Daily Bulletin

Monday, November 18, 1996

Waterloo keeps its reputation

In the magazine's own rankings, Waterloo came "only" number two among "comprehensive" universities, up a spot from last year's number-three ranking. First according to Maclean's this year is Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.

The magazine stuck with last year's winners in the other two groupings of universities: the University of Toronto tops among "medical-doctoral" universities and Mount Allison tops among "primarily undergraduate" universities.

Says the magazine:

This year, for the first time since 1992, all 42 English-language universities in Canada participated -- with Regina, Manitoba and Memorial all rejoining the project. As well, the Universite de Montreal broke ranks with its French-language colleagues, and also took part. Overall, nine Canadian universities moved up in their ranking, 16 were graded down while 14 held on to their previous position. . . .

The rankings are determined in six categories: composition and academic achievements of the student body; class size and percentage of tenured professors who teach first-year classes; the calibre of the faculty and their success in securing research grants; school finances spent on student services, scholarships and bursaries; the quality of the library; and the school's reputation among its graduates and the community at large. . . . Reduced funding of postsecondary education has put enormous pressure on Canada's academic institutions, according to Ann Dowsett Johnston, the assistant managing editor of Maclean's who has overseen the annual survey for the past five years. "At the same time, students are facing rising tuition costs, they're borrowing at unprecedented levels, and they face a very uncertain job market," says Dowsett Johnston. "More than ever before, they need to know where the universities are cutting and where they are not. Where are the small classes, the access to tenured professors? This is information they deserve to know."

According to Maclean's, this pressure is producing the "Y" generation. Says Education Editor Victor Dwyer: "They're questioning why professors aren't ensuring their courses are professionally relevant, why the focus is on expanding intellect rather than expanding marketable skills, and why four years of hard work and high bills don't lead to a good career."

Speaking of other universities

Happening today at Waterloo

• Paul Kay, of the department of environment and resource studies, gives a noon-hour brown-bag talk (12:00, Environmental Studies I room 221) on "Performance of Israel's Water System".
• The part-time studies office is holding an information session tonight (7:00 to 8:30, at 156 Columbia Street) about part-time studies in the winter term.
• The university senate meets at 7:30 tonight (Needles Hall room 3001) to discuss everything from the University Committee on Student Appeals to proposed changes in federal copyright law. A highlight of the agenda is to be a presentation on the Business 1999 program for bringing UW's administrative computer systems up to date.

Talking engineering and math

All day, in Davis Centre room 1302, the Waterloo Management of Integrated Manufacturing Systems research group, better known as WATMIMS, runs its third "Supply Chain Management Workshop". The supply chain means the flow of production and transportation from raw materials to finished goods in the hands of consumers, and business people attending tomorrow's seminar will hear (from James Bookbinder and others at WATMIMS) about such matters as "a carrier's perspective on increasing customer value" and "decision support for supply chain management".

At 3:30 tomorrow, in Math and Computer room 2065, Ed Vrscay of the department of applied math will speak on "A Hitchhiker's Guide to Fractal Image Compression". He says in an abstract that fractal methods offer "an exciting alternative to more conventional methods of representing and compressing signals and images, especially in light of the ever increasing demand for more powerful methods of data compression. . . . In this talk, the basic ideas of Iterated Function Systems are presented along with some very simple examples." It's a warmup, aimed largely at students, for a Fractal Compression Workshop to be held Thursday.

And these other notes

Breast Cancer Awareness Week is beginning (more on that in tomorrow's Bulletin), and the women's centre holds a health fair today at the Student Life Centre, with "holistic health strategies and speakers". More information: ext. 3457.

Information systems and technology is doing some preventive maintenance to its networks this week, as announced in this delightfully worded memo from Doug Payne of IST:

Beginning next week, on Tuesday morning, Nov 19, at 07:00, we will begin a series of campus router upgrades, both software and hardware (microcode). At the same time we'll do some preventative maintenance and cleaning, since these devices run for very long periods of time untouched, often in less than ideal environments.

The current schedule is to do one router per morning, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, starting at 07:00. We hope that the disruption will last no more than about 1 hour, although the Thursday one may be a little longer since it will require more maintenance. There is a slight possibility that the Tuesday upgrade won't work the way want it to, and if it doesn't, we'll move the Wednesday upgrade back to Tuesday. If that fixes our possible (compatibility) problem, then we'll also do the Thursday upgrade on Tuesday. That could create a considerably longer outage, hopefully not more than 2 hours.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo credmond@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004 Comments to the editor | About the Bulletin | Friday's Bulletin Copyright 1996 University of Waterloo