham (BA ’85), co-executive producer of the CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother.
Mercedes Rowinsky-GeUrts Mercedes Rowinsky-Geurts has been a full-time professor at Laurier since 1996. A Spanish professor, she is interested in Latin American literature, poetry, film, theatre and history, as well as teaching methodology. Rowinsky-Geurts has won the 3M Canada Teaching Fellowship and the WLU Outstanding Teacher Award. “I quickly learned that Dr. Rowinsky’s approach to teaching was infectious. She brings passion and energy into the classroom regardless of whether you’re taking introduction to Spanish or a course on Latin American film. She was one of the professors who inspired me to pursue graduate studies and always pushed me to work harder and expect more from myself. Her creative approaches to teaching allow students to experience new ideas and points of view; she opens the doors to new and exciting places enriching the lives of those lucky enough to be in her classroom.” Marcos Moldes (BA ’06), PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University.
Michel Desjardins Religion and Culture Professor Michel Desjardins has been teaching at Laurier since 1993 and is currently chair of the department. His areas of interest include food and religion, peace and violence and religion, and apocalypticism. He is the recipient of a 3M Canada Teaching Fellowship and the WLU Award for Teaching Excellence. “In the summer of 1999, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I knocked on the only open door in the corridors of the Dr. Alvin Wood Building. A gentle voice invited me in. It was the beginning of a life-changing encounter for me. Behind that door was Professor Michel Desjardins who became, over the following decade, more than a mentor. His patience with students’ endless questions, his precision with academic feedback, his critical mind in intellectual interactions, his gentleness in correcting people, his sensitivity to his students’ needs and his delicious homemade cookies have all contributed to making Professor Desjardins not only a mentor, but also a thinker and a peacemaker to emulate.” Shahram Nahidi (MA ’04), Lecturer, Senior Research Assistant and Canada Research Chair on Islam, Pluralism, and Globalization at the University of Montreal
Don Morgenson Don Morgenson has been one of Laurier’s most celebrated professors since he began his long career at the university in 1960. Although he officially retired from Laurier in 1994, the professor emeritus has continued teaching Psychology at the university part-time. Morgenson has received the WLU Outstanding Teacher Award. “I took Dr. Morgenson’s first-year psych class on a whim, but his amazing real-life stories – he literally had a story for every single theory he taught – inspired me to take a minor in Psychology. You know a teacher is a good one when an 8:30 a.m. class can hold your attention! Morgenson’s obvious care for his patients and his desire to share his knowledge with students left me with a deep respect for the field of psychology. I know he has inspired literally thousands of other students throughout his long career at Laurier, but I’m incredibly thankful that I was one of them.” Siobhan Bhagwat (BA ’06), Administrative Assistant, Wilfrid Laurier University Development and Alumni Relations.
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Good chemistry Chemistry Professor Hind Al-Abadleh tracks tiny changes in the air and water that impact the environment in a big way. Her research in environmental surface chemistry tackles problems in geochemistry and atmospheric chemistry that aid in the development of technologies that remove pollutants from soil, water and air. In one current study, Al-Abadleh is tracking the interactions between the poisonous element arsenic and reactive elements in soil particles. When environmental conditions change the element can become “liberated” from surrounding materials, with terrifying results: in 2005, for example, the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina freed a large amount of arsenic from pressure-treated wood, and the poison found its way into the water and soil of Louisiana. Al-Abadleh provides the numbers and mechanisms to create accurate models that predict how far and how fast arsenic compounds can travel. In another of her studies, she is looking at aerosols, nasty airborne particles that make mischief in the Earth’s lower atmosphere. Aerosols can influence the amount of sunlight that reaches the planet’s surface, provide a platform for chemical reactions in the atmosphere, and alter the properties of clouds – with worrying implications for the global climate. To understand how it all works, Al-Abadleh has been studying the role that sunlight plays in driving aerosol chemistry at the molecular level. Who knows? In the future, maybe even the television meteorologist will be getting it right.
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War and peace
Strange animals
A war may be won, but that doesn’t mean the trouble is over. Just ask Laurier Political Scientist Alistair Edgar, an expert on how communities create and foster peace in the wake of devastating conflicts. His research focuses on how local populations and politicians respond when the UN and other international groups impose outside justice mechanisms designed to help put conflicts to rest. Recently, he has been doing fieldwork in a number of trouble spots – from Afghanistan, where he’s been examining how the country is handling war crimes investigations, to Cambodia, where he’s been observing trials of surviving members of the Khmer Rouge regimes for genocide and crimes against humanity. In conducting his field work, Edgar interviews both senior officials and regular citizens, getting the story from as many different angles as possible. Research like Edgar’s goes a long way to helping nations through war-topeace transitions and determining how outside actors should intervene – crucial work in an era of global unrest. When not visiting the world’s danger zones, Edgar is often focused on his role as executive director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), a highly respected research organization currently headquartered at Laurier (its previous hosts were Dartmouth, Brown and Yale universities). Representing nearly a thousand scholars who study the intricacies of the United Nations, the council organizes an annual meeting each June, attended by senior UN scholars from around the world. This year, they converged in Waterloo to discuss issues ranging from security and development to global governance. With ACUNS on campus, the world is truly on Laurier’s doorstep.
Humans are fascinating creatures. They behave in surprising ways and think surprising thoughts. Even more fascinating, however, are the reasons why people behave and think in the ways that they do, as the work of Psychology Professor Anne Wilson aptly demonstrates. Over the course of her academic career, Wilson has studied many aspects of the human psyche, including how we construct our identities, how our ideas about the future influence our motivation levels, how we remember past events, and how society’s cultural norms affect our relationships. In the latter case, Wilson recently studied the ways in which unrealistic notions of beauty fed by the media impact young men and women. She found that although many teenagers recognize that common standards of beauty and thinness are unrealistic, they typically don’t recognize that other people think the same thing, a disconnect that results from a psychological condition known as “pluralistic ignorance.” The implication of this is that even though young men and women think critically about the media’s body image standards, they still feel they must strive to live up to them, because everybody else will hold them to the impossible standards. Wilson believes that young people need to hear the experts point out the absurdity of some of these norms, and also they need to participate in discussion and criticism themselves. This can help them to realize that others don’t care as much about appearance as they might have assumed. And maybe the media will one day realize it too.
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OUR history
One
hundred yEARS By Nicholas Dinka
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS 1913 • The Women’s Auxiliary is founded. In the coming decades, it will provide an informal support network to students, sewing quilts and holding Saturday “cake days” in which visitors from the community bring donations – baked goods, furnishings, and, in one case, a ton of heating coal.
1911 The Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Canada votes to
1911 • On October 30, a
crowd gathers on the lawn of the new seminary on opening day. Over 1,500 well-wishers attend the celebrations.
locate its new seminary in Waterloo, after being enticed away from a proposed Toronto site by a gift of five prime acres from the Waterloo Board of Trade.
Waterloo Lutheran Seminary 1911-1924 1911 • Ottomar Lincke begins his
tenure as acting president of the new institution, not to mention its sole faculty member. There are only four students, so the workload is manageable. 1914 • Nils Willison becomes the seminary’s first graduate.
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1914 • As the drums of war sound in Europe, the cornerstone of the original Willison Hall is laid.
1920s 1921 • Clara Conrad
is elected president of the Women’s Auxiliary. A leading voice on campus, she will serve in the role for the next two decades. 1915 • Waterloo College School, offering high school-level courses, is launched.
1924 • On September
18, the Faculty of Arts is created, bringing Waterloo College into being with six faculty members and 24 students.
With the help of Laurier historian Andrew Thomson, we look at six pivotal moments amid a century of growth and change A lot can happen in a hundred years. Just ask historian Andrew Thomson, who’s been tasked by the university to boil it all down into a single volume. Due out this fall, Thomson’s centennial history of Laurier will tell the story of the university’s growth and development over the last century, with an emphasis on influential characters, engaging stories, and memorable photographs. While finalizing the book, Thomson was kind enough to spare a few hours to speak with us about what he’d learned in the course of his research. If it’s a difficult task to compress a hundred years of history into a single book, it’s almost impossible to do so in a single brief article. So we’ve instead decided to introduce
a handful of pivotal moments in the university’s evolution from tiny seminary to thriving, multi-campus university. “It wasn’t always happy, but it certainly wasn’t boring,” Thomson says of that evolution. “It’s a story of growth and a story of choices, and there were some very tough decisions that had to be made along the way.” An affable, easygoing man with a sly wit and a mischievous gleam in his eye, Thomson has a habit of slipping into the present tense when speaking about the past, as if the events being discussed were still unfolding – which they are, in a sense, given the ways in which these key turning points continue to have an impact on Laurier to this day.
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS
1926 • The first issue of The Cord hits newsstands on September 23. “By means of the College Cord we must draw the hearts of all together in a common love for Waterloo,” its editors proclaim.
1924 • Student Earle Shelley takes the air on the roof of old Willison Hall. Although strictly forbidden, hanging out on the roof of old Willison was de rigueur for the college’s undergrads.
Waterloo College 1924-1960 1925 • February 18, Waterloo College affiliates with the University of Western Ontario, allowing it to grant degrees for the first time. Waterloo College student Carl Klinck places first out of Western’s graduating class of 85 that year.
1927 • Ernst Neudoerffer, Jr., is sworn in as president of the seminary, following a twodecade stint as pastor of the Church of South India English Congregation in Kotagiri, India.
1929 • Waterloo College promotional and fundraising pamphlet.
1930s • The Boarding Club – student-
operated residence system – is a depression-era mainstay. It is run by an elected “Provider” who manages the kitchen and slaps fines on chore-shirkers. 1929 • In the midst of growing global financial instability, the college admits that it’s on the brink of insolvency.
1939 • On September 10, Canada declares war on Germany. A total of 152 Waterloo College students and alumni served during the conflict. Eleven never returned home.
1930s 1929 • “Waterloo College is Here to Stay,” reads The Cord’s top story on May 23. Thanks to aggressive fundraising and an infusion of $150,000 in donations, disaster has been averted.
1931 • Louise Twietmeyer
becomes Waterloo College’s first female grad in 1931. She returns to become an instructor in English and French. 1939 • The college sets up a Canadian Officers Training Corps on campus, with Carl Klinck, who was top student in the first graduating class, spearheading the effort.
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1925: a college is born The Waterloo Lutheran Seminary launches a new degree program When the Waterloo Lutheran Seminary first opened its doors in 1911 – with four students and a single instructor – the plan was to train ministers for the Lutheran clergy, full stop. But driven by a combination of practical necessity and visionary ambition, that mandate quickly expanded. First came a high school program and entry-level university courses, initially for seminary candidates, to help prepare them for the rigors of theological study, and later for paying students from the community who weren’t bound for the clergy (finances were tight in those days, and the extra money helped keep the lights on). Then in 1924, the seminary began offering a threeyear BA degree under the auspices of Waterloo College, which operated in affiliation with the University of Western Ontario for legal and administrative reasons. There were six faculty members that first year, and 24 students, all male.
“The feeling is that this was the next logical step in creating an educated clergy and an educated community that’s sympathetic to the Lutheran tradition,” Thomson says. The venture was a success, but it also changed the institution in unanticipated ways. By the end of the 1920s, roughly a quarter of the faculty and half the students were non-Lutherans. “That’s a big change to the makeup of the place,” Thomson says. “And it’s a function of the decision to have more than just a seminary.”
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS 1942 • On July 24, Flight Sgt. W. C. Thurlow, who joined the RCAF after his second year at Waterloo College, is killed in action when his Halifax Bomber goes down while returning to base after a mission.
1950 • Mmmmm, boar’s head. Laurier’s first Boar’s Head Dinner, modeled on an old Oxford tradition, is held in celebration of the end of fall classes in 1950.
1945 • Having fled Nazi Germany
during the war, Ulrich Leupold becomes dean of the seminary (and later its president). He is also the first person to teach music at the university.
Waterloo College 1924-1960
1940s
1944 • The Kitchener-Waterloo economy booms due to war production, allowing the college to pay down its entire debt, via community fundraising, for the first time ever.
1953 • J.G. Hagey, a graduate
of the college and successful local businessman, is sworn in as president of Waterloo College.
1953 • The Boarding Club is disbanded, as the last of its official duties – feeding students – is taken over by the university’s new dining hall and kitchen, which stand at Bricker and Albert, today the site of the seminary.
1957 • The cornerstone of Seagram Stadium, field of dreams for generations of Laurier athletes, is laid on September 19 by Waterloo Mayor Leo Whitney.
1950s 1950 • The first edition of the Keystone yearbook is published. Previously, the college didn’t have its own yearbook but instead received a few pages in Western’s Occidentalia.
1953 • September 20, the cornerstone of the Arts building is laid.
1954 • Betty Groff was the editor of the Keystone yearbook. 1946 • Lincke House, the college’s first women’s residence, opens its doors.
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1957 • Promotional brochure for the 3rd annual alumni reunion, in October.
1929: a boys’ club no more With surprisingly little fuss, Waterloo College opens its doors to female students At the end of the 1920s, the chair of the seminary’s Board of Governors – Nils Willison, who had also been its first graduate in 1914 – suggested that Waterloo College should begin accepting female students. One might think the suggestion would have provoked a controversy, given the college’s religious roots and conservative leanings, but there was nothing of the kind. “There’s remarkably little opposition, either among students or faculty,” Thomson says. “The college encourages a debate among the male students – non-binding, but to get people’s reactions – and with a couple of exceptions, everyone’s in favour.” (One dissenter was worried that female students would get better marks than males by flirting with the professors.) There was strong support for co-education in the local community, too – in fact, that may have been where Willison got the idea from in the first place. “There were
young women in the area who liked the idea of a local education, and boy, their parents liked the idea too,” Thomson says. “The community supported the college through donations to the church, and this was what the community wanted.” The first female students were admitted in September, 1929, and almost immediately women began to make a mark on campus life – taking on prominent roles in the Athenaeum Club, a debating and cultural organization, and writing prolifically for The College Cord, for example. (A Cord advice column also began dispensing dating tips to lovelorn students of both genders.) By the end of the 1930s, women made up about 40 per cent of graduating classes. There were also several female faculty members, including the head of the English department. “It clearly wasn’t terribly traumatic for the college,” Thomson says.
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS
1957 • The Waterloo College Associated Faculties are established. These science- and engineering-focused departments are organized under an independent, secular board in order to qualify for provincial funding.
1960 • William J. Villaume, a Brooklyn-born orphan who rose to become a prominent Lutheran minister, is sworn in as university president.
1960 • Following complex, often heated negotiations, Waterloo College opts to remain a private, independent institution separate from the University of Waterloo.
1964 • The university inaugurates a series of regular “family style”sit-down dinners in the dining hall in order “to encourage some of the social graces which are sacrificed to the expediency of cafeteria-style service.”
1961 • “From Jackass to Bird of Prey,” reads The Cord’s top headline on January 16, as the sports teams change their names from Mules and Mulettes (and Ice Mules for hockey) to the Golden Hawks and Lady Hawks.
Waterloo Lutheran University 1960-1973 1959 • The Waterloo College Associated Faculties are reorganized as the publicly funded University of Waterloo, with J. G. Hagey as president. Waterloo College agrees to join them as the new university’s Faculty of Arts.
1960 • Waterloo College becomes Waterloo Lutheran University on July 1, after ending its three-and-a-half-decade affiliation with Western the day before.
1960 • The university’s first annual Winter Carnival kicks off, inaugurating a long tradition of student-led fun.
1962 • The Theatre Auditorium and modern seminary are built.
1961 • “Care for a shine, guv’nor?” The first-ever Shinerama – a Laurier original – kicks off, with more than 400 first-year bootblacks hitting the street to raise money for a local charity.
Photo from 1962.
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1945: the post-war boom With flush coffers and waves of new students to accommodate, the university goes on a building spree By 1945, Waterloo College had been through a decade and a half of difficult times – from the threadbare years of the Depression to the tragic war years, which saw 11 alumni killed in action overseas. But things were finally turning around. The wartime economy had unleashed an economic boom on the local manufacturing scene, and for the first time in its history the university was financially in the black – having wiped out not only its deficit but its entire debt as well, almost entirely through local fundraising. Now the government’s generous education grants to returning soldiers brought waves of new students. Enrolment more than doubled in one year immediately after the war and continued to climb quickly thereafter. “Financially, there’s all kinds of breathing room,” Thomson says. “Physically, there isn’t. The place fills up – literally.” And so the university embarked on its first great building boom, constructing new teaching facilities and residences at
a furious pace. Before the war, life at Waterloo College had taken place almost entirely within the ivycovered brick walls of the original Willison Hall building. That arrangement was now a thing of the past, as were some of the college’s stuffier pre-war customs. “If you’ve spent two years fighting in Northern Europe and now you come to college and they tell you to turn off the lights at 10 p.m., you may not react well,” Thomson says. “The new generation of students is very capable, and wildly enthusiastic, but there’s a sense that some of the old ways are finished now.”
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS 1965 • In Toronto, 25 Waterloo Lutheran students march in front of the U.S. Consulate in support of the Vietnam War with placards reading “Better Dead than Red” and “Our Western Democracy must be Defended.” 1965 • The university enlists staff and faculty to move more than 70,000 books and documents from the original Willison Hall into the newly completed library building. Free lemonade is employed as an enticement.
1967 • Frank C. Peters becomes president of the university.
1968 • In September, The Cord’s
top story advises incoming students they have just sold out to the Man: “University is not for you….all minds are warped by university.”
1968 • The men’s
1965 • Bottoms up: Fred Nichols, director of student activities, is served the first legal alcoholic drink at a campus establishment.
basketball team wins the national championships – the first Laurier team ever to do so – defeating the St. Mary’s Huskies 66-61.
Waterloo Lutheran University 1960-1973 1965 • The legendary David “Tuffy” Knight, then aged 29, is named director of athletics. His mission: build Laurier into a varsity powerhouse.
1966 • The university celebrates “Quilting Year” as the Women’s Auxiliary sews a record 216 handmade quilts to keep undergrads warm on cold winter nights.
1965 • In the midst of the civil rights era, university President William J. Villaume preaches at the Baccalaureate Service at the famous Tuskeegee Institute in Alabama; the commencement address was delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr.
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1966 • The Faculty of Social Work holds its first day of classes.
1968 • From Motown to K-town: the Supremes play the Winter Carnival, drawing over 11,000 fans to their performance at the Kitchener Auditorium.
1967 • Mainframes and punch cards: SBE becomes the first faculty in Ontario to use a computer for general undergraduate education.
1957: The great schism The associated science and engineering faculties separate from Waterloo College to become the University of Waterloo One of the big residual impacts of the Second World War was the enormous boom it fostered in science, technology and engineering. But as a religiously affiliated private institution, Waterloo College wasn’t eligible for the money that governments were looking to invest in these areas. The college’s solution to this financial conundrum was to set up the Waterloo College Associated Faculties, a cluster of new science, math and engineering departments that operated under their own secular and independent board, and were thus eligible to receive substantial government funding. Under the direction of Waterloo College president J.G. Hagey, the Associated Faculties, with their innovative, co-op based approach to education, rapidly flourished. And with the acquisition of a beautiful, sprawling 400-hectare property just up University Avenue from the old campus, they were ready by 1959 to become a full-fledged provincial university with Hagey as president.
The plan at first was that the other Waterloo College faculties would join the new university too, either as its Faculty of Arts or as an affiliated college. But the negotiations – complex and often heated – broke down in the spring of 1960, as the leadership of Waterloo College ultimately worried that its Lutheran traditions would be sacrificed if independence was given up. “There are bad feelings on both sides,” Thomson says. “People quit, and friendships end. Up the road at UW it’s the founding moment, but here it’s a huge trauma.” Amid the gloom, there was a silver lining: the legislation that had been drawn up to allow Waterloo College to join UW also permitted it to grant degrees on its own, without Western’s backing. On July 1, 1960, Waterloo College became Waterloo Lutheran University, a fully fledged independent university for the first time in its history.
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS
1976 • On Sept. 13, the Laurier MBA program launches – evenings only – with an initial class of 30 executives.
1973 • Waterloo Lutheran University
– the last remaining private university in the country – is reborn as the public Wilfrid Laurier University.
WLU garter belts were sold at the bookstore.
1969 • Ivy-covered red
brick Old Willison Hall falls to the wrecking ball – the building had been slated for refurbishing, but costs were deemed too high.
1970s 1972 • On Sept. 28, with provincialization on the horizon, The Cord publishes a list of 92 proposed new names for the university, including Leif Erickson University, the University of Ontario at Waterloo, and Beaver University.
1980 • The Frank C. Peters
Building is completed. 1975 • Smoochy smoochy: Glam rockers
KISS hit the stage on campus, but The Cord is underwhelmed: “the lead guitarist (?) only soloed out of tune twice,” the reviewer notes.
Wilfrid Laurier University 1973-today 1973 • The Athletic Complex opens.
1974 • Wilfrid Laurier University Press, one of Canada’s leading academic publishers, commences operation.
1974 • The Turret opens for business, finally giving students a permanent on-campus venue for showing off their dance moves.
1980s
1979 • A Laurier study reveals that Oktoberfest makes people nine per cent more helpful and 22 per cent more “very helpful.”
1981 • Frank Mallory, an arctic scientist and assistant professor of biology, sets the record straight on lemmings: they do not commit suicide, but are instead pushed off cliffs during migratory crowd surges.
1975 • The Faculty of Graduate Studies is founded.
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1973: WLU becomes WLU Waterloo Lutheran University is reborn as the public, provincially funded Wilfrid Laurier University The loss of the Associated Faculties initially left Waterloo Lutheran in a depleted and defensive position, but the newly independent university soon recovered and began to thrive – with new buildings, more students, and freshly minted traditions such as Winter Carnival and Shinerama. By the early 1970s, however, questions about funding had returned. “It became apparent that it was getting very difficult to run a university in Canada on private subsidies,” Thomson says. “At the same time, the campus, aside from the seminary, has become quite secular.” In fact, only about 10 per cent of students and 15 per cent of faculty were Lutherans by that point. A secular university would require a secular identity, and on June 12, 1973 the Board of Governors selected Wilfrid Laurier University as the university’s new name, after several other finalists, including Cambridge University, MackenzieKing University, and Humanity University, were voted
down. Sir Wilfrid was an esteemed Ross Macdonald signs Bill 178 while Robert J. Binhammer, chair Canadian who of the Wilfrid Laurier University Board of Governors, looks on. had been active in politics at the time of the Seminary’s founding, the reasoning went, and many were also pleased that the initials of Waterloo Lutheran University would be preserved in the new name. While not everyone agreed with the decision to provincialize, the consensus was broad, Thomson says. Provincialization was not difficult to achieve legally or administratively, and once completed it provided a smorgasbord of new government funding opportunities. “There’s immediately more money to hire and pay faculty, and the number of courses offered quickly goes up,” says Thomson. “There’s a fresh building boom as well, and it never really stopped – right up to the present day.”
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS 1991 • The Laurier Golden Hawks football team wins its first Vanier Cup, defeating Mount Allison 25-18 at the SkyDome before a crowd of over 30,000 fans.
1981 • Dr. Richard Crossman, a theology and ethics professor, develops an electric car known as the FireFly. He uses the yellow prototype to commute to work at the university, and notes that he got the idea for the project after telling students that if they wanted to change the world they should look within “I then applied that thought to myself.”
1992 • Lorna Marsden, a respected sociologist and Liberal Party politician, becomes the university’s first female president.
1985 • Eileen Stumpf (1922-2005), affectionately known to generations of students as the Coffee Lady, becomes the first woman in Laurier history to be named an honorary Letterman.
Wilfrid Laurier University 1973-today
1990s 1992 • The women’s soccer team becomes the first women’s team at the university to win a national championship.
1982 • John A. Weir,
formerly associate professor of economics, is sworn in as university president.
1980s • Pin from marketing campaign established.
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1999 • Laurier opens a campus in Brantford, with three faculty members and a student population of 39.
1988 • Campus culturati rejoice as the John Aird Centre, housing the Maureen Forrester Recital Hall, Robert Langen Art Gallery and new Theatre Auditorium, opens its doors.
1997 • Robert Rosehart, a chemical engineer and former president of Lakehead University, becomes university president.
1999: a brand-new campus With the opening of a campus in Brantford, Ontario, the university looks towards a multi-campus future In the years that followed the provincialization decision, the university went through a long period of relative stability. Laurier was by now well established as a respected university – known for its great teachers, strong athletics programs and friendly community feel. But as time passed, growth began to put pressure on the compact Waterloo campus, leading administrators to discuss the possibility of additional campuses. “We’d been running off-campus degree programs for teachers around the province since the sixties, and of course there were traditions here around co-op and distance education,” Thomson says. “In many ways this was the next logical step.” In 1999, the stars aligned for a new campus in Brantford, Ontario. The former factory town had been struggling in the post-industrial era, and was approaching universities with the offer to build a campus within its borders
just as Laurier was getting serious about expansion. From 39 students and one building when Laurier’s Brantford campus opened in 1999, the campus now has about 2,500 students – more than the student population of the entire institution in 1973. “The Brantford campus has worked out very well,” Thomson says. “Having said that, the question of its longterm future is one that in many ways goes back to the university’s choice to affiliate with Western back in the mid 1920s – and who knew at the time the changes that would bring? I’d be interested to know what the person who writes the book about the university’s 150th anniversary will have to say about where it all has led us.”
A TIMELINE FOR 100 YEARS 2000 • The Faculty of Science becomes a stand-alone faculty, as the university continues to move beyond its arts- and business-focused roots.
2002 • The Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship building is constructed.
2008 • Laurier establishes an office in Chongqing, a city in southwest China with a population of over 31 million (over 90 per cent that of Canada), to support academic initiatives in the region.
2011 One hundred years and counting: the
2007 • Max Blouw becomes the university’s president. A biologist by academic discipline, he was previously vice-president of research at the University of Northern British Columbia.
university celebrates 2008 • The men’s
and women’s curling teams pull off a clean sweep at the nationals.
its centennial and looks forward to a bright second century.
2000s 2003 • Russell Johnson, who played the Professor on Gilligan’s Island, receives an honorary degree at convocation, making him an official “doctor,” if not a real professor.
2008 • Laurier, the University of Waterloo and Centre for International Governance Innovation establish the Balsillie School for International Affairs.
2007 • The Faculty of Education opens its doors.
2009 • Laurier’s Toronto office
opens for business, providing support for the weekend-format MBA program and co-op work placements, among other activities.
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CAMPUS life
the ongoing
moment By Sandra Muir
Fencing on the roof of Willison Hall. Rawking the Hawk at Homecoming. Watching the rock band Rush perform in their early days. Pushing a bed from London to Waterloo in the name of Winter Carnival. These are things that could only happen at Laurier – where the community is strong and friendships feel like family.
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A Sentimental
journey
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1 1. In 1962, these friends pushed a hospital bed from London to Waterloo in a race against the University of Waterloo. They beat their rivals and enjoyed a memorable Winter Carnival. 2. Laurier students tailgate at University Stadium ahead of the football game • Homecoming, 1999 3. Frosh Week creates good feelings in Brantford • 2009 4. Alumnus of the Century Earle Shelley surrounded by cheerleaders and the Hawk mascot • Homecoming, 1984 5. Waterloo College students Stewart Ogg, Ellen Roberts – who was named Campus Queen – Dick Mutton, Marion Zapfe, Don Honey, and Lillian Koncezewski • Junior Prom, 1951 6. Meeting of the Fides Dianae, a social group for female Waterloo College students • 1953 or 1954 7. Waterloo College Valentine’s Day Dance Card • 1958 8. VP, Student Affairs David McMurray with alumni • Homecoming, 2010 9. Alumna Debbie Lou Ludolph and David Falk, a former faculty of music member, get into character • 1986, South Pacific 10. Convocation gets two thumbs up • Fall 2010
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Hijinks and
tomfoolery 4 2
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1. It’s almost as if you can hear the shock and peals of laughter that would have erupted from the 19 first-years as they were ‘initiated’ in front of Willison Hall on Sept. 24, 1947 2. Snowman blocks entrance to women’s residence in Conrad Hall • 1956 3. Student Wilfrid Schweitzer stands on his head on the roof of Willison Hall • Between 1924 and 1928 4. Enjoying a snowy day on campus • Winter Carnival, 1976 5. Flipping pancakes with style • Homecoming, 2007 6. Foot Patrol, BACCHUS and Go Team get down • Orientation Week, 2007 7. Laurier staff member Ian Smith enjoys empty swimming pool • 1973 8. Waterloo College students enjoy break from studying • 1953 or 1954 9. Two Waterloo Lutheran University students joke around • Early 1970s 10. Male students bare their legs for Gold Revue • December, 1957
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1. Students getting their exercise in the Willison Hall gymnasium • Between 1924 and 1945 2. Waterloo College pyramid team gets into formation in front of Willison Hall • Between 1924-1930 3. In March 2005, the Laurier Golden Hawks defeated the University of Alberta Pandas 4-1 to win the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Women’s Ice Hockey Championship – their first national title. It was a great moment. But even when we don’t leave with a trophy, the Golden Hawks know how to rawk. 4. Golden Hawk Andy Baechler gets a 2nd-quarter touchdown, helping Laurier beat Saskatchewan 24-23 •
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2005 Vanier Cup
5. Hawks defeat the Warriors 62-59 to win the 1978 West Divisional Championship • 1978 6. Varsity cheerleaders show they are more than a sideline act • Homecoming, Sept. 30, 2000 7. Badminton players show they are good sports • 1954 or 1955
8. Students Earle Shelley and Ted Wagner fence on the roof of Willison Hall • 1924 9. Fans cheer on Laurier as they beat Windsor 63-7 • Homecoming, 1991
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10. Trying out Laurier’s new tennis courts, which opened in June, 1977
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FAMOUS
faces 2
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7 8 1. The Supremes play to a crowd of 11,000 • Winter Carnival, 1969
2. KISS brings their glam-rock style to Laurier • September, 1974 3. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas belt out tunes at Motown Revue • Winter Carnival, Jan. 29, 1970 4. Russell Peters chats with a fan before hitting the stage • Homecoming, 2008
5. Canadian rock band Rush visited campus several times in the 1970s. In this photo they are performing outside the old Student Union Building (exact date unknown). They are among many performers who have entertained the university community through the years. 6. Stevie Wonder entertains at Motown Revue • Winter Carnival,
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Jan. 29, 1970
7. Sha-na-na performs in the Theatre Auditorium • September, 1972
8. Gordon Lightfoot performs at Waterloo Lutheran University • January, 1968
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9. Canadian comedian Jessica Holmes gets into character • Homecoming, 2006
10. Tim Allen works the Homecoming crowd • Oct. 3, 2010
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CAMPUS life
memories By Sandra Muir
W
hen I started at Waterloo College in the early 1940s, it was mandatory for all entering students to take a series of aptitude tests. Getting your results back wasn’t mandatory, but I was curious to know how I’d fared. So I talked with my counselor, James Rikard, who was a psychology professor, and he told me I had a “pretty amazing” score – far higher than I’d imagined possible. I was sure something was wrong. My high school record was proof that I was nowhere near as smart or capable as the test said I was. I told Rikard that the percentiles were simply incorrect. The counselor gave the apparent contradiction more time and thought than I think he was getting paid for. His analysis? He said my big problem was that I wasn’t motivated. I could have done far better in high school, but I hadn’t ever bothered to really apply myself. I’d paid far more attention to dances and dates and making money and camping than I had to my school subjects. Plus, I had never mastered study methods. He told me to solve those problems and promised I would do great things. That, to me, summarizes the spirit of Laurier: it’s a knowledgeable and caring community. It U-turned my life, from just getting by to setting my sights on achieving excellence, and to emulating that spirit of caring. Whatever good I may have done owes much to that moment and to the way this school continues to bring out the best in all of us. Ward Kaiser • BA ’45
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hen I started at Laurier Brantford in 2000 there were about 80 students in total. It was pretty tiny, but I liked that because I didn’t feel like I was going to get lost in this big sea of people. We all helped and supported each other in those days. I remember one time I went to a tutorial and had been having a bad day. At the end of the session, I packed up my things and made a quick exit, my head down. But the professor came running after me. He said he’d noticed I wasn’t myself in class and asked if I needed to talk. That’s a rare university experience, and I really appreciated it. I also had a lot of academic support. There was one course I needed to get in my final semester to complete my degree requirements. Three other students had registered but then dropped it, and it looked like the course was going to be cancelled. Fortunately, my student advisor was able to organize things so I could still do the course. It was kind of funny because every time the professor came in he’d look around and say, “Looks like it’s just you and me today.” After class or exams, students, professors and staff would all go to the Irish pub around the corner. It was more like a family than a traditional school. Tanya Stephens • BA ’03
D
IN
the 1964-65 academic year, I worked as a don in the East Hall Residence – known today as Nils Willison Hall. It was a perfectly decent residence, but there was one major flaw: the TV reception, courtesy of an old aerial on the roof of the building, was awful. We needed our daily dose of mindless entertainment, and so we came up with a solution. At the time, my brother-in-law happened to live on Bricker Avenue, adjacent to the residence. He had cable TV, which came into his house from cables strung from a pole in the backyard. And so I looked into having Grand River Cable supply East Hall from the same line. Tamara Giesbreck, who was controller and business manager for the university, heard about it, and wound up having the company string the cable not just to East Hall but through the entire campus, running the wires from building to building through the underground service tunnels. We’d been prepared to pay for the cable ourselves, but the university ended up taking care of it. Hockey Night in Canada had never looked so good. I came to Laurier in the fall of 1962, and I liked the fact that staff and administration were available to listen and work with you. And it was very easy to get to know everyone, because you all ate in the same dining hall. We were small but we made up for it in enthusiasm. My three years are packed with great memories. Ken Farrish • BA ‘65
IN
2005 I competed at the Canadian Classic Urban Dance Competition with the Laurier dance team – the Hawk Gurlz. Even though we were first-ever Laurier’s competitive dance team, we had already started to develop a name for ourselves on the urban dance scene. In other words, we had a reputation to uphold. In the months leading up to the competition we practiced any time we weren’t in class or studying – sometimes up to four hours a day. We were still really nervous on the day of the meet, but we knew we’d done everything right to get ourselves ready. When
uring Orientation Week in 2007, when I was in my second year, I volunteered with Foot Patrol, the group that accompanies people around campus at night to help them feel safe. Like everyone else, I had barely slept in about five days and had been cheering my little heart out for Foot, the Blue Sorcerers and Shinerama. The sleepless delirium and constant cheering had finally gotten the better of me and one night along with a fellow Footer and amazing friend, Emily, we began making up cheers for each of the other Foot volunteers. (“Kevin, Kevin, he’s not Evan…”) While they made no sense and were so random and weird, the entire team was so into it. Everyone was laughing right along with us for the two hours we danced and cheered in the Quad and the 24 Lounge. I’ve never laughed so hard with, or felt so close to, a group of people that were, up until only five days before that, mostly strangers to me. It was an amazing experience and one that could only happen at a place like Laurier. Graeme Blyth • BA ’09
they announced we had come in first place, we all went absolutely INSANE. We were crying, screaming in excitement, hugging each other and jumping all over the stage. Canadian R & B singer-songwriter Jully Black was on the judging panel, and I remember her saying how impressed she was with our professionalism on and off the stage. She also said she could tell we were more than just a dance team – that we were a group of true friends. We were so proud and excited to bring the trophy home to Laurier. I am very proud to say that I am a Laurier alumna, and a Hawk Gurlz alumna, too. We danced at football and basketball games, Fashion ‘n’ Motion, charity and community events, and still found time to compete – and win. We were not only a team, but also a family. Sarah Clare • BA ’08
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today & tomorrow
Burgeoning
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Lesley Cooper talks with a student in the Brantford Research and Academic Centre during Spring 2011 Convocation
Brantford By Natalie Gallo and Sandra Muir
When the university’s Brantford campus opened in 1999, there were just 39 students, three full-time faculty and one cat. Since then, it has blossomed into a thriving, 2,300-student institution that’s bringing new energy to the city – and to Laurier. When Sara Neziol was growing up in Brantford, she wasn’t allowed to go into the downtown core. It was run-down and littered with abandoned storefronts. But by the time she was ready to start university in 2001, Laurier’s first campus outside of Waterloo had already started to change the face of the city and was attracting students like her. “I thought it was very quaint,” said Neziol, who graduated with a degree in Contemporary Studies in 2005. “It was a very close-knit campus. My whole year could fit into one classroom, and all of the students became very close because we moved through the program together.” That close-knit feeling continues today despite rapid growth. Laurier Brantford opened its doors in 1999 with 39 students, three full-time faculty members and one building – the refurbished Carnegie Library. Today, there are more than 2,300 students and 18 buildings – some new and some repurposed, including a post office, movie theatre and bank. There is also new construction. The west wing of the Research and Academic Centre opened in December 2010, and is home to the new Stedman Community Bookstore; the east wing is scheduled to open this year. “Brantford has its own characteristics,” said Lesley Cooper, acting principal and vice-president of the Brantford campus. “And those characteristics are very important to Laurier as a whole. We strengthen
the university. We draw strength from the Waterloo campus, but they also draw strength from us.” The vision of a university campus in Brantford began in 1997 when the Grand Valley Education Society (GVES) and the Brant Community Futures Development Corporation (now Enterprise Brant) created the Brant University Steering Committee to study the issue. Research indicated that Brantford residents who left the community to pursue education seldom returned, and the city wanted to recapture some of that lost human capital. That same year, Robert Rosehart joined Laurier as president. News of the efforts in Brantford to bring a university to the city reached him through local news stories, and, having been charged with increasing enrolment at the university, he took notice. At the same time, Brantford Mayor Chris Friel was actively looking for a way to get introduced to the new president of Laurier. One of Friel’s friends was a Laurier grad, and he asked him to arrange a meeting with Rosehart through a former history professor, Terry Copp. “It was an accident of history,” said Rosehart. “I saw it as a real way for Laurier to have a presence in Brantford.” And so Laurier partnered with the City of Brantford, Enterprise Brant and GVES, launching a successful $2-million fundraising campaign to get the campus started.
Brantford has its own characteristics … And those characteristics are very important to Laurier as a whole.
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today & tomorrow
Congratulations on your 100th Anniversary! from Mayor Chris Friel and Brantford City Council PROUD TO PARTNER WITH LAURIER
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Additions could bring the Brantford student population to
4,500 within the next five years. With the brand-new campus came an innovative approach to education. Rowland Smith, then vicepresident: academic, conceptualized the idea of a core curriculum known as Contemporary Studies, a compulsory program that aimed to bring students from various disciplines together through liberal arts and science courses. An instant success, the program remains a signature of the Brantford campus. “This core program provides students with a bit of a sense of cohesion,” said Ken Paradis, a co-coordinator of the Contemporary Studies program. “There is a tendency at university to focus rather narrowly on the skills and ways of knowing developed in a single discipline. The core courses are our attempt to have students on our campus interact with one another, and share their insights from their program with people from others – to have a common conversation.” Beyond the core of Contemporary Studies, Laurier Brantford offers a variety of programs such as Criminology and Journalism, and a Concurrent Education program in partnership with Nipissing University. More recently, the campus added Business Technology Management, Youth and Children’s Studies, and a master’s program in Criminology. These unique programs are just part of the reason enrolment at the Brantford campus has snowballed in recent years. It also has a close-knit feel that exists at Laurier as a whole, and particularly in Brantford. “Everything I loved about Laurier was here [in Brantford], but magnified,” says Kevin Klein, Brantford’s external relations coordinator and a graduate of the university who attended the Waterloo campus. “Instead of having 8,000 students, you had 1,000 students; instead of knowing two of your professors, you know six – that sort of atmosphere, boiled down to its essence, is really attractive to people.” Holly Cox, one of the first staff members hired at Brantford (today, she is director of recruitment and admissions), said staff, faculty and students really care about each other – and even the stray pets that show up.
“Early on, we had a cat,” said Cox. “It was a stray, and some of the staff started taking care of it. And then it started sleeping in the building. It was there for about a month and then one of the students said that they would adopt it. It was funny – one of those very ‘small campus’ kind of things to do. It just kind of fit – [it was] charming, like the campus.” Another benefit of a small campus is that students also get a lot of support from faculty, said Cooper. “We have an amazing faculty who are part of the community,” she said. “Students get a lot of support from the university and the community. The students love the faculty, [and it’s] very important to have faculty that are so supportive.” Neziol is currently completing a master’s degree in Education part-time at Laurier, but it’s not a path she had ever thought of before she went to Laurier. Her undergraduate professors were so encouraging, leaving her notes on her papers telling her she was producing graduatelevel work. “After I graduated and once I started working, I knew I wanted to get back into the classroom. I was fortunate to still have these relationships with faculty to get advice and recommendations,” said Neziol, who now works at the Brantford campus as an academic advisor. Meanwhile, there are plans for more growth at the Brantford campus – including new residence space, a joint athletic centre with the YMCA, and a much-needed university library. These additions are expected to bring the Brantford student population to 4,500 within the next five years. With so much growth in Brantford, many students say they could see themselves staying in the community, just as Neziol and her two sisters, who followed her to Laurier Brantford, have done. They are excited about the changes to campus and the downtown. “Even with all the changes, it still has the smallcampus feel and the close-knit community of students,” said Neziol. “And there are so many more opportunities. It’s an exciting time to be here.” ❖
Everything I loved about Laurier was here but magnified.
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today & tomorrow
The Next
years With the help of a few of Laurier’s leaders, we look at some of the key changes the university is making on the infrastructure, education and research fronts as it lays the groundwork for a stellar second century.
By Nicholas Dinka
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None of us knows exactly what the future will hold, but as Laurier President and Vice-Chancellor Max Blouw could tell you, that doesn’t mean we should sit back and wait for whatever happens to come our way. When Blouw arrived at Laurier in 2007, the university prided itself, as it had long done, on its high-quality teaching and intimate community feel, but it was no longer the tiny, 2,500-student institution it had once been. Over the course of the preceding decade, it had grown in a rapid and sometimes opportunistic fashion, approximately doubling its student population from 7,700 in 1999 to roughly 15,000 when Blouw arrived, as government funding formulae encouraged post-secondary institutions across the province to increase enrolment numbers. Laurier had added a second campus in Brantford, Ontario, in 1999, and a new generation of professors was pushing for a stronger emphasis on research and graduate studies. There were also suggestions that the university needed to more actively engage with the world beyond the campus perimeter in an era of globalization, increasing diversity, and evertightening economic constraints. How could the institution respond purposefully to the challenges and opportunities it was faced with? As befits an institution of higher learning, Blouw and his colleagues began to come to grips with these questions by first doing some homework. In 2007, they embarked on an initiative known as Envisioning Laurier, which included a comprehensive review, in 2007-8, of how internal and external groups saw the university – its past, present and potential for the future. The project, carried out in collaboration with a wide array of groups across campus, as well as Laurier alumni, provided guidance for a new mission statement for the institution, as well as reams of data on its strengths and weaknesses that could be used to plan for the future. Next, in consultation with deans, faculty and librarians, the university developed a new Academic Plan, governing the years 2010-2015, which articulated core principles and top priorities on the
academic and research fronts going forward. And in early 2010, a task force on multi-campus governance was set up to figure out how Laurier, as a multicampus university, should be governed. What emerges from a review of these initiatives, and from conversations with the senior administrators involved with them, is a picture of the broad goals and priorities that will shape the university in the years and decades to come.
A multi-campus approach… helps us to preserve our community-based values while at the same time growing to meet access needs.”
Max Blouw, president and vice-chancellor
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The university is determined to maintain the community atmosphere, reputation for great teaching, and emphasis on the student experience that have been its signatures in the past. In the face of growth – both recent and future – the university is determined to maintain the community atmosphere, reputation for great teaching, and emphasis on the student experience that have been its signatures in the past. At the same time, it’s looking to augment its research capabilities and to expand its graduate programs. And it plans to do all of these things within a vibrant multi-campus framework that includes the Waterloo and Brantford campuses and possible new campuses as well. “I think we have an excellent model now of a multicampus university that’s highly responsive not only to the history, the culture and ethos of the institution but also to new challenges,” Blouw says. Now comes the hard part: putting theory into practice. It would be difficult to capture everything the university has been doing to make these plans a reality in a single, brief article, so we’ve instead decided to focus on a few of the key ideas that the university is embracing as it prepares for the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Multi-campus model To see what one particularly ambitious future path for the university might look like, it’s worth taking a drive out to the southwestern corner of Milton, Ontario, where an idyllic stretch of grassland lies nestled beneath Rattlesnake Point on the Niagara Escarpment.
It’s hard to imagine this quiet spot as a busy hub of intellectual activity, but that’s exactly what the Town of Milton’s leaders would like it to become. Their “Milton Education Village” project is a proposed 450-acre development that encompasses a research park, student living spaces, commercial support services, and a new 150-acre Laurier campus at the heart of it all. According to Canada’s 2006 census, Milton was the fastest growing community in the country, as well as one of the youngest. Town and university leaders believe that Milton is ideally situated to absorb some of the 70,000 additional post-secondary students the province is expecting in the next decade over and above current enrolments. “In the GTA, the cohort of university-age students is expected to explode for the next 20 years or so,” Blouw told the Toronto Star in 2008, when the idea was first announced. “We’re meeting a need.” Over the last three years, the town and university have done extensive preliminary planning around the proposed campus, and have signed two memoranda of understanding regarding the project. This May, however, Queen’s Park announced a new policy in which it alone will determine the location of any new university campus. The details of the new policy are still being worked out, but the change gives the province the power to ensure that new campuses are located where it feels they are most needed. This
We pride ourselves on this notion that we’re a small school, but in fact we’re not a small school any more in terms of population.” Nick Gibson, WLUSU president, 2011-12
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means that if the province decides that a new campus is warranted in Milton, Laurier would have to bid for it along with any other university or college interested in the project. Even if Laurier Milton never materializes, however, the university remains committed to a multi-campus model of development. Founded in 1999, Laurier’s Brantford campus has already grown into a mature institution, and its 2010 student population of approximately 2,300 – roughly equal that of New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University – is projected to nearly double, to 4,500 students, by 2015. “I believe the multi-campus model is part of what will enable Laurier to be more successful in the new environment than most other universities,” says Blouw. “A multi-campus approach lets us keep each individual campus at a relatively small size, which helps us to preserve our community-based values while at the same time growing to meet access needs.” Not everyone at Laurier shares the multi-campus vision – some worry that the university will spread itself too thin by trying to operate on multiple campuses. Many of the younger generation are on board, however. “We pride ourselves on this notion that we’re a small school, but in fact we’re not a small school any more in terms of population,” says Nick Gibson, head of the Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union. “If you want to maintain this notion of a community feel at Laurier, then the multi-campus framework is really the only way to go.”
Integrated and engaged learning Pay a visit to the office of David McMurray, Laurier’s vice-president: student affairs, and there’s a good chance you’ll receive a brief tour of “the wall.” It’s a set of shelves, roughly 10 feet in length, displaying hundreds of cards and thank-you notes sent in by students over the years. There’s even a pair of wooden clogs, from a young Dutch woman who received some emergency assistance with her student-visa a few semesters back. The cards are a symbol and reflection of what makes Laurier special, McMurray says. “When students write in, they actually tell us the experiences they had here that helped transform their lives.” McMurray spends a lot of time these days thinking about the Laurier student experience, about how to preserve it in an era of growth and change, and about how to nurture it across multiple campuses.
There’s a lot of focus here on community but we need to define that more precisely, to really capture it.” David McMurray, vice-president: student affairs
“I’ve used the term ‘bottling it’ for some time, because we really need to bottle this culture that we have here, to protect it as the university grows and evolves,” he says. “There’s a lot of focus here on community – the word ‘community’ crops up a lot when you talk to people about Laurier – but we need to define that more precisely, to really capture it.” One way the university is trying to “bottle” the student experience is through a new teaching and learning paradigm it is developing to support all of its undergraduate and graduate programs in the coming years. This major new initiative has been tentatively titled “integrated and engaged learning at Laurier.” The concept is still evolving, but at its core the approach is designed to ensure that every student at the university is able to integrate classroom study with applied experiential learning opportunities – whether in the form of co-op, internships, collaborative research, community-service learning, or other opportunities. “You take the theory you learn in the classroom out into the community, or into a research lab, or the workplace, and apply it,” says Deborah
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You take the theory you learn in the classroom out into the community… then you also bring it back into the classroom to integrate it into your studies.” Deborah MacLatchy, vice-president: academic & provost
MacLatchy, Laurier’s vice-president: academic. “But then you also bring it back into the classroom to integrate it into your studies and to apply it to your next set of learning opportunities.” MacLatchy believes that undergraduate education will continue to be a key strength at the university in the future, and sees the integrated learning approach as a way to help ensure that is the case. She also notes that the approach is strongly supported by recent scholarship on university learning. Integrated learning is also the most successful model used in graduate education, from professional programs such as the MBA and MSW to research-intensive MAs, M.Sc.s and PhDs. Laurier has historically been strong in areas that support the integrated and engaged learning model, such as a focus on the student experience and outcomes, institutional pride in undergraduate success and a blending of in-class and external learning opportunities. A number of formal programs along these lines are already in place, including the university’s large co-op program in Business, a robust Community Service-Learning program, and the co-curricular record – a supplemental transcript of students’ extracurricular activities that has been available since 2004. The integrated and engaged learning paradigm is designed to intertwine and deepen these programs into a unique approach to learning that will be one of the university’s hallmarks in the years to come.
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Domains of research excellence It might seem odd to build a think tank and educational facility in a former distillery, but the new CIGI Campus, in uptown Waterloo, makes it work. The original building is home to CIGI, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a think tank founded by Research In Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie. Opening in the fall of 2011, new adjacent facilities will include the Balsillie School of International Affairs, a joint project among Laurier, the University of Waterloo, and CIGI. Where the Seagram Company once blended whiskey, now thinkers from a variety of disciplines – from economics and political science to religious studies – blend disparate ideas about some of the most challenging problems facing the international community today. These scholars and practitioners cooperate in two master’s programs (one through Laurier and one through the University of Waterloo) as well as a joint Laurier-UW PhD in Global Governance. The Balsillie School and its programs have attracted international scholars, as well as several cohorts of exceptional graduate students. According to Deborah MacLatchy, the Balsillie School’s approach will be increasingly characteristic of Laurier going forward, as the university moves more intensively into research and graduate education at the same time as it maintains its historic role as a great teaching university. “In a lot of cases there is significant overlap between a number of academic disciplines and I
think that going forward we’ll have faculty in scholarly disciplines interacting more with one another and with practitioners, rather than in isolated silos, in order to help address major societal, business and industrial challenges in strategic and coherent ways,” she says. About half of Laurier’s Academic Plan for 20102015 is devoted to what university administrators refer to as “research domains” – areas of interdisciplinary focus within which the university already excels and upon which it hopes to build further in the coming years. The research domains as laid out in the Academic Plan are broad – covering themes such as governance and the environment – but within them more concrete areas of cross-disciplinary focus have emerged. The university’s Institute for Water Science, for example, addresses the most challenging waterrelated issues affecting the global community today, including the effects of climate change on water resources, the impact of public policy on water use, and the future of aquatic and coastal ecosystems. The project is a collaboration among researchers from the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Arts and the School of Business & Economics. “I think you’ll see us gaining more and more of a national and international reputation in some of these key niche areas going forward – water being one of them,” MacLatchy says, adding that the approach will help on a number of fronts, attracting additional funding and researchers, top-tier graduate students, and providing exciting opportunities for undergraduates as well.
“It can help the university as a whole, because success builds success,” she says.
Embracing diversity in all its forms On a chilly day in mid-November, 2010, a delegation of academics and senior officials from Chongqing, China visited the Communitech Hub, a digital media centre located in the beautifully renovated Lang Tannery building in downtown Kitchener. The delegates met with local politicians and stopped by Laurier’s space in the Hub (the university is a founding partner in the facility) to meet with Laurier staff. They also attended a presentation about a prototype technology platform that could allow Laurier students to virtually “sit in” on classes at Chongqing University and vice versa. “We hope to facilitate opportunities for Laurier students to listen to professors from China delivering guest lectures on Chinese business and culture,” said Tom Buckley, assistant vice-president: academic services, at the event. “This concept is unique in that most Canadian universities send their curriculum the other way.” Although it was a single event, the visit encapsulated a number of additional areas in which the university is gearing up for the future. Chongqing – a city in central China with a population of over 30 million, roughly nine-tenths that of Canada – is the site of Laurier’s China office, established in 2007 to give the university a base in that increasingly influential nation. The Laurier office in
The university’s Institute for Water Science addresses the most challenging waterrelated issues affecting the global community today, including the effects of climate change on water resources, the impact of public policy on water use, and the future of aquatic and coastal ecosystems.
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2 0 1 1
The Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Association (WLUAA) PICTURED FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: KRISTEN SAUNDERS, WALLY PIRKER, MIKE MORRICE, DR. VICTOR MARTENS, DR. KAY KOPPEDRAYER, AND JANE ARCHIBALD
established to honour alumni, faculty and staff who, through their actions and accomplishments, make a difference in the Laurier community and the community at large. If you know someone who embodies the spirit of Laurier, nominate him or her for the WLUAA Awards of Excellence.
Kristen Saunders ’11
Mike Morrice ’08
Dr. Kay Koppedrayer
STUDENT ALUMNA OF THE YEAR
YOUNG ALUMNUS OF THE YEAR
This award is presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to the university by a student. During KRISTEN SAUNDERS’ four years at Laurier, she was an active member of the Laurier Student Alumni (LSA), serving as its president this past year. With Kristen’s leadership and support, LSA had a record number of first-year recruits, executed a number of successful events, and created the LSA Engaged Student Leader Award for which the LSA provided a substantial donation. Upon graduation in June, Kristen will attend the University of Ontario Institute of Technology to pursue a Bachelor of Education.
F A C U LT Y M E N TO R I N G AWA R D This award was established to recognize a faculty member for his or her outstanding mentorship and support to students. For the past 25 years, DR. KAY KOPPEDRAYER has been a mentor to undergraduate and graduate students at Laurier. She has held a number of leadership roles in the Department of Religion and Culture, including: undergraduate officer, graduate officer, and department chair. Always putting her students first, Kay’s students say she has made Laurier a better school, and its students better scholars.
Wally Pirker ’81
This award is given to recognize outstanding achievement by an alum of any Laurier program who is 30 years of age or younger. MIKE MORRICE graduated from Laurier in 2008 with an Honours Bachelor of Science in Computing and Computer Electronics and a Bachelor of Business Administration with a grade point average of 11.6 (out of 12). As a student, Mike co-founded Sustainable Waterloo, a not-for-profit organization that advances the environmental sustainability of organizations across the Region of Waterloo. He continues to serve as its Executive Director and has been instrumental in advancing environmental sustainability in the Region.
S C H AU S AWA R D F O R S TA F F
Dr. Victor Martens ’64
This award is presented in recognition of outstanding contributions to the university by a staff member. The recipient is distinguished by his or her stature, dedication, integrity and ability. WALLY PIRKER has been an integral part of the lifeblood at Laurier for the past 29 years. Since graduating from Laurier with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1981, Wally has held key responsibilities in internal auditing and institutional research at Laurier. Known by many as the go-to guy for data and information analysis, his work is vital to the operations of the university.
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HOFFMANN-LITTLE A W A R D F O R F A C U LT Y The Hoffman-Little Award recognizes teaching excellence and professional endeavour at Laurier. During DR. VICTOR MARTENS’ career at Laurier, the success of his students on the operatic and concert stages of the world has helped to put Laurier’s Faculty of Music on the map. Victor graduated from Laurier in 1964 and went on to enjoy a successful performing career. He performed in London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Geneva, Germany, across Canada, and returned to Kitchener-Waterloo five years later to devote his career to teaching the next generation. Victor’s former students rank him as one of the three most significant voice pedagogues in Canadian history.
Jane Archibald ’99 ALUMNA OF THE YEAR This award recognizes an alumna who has brought honour to the institution through outstanding achievement. In a short amount of time, JANE ARCHIBALD has already had an extraordinary career. A student of Professor Emeritus Victor Martens, Jane is known as one of Canada’s finest artists on the international stage. She has performed around the globe in a number of prestigious roles, including a top-ten position in the coveted international Neue-Stimmen competition. In addition, she received an unheard-of offer to sign a contract, on-the-spot, with the Vienna State Opera. She is currently performing with the Canadian Opera Company.
ALUM-0661-MAY11
Awards of Excellence were
We need to help each other to become effective global and locally engaged citizens in an increasingly complex society.” Officials from Chonqing, China explore the Communitech Hub
the Communitech Hub is part of a broader strategy of building industry links and helping Laurier alumni get start-up enterprises off the ground. And the co-operation with local political figures was in keeping with the university’s plan to enhance its outreach work on the community and government relations fronts. Again and again, when speaking about the future of the university, senior officials return to words like “integrate,” “synthesize” and “engage.” These ideas also inform a host of activities, in addition to those mentioned above, that the university is undertaking to prepare for the future: strengthening relationships with the communities in which its campuses are situated; building new links internationally with students, academic colleagues and industry partners; integrating new technologies that enhance research and learning; embracing diversity in all its forms; and adopting more environmentally sustainable ways of operating. In each of these areas, plans are being put in place, and new positions created to help the university manage the process of change. “The university should be a place where we can come together and learn from one another and enrich one another,” Blouw says. “We need to help each other to become effective global and locally engaged citizens in an increasingly complex society.”
THE FUTURE The future may indeed be impossible to predict, but the university’s leadership hopes that its vision for the institution will provide fertile ground from which a healthy future can spring. That said there is one more challenging prediction about the near-term future that seems certain to come true: managing the changes ahead is not going to be easy.
“I’d articulate the core challenge as, how do we evolve to a new, innovative, exciting model of education and research that we can all embrace and that’s financially sustainable?” he says. “It’s change management to a new kind of system. I’m under no illusions – it’s not easy to do. But we shouldn’t forget that often with change there are tremendous opportunities, and I think Laurier is very well placed for a great new century.” The Laurier Milton campus remains a dream, for now, and may never be The university’s anything more than that. But if nothing else, the fact leadership hopes of its possibility suggests that its vision for a link with the past, and to the spirit that led to the the institution will founding of the school that provide fertile grew into the university we know today. ground from A hundred years ago, which a healthy the seeds of Wilfrid Laurier University were sown future can spring. when the town of Waterloo offered its founders a gift of virgin land on its outskirts. Today, another city has made a similar offer. To gaze out over the Milton property, with the town at one’s back, it’s possible to imagine the sense of wonder that the founders felt as they gazed out over the grassy fields where Laurier’s Waterloo campus stands today, proud and secure. Despite the optimism that prevailed among the founders, it’s unlikely that they had even the foggiest notion of what a century of growth, hard work, and constant change, would yield. Who knows where Laurier might find itself in another hundred years? ❖
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sports & tom
Purple &Gold forever
From small-school upstarts to established national players, our Golden Hawk athletes have never ceased to amaze and inspire us with their winning ways
IN
Jim Reid Sport: Football Position: Running
back
Years played: 1976-78 Degree: BA, Geography and Physical Education
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the summer of 1967, David “Tuffy” Knight was tired of having his football team’s abilities belittled. The Golden Hawks, for which Knight played the dual role of athletic director and head football coach, had won two Ontario Intercollegiate Athletics Association championships in the span of five years. But they hadn’t gone up against any of the province’s storied “Big Four” – Western, McGill, U of T and Queen’s – and so they still had something to prove. At the time, those schools played in their own separate league and were considered the be-all and end-all of university football in Ontario. The general belief was that a tiny school like Waterloo Lutheran would never be mentioned in the same breath as any of those vaunted teams. So the man they called Tuffy wrote a letter, asking each of the Big Four teams for an exhibition game before the 1967
By Justin Fauteaux
football season. Only J.P. Metras, the head coach of Western, said yes – a response that he was soon to regret. “Metras couldn’t understand how we beat them,” Knight, now aged 75, recently recounted. “They came out on the field with about 55 to 60 guys and we came out with our squad and we had maybe 35. But I said to him, J.P., my guys don’t get tired.” While the victory didn’t affect the team’s standings, its broader impact on athletics at Laurier cannot be overstated. Not only did it mark the beginning of a longstanding rivalry with Western, it also helped usher in a tradition of athletics excellence. That tradition has translated into a long history of success for Golden Hawk teams. In the years since the Western game, the university has won 12 national championships and 60 provincial titles in a wide range of sports. That winning record includes both men’s and
women’s teams, from men’s football to women’s soccer and curling. At the same time, it has helped establish Laurier’s name on the national scene, just as it has helped build the university’s proud sense of itself. According to David McMurray, Laurier’s vice-president, student affairs, all you need to do to see that spirit in action is go to a game. “The spirit, the pride, the loyalty in the institution and the community that athletics brings about is just a huge factor in the ethos of this particular university,” he says.
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iven the university’s tradition of athletic success and spirit, it’s hard to imagine Laurier as anything but an athletics powerhouse. In the university’s 100-year history, however, it’s a relatively new development. Before 1960, athletics programs at the school were rudimentary. While it had been participating in intercollegiate sports such as rugby, hockey and soccer as early as 1917 – back before it was offering bachelor’s degrees – it wasn’t until the formation of the Ontario Intercollegiate Athletic Association in the early 1950s that it was even part of an official intercollegiate league. Not surprisingly, the sports facilities back then were makeshift – open fields, the school auditorium, local barns converted into impromptu arenas. The teams didn’t have a mascot – or even an official name. Whether it was football, soccer or hockey, the school’s teams were simply referred to as “Waterloo College,” which made for such less-than-rousing chants as “Go Waterloo College!” In 1951, the school’s teams finally earned a name. It wasn’t the Golden Hawks, however, but something a tad more humble. At the time, Waterloo College was still affiliated with Western, and in a tribute to that connection the previously nameless teams became
All you need to do to see that spirit in action is go to a game.” the Mules – in honour of Western’s Mustangs. The women’s teams were called the Mulettes, while the hockey teams were referred to as the Ice Mules. The name stuck through the rest of the 1950s, but by 1960 the university decided it was time to take the beleaguered mule out behind the barn. For one thing, Waterloo College had just become Waterloo Lutheran University, in the process severing its affiliation with Western and the Mustangs. For another, students were tired of being ridiculed: “the Jackasses” was the preferred moniker for the teams among opposing fans. The students held a vote and the name that emerged victorious was the Hawks, beating out contenders such as the Mongooses and the Astronauts. The university administration subsequently decided to add “Golden” to the name, in recognition of the WLU purple-and-gold colour scheme, which had been in place since 1927. “From Jackass to Bird of Prey,” read The Cord headline announcing the change, summing up the feeling around campus that the new name represented a bold new mindset that was taking hold.
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everal decades after that first exhibition game against Western, Tuffy Knight’s face still lights up when he talks about the quest to bring WLU into the ranks of the intercollegiate sports elite. Even before the Western game made headlines, the team had been working hard to build itself up, but the media still thought of the university as a small fry. “We beat the University of Alberta in 1966, we beat Western in 1967,” Knight recalls telling reporters. “What are you talking about big schools? Do you mean big as in old? Because yes, they’re certainly older than us.”
Kandice Baptiste Sport: Basketball Position: Point
guard/ shooting guard Years played: 2006-10 Degree: BA, History
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David “Tuffy” Knight in 1965
Knight himself was still in his late twenties when he came to Laurier as one of the “four West Virginians.” Fred Nichols was the first of the four. A graduate of West Virginia’s little-known Fairmont State College, he’d come to work at Laurier in 1963 as director of student services, subsequently inviting a trio of his fraternity brothers from Fairmont to join him. In addition to Knight, the group included Rich Newbrough, who became the football team’s offensive coordinator, and Don Smith, who assisted with football coaching and also coached basketball. It might seem like an unusual start to a Canadian sporting dynasty, but the West Virginians brought with them a fierce competitive spirit, and almost immediately the teams began to improve. Between 1963 and 1971, the basketball team won seven provincial championships, and in 1968 they took home the university’s first-ever national
athletics championship cup, defeating the St. Mary’s Huskies 66-61. The football team became a strong contender, too, winning the provincial Ontario University Athletics Association title in 1972, a year after the leagues were re-aligned and the Golden Hawks were put in the same league as the Big Four. Through the balance of the 1970s and into the 1980s, the university slowly but surely made a name for itself by way of its athletic achievements. The men’s hockey team broke through in the ‘80s, winning three provincial titles, while the football team finally nabbed its first national championship in 1991, besting Mount Allison by a score of 25-18 to win the Vanier Cup. Often playing against schools twice Laurier’s size, the university’s teams developed a “little school that could” mentality, gaining a reputation for, as current head football coach Gary Jeffries puts it, “knocking off the big guys.”
Golden ages Five great Laurier sports dynasties
Men’s basketball, 1963-1971 Men’s basketball was the program that saw the most immediate benefit from the arrival of the four West Virginians at Waterloo Lutheran (see main article). Starting in the 1963-64 season, the Golden Hawks rattled off seven provincial championships in eight seasons. This era would also bring the university its first national championship in any sport, when the team claimed the 1968 Canadian Interuniversity Athletics Union national title.
Women’s soccer, 1989-1995 The first truly successful women’s program at Laurier, the Golden Hawks women’s soccer team has been a force at both the provincial and national levels, winning provincial championships in 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993 and 1995. This era also included two national championships, in 1992 (the first for a Laurier women’s team) and 1995. This dynasty has seen a renaissance in recent years, with the Hawks winning provincial titles in 2008 and 2010, taking silver in the national championships in 2010.
Women’s lacrosse, 2000-present To put the achievements of this dynasty into perspective, many were shocked when the team didn’t win the provincial championship in the 2009 season. Between 2000 and 2010, the Hawks won eight provincial championships (there is no national championship for the sport), including six consecutive victories. Championships aside, this
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team has simply dominated its sport, particularly between 2006 and 2009, when it went 29 games over nearly three years without a loss.
Women’s hockey, 1999-present Not only was this past season the first time in seven years that the women’s hockey team didn’t win the provincial championship, but it was the first time since the 2000-01 season that it wasn’t at least playing for provincial gold. The team’s first Ontario University Athletics title came in 1999, just two years after its founding, the first of nine over the next 11 years – including a streak of seven straight from 2004 to 2010 that is the longest in Laurier history. The Golden Hawks women’s hockey team also holds the only national championship banner in Laurier hockey history, thanks to its win over McGill in 2005.
Curling, 2005-present The Golden Hawks’ curling teams have dominated on both the men’s and women’s sides like no other program at Laurier. The teams’ reign started with a provincial championship for the men’s side in 2005-06, and continued with both teams winning provincial gold in 2007-08. The men and women also both won national titles in 2007-08, a feat that has never been matched in Laurier history. The women’s team has been on fire recently, too, with two more national championships in 2008-09 and 2010-11, and a provincial title this past season. The four national titles between the two teams put the program in a tie with soccer for the most national championships in Laurier history.
The West Virginians brought with them a fierce competitive spirit, and almost immediately the teams began to improve.
It
would be inaccurate to paint the story of athletics at Laurier as one of unmitigated success – there were plenty of losses, injuries, and disappointments to go along with the highlights. In the mid-1990s, the university’s varsity programs went through a particularly rough period. The women’s soccer team was doing well, but relatively few teams were making the playoffs, let alone winning championships. Meanwhile, the school’s athletics facilities were in serious need of renovation. Another aspect of the university’s varsity system needed updating, too: its approach to women’s athletics. Back in 1984, Rich Newbrough had started the ball rolling, increasing the university’s budget for women’s athletics, which at the time had been severely underfunded. The curling team had won the first women’s championship in 1986, and the powerful soccer team kicked its way to national titles in 1992 and 1995. It was clear, however, that more needed to be done. “When I arrived at Laurier in 1998, the change rooms in the Athletic Complex were about one-third women, two-thirds men, and there were only about four washrooms for women in the whole building,” recalls current Director of Athletics and Recreation Peter Baxter. Shortly after Baxter’s arrival on campus, a number of changes designed to boost women’s athletics took place. The Athletic Complex was renovated to provide more and better space for female users (and to make it a better facility overall, with a new gym floor and improvements to the pool). At the same time, the university made a renewed commitment to female varsity athletics. The success was almost immediate. Two years after its formation, the women’s hockey team won its first provincial championship, subsequently going on to win a total of seven in a row, as well as a national championship in 2005. Meanwhile, the women’s soccer team continued to rack up victories, while the women’s lacrosse team won an astonishing eight provincial titles during the first decade of the 2000s. “From 2003 to 2008, we won every year and I think that did a lot for the visibility of women in athletics,” said current women’s lacrosse coach Lynn Orth, who arrived at the university in 1998. “Success definitely gives you credibility, and I think we saw that from those years.”
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uccess in competition – on both the men’s and women’s sides – has given Laurier something else, something that lingers after the field lights are shut off and the skates hung up, many say. For the athletes themselves, it’s meant great memories, close friendships and great life skills. “The relationships I’ve built with my teammates and coaches – they’re family,” says basketball team member and recent graduate Kandice Baptiste. “I came to Laurier without knowing anyone, and now some of my closest friends are my old teammates. Those relationships have been part of my journey.” Baptiste says she also learned valuable life skills as a student athlete – discipline, time management, and the ability to work with many different kinds of people – sentiments echoed by Jim Reid, a legendary member of the football team in the late 1970s. “When you go out into the business world, you find that no matter what job you apply for, if you’re not competitive you’ll get run over, and if you’re not a good co-worker you won’t do your job well,” Reid says. “Teamwork, passion for what you do – I believe Laurier gave me a big head start on those things.” Varsity athletics has served the university well, too.
Top row (l-r): coach Rich Newbrough offers sage advice; Waterloo College football players. Bottom Left: Golden Hawk David Baird (jersey #14) soars in 1966 or ‘67. Middle row: (l-r) Basketball coach Howard “Tex” Lockhart with national championship trophy in 1968; 1985-86 Laurier women’s curling team with the Ontario championship banner – the first-ever for a woman’s team at the university. Bottom right: Golden Hawks fans at the 1969 Canadian National Basketball Championships.
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Congratulations Laurier! The Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Association (WLUAA) is proud to support a number of Laurier’s centennial celebrations in 2011, including:
• matching dollar for dollar alumni donations up to $10,000 for the commissioned bronze statue of Sir Wilfrid Laurier • proudly sponsoring Laurier’s Centennial Celebration
WLUAA supports more than 79,000 alumni located around the world. Its mission is to:
• foster alumni interaction with the university and alumni communities • promote active alumni participation in the affairs of the university • maintain and promote the reputation of the university and contribute to its ongoing development
The WLU Alumni advantage: • Take advantage of our GradVantages program including credit cards, insurance
(home, auto, life, health, dental and travel), real estate agents and mortgage brokers, license plates, coupon books and much more. The revenue generated by these partnerships is distributed to our numerous student scholarships, bursaries and student initiatives. In addition, revenues are also used to support many capital projects on the Laurier campuses, including the development of the Alumni Hall lecture facility at Laurier Brantford in 2010. Since 2005, the Alumni Association has pledged over $1.2 million in capital support to the university
• Volunteer through one of our location-based Chapters including Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Greater Toronto Area West and Ottawa
• Learn more and connect with WLUAA through the alumni magazine (Campus), our e-newsletter (Alma Matters) and our website www.laurieralumni.ca
visit us online at laurieralumni.ca
Once we started succeeding in sports and getting on TV – there’s no doubt that athletics played a monumental role in attracting students.”
Left: 2007 women’s lacrosse champions. Top row (l-r): men’s basketball in winter 2011; the women’s team at the Laurierhosted 2011 CIS hockey championships; basketball fans this past winter. Bottom row (l-r): 2005 Vanier Cup winners; women’s curling at the 2009 Winter Universiade in China.
“At first, even in Toronto no one knew where Waterloo was or what Waterloo Lutheran was,” says former basketball coach Don Smith. “But the notoriety of this university once we started succeeding in sports and getting on TV – there’s no doubt that athletics played a monumental role in attracting students.” Athletics has also helped define the school’s culture and spirit. Whether it’s a packed football stadium or a gym full of Laurier basketball fans, cheering and banging pots, the Golden Hawks garner support that is easily among the best in the country. The university’s teams have enjoyed that extra-strength homecourt advantage for a long time. “No one could beat Waterloo Lutheran in their own gym in basketball,” says football head coach Gary Jeffries, an alumnus who played football for the university in the early 1970s. “Our enrolment couldn’t have been much more than 2,000 or 2,200, and maybe 400 people was all you could jam in that gym. But was it ever loud.”
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n a wet, slushy afternoon late in January of this year, the volume at the Athletic Complex gym was similarly impressive as the men’s and women’s basketball teams played in a double-header against the Western Mustangs, their old rivals. The games, regular season outings, were also Right to Play fundraisers, and had drawn an enthusiastic crowd of Laurier supporters. There were lots of purple-and-gold faces in the crowd, and raucous cheering, and signs with silly proLaurier slogans.
“Oh, god, it was loud,” said Samantha Dzikewicz, a residence don who attended the double-header. “Everybody was going crazy.” Both games were tight, but in the end the women fell to their Western counterparts by a slim margin, while the men’s team pulled off a dramatic victory – thanks to a clutch three-pointer in the game’s dying minutes. The old rivalry was in no danger of dying out. In recent years, Laurier’s sports programs have continued to thrive, with the women’s teams leading the charge these days. The Lady Hawks curling team won a national title in 2010-2011, while the lacrosse team won their eighth OUA provincial championship. Women’s soccer won its second provincial title in three years, and finished second at the nationals. Meanwhile, the opening lines of a new chapter in athletics at the university were being written, as the Brantford campus announced this spring that it was joining the Ontario College Athletics Association, and will field varsity men’s and women’s soccer teams in 2014 and basketball teams in 2015. For Rich Newbrough, of the four West Virginians, it all comes back to the Laurier spirit, and the passion that fans bring to the games. Newbrough worked at the university for over 30 years, and he says that spirit has been a constant at the university, no matter the time period. “The Laurier spirit has not abated a bit – it’s still there,” he says. “We’ve got an awful lot of pride.” ❖
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Wilfrid Laurier University traces its roots to the opening of the Evangelical Lutheran Seminary of Canada in 1911. For 100 years, this remarkable institution has been inspiring lives of leadership and purpose. As we celebrate our centennial, the Laurier community has much to be proud of and much to look forward to.
Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo | Brantford | Kitchener | Toronto
Guess who’s in your Laurier family MUSICIANS • Presidents • Educators • Politicians • Surgeons • PHILANTHROPISTS • Authors • Olympians • PLAYWRIGHTS • Performers • Ambassadors • Innovators • INVENTORS • Politicians • Screenwriters • Teachers • OLYMPIANS • Dignitaries • Volunteers • Emmy nominees • ENTREPRENEURS • Performers • Researchers AMBASSADORS • Playwrights • Politicians • Philanthropists • Innovators • Inventors • Volunteers • CEOs • EMMY NOMINEES • Teachers • RESEARCHERS • Performers • DIGNITARIES • Philanthropists • Entrepreneurs • Authors • Musicians • Presidents Entrepreneurs • AUTHORS • Olympians • EDUCATORS • CEOs • Surgeons • POLITICIANS • Screenwriters • Performers • Philanthropists • INNOVATORS • Inventors • Performers • TEACHERS • Screenwriters • Researchers • Dignitaries VOLUNTEERS • Emmy nominees • CEOs • Innovators • PERFORMERS • Educators
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In honour of our centennial, Laurier will announce a distinguished group of 100 ALUMNI of ACHIEVEMENT on September 1. Celebrate Laurier and the achievements of this illustrious group of alumni at a once-in-a-century event honouring our 100 Alumni of Achievement and centennial reunion classes as part of our Homecoming celebrations: CENTENNIAL ALUMNI CELEBRATION, OCTOBER 1, 2011 See the Homecoming section on page 57 for details.
The Centennial Alumni Celebration is proudly sponsored by:
HOMECOMING 2011 SEPT 30 – OCT 2 YOUR GUIDE TO THIS YEAR’S CENTENNIAL HOMECOMING CELEBRATIONS: 14th Annual Dean’s Alumni Golf Classic | Free Pancake Breakfast Legends of Laurier Lecture Series | Faculty Open Houses | Football Game & Tailgate Party Centennial Alumni Celebration | 100 Alumni of Achievement Experience Stratford | Class Reunions + MORE!
To discover Homecoming 2011 or to purchase tickets, scan the QR code or visit
www.laurieralumni.ca/homecoming A SPECIAL CENTENNIAL HOMECOMING 2011 SECTION
flash back
Homecoming 2011 Events | Sept 30 – Oct 2 Thursday, September 29
Saturday, October 1
5 Annual Mac Wilson Memorial Charity Golf Tournament Doon Valley Golf Course $60 per golfer th
Come see what’s new and exciting in your faculty and reconnect with past professors and alumni.
Help raise money for much-needed student scholarships at this fundraising golf tournament.
WLU Campus Tours Alumni Hall 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. | Free
Friday, September 30 Free Pancake Breakfast Amphitheatre/Dining Hall Quad 9 a.m. – Noon | Free Start your day with a free pancake breakfast. Rain or shine!
14th Annual Dean’s Alumni Golf Classic Rebel Creek Golf Club Golf, lunch & dinner | $160 + tax per golfer Join us for an exciting day of golf as the School of Business & Economics kicks off Homecoming 2011!
Athletic Hall of Fame Dinner Senate & Board Chamber $65 per person The Athletic Hall of Fame, created in 1986, celebrates individuals, athletes and teams who have made outstanding contributions to varsity athletic programs. The 2011 inductees are Ashley Stephenson, Yannick Carter, Jesse Alexander, Meghan McGrath, Arthur Stephen, and the 1961 men’s football team.
Faculty Open Houses Various locations across campus 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. | Free
Alumni Association Annual General Meeting Paul Martin Centre 9:30 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. | Free Meet your Board of Directors, find out more information about your Alumni Association, and have a chance to win $250 in prizes.
Legends of Laurier Lecture Series Senate & Board Chamber 10:30 a.m. | Free Reminisce about your Laurier days with Dr. Fred Nichols, dean of students emeritus, host of the Laurier Legends Lecture Series. Our 2011 lecturer is Business Professor Emeritus, Dr. Tupper Cawsey.
Enjoy a tour of your favourite Laurier campus spots & facilities. Tours leave Alumni Hall every 15 minutes.
Junior Hawks – Children’s Program University Stadium Gymnasium Noon | Free Children are invited for story time, crafts, games, face painting and more.
Football Game & Tailgate Party Laurier Golden Hawks vs. Ottawa Gee-Gees 1 p.m. Kickoff $15.95 | Adults (Football Game Only) $18.95 | Adults 19+ years of age (Endzone Tailgate Party) $11.95 | Students (non-WLU) & Seniors $3.95 | Children 4-12 FREE | Children under 4 Homecoming 2011 reaches a fevered pitch as we cheer our Golden Hawks to victory! REMEMBER: You must purchase a ticket to access the Endzone Tailgate Party. Ticket prices increase by $2 if purchased on game day.
58 26 Homecoming LAURIER LAURIER CAMPUS CAMPUS Summer Centennial 2011 Edition 2011 Laurier Must-Haves: an official Homecoming 2011 t-shirt • your group of Golden Hawk friends • a loud noisemaker
flash back
Join us in celebrating purple&gold Post-Game Dinner and Celebration Wilf’s Pub 4 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Order from our special Alumni Homecoming Menu Wilf’s is the perfect place to celebrate a Golden Hawk victory! Admission is free until 7:30 p.m. on a first-come, firstserved basis.
Centennial Alumni Celebration Bingemans Conference Centre 6 p.m. Reception | 7 p.m. Dinner 9:30 p.m. Dance (featuring Blackwater Trio) $60 per person The entire Laurier family is invited to attend this once-in-a-century event to celebrate Homecoming weekend and Laurier’s Centennial anniversary. Join fellow Hawks as we mark this momentous milestone, while honouring Laurier’s 100 Alumni of Achievement and centennial reunion classes. After dinner, dance the night away with Blackwater Trio.
Alumni Party at Wilf’s Pub Featuring Live Music 9 p.m. | $10 per person Purchase your tickets early to avoid disappointment!
Alumni Party The Turret Nightclub 9 p.m. | $10 per person To avoid disappointment, purchase your tickets early!
Sunday, October 2 Homecoming Worship Service Keffer Memorial Chapel, Waterloo Lutheran Seminary 10 a.m. Join us for a special Homecoming service, featuring a performance by the WLU Alumni Choir.
4th Annual Laurier Loop University Stadium 10 a.m. | $25 per person Participate in one of four options: four-loop 10-km run, two-loop 5-km run, one-loop 2.5-km run, or one of three relays. All pledges are donated to Laurier’s Sun Life Financial Movement Disorders Research & Rehabilitation Centre (MDRC).
Experience Stratford Fellini’s & Avon Theatre, Stratford 10:30 a.m. Bus Departs Laurier 2 p.m. Showtime | $99 per person Enjoy a performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar at the Stratford Festival. Cost includes coach transportation between Laurier’s Waterloo campus and Stratford, lunch at Fellini’s, tickets to the performance and a Q&A session with 2 actors.
History of the Golden Hawk 1951 Tired of having no team name to chant for, Kenneth Coker, writer for the campus paper, jokingly calls the Waterloo College basketball team “The Mules” to symbolize Western’s Mustangs’ harder-working cousin (Waterloo College was affiliated with the University of Western at the time). 1959/60 Waterloo College becomes Waterloo Lutheran University. Professor Don Morgenson organizes a pep rally to announce the new mascot: The Hawk. 1961/1962 The university’s Athletic
Director and two students spray-paint the stuffed Hawk mascot metallic gold. The Golden Hawk is born! Late-1970s The stuffed golden hawk is replaced by a costumed student and has been our symbol of pride ever since.
Scan the code to watch a video history of the Golden Hawk.
All event details subject to change.
LAURIERbeverage LAURIER CAMPUSCAMPUS Centennial Edition2011 2011 27 59spirit! • PURPLE and GOLD accessories • a Golden Hawk temporary tattoo • your favourite game-time • yourSummer Golden Hawk
KEEPING in touch
Championships
Laurier by the Numbers
12 National titles have been won in varsity sports. 77 buildings at our Waterloo campus; most within one city block. Our Brantford campus has eighteen buildings. 97.7% of Laurier grads have jobs within six months of graduation. 100 student campus clubs operate at Laurier’s main campus in Waterloo. 79,411 alumni are members of the WLU Alumni Association; they’re found in 95 countries.
Reunion Celebrations The following classes are encouraged to come back to campus to celebrate their centennial milestone reunions. • Class of 2006 • Class of 2001 • Class of 1996 • Class of 1991
| | | |
5th Anniversary 10th Anniversary 15th Anniversary 20th Anniversary
• Class of 1986 • Class of 1981 • Class of 1971 • Class of 1961
| | | |
25th Anniversary 30th Anniversary 40th Anniversary 50th Anniversary
• All Kinesiology and Physical Education graduates • All alumni who graduated prior to 1960 will celebrate as part of our Founders’ Club.
Are you a member of one of these classes? Be sure to visit www.laurieralumni.ca/reunions.
HOMECOMING ATHLETICS Saturday, October 1 Men’s Football: Ottawa @ Laurier – 1 p.m. @ University Stadium Men’s Baseball: Waterloo @ Laurier – 1 p.m. & 3:30 p.m. @ Jack Couch Park, Kitchener
Sunday, October 2 Men’s Baseball: Western @ Laurier – 1 p.m. & 3:30 p.m. @ Bechtel Park, Waterloo 28
LAURIER CAMPUS Summer 2011
Accommodations Discounted accommodations are available for all returning alumni and friends at the following hotels in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. More information about each hotel is available online at www.laurieralumni.ca/homecoming. Quote “WLU Homecoming” when making your reservation to take advantage of the Laurier alumni group rate. Waterloo Inn Conference Hotel | Booking cut-off date: August 19, 2011 Delta Kitchener-Waterloo | Booking cut-off date: August 30, 2011 Destination Inn | Booking cut-off date: August 31, 2011 Four Points By Sheraton Cambridge | Booking cut-off date: August 30, 2011
KEEPING in touch
LAURIER BRANTFORD HOMECOMING 2011
3 rd A nnual
LAURIER BRANTFORD H O M E C O M I N G
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Sept 24, 2011 – Schedule of Events Saturday, September 24 Children’s Reading and Activities Stedman Community Bookstore, Research & Academic Centre West 11 a.m. | Free Bring the whole family out to enjoy lots of activities aimed at our junior Golden Hawks and all kids at heart!
Pre-Baseball Dugout Party Arnold Anderson Stadium 11 a.m. | Admission is 19+ with your game ticket or All Access Pass Reconnect with former classmates and faculty while enjoying a BBQ lunch and the chance to win fabulous prizes – all in our fully-licensed tent. Admission to the Dugout Party is included in your ticket to the double-header!
Home Run Derby Arnold Anderson Stadium, Diamond #2 Noon Qualifying Round 3 p.m. Final Round | Free Think you’ve got what it takes to hit the long ball? See which of your friends can go deep, and which ones only have warning-track power—in our first annual Home Run Derby.
Laurier Varsity Baseball Double-Header Arnold Anderson Stadium 1 p.m. Game 1 | 3:30 p.m. Game 2 $7 for adults; $2 for children; All Access Pass Cheer on the Golden Hawks as they take on the Guelph Gryphons in this exciting double-header. Be sure to wear your purple and gold!
Brantford Comedy Festival Night Sanderson Centre Doors open at 7 p.m.| Show begins at 8 p.m. $30 per person Come out and enjoy performances by some of the top Canadian comedians performing today, including Sean Cullen from Last Comic Standing and CBC’s Debaters. A portion of proceeds from this event supports Laurier Brantford Homecoming programming.
Class of 2006 – 5th Year Reunion SC Johnson Building, Alumni Hall Foyer 7 p.m.
Homecoming Pub Night Research & Academic Centre West 7:30p.m. | ALL Access Pass guarantees access before 9 p.m. | $7 general admission after 9 p.m. until 11pm. What better way to finish off Homecoming than a reunion with your classmates in a pub-style atmosphere. Enjoy live music, a great atmosphere and good friends at RAC-West. Take this opportunity to catch up with friends and enjoy a night out on the town.
All Access Pass
The All-Access Pass includes: • Admission to both games of the double-header • Admission to the Dugout Party • Guaranteed Access to the Pub Night before 9 p.m. NOTE All-Access pass does not include admission to the Comedy Festival Night.
We are excited to welcome back the class of 2006 to celebrate their fifth-year anniversary – centennial style!
All event details subject to change.
LAURIER CAMPUS Summer 2011 www.laurieralumni.ca/brantfordhomecoming
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centennial update
We’re already more than halfway through Laurier’s centennial year – and the calendar so far has been jam-packed with celebratory events. We hope many of you have taken advantage of the wonderful performances presented by our Faculty of Music, and that you have had the opportunity to attend some of the fascinating conferences and lectures that have been held. There is still time to celebrate your alma mater’s 100th anniversary. The calendar of events ramps up this fall as we prepare for the culmination of Laurier’s centennial in October. Check out events we have planned in the listings below, and don’t forget to visit www.LAURIER100.ca for news, contests and more special events as they are added. We look forward to having you join us as we continue our celebration of 100 years inspiring lives of leadership and purpose.
Centennial calendar of events Canada’s Foreign Policy in the 100 years after Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier
Drabble Winners’ Reception Thursday, September 29, 7:30 p.m.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier Statue Unveiling Ceremony
Thursday, September 22, 7:30 p.m.
Hawk’s Nest
Tuesday, October 18, 1 to 3 p.m.
The winners of the popular drabble contest
Amphitheatre
Maureen Forrester Recital Hall
will be recognized during an evening reception
After months of painstaking work on every
The Honourable Bob Rae will speak about the
in the Hawk’s Nest on Laurier’s Waterloo
crease and button, artist Marlene Hilton
changes to Canada’s foreign policy in the years
campus. Featuring drabble readings, prizes,
Moore will unveil the new life-sized bronze
since Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s time as Prime Minister
food and drinks, this will be an evening of
statue of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, commissioned
of Canada, which ended in October 1911 (the
short-but-sweet literary pleasures. Free event;
in celebration of the university’s centennial,
same month Laurier’s roots were established in
open to the public.
to our community. Free event; open to the public.
Waterloo). Free event; open to the public.
Centennial Alumni Celebration
Heritage Plaque Unveiling
Saturday, October 1, 6 p.m.
Jill Bolte Taylor Lecture
Friday, September 23, 1 to 3 p.m. Seminary Walk
Bingemans Ballroom
Tuesday, October 18, 7:30 p.m.
Honouring our 100 Alumni of Achievement
The Tannery
Ontario Heritage Trust will present Laurier with
and the centennial reunion classes, this
Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained and
a special Heritage plaque to commemorate its
recognition dinner is the Homecoming event
published neuroanatomist. She is the
100th anniversary. The plaque will be unveiled
you don’t want to miss. Tickets are only $60
author of the New York Times best-selling
during a ceremony at its permanent location
each and are now available. The names of the
memoir My Stroke of Insight: A Brain
on Seminary Walk (between the seminary and
100 Alumni of Achievement selected for this
Scientist’s Personal Journey. Chosen as one
the Library). Free event; open to the public.
honour will be released in early September.
of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential
Ticketed event; $60 per person includes
People in the World” in 2008, she has
reception, dinner and entertainment by
also been featured on the Oprah Winfrey
Blackwater Trio.
Show. Free event; open to the public.
Visit LAURIER100.ca for more information about these events as well as contest information, a historical timeline and much more!
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LAURIER CAMPUS Centennial Edition 2011
centennial update
THANK YOU to our centennial sponsors, who have helped make our special initiatives possible.
DIAMOND SPONSORS
Re-Imagine Conference: The Role and Future of Universities in a Changing World
Centennial Opera Gala
Thursday, October 20
This special centennial performance will
Friday, October 28, 8 p.m.
w w w. l a u r i eralumni.ca
PLATINUM SPONSORS
Knox Presbyterian Church, Waterloo
Senate and Board Chamber
feature alumna and acclaimed soprano
Universities are being asked to engage
Jane Archibald, the WLU Orchestra and
with the most complex student base
Choir, students of the Opera program
in history. Is there a more sustainable
and other guests. Ticketed event. Watch
model of teaching and research in
for details on www.laurier100.ca.
GOLD SPONSORS
the age of exponential enrolment growth? What are the opportunities to re-envision the academy of higher learning? This one-day conference will provide an opportunity for leaders and stakeholders to re-imagine tomorrow’s universities. Registration required; visit www. laurier100.ca/re-imagine for details.
Fall Convocation Friday, October 28 Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex The graduating class of 2011 will celebrate their achievements with family and friends in ceremonies throughout the day.
Final Centennial Evening Saturday, October 29, 6:30 p.m. Bingemans Ballroom
SILVER SPONSORS
The grand finale of our centennial celebrations – a night you don’t want to miss! Ticketed event. Watch for details on www.laurier100.ca.
Centennial Opera Gala Sunday, October 30, 2 p.m. Maureen Forrester Recital Hall, Waterloo Campus This final centennial orchestral concert will feature the WLU Orchestra and special guest alumna soprano Jane Archibald. Ticketed event. Watch for details on www.laurier100.ca.
75 University Avenue West | Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5 73 George Street | Brantford, Ontario N3T 2Y3 120 Duke Street West | Kitchener, Ontario N2H 3W8 130 King Street West | Toronto, Ontario M5X 1C9
100 years inspiring lives of leadership and purpose.
LAURIER CAMPUS Centennial Edition 2011
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A L U M N I
THREE AWARDS of $1,000 EACH are provided annually by the Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Association. Students who are siblings or children of Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo Lutheran University, or Waterloo College alumni, and are entering the university having met all entrance requirements are invited to apply.
T O Applications are available at www.laurieralumni.ca/awardofmerit and must be received in the Student Award Office before Friday, September 23, 2011.
1,000 Bonus reward miles! That’s the ticket. In fact, that’s enough for a return flight1. Just apply for a BMO® Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Association Gold AIR MILES®† MasterCard®* by August 31, 2011 and earn 1,000 Bonus AIR MILES®† reward miles with your first card purchase2. Plus, with every card purchase you make, BMO Bank of Montreal helps support the Laurier Alumni Association in connecting you and fellow alumni, and providing on-campus student programming. Hurry, Bonus AIR MILES reward miles offer ends August 31, 2011. Apply online at bmo.com/wlu BMO Bank of Montreal is a proud GRADVantages Partner.
1. With BMO’s exclusive Gold AIR MILES MasterCard 25% discount, round trip flights start at only 712 reward miles in low season. 2. Bonus offer is limited to new accounts. Applications must be received between June 1, 2011 and August 31, 2011. You must make your first card purchase by October 14, 2011 in order to receive the one time 1,000 Bonus AIR MILES reward miles on your MasterCard account. Complete Terms & Conditions are available at bmo.com/wlu. ® Registered trade-marks of Bank of Montreal. ®* Registered trade-mark of MasterCard International Incorporated. ®†/TM† Trademarks of AIR MILES International Trading B.V. Used under license by LoyaltyOne, Inc. and Bank of Montreal.
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LAURIER CAMPUS Centennial Edition 2011
What if there were no curveballs?
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100 years of successful alumni. 100 years of xcellence in academia. Congratulations Laurier on your 100 th anniversary.