Bill Whelan

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Slide - 50 Years, 50 Voices - Bill Whelan - 00:00
Bill Whelan I am a Professor in the Department of Physics, current Chair of
the department. I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Prince
Edward Island from 1984 until 1988, graduated with a degree in Physics and
returned to UPEI in 2008 as a Faculty member.


Slide - Why Physics & UPEI - 00:26
My interest in physics really started in high school in grade 11, I went to
highschool at Three Oaks in Summerside and Tom Mahoney, the high school
physics teacher, really inspired me and got me into, made physics fun,
which is what we all try to do and at that time choosing to come to UPEI
just seemed like a natural choice. I grew up in Summerside, many of my
friends had decided to go to UPEI for their undergraduate degree and for me
it just seemed like a natural choice. I think at that time it’s difficult
to think about leaving the Island, why would you want to leave PEI? And it
was the right choice when I look back on the education I received at UPEI
and how that provided me with the skills and the knowledge to go onto a
Master’s degree in Health and Radiation Physics at McMaster University
and then a PhD in Medical Physics all that started at UPEI so the choice of
coming to UPEI might have just been a natural without much thought but in
the end it turned out to be the right choice, the absolute right choice.


Slide - Student Life - 01:52
So I completed a degree here in Physics in 1988, I look back at my UPEI
years and it was a wonderful period as you can imagine, I think as an
undergraduate student you grow so much, you learn so much. I lived in
residence in Marion Hall for the first three years which I would highly
recommend everyone doing to spend time on campus in residence, much of the
stuff that happened in residence I can’t talk about because of many
reasons but what I do remember about my time at UPEI living in residence
was the many friendships that were developed there and these friendships
have lasted throughout my life and it was really, really a great time to
meet new people, bond with new people, build relationships. The courses
that I took at UPEI enabled me to go on and do graduate work in physics and
ultimately led to a PhD in Medical Physics so I consider my undergraduate
degree at UPEI was a strong foundation degree to enable me to do what I was
interested in. 


Slide - Residence Life - 03:09
The interactions among the residents that lived in Marion Hall and
Bernadine Hall and Blanchard Hall, we were always getting together, you
know, doing things whether they were, these were typically spontaneous
activities or events. We spent a lot of time in the field between Bernadine
and Blanchard doing various sports. Marion Hall used to organize Hall
parties, I can’t remember the frequency but it would be every month or so
where all the residents would get together and have a dance, you know, and
connect. In my third year at UPEI in residence, I was the President of
Marion Hall which gave me some responsibility to make sure that things were
going well and the students who were living there were having a good time,
were all looked after, and that was a great opportunity to get to know more
students as well. So residence life was something that I’ll never forget
and I mean I think when you live in residence and you spend time
interacting with other folks that you typically are meeting for the first
time and you are living in rather close quarters, sharing washrooms, it was
a time of you know real growth and really opened your mind in term of
what’s needed to live with other people, work with other people,
understand other people’s needs and wants and so it was a real growing
period.


Slide - The Most Memorable Moment - 04:49
So between my third year and fourth year at UPEI, I received a national
research scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council, NSERC, to work with Dr. Madan, who was the Chair of the department
at the time, in the summer and another classmate Michelle Cutrow who also
received the same scholarship, so we had a chance to work together in the
lab running experiments, 6-7 hours a day, 5 days a week for an entire
summer. Now two important things came out of that experimental experience,
one is we learned a lot of skills, we were able to appreciate and
understand a bit more what research meant and we also fell in love and got
married, you know, after that so when I think back at my undergraduate
experience at UPEI, not only prepared me for the career I have now but it
also connected me with my wife Michelle, my partner in life, and you know,
absolutely wonderful.   


Slide - Teaching at UPEI - 06:05
I started my career at Ryerson University teaching in Physics there in
1996, so I spent 12 years at Ryerson teaching and then transitioned to UPEI
as a Canada Research Chair, you know when I reflect upon teaching at UPEI,
I think a couple of things strike me, one is that the students have given
me great respect and I don’t think that is necessarily taken for granted,
I receive great respect from students. The students are typically, are
interested in the material that you’re covering or you’re teaching.
They are, they have been engaged in my courses and ask lots of questions. I
think from the point of view of an academic, I would say the real magic in
the classroom happens when there’s that level of engagement, you know,
not only between the instructor and students but when that generates
discussion among the students and I try to do that in class. Try to find
ways to get the students to talk to one another and to work together and I
have a couple of different exercises and activities that I do in classes to
make that happen and I think that’s something that we need to do more of.
I mean the traditional lecture is, if it isn’t gone, it should be gone in
classrooms and we need to think of these classrooms as being opportunities
to facilitate, engage meaningful discussion among students. I mean what I
find in maybe the last five years that students are looking to do things in
the classes that are meaningful to them and I think as a faculty member our
role is to make sure to provide them with meaningful learning opportunities
and I’m trying my best to do that. I think the students like that type of
teaching and my wife always tells me when I come back at that start of a
semester, let's say that first week, and I, you know, have done my first
two classes, she says always seems where I’m happiest and I think I am,
I’m happiest when I get to interact with students and help them expand
their knowledge and tap into their interests and talents.   


Slide - Canada Wide Science Fair - 08:41
The one thing that UPEI offered me as a Faculty member here was the time
and the support to be able to do work in the community through being
involved in different organizations. Canada Wide Science Fair is a good
example, so we hosted the Canada Wide Science Fair at UPEI in 2012, I was
the co-chair with Andrew Trivett from Engineering and we approached the
University, this would have been two years previous to that, there’s
usually a two year window where you are raising funds and organizing the
Fair and the response from the University was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
The thought of having seven hundred top high school science students to
come to UPEI and share their experience and the research that they
conducted as part of their science fair project, UPEI was a hundred percent
on board and that was wonderful to have that level of support and it was
actually quite unique so our Fair at UPEI was one of the first Canada Wide
Science Fairs, you know, held and run by the university, typically the
science fairs were run by outside organizations and hosted at the
university but this one was really run by the University and in advance of
the Fair and during the week of the Fair, all divisions of the university
were on board from accommodation to food to room assignments, we basically
took over the entire university that week and were fully supported to do
that so I don’t think, you know one should think that would be something
that you would expect to happen but at UPEI, that is exactly what happens.


Slide - A Solar Eclipse & Motorcycles - 10:36
There are two events that I will never forget, one was the partial solar
eclipse event that happened at UPEI that was organized by the department of
Physics in August, end of August 2017. We decided to hold a public event
because there was going to be a reasonable partial solar eclipse in this
part of the world and we publicized this event, it got picked up by CBC so
this was a nice story to get out and we were expecting oh about a hundred
individuals maybe that would come out and watch the partial solar eclipse.
We connected with the Royal Astronomical Society a group in Charlottetown
we had about five or six solar telescopes set up and we connected one of
the classrooms with a NASA feed for this particular event and we were set
up for a hundred members of the general public and we estimate there was
just under a thousand so we, it was just an unbelievable community event
and really the community’s response to an important physics event that
was happening above us and what I think was remarkable about that was the
fact that we had lovely partners form the local community come in and bring
in their telescopes, astronomy enthusiasts and members of the general
public coming from, many of them were here on vacation and picked it up and
had their kids. We organized a number of solar lenses as glasses that we
had purchased and handed out and it was just lovely to see so many people
fascinated about this solar event so that one big one. I have one more, so
in 2015, I received a grant from the Telus Ride for Dad a group that raises
funds for prostate research that was one of my main research projects and
in receiving those funds, the local Ride for Dad chapter, it made up of a
few dozen motorcyclists actually came on campus and presented me with the
cheque to fund some of my prostate cancer research here at UPEI and it’s
the first time that I had, I have been doing research for, you know, almost
thirty years and it’s the first time I’ve ever had an opportunity to
talk to the individuals who raised the money to enable that research so
that was a powerful moment for me. I think it was equally moving for them
to be able to see a researcher and be able to provide funds to a researcher
to do prostate cancer research but what sticks out in my mind is one of the
most memorable events, it’s the first time I sat on a motorcycle so they
actually, I think there’s a video the day the motorcycles took over at
UPEI and I had the opportunity to sit on a motorcycle, take these, you
know, quite large burly men and lovely women up to the lab and show them my
lab and that was a pretty powerful moment, yep.


Slide - The Edge Program (or “The Maple Leaf Degree”) - 14:12
So before I joined the Faculty at UPEI in 2008, I was at Ryerson but before
that I actually worked and developed an interesting initiative between
Ryerson and UPEI, in that time period between 2006 and 2008 and it was an
exchange program between UPEI and Ryerson. At that time Sheldon Levy who
was the President of Ryerson and Wade MacLauchlan the President of UPEI,
they knew one another, they came up with a very interesting idea that
university students in the big city of Toronto should experience
Charlottetown and students at Charlottetown should experience Toronto, so
it was deemed, there was a story in the Toronto Star at the time calling it
the Maple Leaf Degree. We called it the Edge Program and the acronym meant
that students would be given an edge by being able to experience classes
and instructors at another university and I was asked to coordinate the
program because I sort of had a foot in both institutions at the time so it
was a bit of traveling back and forth between UPEI and Ryerson. What came
out of that program was, there were a couple of things, one is talking to
the students who participated in the program a real recognition by students
in Toronto how lovely Atlantic Canada and PEI, the Atlantic Canadian
region, is and how much they love PEI and also for the UPEI students the
ability to experience Toronto, you know, live and go to school in a larger
urban centre.


Slide - Advice for the Next Fifty Years - 16:03
I think UPEI has done a great job over the last number of decades as being
recognized as the Island university and certainly under multiple recent
presidents there’s been a lot of support for Faculty member to be a part
of the Island community and to give back and to use our interests and
talents to help organizations and help Islanders become more prosperous,
you know from that perspective I think that needs to continue and maybe it
needs to be amplified a bit more. Being a Faculty member is a privileged
position, it’s a privileged career but I think it also comes with a lot
of responsibility, and a responsibility to ensure not only our students are
getting the best learning experience that they can possibly receive but
that we also ensure that those students have paths to prosperity, that they
have opportunities, you know, in Prince Edward Island to do things that
they feel are meaningful and that match with their interests and talents.
So my advice to UPEI in the next fifty years is to keep connecting with the
community and value not only those community connections but value and work
with the other organizations and learning partners that are in the
community. 


Slide - Final Thoughts - 17:23
Thinking about my relationship with UPEI and it goes back even before for
me, my mother graduated with a Science degree in Biology from UPEI in 1963
and so, you know, I guess thinking about you know from my undergraduate
time at UPEI to being here now I think what strikes me is, you know, when I
graduated from UPEI with a Physics degree in 1988, I in a million years, I
never would have thought that twenty years later I would return to UPEI as
a Canadian Research Chair and Faculty member and then ultimately Chair the
department that I got my undergraduate degree from, so when I think of that
journey or that experience sometimes I think of it through the mind of a
twenty one year old at UPEI’s undergraduate student and thinking that,
you know, some day I could be Chair of this department, that never would
have crossed my mind at all but that’s the reality and that reality is
because of UPEI.