Effective October 30, 2026, Alumni Hall (618 University Avenue) is open for normal operations as the heating system has been repaired.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while this issue was being addressed.

Facilities Management

The Office of the AVPR welcomes Zeyad Ahmed to UPEI as the new ACENET Research Coordinator.

Zeyad will support researchers with advanced research computing resources, services, and training opportunities. Zeyad is located in Kelley Memorial Building, Room 101 and can be reached at zaawad@upei.ca.

We are excited to have Zeyad join the UPEI community and encourage faculty, staff, and students to connect with him to learn more about ACENET's research computing resources and services.

Dr. Kevin Gannon, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of History at Queens University-Charlotte, gave the 2026 Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy in September on the UPEI campus. Dr. Gannon’s lecture, titled "Hope for Humans", was open to the public and was also recorded by CBC IDEAS, hosted by Nahlah Ayed. 

The 2026 Shannon K. Murray Lecture will first air on CBC Radio One (96.1 FM in Charlottetown) on Monday, November 2, at 8 pm. For other air times and ways to listen, visit the CBC Radio website: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/about-ideas-1.4348080 

The Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy was established in 2023 to honour the achievements of Dr. Shannon Murray, an award-winning professor of English and a 3M National Teaching Fellow. CBC IDEAS has recorded and aired the annual lecture every year since it was launched.

Have you ever wanted to turn a unique idea into a business? Here's your chance!

Pitch Battles is a three-day entrepreneurship competition bringing together students from UPEI and Holland College to develop business ideas, build their entrepreneurial skills, and compete for cash prizes!

The twist? You won't know the competition's theme or your teammates until the event begins!

Throughout the weekend, you'll collaborate with students from different backgrounds, receive guidance from experienced entrepreneurs and industry mentors, and participate in hands-on workshops to bring your team's idea to life. You’ll have the opportunity to request one fellow full-time UPEI student or Holland College student, and as long as they sign up and request you back, you’ll be guaranteed that teammate. The competition wraps up with teams pitching their ideas to a panel of judges for a chance to win $4,000 in prizes!

Whether you're interested in entrepreneurship, looking to develop new skills, or simply enjoy creative problem-solving, Pitch Battles is an opportunity to challenge yourself, make new connections, and gain valuable hands-on experience.

Event Details:

• Dates: November 6–8, 2026
• Location: UPEI Campus, Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering Building
• Eligibility: Open to current Holland College and UPEI students
• Registration Deadline: Wednesday, November 4 at 4:00 PM

Ready to take on the challenge? Learn more and register here: https://www.upei.ca/entrepreneurship/programming/pitch-battles

Please join us to thank Sister Sue for her years of dedicated service to UPEI as our Campus Minister and to congratulate her on her leadership appointment with the Sisters of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame de Montréal.

Monday, November 2, 2026
3:00–6:00 pm
The Fox & Crow, W.A. Murphy Student Centre

Your experience matters to us.

If you have received services at the UPEI Health and Wellness Centre in the past year, we invite you to complete our Patient Experience Survey. Your feedback helps us understand what we're doing well and where we can improve to better support our campus community.

• Takes just 5-6 minutes to complete
• Responses are anonymous and confidential
• Participation is voluntary
• Open to students, staff, faculty, and eligible family members who have received services at the Health and Wellness Centre within the last year
• Survey closes at midnight on November 4

Complete the Survey: Patient Experience Survey | UPEI Health and Wellness Centre – Fill out form

Win a Prize! After completing the survey, you may enter a draw for a chance to win 1 of 3 prizes:

• Two $150 VISA prepaid gift cards
• One UPEI Bookstore Gift Basket

If you have questions or concerns about the survey, please contact Bonnie Lipton-Bos at blipton@upei.ca

Thank you for helping us improve the care and services we provide to the UPEI community!

Internationally acclaimed and award-winning Canadian composer, improviser, and jazz pianist David Braid visits the Department of Music from November 4-6 to lead creative workshops with students, provide a public talk on his work, and present a solo piano performance on the Department's fabulous Yamaha CFX grand piano. Braid is a four-time JUNO award winner whose work spans jazz piano performance and chamber music, choral music, and film score composition. He is known for engaging audiences in both classical and jazz communities and transcending genre boundaries.

Public events include:

Thursday, November 5, 7:00 pm: Public talk at Steel Recital Hall (FREE admission)

Friday, November 6, 7:30 pm: Solo piano performance, music from Braid's JUNO award-winning album Verge

Admission for the November 6 performance is $30 adults, $25 seniors, $10 students, and FREE for UPEI students with ID, available online via upei.universitytickets.com or by cash at the door.

Steel Recital Hall is an accessible venue with elevator and ramp entry via the South-centre doors to Steel Building.

Please note that effective Monday, October 26, 2026, the hallway on the first level in the UPEI Chi-Wan Young Sports Centre that leads to the Fitness Centre and the Bell Aliant Centre will be closed as the area undergoes renovations for the next two months.

During this time, members of the UPEI community will only be able to access the Fitness Centre via the stairwell and elevator to the right of the Panther Central desk as you enter the Sports Centre.

UPEI Athletics and Recreation thanks you for your patience and co-operation during this renovation period.

The Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, invites all to attend Michael Nash's public dissertation defense presentation of Michaels’s PsyD research titled: "Understanding the Source: A Qualitative Exploration of Early Experiences of Misophonia."

Please join us in supporting Mike on this momentous occasion!

Date and Time: November 3, 2026 at 12pm
Location: Memorial Hall, Room 104

Below are upcoming training opportunities for the fall that may be of interest to faculty and students. Most sessions are online and free of charge.

REGISTER: https://www.ace-net.ca/training/

Introduction to Machine Learning
2, 9, 16 November, 1200-1500hrs Atlantic | 1230-1530 NL (online)
These hands-on sessions guide learners through the end-to-end machine learning lifecycle using Python and Scikit-learn. Participants evaluate when to apply machine learning to real-world challenges and implement initial baseline approaches for straightforward datasets. Through interactive coding exercises, learners import data, preprocess features, and build, train and evaluate fundamental models. The curriculum contrasts key supervised learning algorithms including linear and logistic regression, decision trees, and random forests while introducing unsupervised methods like K-Means clustering to discover latent structures within unlabeled data. Learners quantify model performance using regression metrics like R2 and mean squared error alongside classification tools such as accuracy and confusion matrices.

Data Cleaning with OpenRefine
3 November, 1000-1300hrs Atlantic | 1030-1330hrs NL (online)
Researchers and librarians often deal with “messy” data. This could include inconsistent interview transcripts, poorly formatted longitudinal datasets, or standardizing names for an authority file. Preparing this data for analysis is a critical step that requires the same level of rigor and reproducibility as the analysis itself. This workshop introduces OpenRefine, a powerful, free, and open-source tool for cleaning, normalizing, and transforming research data. participants work with a sample dataset to learn how to efficiently handle common data issues, such as automating data standardization, identifying clusters of similar entries, and transforming complex strings into structured information without the need for advanced programming. Unlike manual editing in Excel, OpenRefine records every step of your process, ensuring your data cleaning is transparent and fully reproducible. Participants should be comfortable using a computer and have a general understanding of spreadsheets. No prior programming experience is necessary.

Introduction to R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis
17, 19 November, 1200-1500hrs Atlantic | 1230-1530hrs NL (online)
This hands-on, beginner level series covers the fundamentals of R, including data types, functions, importing, manipulating and analyzing data as well as program design, data management, and task automation. Participants are encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems. The goal is to teach the practical knowledge needed to start programming, debugging and using R in everyday tasks. You do not need any previous knowledge of the tools that are presented, or previous programming experience, but intermediate level experience with a computer is highly recommended.

Visualization with R
24 November, 1200-1400hrs Atlantic | 1230-1430 NL (online)
When managing large datasets, visual representation is essential for uncovering hidden patterns and communicating insights. This session focuses on transitioning from raw numbers to impactful graphics — such as histograms, scatter plots, and box plots — using the powerful R programming language. While basic R knowledge is helpful, this workshop is designed to be accessible to all. We move beyond simple charting to explore the "Grammar of Graphics" approach, teaching you how to build visualizations layer-by-layer. Participants should be familiar with R (variables, vectors, and data frames).

Introduction to Large Language Models (LLMs)
3 December, 1200-1500hrs Atlantic | 1230-1530hrs NL (online)
This comprehensive, non-coding session provides an architectural walkthrough of Large Language Models (LLMs), bridging the gap between high-level AI concepts and practical model utilization. The session traces the historical evolution of Natural Language Processing (NLP), tracking how early statistical models (N-grams, Bag-of-Words) and sequential deep learning networks transitioned into modern self-attention paradigms. Participants examine the inner workings of the Transformer architecture, exploring tokenization, embeddings, multi-head self-attention, and the structural trade-offs between encoder-only, decoder-only, and encoder-decoder designs, while analyzing how context window limits dictate memory consumption and computational complexity. Beyond core mechanics, the session evaluates the current LLM ecosystem through model benchmarks, comparing leading families (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and DeepSeek) across parameters like reasoning, cost efficiency, multimodal capabilities, and alignment. Finally, through guided visual demonstrations and concrete examples, participants discover how to access these models via proprietary APIs and open-source platforms (such as Hugging Face), identify key failure modes (hallucinations, bias, prompt injection), and learn some applied prompt engineering patterns to reliably direct model behaviour.

Meet fellow UPEI and Holland College students, learn more about the Pitch Battles competition, and grab some light refreshments at the Pitch Battles Networking Night on Monday, November 2!

Happening from 5:00–7:00 pm in the Catherine Callbeck Centre for Entrepreneurship, Room 201, Robertson Library. This is a great way to meet future potential teammates and competitors in the competition, or ask questions to organizers of the program!

Visit our Pitch Battles page for complete information.

Effective October 30, 2026, Alumni Hall (618 University Avenue) is open for normal operations as the heating system has been repaired.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while this issue was being addressed.

Facilities Management

The Office of the AVPR welcomes Zeyad Ahmed to UPEI as the new ACENET Research Coordinator.

Zeyad will support researchers with advanced research computing resources, services, and training opportunities. Zeyad is located in Kelley Memorial Building, Room 101 and can be reached at zaawad@upei.ca.

We are excited to have Zeyad join the UPEI community and encourage faculty, staff, and students to connect with him to learn more about ACENET's research computing resources and services.

The UPEI Bookstore recently opened the Panther Shop as our game day store. It's located in the concourse of the Bell Aliant Centre across from Subway and is open for hockey and basketball home games. Stop by and pick up some Panthers gear as you cheer on your favourite team. Store hours and more can be found at upei.ca/bookstore, we hope to see you at the games!

Dr. Kevin Gannon, Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence and Professor of History at Queens University-Charlotte, gave the 2026 Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy in September on the UPEI campus. Dr. Gannon’s lecture, titled "Hope for Humans", was open to the public and was also recorded by CBC IDEAS, hosted by Nahlah Ayed. 

The 2026 Shannon K. Murray Lecture will first air on CBC Radio One (96.1 FM in Charlottetown) on Monday, November 2, at 8 pm. For other air times and ways to listen, visit the CBC Radio website: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/about-ideas-1.4348080 

The Shannon K. Murray Lecture on Hope and the Academy was established in 2023 to honour the achievements of Dr. Shannon Murray, an award-winning professor of English and a 3M National Teaching Fellow. CBC IDEAS has recorded and aired the annual lecture every year since it was launched.

Have you ever wanted to turn a unique idea into a business? Here's your chance!

Pitch Battles is a three-day entrepreneurship competition bringing together students from UPEI and Holland College to develop business ideas, build their entrepreneurial skills, and compete for cash prizes!

The twist? You won't know the competition's theme or your teammates until the event begins!

Throughout the weekend, you'll collaborate with students from different backgrounds, receive guidance from experienced entrepreneurs and industry mentors, and participate in hands-on workshops to bring your team's idea to life. You’ll have the opportunity to request one fellow full-time UPEI student or Holland College student, and as long as they sign up and request you back, you’ll be guaranteed that teammate. The competition wraps up with teams pitching their ideas to a panel of judges for a chance to win $4,000 in prizes!

Whether you're interested in entrepreneurship, looking to develop new skills, or simply enjoy creative problem-solving, Pitch Battles is an opportunity to challenge yourself, make new connections, and gain valuable hands-on experience.

Event Details:

• Dates: November 6–8, 2026
• Location: UPEI Campus, Faculty of Sustainable Design Engineering Building
• Eligibility: Open to current Holland College and UPEI students
• Registration Deadline: Wednesday, November 4 at 4:00 PM

Ready to take on the challenge? Learn more and register here: https://www.upei.ca/entrepreneurship/programming/pitch-battles

Please join us to thank Sister Sue for her years of dedicated service to UPEI as our Campus Minister and to congratulate her on her leadership appointment with the Sisters of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame de Montréal.

Monday, November 2, 2026
3:00–6:00 pm
The Fox & Crow, W.A. Murphy Student Centre

Your experience matters to us.

If you have received services at the UPEI Health and Wellness Centre in the past year, we invite you to complete our Patient Experience Survey. Your feedback helps us understand what we're doing well and where we can improve to better support our campus community.

• Takes just 5-6 minutes to complete
• Responses are anonymous and confidential
• Participation is voluntary
• Open to students, staff, faculty, and eligible family members who have received services at the Health and Wellness Centre within the last year
• Survey closes at midnight on November 4

Complete the Survey: Patient Experience Survey | UPEI Health and Wellness Centre – Fill out form

Win a Prize! After completing the survey, you may enter a draw for a chance to win 1 of 3 prizes:

• Two $150 VISA prepaid gift cards
• One UPEI Bookstore Gift Basket

If you have questions or concerns about the survey, please contact Bonnie Lipton-Bos at blipton@upei.ca

Thank you for helping us improve the care and services we provide to the UPEI community!

There will be respirator fit testing on Monday, November 9, and Tuesday, November 10, 2026. Individuals who require fit testing are asked to book an appointment in advance by contacting HSE at hse@upei.ca by end of day November 4, 2026.

If you have questions or require additional information, please contact Health, Safety and Environment at hse@upei.ca.