Laurier in brief

Postdoctoral fellowship recipient named
The first Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship recipient was named on Sept. 23 as Gordon McNickle by the Honourable Greg Rickford, the minister of state.
The fellowship program provides funding for postdoctoral applicants who will contribute to economic, social and research-based growth in Canada. McNickle’s research looks at the impact of climate change on the boreal forest.
McNickle will be speaking in the Science building on Oct. 4 as part of the Department of Biology’s Seminar Series. His talk will be entitled: “Plants, game and foraging behaviour; from nutrients to ecosystems.”

Laurier professor receives award for new election methods
Marc Kilgour, a mathematics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, was recently awarded the 2012 Elinor Ostrom Prize. The award was for the best paper in the Journal of Theoretical Politics.
The paper, which Kilgour co-wrote with Steven J. Brams of New York University,  was called “Narrowing the Field in Elections: The Next-Two Rule”.

Wagamese visits Laurier
Last Wednesday, author Richard Wagamese visited Laurier’s Waterloo campus as part of the university’s Common Reading Program. This is the first year the program has  been run, selecting a book for the faculty of arts to simultaneously read.
This year’s book was Wagamese’s Indian Horse. One of Canada’s foremost Aboriginal authors and storytellers, he spoke to students about the topics in his book as well as his own personal history in relation to it.
The final event for the Common Reading Program will be taking place Sept. 25 at 5:00pm in DAWB 2-101, where a panel will discuss the book.

Word-of-mouth study
A study by Grant Packard, assistant professor of marketing, shows that word-of-mouth may not be a reliable way of getting information.
According to Packard’s study, people who feel deficient in their knowledge of a certain product, they are more motivated to share their opinions about it with others.
He co-authored the research article “Compensatory Knowledge Signaling in Consumer Word-of-Mouth” with David Wooten, a professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.