Daily Bulletin

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Wednesday, March 12, 1997

Arthur the Aardvark, star of page and screen, visits the UW Shop at 1:00 this afternoon to meet members of the Kids' Club.

Down to 640 professors

That's the count of full-time faculty members working for UW in 1996-97, after the decimation of last summer's special early retirement program. The number had been 767 in 1995-96, and even that was down from a high of 806 three years earlier.

The figures appear in background documents that will come tomorrow to the senate finance committee, which is meeting to hear about "scenarios" for the 1997-98 operating budget. The meeting, which is open to anyone interested, starts at 8:30 a.m. Thursday in Needles Hall room 3001.

While UW has 640 full-time professors this year, the "faculty complement" is higher than that -- including part-time regular faculty members, and also positions that have been approved but are vacant right now. The total faculty complement, then, is 715.1 professors. Where they are: applied health sciences, 43.5; arts, 197.5; engineering, 158.0; environmental studies, 64.0; mathematics, 128.1; science, 124.0. The biggest single department is computer science, at 42.5, edging out electrical and computer engineering at 42.0. Psychology has fallen to third place at 33.5.

The figures also show that with the retirement of many of the most senior faculty members last summer, the average salary of a professor has fallen. The "average nominal salary" was $80,390 in 1995-96, but dropped to $77,090 in the current year, before the salary increase that went into effect in the fall.

Of the 640 full-time professors, 542 have tenure and 73 more are in tenure-track positions, leaving just 25 in definite-term appointments.

In charge of finding students

Tina Roberts, who's spent the last 13 years as "coordinator of marketing and public relations" for the faculty of applied health sciences, is getting a bigger job. Registrar Ken Lavigne announced yesterday that she has been named to the new position of "director, undergraduate recruitment and publications" in the registrar's office.

"Tina will be responsible," he said, "for the development, co-ordination and execution of undergraduate recruitment and marketing strategies for the University, including the review, development and production of recruitment publications." That's more or less the job that was held for many years by Steve Little, who retired last summer, though his title was "director of secondary school liaison".

She arrives at a time when the spotlight is definitely on recruitment, the business of attracting enough students (and the right students) to UW. Lavigne admitted yesterday that a drop in applications to Waterloo, and to most other Ontario universities, for the fall of 1997 is "a cause for concern", though it's not yet clear what it means. If the students who didn't apply to UW are ones who probably wouldn't be admitted anyway, then no problem. But if good students, the ones UW would like to get, aren't applying, well . . .

The truth about co-op

Pursuant to what Monday's Bulletin said about the co-op placement process, I have a letter from Olaf Naese in the co-op education department:

The statement that the spring term is the "lightest term of the year" in co-op is not really true. Finding jobs for the spring term is usually the most difficult of the three terms in any given year. Not only do most first year stream eight students require employment then, but there is greater competition from non-coop students as well as students from other universities and high schools for the same job pool. Such a problem does not exist for the fall and winter work terms.
In addition, the fall work term is the one in which we consistently have the most success finding employment for our co-ops. First work term students are rare and employer demand is generally high. This usually yields the highest employment rate of the year.

He also sends along the word on how Monday's job matching process went: "As of March 10 there were 3,356 co-op students scheduled to be on a work term for May-August. Following yesterday's computer match 60.3% (2,024) students have jobs. This represents a 4.6% increase in co-op employment over last year at the same time. Since we are just past the mid-point of the term, there is still a significant amount of time for students to secure employment before the beginning of the work term. There are currently 350 new jobs in the system and over 500 positions which did not match with a student as a result of the initial round of interviews."

And this just in . . .

The 40th anniversary celebrations have an electronic component now, as the 40th anniversary web site is officially in business, even though not all the possible information is there yet. It can be reached from a link on the UWinfo home page.

"Death Divine", an exhibition of photographs of cemetery sculpture from three European cities, opens tomorrow in the Modern Languages gallery. The artist, Pamela Williams, will be at UW to give a talk about her work (1:30 Thursday, East Campus Hall room 1219) and to attend an opening reception at 4:00 in the gallery. "Death Divine" continues through April 20.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
March 12, 1969: Members of the Radical Student Movement conduct a "study-in" at the Arts Library to draw attention to inadequate library budgets. March 12, 1986: UW president Doug Wright leads a protest march from campus to city hall to draw attention to the state of university financing.

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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