Daily Bulletin

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Wednesday, May 29, 1996

Board will consider fee increases

The agenda is out for Tuesday's meeting of the UW board of governors (June 4, 3:30 p.m., Needles Hall room 3001). The main item on the agenda will be the 1996-97 operating budget for UW, with such features as a 7 per cent cut to departments' spending, a parking fee increase, and a plan to pay off the costs of the early retirement program over four years.

Also on the agenda are increases in the Federation of Students fee, the "student co-ordinated plan" fee (which pays for the construction of the Student Life Centre), the Waterloo Public Interest Research Group fee, and the Independent Studies Society fee. And there's a boost, from $35 to $50, in the application fee charged to students applying to graduate programs.

The board will be asked to approve a new $75 fee for students applying to the school of optometry. "The purpose of the fee is to help defray the costs of processing applications," says a memo to the board, which notes that 350 to 400 people apply for admission to optometry each year.

Events and announcements

Employer interviews begin this morning, with more than 2,000 co-op students looking for fall term jobs. Jobs are continuing to be posted (Posting #6 will be available at 10:00 this morning), and the official interview period continues through June 18.
Surplus UW equipment -- computers, furniture, lost-and-found items, whatever -- will be on sale from 1 to 5 this afternoon at central stores in East Campus Hall. "We have a number of new items available," says Ed Goodwin of the stores staff, promising "prices slashed on all items left over from last sale".
End-of-the-year dance recitals by local academies are under way in the Humanities Theatre almost every night for the next three weeks. This evening and tomorrow, it's "A Salute to Disney" from Centre Stage Dance Studio. The Moree School of Dance moves in on Saturday and Sunday.
Electrical power, heating, cooling and ventilation will be shut down in Biology II from 6:00 to 10:00 tonight, the plant operations department advises. The shutdown is for maintenance on 15,000-volt electrical substation equipment. "Computer equipment should be shut down in an orderly fashion," occupants of B2 are advised.

Department heads being chosen

The Positions Available listings in this morning's Gazette include the job of registrar of the university -- someone to fill the shoes of Trevor Boyes, who's held that job (both ceremonial and administrative) since the fall of 1966. The hiring decision will be made with the help of an advisory committee including a faculty member, a student, two people from the registrar's office itself, and human resources people, says the associate provost (academic and student affairs), Gary Waller, to whom the registrar reports.

Also in Positions Available: the post of director of the audio-visual centre, someone to succeed Ron Russell. That department head also reports to Waller. There had been speculation that an A-V director wouldn't be named, and that the department would be eliminated -- its "film library" coming under the wing of UW's libraries, its projection and production facilities being managed by the teaching resource office. But no. "I decided early on that I didn't want to carve it up," Waller says.

The talk of the campus

I see that at least two UW units have found ways around the use of the new 31-digit "accounting flexfield" or account numbers that are an unpopular part of the new financial system. Chemistry stores is inviting users to adopt "code words" that will be translated by computer into the relevant account number. The bookstore is assigning three-digit "customer numbers" to heavy users. Perhaps there are other such conveniences in the works?

A final note: I made the same mistake in yesterday's Bulletin that I've made several times before. I referred to Ka-Ping Yee, creator of the Shodouka interpreter for Japanese-language Web pages, as a computer science student. He's definitely not: he's a computer engineering student, and there's a big difference.

Chris Redmond -- credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 ext. 3004

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