University of Windsor Alumni Magazine Summer 2008 view Challenge and Opportunity The Cross-border Issue Dr. William Anderson, Chair, Cross-Border Transportation Policy University of Windsor Alumni Magazine Summer 2008 inview Your link to For more U of W info, visit the University www.uwindsor.ca/alumni of Windsor or www.uwindsor.ca/view features news DEAR READER 3 COVER: ALUMNI NEWS 35 CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY 10 RESEARCH: EVENTS CALENDAR 39 Dr. William Anderson comes to campus STRESSED OUT! 4 as the new Ontario Research Chair in Researcher Fuschia Sirois measures anxiety. LANCER NEWS 44 Cross-border Transportation Policy. ALUMNI PROFILE: CLASS NEWS 46 ALAN WILDEMAN 40 THANK HIS LUCKY STARS 6 UWindsor welcomes its sixth president. Assistant Director Dan Murphy keeps finding work in one of the toughest industries around. TO GREATER HEIGHTS 15 ON THE COVER: Dr. William Anderson on the site of North America’s busiest border crossing. Photograph by Kevin Kavanaugh view . summer 2008 1 view EDITOR Jennifer Barone DESIGN & LAYOUT Sophia Tanninen ALUMNI OFFICE LIAISON Trevor Dinham CONTRIBUTORS Jennifer Barone, John Carrington, Mike Clark, Stephen Fields, Amanda Gellman, Susan Lester, Elisa Mitton, Paul Riggi, Alan Wildeman PHOTOGRAPHY Tory James, Kevin Johnson, Kevin Kavanaugh, Jason Kryk, Doug MacLellan View is published three times per year by Public Affairs and Communications, University Advancement, University of Windsor. Editorial Correspondence: Public Affairs and Communications, University Advancement, 400 Huron Church Road, Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4 Phone: 519.253.3000 Ext. 3240 Fax: 519.973.7067 E-mail: [email protected] ClassNews/address changes: Alumni Affairs Fax: 519.973.7063 E-mail: [email protected] [email protected] Save a Tree Internet: www.uwindsor.ca/alumni The views expressed or implied herein do Read View Online and not necessarily reflect those of the Alumni Association or the University of Windsor. forward it to a friend! CPM Agreement No. 40063423 60,000 copies of this issue of View were printed and RETURN UNDELIVERABLE mailed to University of Windsor alumni and friends. CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO: Office of Alumni Affairs, You can help lessen the impact on the environment by University of Windsor, reading your View magazine online. Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4 E-mail: [email protected] Simply call 519.971.3618, toll free at 1.888.561.5551, e-mail [email protected] or fax 519.973.7063 with PAC #3934 your name and e-mail address and we will send you ISSN 1489-0534 a reminder when a new issue of View is available at www.uwindsor.ca/view 2 view . summer 2008 Goals and aspirations Dear Reader, It is with pride that I write my first letter as President of the University of Windsor to you – its valued alumni and friends. This University has a distinctive legacy and unique potential among universities in Ontario and beyond. UWindsor graduates are making a difference in all walks of life. It is fortuitous for me that this issue of View was already in preparation when I began a few weeks ago. It has helped me to learn more about the University we now share. In my early days at UWindsor the question I am most frequently asked is what I plan to do as president. I must of course concern myself with the quality of the University’s teaching and research programs, the experience our students have on campus, the day-to-day operations, fundraising, external relations and more. The good news is that in all of those areas there are dedicated faculty, staff, administrative teams, alumni and volunteers who do what needs to get done to make the campus vibrant. They are the heart and soul behind the creative experience we want our students to have. But the simplest answer to the question is that my goal is to help ensure that all alumni – present and future – have a lifetime of pride in their university. When I was growing up in Saskatchewan, I was told that if you put your ear to the railroad tracks you can hear a train coming before you can see it. Our world is changing rapidly, with global shifts in the environment, demographics, commerce, technology, and the arts. UWindsor faculty and staff have interests and expertise that span all of the disciplines critical in this changing world, and are engaged in research and teaching that help all of us prepare for the future. They allow UWindsor to be a place where, metaphorically, our students can put their ears to the tracks. View gives us a glimpse of some of these people, and of alumni whose lives contribute to the greater UWindsor story. I want to close with a word of appreciation for Dr. Ross Paul. Many of you know him personally and understand the tireless commitment he brought to UWindsor during his time as president. In handing over the pen for me to be the one who now writes to you, he also shared with me his continuing, unwavering passion to see your university excel. ALAN WILDEMAN President, University of Windsor [email protected] view . summer 2008 3 research 4 view . summer 2008 Stressed Out! By Stephen Fields Measuring our anxiety and promoting positive responses recent series of print advertisements aimed at Health-seeking behaviour is another Sirois focus. She plans reducing on-the-job accidents caused controversy to conduct a study that would involve drafting drama students to in Windsor when the organization that governs the develop mock enactments of announcements about certain diseases city’s public transit system decided they were too and conditions that would vary in their level of alarm. The subjects Agraphic for commuters. People waiting for a bus did not need the in her lab would be exposed to the enactments, with the aim of anxiety of seeing someone lying in a pool of blood, declared the determining how anxiety can be used effectively to motivate people transport committee. into health-promoting behaviour, without causing a sense of However, the effect of such ads – which were placed by the near-mental paralysis. Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and depicted a series of “To what level do you have to raise people’s anxiety to get sometimes gruesome workplace accidents – are what intrigue them to seek help for a symptom, but without alarming them?” University of Windsor Psychology Associate Professor Fuschia Sirois asks rhetorically. Sirois. With her team of students, Dr. Sirois operates a Health People may intuitively know that they need to see a doctor if and Well-Being Lab in UWindsor’s Chrysler Hall. The lab is they’re experiencing light-headedness or shortness of breath, but used primarily for measuring the physiological reactions people may put off going if they know that the consequence might be experience when they are subjected to anxiety-inducing stress. The discovering they have life-threatening heart disease. equipment they employ includes galvanic skin response finger clips, Sirois has reviewed the existing literature on the subject and has as well as devices that monitor cardio-respiratory status. “Rather found that, at low levels of anxiety, people do not tend to look for help than just asking someone about how anxious or stressed they are,” or treatment, though they become much more active attention-seekers, she says, “we can take the actual physiological measures.” “At what point is (anxiety) a threat?” says Sirois. “There are cases One of the group’s studies involves surveying people who are in the literature where people have had full-blown heart attacks and making healthy lifestyle changes and monitoring their progress to haven’t even gone to see a doctor. People can go undiagnosed for determine, among other things, what sorts of mental strategies they years and go through a lot of suffering. A wide variety of things can use when they delay acting on their commitments. Procrastination happen to people without them ever doing anything about it.” is one of Sirois’ major fields of interest and she has published The ultimate aim of Sirois’ research, she says, is to convince numerous articles on the subject. people to get the care they need.❍v “We know that people who put things off engage in thought processes to minimize that stress,” she says. “What happens in that thought process? What is it that they tell themselves to make it okay?” Opposite: Psychology Associate Professor Fuschia Sirois (Kevin Kavanaugh Photo) view . summer 2008 5 alumni profile 6 view . summer 2008 Thank his Lucky Stars By Paul Riggi Assistant Director Dan Murphy keeps finding work in one of the toughest industries around t is mid-summer and Dan Murphy is busy. He’s behind the Adoration, nominated for the Palme d’Or, the top award at Cannes. scenes on the set of Cairo Time with director Ruba Nadda, Murphy’s successful film career has taken him to many places capturing images on film in the blistering heat of Cairo, and introduced him to such actors as Julie Christie, Olympia Alexandria and the White Desert in Egypt, where “they say Dukakis and Keith Carradine, as well as prominent filmmakers, Iit’s 95 degrees in the shade and there is no shade.” including Polley, Egoyan and Ken Finkleman. A lifelong student The BA Communications ’85 grad is first assistant director in of film, he decided to work in the industry after taking Eugene a movie about unrequited love, starring Patricia Clarkson and set McNamara’s Literature of the Cinema and Jim Linton’s Advanced for release next year. He will spend three months in Egypt before Documentary courses. returning to Windsor, where he relocated with wife Erin Picard PhD “If I sort of step back from it and think about it, it’s a pretty Psychology ’95 and their children in December 2006.