Created in Canva using images from Derek Samaha, Sarah McMahon and Sophie Stuart-Sheppard
By
Sarah McMahon
With Valentine’s Day approaching, the Office of the Vice Dean, Research and Health Science Education in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, is enjoying a different kind of HEARTS celebration, the launch of the new Health Education and Research Training Series (HEARTS) calendar on January 15, 2025.
This new online calendar provides the wider Temerty Medicine community an easy way to share and search for relevant research and education events.
Justin Nodwell, vice dean, RHSE, and professor of biochemistry, said the new calendar is expected to, “resonate throughout the city.” The Temerty Medicine health sciences community, he explained, is vibrant and active across several departments, institutes, research centres and hospitals throughout the university and surrounding areas.
The new calendar was modelled after the popular website, Cette Semaine, created by Rob Reedijk of biochemistry, with which Nodwell was very familiar as a faculty member of the department.
Cette Semaine offered the local health sciences community at the university a way to quickly browse for interesting seminars, conferences, discussions and other events. While the department of biochemistry kept the event listings up-to-date, the website itself was no longer actively maintained.
In consultation with the department of biochemistry and Temerty Medicine, Nodwell proposed revitalizing Cette Semaine with a fresh, new look and updated branding, and transitioning oversight to RHSE, which manages undergraduate and graduate education, research and translation within Temerty Medicine. The newly created RHSE website is regularly accessed by faculty, staff, students, clinicians and researchers, making it an ideal location for the updated events calendar.
The HEARTS calendar features easy-to-use search and filtering options that allow website visitors to browse seminars, conferences, discussions and other events hosted by Temerty Medicine and its basic and rehabilitation sciences departments, as well as offerings from affiliated hospitals and research institutes. The ability to submit events to the calendar is currently available to Temerty Medicine departments and will be rolled out to affiliated hospitals and research institutes in the coming weeks.
“We’re excited to help facilitate participation in the fantastic research and educational events hosted within our community,” Nodwell said. “In addition to the obvious training and educational benefits associated with these events, they foster connections, provide networking opportunities and nurture a collaborative environment. We’re proud to be able to cultivate a shared sense of belonging.”
