Alumni, faculty and staff are invited to the All Years' Alumni, Staff and Faculty Mixer on Friday, July 25 from 3:00–5:00 pm in the tent situated between the Kelley Memorial Building and W. A. Murphy Student Centre. This will be a great opportunity to kick off the weekend, and mix and mingle with a cross section of our campus community, while enjoying some strawberry shortcake, refreshments, and entertainment! Everyone is encouraged to attend!

Kent Stetson, a distinguished Island author, will offer a two-tiered, sixteen-hour workshop at UPEI for writers of drama and prose fiction at various stages of their practice. Stetson is a Member of the Order of Canada, Governor General’s Award laureate, and this year’s recipient of the UPEI Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Award. Stetson’s workshop, entitled “The Character Driven Story in Drama and Prose Fiction,” will begin on August 22, and continue on August 23 and 24. The two-tiered structure will include 10-12 participating writers and up to 15 auditing writers. The workshop is co-sponsored by the UPEI Alumni Association, the Dean of Arts, the Department of English, and the PEI Writers’ Guild. The workshop will be held in the Don and Marion McDougall Hall, Room 242. For more information, and to register, email Kent.Stetson@sympatico.ca before August 5.

UPEI welcomes all new students and their families to campus before classes begin on Saturday, August 30 from 9:00 am - 2:00 pm. It’s a chance to tour campus, pay for tuition and other services, pick up your ID card, kick-off O-Week, shop at the Bookstore, and meet staff, faculty, your Student Union, and new friends! Stop by the photobooth featuring Panther mascot, Pride, and tag yourself on Facebook. This year’s Welcome Day will also include parent sessions for parents of residence and non-residence students. The sessions will take place at the following times: Parent Sessions: 9:00 am, 11:00 am, and 1:00 pm - Don and Marion McDougall Hall, room 328 Residence Parent Sessions: 10:00 am and 2:00 pm - Bill and Denise Andrew Hall, room 142 A barbeque will take place in Don and Marion McDougall Hall, in the mezzanine for all from 12:00–1:30 pm. Join the hub of activity in Schurman Market Square in Don and Marion McDougall Hall where you will find representatives from Residence Services, Registrar’s Office, Accounting, Student Affairs, Webster Centre for Teaching and Learning, and many more! Join us for Welcome Day so you can be UPEI-ready before classes even start! Thinking of applying to UPEI? It's not too late--we'll be taking applications on the spot!

Eminent scholar and environmental historian John R. Gillis, a longstanding friend of Island Studies at UPEI, will be delivering a lecture entitled Islands as Wetlands on Friday, August 1 at 7:00 pm in Don and Marion McDougall Hall, Room 243. Doctor Gillis is a Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University and spent time at UPEI while preparing his most recent book, The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History (University of Chicago Press), a provocative exploration of the rich history of humans' relationship with the the seacoast, the vital ecotone where land and sea meet. The lecture is sponsored by the NiCHE, the Network in Canadian History and Environment.

"Welcome Back Wednesday" will take place on September 3 from 11:30am-1:30pm, in Meincke Plaza right outside of the W.A Murphy Student Centre. To celebrate the first day of classes, the UPEI Student Union, in partnership with Orientation Week, will host a BBQ, live music, in addition to a society fair welcoming new and returning students. In the event of inclement weather, we will move inside to McMillan Hall, W.A. Murphy Student Centre.

Welcome new and returning students to your first day of classes at UPEI! Visit the fall timetable to find out when and where your classes take place.

Are you joining the UPEI community this fall? Make sure you sign up for Orientation Week! Join in an energetic week of welcome events for incoming UPEI students that packs in both academic and social activities. Orientation Week kicks off on Welcome Day, and is said to be the most spirited week on the UPEI campus with events to bring students together and build friendships with not only freshmen but upperclassmen as well. Check out the full schedule of events!

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.