Tuesday, December 14, 1993

BUDGET PLANNING: Don't believe all the scary rumours about next year's budget 
and the terrors it will bring, the provost advised yesterday at a meeting
of departments heads and chairs.  The meeting included Christmas greetings
from the president and a few words of thanks for the hard work of UW faculty
and staff, as well as a report on financial planning for 1994-95 and the
following years.

"I've heard rumours," said the provost, Dr. Jim Kalbfleisch, "that we
have already plans in place to lay off 100 people on the first of May 
. . . that everybody's going to get a 5 per cent budget cut on the first 
of May!  It's not so.  Those rumours are far worse, I hope, than anything 
that's going to be delivered to us."

The reality, Kalbfleisch said, is that UW has hardly begun budget planning, 
because so little information is available about next year's income.
He predicted that it will be the end of January before it's clear how much 
money the Ontario government will be giving universities, and how much of 
an increase in tuition fees the government will allow.

JOURNALISM PROGRAM:  A news conference is set for 4 p.m. today at the
University Club, where the presidents of UW and Conestoga College will
make the formal announcement of a joint program in journalism.  The "print
journalism option" will let students get both a UW degree and a Conestoga
journalism diploma in four years (five years if it's an honours degree).

THE END OF CMS:  Computing on the old VM/CMS system (Watdcs) will soon be
available only for certain administrative uses, as the computing services
department has warned for the last two years.  The deadline date was the
end of 1993 for all academic users of CMS to "migrate" to other forms of
computing.  CMS has announced the exact plan: the last date that academic
and research users will be able to log onto CMS is Monday, January 17.

Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs
credmond@watserv1    ext. 3004