NEWSWIRE

Orientation
fun & games
run this week

The force will be with 7,500 new students this week as they arrive at York’s Keele and Glendon campuses today for the official start of Welcome Week. Over the course of nine days new students to York will enjoy a host of fun, games and parties organized with one purpose – to welcome them to university life. Welcome Week, which takes place Aug. 28 to Sept. 5, offers a variety of social events and activities organized by the York Orientation Directors Association (YODA).  The YODA team works toward putting on the best possible Welcome Week for first-year students and is responsible for training over 500 upper-year students who volunteer as frosh bosses to lead social orientation events.

Ernesto forces shuttle Atlantis’ launch delay
Astronaut and York alumnus Steve MacLean’s long wait to return to space will be just a little longer after concerns about Tropical Storm Ernesto cancelled the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis over the weekend. A new launch date had not been set.

H-Day: Moving 10,000 student files in a day
Aug. 4 was like D-Day for Stan Taman and Al Regina. They call it H-Day and it will be fixed in their memories as the day they completed an automated transfer of almost 10,000 students into York's new Faculty of Health on the University’s Student Information System (SIS) – months ahead of schedule and without a hitch.

TA Day offers lessons on classroom skills
New and experienced teaching assistants are invited to hone their teaching skills and network with colleagues at the 24th annual TA Day conference next Thursday, Aug. 31. The Centre for the Support of Teaching, which hosts the conference, expects about 500 participants for sessions on how to engage undergraduate students in the classroom, lab and studio.

Students help teachers develop virtual learning projects
What better way to design new and improved interactive learning programs than to invite the very students and teachers who use them to put their heads together? That’s exactly what happened Monday and Tuesday at the fifth annual summer institute organized by York’s Advanced Broadband Enabled Learning (ABEL) program.

York wins gold, silver and bronze
for communications and advancement
Once again, York walked away with a clutch of gold, silver and bronze awards at the annual "Prix d’Excellence" awards ceremony of the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) this year. And once again, a development officer from the York University Foundation won a Rising Star Award.

York theatre prof teaches in South Africa
"The town of Stellenbosch is certainly a must stop these days on any visit to South Africa," says York theatre Professor Don Rubin, who was there from January through June as part of a teaching exchange between York’s Theatre Department and the University of Stellenbosch’s Department of Drama.

Basketball Lions take on NCAA visitors
The York Lions basketball teams begin their 2006-2007 pre-season schedules at the Tait MacKenzie Centre this weekend against three US NCAA teams: Ohio’s Dayton University Flyers; Nashville’s Lipscomb University Bisons; and Omaha’s Creighton University Bluejays.