Daily Bulletin

Wednesday, July 9, 1997

High academic honour for four

"In joining their peers as members of this illustrious institution, this group of new Fellows embodies the tradition of excellence in Canadian research and scholarship," says the president of the society in a news release.

These are the new Fellows from Waterloo:

• Michael Craton of the history department, described as "the most eminent scholar in Caribbean history of his generation".
• Tom Fahidy of the chemical engineering department, a specialist in electrolytic process dynamics, as well as being associate dean (graduate studies and research) of the engineering faculty.
• Bob Gillham, chair of the earth sciences department and former director of the Waterloo Centre for Groundwater Research.
• Murray Moo-Young, a bioproduction and bioremediation specialist in the department of chemical engineering.

Almost seven million dollars

A report from the office of development and alumni affairs says cash had reached $1,248,098. Pledges for 1997-98 were $1,274,770, and pledges for 1998-99 a further $892,299.

The money gets matched by the Ontario government, so a total of $6,830,334 will be available for new student aid. "All of the funds raised for OSOTF will be endowed," says Maryann Gavin in the development office, meaning that only the interest on it will be spent -- "used to support bursaries or awards where financial need is demonstrated".

Announced in the 1996 Ontario budget, the trust fund is intended to help "academically qualified individuals who for financial reasons would not otherwise be able to attend college or university". The government has said that only Ontario-based students will be eligible, leading to criticism that out-of-province students will face sharply higher tuition fees with no new financial help. Especially vulnerable are students coming to Ontario for programs that are hard to find in other provinces -- the school of optometry at UW, for example.

Reporting on the trust fund givings, Gavin said $2.8 million was pledged specifically to UW and about $600,000 to the four church colleges. Much of it was designated for specific scholarship funds: a total of $649,000 for the math faculty's Descartes Scholarships, for example, and $3,775 for a women's studies bursary.

Waterloo Web site of the day

Crosswords and jigsaws and tangrams and Rubik's Cube: you can find them all at the UW games museum in Matthews Hall, and you can find a fair selection of them on the "puzzles" page, one of several Web presentations of what the museum has to offer.

Says Elliott Avedon, retired as the museum's curator and as professor of recreation and leisure studies:

We've mostly added lots of jigsaw stuff and will now move on to mechanical and other types of puzzles. We also hope to optimize what is there by reducing the size of some of the graphics (for people with slower machines), and letting those that want to open full sized photos.

We're beginning to envision the Web as an opportunity to offer the public what we cannot physically do on campus -- that is, since we only have one physical public gallery on campus we are limited to only one exhibit at a time. The Web enables having multiple galleries. Thus for the first time, we can have a "Puzzle Gallery" per se, as well as our other "Virtual Exhibits".

Development of the Puzzle Gallery is in cooperation with a number of colleagues external to UW; a professor of economic history at a US university who is an expert on jigsaw puzzles, a world famous collector of mechanical puzzles and author of three books on the subject, a number of puzzle enthusiast members of the American Game Collectors Association, commercial puzzle manufacturers in both Canada and the US, two European colleagues, and of course making considerable use of Dr. Hagey's photographs.

Avedon says the intention is for the puzzle Web page to become "a one-stop area to find out about all kinds of puzzles. We assume it will interest a wide range of audience, similar to the kind of response we are currently getting to our other pages. Information requests in response to the Web site comes from all over the world, from people in all walks of life, scholars, librarians, researchers, business people, collectors, and game players!"

These other notes today

One of the bigger contingents of the summer is arriving today at the conference centre in Ron Eydt Village. Some 600 strong, they're delegates to the 1997 convention of the General Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches in Canada and the United States -- the governing body of that Christian denomination. Working sessions will be held at Waterloo Mennonite Brethren Church on Lexington Road.

Would-be knights, ladies, jesters and queans are invited to a "Mediaeval Collegium" this Saturday at Wilfrid Laurier University. The one-day event, "Forward Into the Past", sponsored by the local Society for Creative Anachronism, includes workshops on fashions and textiles, armour and weaponry, and many other aspects of life in Camelot days. "We have almost 100 hours of different classes, with only a few repetitions," says Anita Kilgour, one of the SCA's enthusiasts. More information: 886-8261.

CAR

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