The Blue Coat Ceremony marks an important milestone for veterinary students. Faculty and staff mentors, new students and their families come together for a dinner to celebrate the students’ achievement in joining the ranks of veterinarians in training. Following dinner, students are welcomed to AVC through a formal ceremony where each student is presented with their blue coat symbolizing their entrance into veterinary medical school.

Dr. Trung Dung Ngo, a candidate for a tenure track position in Engineering will be giving a public presentation on Thursday, July 31 at 2:00 pm in Don and Marion McDougall Hall, Room 246. Everyone is welcome to attend. Dr. Ngo's presentation is entitled "A Kangaroo inspired Robotic System as the First Responders for Search and Rescue in Hazardous Environments." Abstract: It is very risky for fire fighters to search for and rescue victims in collapsed buildings. The risk can be minimized if they know what is happening inside the building prior to carrying out their mission with the old-fashioned technology they have used for last 50 years. In this talk, I will present a kangaroo inspired robotic system which functions as a team of the first responders for fire fighters. The heterogeneous robotic system consists of a kangaroo marsupial robot and juvenile robots that can be quickly deployed and dispersed for cooperative exploration and coverage, and victim identification. The robots can self-organize an ad-hoc communication network to transmit environmental exploited data from the juvenile robots to fire fighters. I will discuss the key characteristics of this system in terms of typical features of complex systems through simulation results. Finally, I will demonstrate the viability of the concept through real-world experiments.

This week-long camp will be held August 13-19, in Prince Edward Island at Centre Goéland (Wellington), the University of Prince Edward Island and Holland College hosted by Lennox Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC). UPEI will host approximately 70 youth for workshops and demonstrations of CLIVE and the Robotics Club, for two days during the camp.

The campus community is invited to attend the presentations of two candidates for the three-year term position in the Faculty of Education's BEd (français langue seconde) program. On Wednesday, August 6, Guy Albert will present at 8:30 am and Zain Esseghaier will present at 12:00 noon in Memorial Hall, room 417. Each presentation will be followed by a coffee break with the candidates in the Memorial Hall Student Lounge. Everyone is welcome to attend.

The Faculty of Science Graduate Studies Committee will host a Master of Science Defence on Monday, August 18, at 1:00 pm in Health Sciences Building, room 301 by Katie Beck, BSc. She will defend her Master of Science thesis entitled: “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way: Identifying Factors of Physical Activity That Influence Participation in Older Adults.” Everyone is welcome.

UPEI welcomes BBA alumna Shannon MacDonald back to campus as a special guest speaker for the UPEI Executive MBA Summer Speaker Series on Tuesday, August 19, 4:30-6:30 pm, in Schurman Market Square, Don and Marion McDougall Hall. Shannon will speak about her personal journey and successes. Shannon is a UPEI BBA alumna; Partner with Deloitte who is currently lead on the firm’s work with the Government of Ontario. She also sits on Deloitte’s Global Board of Directors and is the company’s Chief Inclusion Officer. Shannon has been recognized in the past as one of the Top 50 CEOs in Atlantic Canada and one of Canada’s 100 Most Powerful Women.

Join people around the world observing the Moon on this night. Volunteers from the Physics Department and Charlottetown RASC will teach you about the Moon, help you identify some of the Moon’s features using just your eyes or binoculars, and show you stunning telescope views of the lunar surface. This event will take place on Saturday, September 6, from 8:00-10:00 PM. Guests are asked to come to Memorial Hall Room 417. This event is weather dependent and may be cancelled if clouds block the view of the Moon. Updates will be provided on our website at http://physics.upei.ca/astronomy, on our voice-mail at 566-0745, or on Twitter @UPEIAstronomy. It is necessary to climb the stairs from the 4th floor up to the observatory which houses our telescope, but an elevator can be taken up to the 4th floor of Memorial Hall. For this special event, we will have some on-the-ground viewing opportunities that will be more accessible to those with mobility issues.

All UPEI faculty are invited to this year's Let's Talk Teaching Day, Tuesday, September 2. We have no fewer than eight sessions planned -- presentations, workshops, activities -- and, of course, morning coffee and lunch will be provided. There will be sessions on test preparation, Writing Across the Curriculum, performing the "role" of professor, and much more! We will also be celebrating UPEI's numerous award winners from this last year. Join your colleagues for a day of discussion and inspiration. The day begins in HSB 104 with coffee and unofficial registration at 8:30, and we will finish up at about 2:30. A full schedule will be sent around later this week. We hope to see you all there!

UPEI's Deirdre Kessler will launch her latest children's book on Thursday afternoon, August 28, 3:00-4:00 pm at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery. The book is a 48-page story set in 1864. BORN! A foal, five kittens, and Confederation is illustrated by Brenda Jones and published by the Acorn Press. The book is a PEI Literacy Alliance project funded by the 1864 Committee. All are welcome to attend the book launch. The author will read from the story, the illustrator will bring some of the original paintings, and refreshments will be served. Deirdre Kessler teaches children's literature, creative writing, and the course on L.M. Montgomery with the UPEI Department of English, and is a full-time writer and poet.

UPEI's Orientation Week Coordinator invites the campus community to laugh, learn and listen to the inspiring words of our world class and TEDx featured speaker Drew Dudley! Drew Dudley creates cultures of leadership by helping organizations and their people "plan to matter." Students, staff, and faculty are invited to listen to our world-class speaker on Tuesday, September 2 in McMillan Hall, W.A. Murphy Student Centre at 10:00 am. In Drew’s current role as the Founder and Chief Catalyst of Nuance Leadership Inc., he works with organizations around the world to empower people to increase their leadership capacity. His clients included some of the world’s most dynamic companies and organizations, including McDonald’s, Proctor & Gamble, JP Morgan Chase, and over 75 colleges and universities. Drew has spoken to over 100,000 people on 5 continents, been featured on The Huffington Post, Radio America, Forbes.com, and TED.com, where his “TED talk” has been voted “one of the 15 most inspirational TED talks of all time” and viewed over a million times.