Daily Bulletin

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Thursday, June 19, 1997

Solar race is under way

UW's Midnight Sun III will be leaving in fourth position -- at 10:03 a.m., Central time -- as the big solar race gets under way today. The first day of Sunrayce '97 involves a 65-mile run, from Indianapolis to Terre Haute, Indiana. Drivers, crews and cars will spend the night there at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, whose own Solar Phantom is also a Sunrayce entry.

Tomorrow, it's a longer run, 169 miles from Terre Haute to Godfrey, Illinois. And the journey continues, until racers get to Colorado Springs on Saturday, June 28, and we find out how Midnight Sun does against some 53 other cars entered for the race.

Midnight Sun rounds a corner at more than 50 miles an hour in the Eastern Regional Qualifier for Sunrayce, held in Michigan last month.

Update on infrastructure funds

As I noted in yesterday's Bulletin, UW is in line to get more than $2 million in federal-provincial funding for "infrastructure" programs this year. Dennis Huber, associate provost (general services and finance), has an update:

The Canada-Ontario Infrastructure Works Program submission was forwarded to the Ministry of Education and Training last Friday and includes three projects: (1) upgrade campus computer network $675,000; laboratory renewals $625,000; and maintenance and repairs $1,415,947. Total $2,715,947 with one-third of the funding coming from UW, one-third from province, one-third from federal government.

About that convocation page

I managed to make two mistakes on page 5 of yesterday's Gazette, it seems, although it contained only a few sentences. First of all, that dapper fellow identified as "Trevor Boyes" is, of course, registrar Ken Lavigne; my typing fingers like to put the Boyes name after the word "registrar", but he retired last year and Lavigne is now the undisputed occupant of the office. Second, last month's events were UW's 74th convocation, not the 73rd.

If you're here for the spring

The registrar's office sends a reminder that June 27 -- Friday of next week -- is the last day for students to pay fees for the spring term, which is now half over. Course credit will not be granted for courses whose fees aren't paid by that date.

News from the dreaming spires

The biggest controversy in British higher education -- until the Dearing inquiry reports, anyway -- has been a proposal to build a school of business at Oxford University, with the help of a $40 million gift from Saudi Arabian businessman Wafic Rida Said. Oxford's governing body, "congregation", voted in November on building the place on a playing field near Merton College that has been open space since the Middle Ages, and the proposal failed by a narrow margin.

Update: Congregation voted on Monday on a new site for the School of Management Studies, next to the Oxford railway station, and approved it, 342-55.

An Oxford news release offers this comment from Said, the donor: "Oxford has traditionally helped to fill the senior ranks of politics, the professions, and science. I hope in the coming generation, it will also provide the brightest and the best in the world of business to the benefit of the University, city and the country." The management school is currently housed in Oxford's famous hospital building, the Radcliffe Infirmary.

Local volunteers are wanted

Latest requests from the local Volunteer Action Centre:

Heritage gardener -- to "assist museum staff and other volunteer gardeners with planning, preparing, seeding, maintaining and harvesting historic gardens. You will also dress in period costume and explain the gardens to visitors." Listing 110-651.
Administrative assistant -- to "handle correspondence, write reports, prepare material for meetings and who is computer literate" to work three hours a day this summer for a cancer support centre. Listing 097-1779.
Communications assistant -- to help Habitat for Humanity "contact media, politicians and celebrities", ten to fifteen hours a week for the summer. Listing 061-1920.

More information: 742-8610.

The plays are the things

Opening tonight at K-W Little Theatre, in downtown Waterloo, is Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". The show's director is Roberto Machado, a UW drama student, and the cast includes half a dozen present and former UW students. The show runs Thursday through Saturday this week and next. Ticket information: 886-0660.

Continuing at Studio 180 in the Humanities building, through Saturday, is Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", directed by Sean Vivian and presented by a cast drawn from UW's drama department. Ticket information: the Humanities box office, 888-4908.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY June 19, 1956: President Gerry Hagey reports to the board of governors that the Evangelical Lutheran Synod has approved affiliating the new "associate faculties", soon to become UW, to the existing Waterloo College. June 19, 1989: In the wake of the Tienanmen Square killings, the UW senate considers, then rejects, a motion to "re-evaluate" Waterloo's academic links with China.

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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