Daily Bulletin

Wednesday, December 10, 1997

Premier's words draw flames

Today's issue of the Gazette has the text of the speech, but the words that have caused the biggest excitement aren't there; they were made during a media "scrum" afterwards.

Harris was an invited speaker at the "Scotiabank Summit on the Future of Ontario Universities", hosted by the Bank of Nova Scotia at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The premier emphasized excellence, access, and accountability as the three needs for the university system. Here's how one key passage appears in the "notes" for the premier's speech distributed ahead of time by staff from his office:

Are there further questions of system-wide service, value, and efficiency that you yourselves can address? Who in the university system will decide to reduce enrollments or close programs when there are few jobs available in a profession, like certain professional or PhD programs? For example, do we need ten PhD programs in geography, or six in sociology? Who is responsible for opening or expanding programs in fields where there are significant shortages, like computer science and software engineering? Our government respects the autonomy of universities in our education system. But I suggest that there are no avenues for change to rule out as we face the challenges of the next century.

Among the responses: an article in Monday's Star by Deborah Flynn, president of the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, who said Harris's comments "not only flaunt his basic lack of understanding of the social benefits of a university education but also reaffirm his lack of commitment to what is best for future generations of Ontarians. . . . The government holds a naive and narrow view of the social, cultural and intellectual development that a university education provides."

In an open letter to the minister of education, the president and vice-president of the University of Guelph had this to say:

In a balanced university such as our own, professional and applied programs are very highly valued. We would, however, insist that the social sciences and humanities (as well as the "pure" sciences) also produce graduates who are well-equipped to succeed in their working lives. For this reason and others, we value them equally. And lest we fall back solely on the "ennobling role" of the humanities and social sciences, it should be emphasized that 100 per cent of our PhD graduates in geography at Guelph (since the inception of the program in 1989) have obtained positions in their fields of study with the public and private sectors.

Carols today, and more

Department heads have been invited to a meeting this afternoon with UW's president and vice-presidents. The main attractions are vice-president (university relations) Ian Lithgow, talking about fund-raising in an era after Campaign Waterloo, and vice-president (university research) Carolyn Hansson, talking about the Canada Foundation for Innovation and other big opportunities for new research support. "And if time permits, there will be a story appropriate to the season," writes provost Jim Kalbfleisch, though I suspect the storyteller will be president James Downey. The meeting starts at 3:00 in Needles Hall room 3001.

And although routine events are getting fewer, with students preoccupied by exams, I see that the Gay and Lesbian Liberation coming-out discussion group meets tonight at 7:30 in the PAS (Psychology) building, room 3005. The topic, reasonably enough, is "1997 in Review -- Looking Ahead Towards 1998". Information: 884-4569.

The community and the environment

And what's it all about? "Community networks attempt to make the Internet more 'local' in nature. They allow local governments, cities, businesses, schools, universities and people to provide information that can be searched on a local or geographic basis. They provide the means for local commerce, education, and different types of information to be provided to the local area. Our version of the Community Network also lets the community itself provide, control and own the information on an organized basis through the activities of local schools and other groups.

"One of the applications on a Community Network can be the display of community environmental monitoring results. Local schools or other groups can 'adopt' a local environmental feature (stream, lake, river, wetland, forest, etc.) and carry out simple environmental monitoring. Water quality tests, species occurrence, vegetation, appearance, etc., are aspects of the environmental features that can be monitored and reported by local volunteers or schools."

Also tomorrow, besides some snow:

• VM computer service -- the service that supports administrative systems such as finances and registration -- will be out of commission from 4 to 10 tomorrow morning, thanks to electrical work that's being done in the Math and Computer building. (This is the shutdown that I prematurely announced for last week; tomorrow is the revised, real date, or at least I think so.)
• The FACCUS group -- that means Faculty Computing User Support -- will hold its next seminar tomorrow at 1:30, in Math and Computer room 2009. The topic: "A Discussion and Tour of the Computing Support Facilities in the Faculty of Math". Kim Martin, Bill Ince, Georgina Russell and Chris Roth of the math faculty computing facility will talk about what they do, and, says the event's organizer, "we will end the session with a tour of the facilities including MFCF operations, the train lab and a brief demo in the graphics lab"

Where to send benefit claims

Dental claims:
ManuLife Financial
Group Dental Claims
PO Box 1654
Waterloo, Ontario N2J 4W2

Extended health claims:
London Life
55 Town Centre Court, Suite 400
Scarborough, Ontario M1P 5B5

He did mean the Commons

Actually, the petition does appear in the House of Commons. It's part of a federal campaign to be released in January and which culminates on the 2nd of February. The hope is that our federal petition will work with a provincial awareness campaign to sway government opinion on student consultation. It's all very cool.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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