September 8, 2009

By Lesley Mak, Student Success Specialist, Engineering Student Recruitment and Retention Office
Left Right Up Up Left Left… Oops!

That’s what I saw during F!rosh 2008’s Faculty Fun Day as Professor Grant Allen, Vice-Dean of Undergraduate Studies, played Dance Dance Revolution on his Playstation 2 with incoming First Year students. First Year students cheered and laughed as Professor Allen dueled with their peers. As a well-respected researcher and professor, he also enjoyed video games, even when outdanced by his students.

In other rooms, First Year students participated in other fun activities: they sculpted clay with Professor and First Year Chair Susan McCahan; expressed their dramatic side through improvisation activities with staff Liam Mitchell, Shannon Osborne and Professors Phil Byer and Peter Weiss; and made music with Professor Steve Mann’s hydraulophone.

Ultimate Frisbee and soccer games ran on Front Campus where students tried to out-kick or out-flick Professors Kim Pressnail, Mark Kortschot, and Jason Anderson, along with other faculty and graduate students.

Throughout the afternoon, students, staff, faculty and graduate students got to know each other through playing games, running around the field and sharing laughs before the first day of classes. Hopefully, memories of that day will bring a smile to a student’s face, when he or she couldn’t get that extra mark on an assignment from a professor that he or she could outdance any day.