The Queen’s community will have the chance to taste the flavours of Peru on Friday at Leonard Hall.

Queen’s University Hospitality Services is hosting one of Sodexo Peru’s leading chefs, Claudia Alvarado, as part of the company’s Global Chef Program.

Chef Alvarado will be serving up seven classic Peruvian dishes including Pollo a la Brassa al Estilo Peruana (Peruvian style chicken), Pimiento Relleno (stuffed red peppers) and Seco de Cordero al Estilo Norteno (leg of lamb in cilantro sauce with rice). There will also be vegetarian dishes and a vegan dish.

For Chef Alvarado, the key to Peruvian cuisine is the variety of ingredients and the pairing of flavours.

“What is good about Peruvian food is that you can mix all the ingredients and everything is going to taste really, really good,” she says.

Combine peppers, potatoes, seafood, tomatoes, lamb and beef and throw in a mixed bag of cultural influences, including China, Africa and Europe.

Chef Alvarado knew from a very young age that she wanted to cook as her whole family spent so much time in the kitchen together. At two years old, and looking to help out, she would bother her parents so much, she says, that her mother gave her a toy knife. She would then get busy chopping imaginary carrots, potatoes or whatever else was on the menu.

“My whole family cooks. Every time my dad cooked I was in the kitchen with him, helping him. It’s a passion for me to be in the kitchen and to make really, really good food makes me happy,” she says.

Chef Alvarado would go on to study at Le Cordon Bleu Peru and joined Sodexo, moving to various positions including North Arizona University in Flagstaff.

But home would call her back and she returned to Peru where she is now the Head of Project for Sodexo Peru.

While this is the first time she has participated in the Global Chef Program, she sees it as a valuable opportunity to gain experience, meet different people and learn new techniques as well as share hers with her hosts.

“We are very fortunate to have Chef Alvarado join us on Queen’s campus,” says Colin Johnson, Queen’s Campus Executive Chef. “She has great skill in the kitchen, and it is a wonderful experience for our team to learn more about Peruvian culture and foods. We are always interested in expanding our menus for students, staff and faculty.”

On Friday she’s hoping diners arrive ready to try something new and fresh.

“I am hoping they are going to like the food, and come for more,” she says.

The Classic Peruvian Menu by Chef Alvarado will be available at Leonard Hall on Friday from 11 am to 2 pm. Many of the menu items will also be available at Ban Righ Dining Hall from 11 am to 2 pm, and West Campus from 4:30 pm to 7 pm. The regular Staff and Faculty $5 Friday event will include the featured Peruvian menu.

A special screening and talk with the film’s director will further the discussion about body image at Queen’s University.

After a showing of America the Beautiful, students, faculty and staff will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A with director Darryl Roberts.

The documentary examines “America’s obsession with beauty” and the impact of the fixation on body image.

The event is part of a campaign aimed at raising awareness and engaging Queen’s students in a dialogue about self-image, while promoting a positive and healthy body image and self-concept. A 2013 Student Health Survey (NCHA) found that 25% of Queen’s respondents reported personal appearance being difficult to handle in the previous 12 months.  

“We know that conversation helps break the stigma that affects students living with a diagnosed eating disorder or struggling with unhealthy food and weight preoccupations, and can encourage students to reach out for help, or to support and encourage a friend, says Kate Humphrys, Health Promotion Coordinator at Health Counselling and Disability Services (HCDS). “Dialogue brought about by things like this movie screening also helps to promote a campus environment that supports positive body image for all members of the Queen’s community.”

The event is organized by the Student Experience Office, in collaboration with HCDS Health Promotion, the AMS Social Issues Commission, and the ASUS AuthenticallyU. It is being held tonight at 7 pm in the Kinesiology Building, Room 100. Admission is free.

When Queen’s University researcher Heather Stuart was appointed the inaugural Bell Canada Mental Health and Anti-Stigma Chair in February 2012, she had no idea how many people would reach out to her with their personal experiences around mental health issues.

“The sheer onslaught of response took me by surprise,” recalls Dr. Stuart, a professor of Public Health Sciences, with cross-appointments in Psychiatry and Rehabilitation Therapy. “The stories I heard – from students, parents, celebrities and people from all walks of life, including family members of those who had died by suicide – were heartwrenching. They all wanted to tell me how important it was that someone was finally looking into mental illness-related stigma.”

The five-year, $1-million appointment – the first such research chair in the world – is funded by Bell Canada to build better practices in anti-stigma programming and to create rich student training opportunities. Dr. Stuart contributes regularly to the scientific literature on mental health and anti-stigma research; supervises and mentors research trainees; and aids knowledge translation through publications, reports, conferences, webinars and outreach, assisting community partners to create better anti-stigma programming practices.

An important component of her outreach is to organize and present the interactive Annual Bell Lecture, to be held this year in Halifax.

Now entering her third year as chair, Dr. Stuart and colleagues, Shu-Ping Chen (Mental Health Commission of Canada Post-Doctoral Fellow) and Terry Krupa (School of Rehabilitation Therapy) are partnering with Movember Canada to conduct the Caring Campus Project. This three-year initiative is aimed at first-year male students at Queen’s, Dalhousie and University of Calgary – a population where 65 per cent report risky or hazardous drinking patterns. The project focuses on reducing substance misuse (drugs and alcohol) and the stigma associated with it, and fostering student leaders to create a more supportive and caring environment on campus.

“Conducting this project under the auspices of the Bell chair is raising awareness in the minds of students and others that substance use and mental health are integrally tied,” says Dr. Stuart. “Having my time freed up by the chair has enabled our team to leverage Movember funding to make this project possible.”

The Caring Campus Project, which currently employs 24 student leaders, organizes educational outreach activities, responsible social events, an online chat room to discuss issues, and social media initiatives reclaiming the term “Queen’s For the Boys” to associate it with supporting each other in a positive, healthy way.

Student comments posted on these websites underscore both the interest and the need being tapped by this project:

"Keep up the mental health advertising. Talking about it during Orientation helped me find the courage to get help."

"A lot of people I know are scared to seek help because they are afraid they will be ridiculed."

"I experienced two incidents this year where my friend attempted suicide as a result of mental health issues as well as substance abuse, and Queen’s helped me deal with the situation in a timely and comforting manner.”

For Dr. Stuart, this type of “implementation research” – partnering with others to deliver an intervention and then evaluating it – is at the heart of her anti-stigma work, and she is delighted to see it bearing fruit. In her remaining two years as Bell chair, she looks forward to expanding on this project and the many other initiatives made possible by her appointment.

Donor-funded faculty positions  – chairs, professorships and post-doctoral fellowships – enable Queen’s to recognize and attract top researchers and scholars, both from within the university and from around the world. The terms of reference for these positions, which require Senate approval, outline how the funding will be used. This may include salary, equipment costs and other resources needed by the holder. Queen’s first chair was named for Sir John A MacDonald in 1899 and was held by Adam Shortt, the university’s first full-time professor of politics and economics. Since the beginning of the Initiative Campaign in 2006, attracting donations to support these positions has been a priority.

Ron Weisman obtained his PhD from Michigan State University in 1964 and was hired as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Queen’s University in that same year. Ron was promoted to Associate Professor in 1970, Professor in 1977, cross appointed to the Department of Biology in 1993, and finally promoted to Professor Emeritus in 2000.

In sum, Ron was a professor at Queen’s for over 50 years.

He is well known for his numerous significant contributions to our understanding of animal learning, cognition, and behaviour. Maybe more important, but not so easily tallied with facts and numbers, are the more qualitative and impactful contributions that Ron made to the research areas in which he was so totally and passionately invested during his long and productive career but that escape the accountant’s ledger.

Of these less quantifiable, but absolutely important contributions, one cannot hope to produce a comprehensive report here. And Ron himself would not want such a thing. “Too many words that no one is likely to read or care about” would probably be his quip in response to such an idea.

No, the manner in which Ron operated and conducted himself is best described using the words of those who have commented about his influence in the days since his passing. Strong themes like “force of nature,” “intellectually challenging,” “passionate,” “inspiring,” are a constant in Ron’s colleagues’ narratives shared in conversations, social media, and emails.

Never one to back down from a challenge, Ron reinvented his research career from the ground up when he realized an opportunity to pursue new more challenging but meaningful problems. This categorical change came when Ron was at a point in his career in which most people would be happy to simply maintain the currently successful status quo until retirement.

Not Ron. Instead, and in spite of, or perhaps, because of, the fear of the unknown, Ron forged a second, even more well-known career for himself, combining research in learning, cognition, ethology, and neuroscience in a manner not often done, certainly not with the same effect. While on this new path, Ron continued to make significant contributions to the scientific literature and to the field through the founding of the Comparative Cognition Society, and their flagship online and open access journal, Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews.

Perhaps Ron’s most enduring legacy will be of the contributions that he made to the mentorship and encouragement of young scientists. Many successful scientists owe their “academic legs” to Ron’s strong and generous support and wisdom. Ron posed challenging questions and championed points of view that were sometimes controversial and always aimed at pushing back the darkness to, as Ron put it, “explain nature.”

Ron always managed to be engaging, encouraging, and able to coax the absolute best out of everyone who was willing to meet his enthusiasm and level of commitment to science. Ron’s enthusiasm, wit, candor, compassion, and his huge smile will be sorely missed by all who had the pleasure of knowing him. What a guy.

Christopher B. Sturdy and Marcia L. Spetch are professors with the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta, co-editors of Comparative Cognition & Behaviour Reviews and colleagues of Dr. Weisman’s.