Volunteering in Hungary

From July 25 to August 8, 2009, I will be volunteering in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary, for Habitat for Humanity.

Habitat for Humanity (HFH) is a non-profit organization that works with low-income families. The families that HFH assists often live in substandard, unhealthy conditions, and need a decent place to live. As part of the partnership agreement with HFH, each family they assist participates in the construction of their future home that they purchase via a no-interest loan after they move in.

I will be traveling with other Canadian volunteers and working with other HFH teams from around the world, the future homeowners, and local HFH volunteers to build homes for less fortunate families.

For more information on HFH: http://habitat.ca/

I am volunteering in this country because I am interested in family heritage; my grandfather came from an area somewhere in the region of present day Hungary. It will be my first visit there. I can’t wait!

Support My Project

If you’d like to make a donation to support my project, you can:

  • donate items for my yard sale (see below)
  • write a cheque to ‘Habitat for Humanity Canada’ and send it to me. In the memo section of the cheque, please write: “Greg Mayer, Trip CA09402” (let me know if you need my mailing address)
  • make a donation online at: http://www.canadahelps.org/GivingPages/GivingPage.aspx?gpID=3785
  • make a cash donation

My goal is to raise $1770 before the start of my trip. This will help cover my trip cost which includes lodging, medical insurance, building materials, and ground transportation while I am there.

All donations of $20 or more are eligible for a tax receipt.

Any contribution will help and will be greatly appreciated!

My Grade Inflation Interview on Science Matters

Science Matters is a bi-weekly science-for-the-public radio show produced by University of Waterloo student, Aletheia Chiang.

I was interviewed by Aletheia last Friday. My thoughts on Grade Inflation and what it means to the University of Waterloo can be found in audio form here:

http://aletheia.podbean.com/

The interview ended at 28:11 in an unexpected way!

Many thanks to Aletheia for helping to raise awareness on the issues surrounding Grade Inflation at UW.

If nothing else, I hope that a few more people out there are aware of what is happening to undergraduate grade distributions at UW.

Canadian Association for Food Studies

Apples

I recently finished building a simple website for the Canadian Association for Food Studies at:

http://www.foodstudies.ca

The site has a lot of content that took me a long time to format properly. The french content isn’t ready, so only some of the English content on the site is in both languages.

I built the website using only Photoshop and Dreamweaver. The layout came together quite quickly of course, as I used a theme from freeCSStemplates.org.

Let me know if you find any problems with any of the links, and what you think about the website.

Grade Inflation

Apples

Last week, an article I wrote for the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) Blog was posted here:

http://cte-blog.uwaterloo.ca/?p=223

My article is on grade inflation at the University of Waterloo and how it might impact course enrollment. For the interested reader, this memo provides more information on the policies Princeton introduced to address grade inflation in 2004, which I referred to in my post.

PhD Thesis Defence Passed

So on Wednesday October 29, I passed my PhD thesis defence.

People are asking me what happens next. Here’s the next few steps that I have in my life:

1. My examiners gave me revisions to make to the thesis. Every grad student gets to make revisions after they defend (provided that they pass their defence of course). So far, it looks like the revisions I have to make might take week or two to get through. My revisions are submitted to my two supervisors, and once they are ok with the revisions, I proceed to step two ….

2. After a final draft is created, I submit my thesis to the Graduate Studies office. They tell me if I have any more revisions that I have to make (such as changes to my font size, line spacing, margin sizes, and other exciting formatting adjustments). If the GSO is ok with my thesis, then ….

3. I submit a copy to the university graphics to get a bunch of copies in made into hardcopy.

I think that’s more or less what the process entails.

And I am submitting a series of exciting paperwork along the way, of course. Plus I also get to complete a 15 page Statistics Canada survey, so that the Federal Government knows I intend to do with myself after I graduate with this thing. Though that bit of paperwork actually looks interesting.

And then what? I really don’t know what I’m doing after I graduate yet, other than taking some time off!

I’ll be here until at least April, teaching differential equations to science students and trying to publish one more paper (the research never really ends when you finish your PhD … ). Most likely, I’ll still be volunteering for too many organizations again, whilst working on my dancing through my spare time.

Then in May/June, I hope to be volunteering abroad. I’ve already found a few fantastic opportunities that involve either construction or human rights projects in developing countries. If you know of any projects abroad that you would recommend, please let me know!

Defending the PhD Thesis

Last Wednesday I submitted my thesis to my examining committee. On Wednesay, October 29th, 1:30, MC 5158, Greg defends his thesis. Oh yes.

Here’s how the defense works in my department: it’s open to the public and will probably be 2 to 3 hours long. I have a presentation at the beginning that’ll run for half an hour, and then the examiners ask questions for 2 or 2.5 hours. After that, anyone from the audience can ask questions (that is, if there’s anyone left in the audience!).

Anyone can come and go during the defense at any time. Please attend if you can! I love public speaking and big audiences.

Oh, and my thesis is titled “Spatial Resolution Enhancement in Magnetic Resonance Imaging”. It has something to do with image processing, fractals, physics, and stuff.

Provided that the examiners are moderately happy with the quality of my defense and thesis, I’ll pass, and have a bunch of revisions to make. That’s what I am hoping will happen, what is probably going happen, and is what happens to most PhD students.

And, since I’ve done everything else I need to do to graduate, I’ll probably finish of my degree requirements by December.

And ….. then what? I think some time off would be cool, but I was offered a 4 month teaching & research job at UW that’ll keep me around campus for another four months. It’s been almost 5 years since I first came to Waterloo to start my PhD. Why not stay one more semester?

So, I’ll probably wait until May to either travel, volunteer abroad, or enter the “real world”. Not sure which, or where, or what (or even why), but I’ll figure that all out eventually.

How to Run a BBQ at the University of Waterloo

Back in the days when I was volunteering for half a dozen clubs and services at UW, I ran many a BBQ to raise money for different charitable causes. I eventually wrote a seven page handbook to

  • increase my own efficiency, and
  • help others run efficient fundraisers.

I posted the handbook on my UW webspace for anyone to download:

http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~gsmayer/downloads/HowToRunABBQAtUW.pdf

I’ve tweaked the handbook into its current form after a few successful bbq’s, and posted it here in hope that it will give others some ideas and a hand in running their own fundraiser.

I hope this helps some people out there, and let me know if your group is having a bbq so that I can drop by for lunch!