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Monday, August 17, 1998
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Yukon Discovery DayThe conference will be addressing "leadership and the management of change", with sessions today through Friday on such topics as "Education and Indigenous Peoples", "The University's Role in Economic Growth", and "Civil Society and Change". At one point on Tuesday, delegates will choose one of two case studies to explore: the "Canadian success story" of canola, developed at the University of Saskatchewan, or the creation of research parks around Britain's University of Warwick. In the course of the week, panelists will come from such institutions as the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Malawi, the University of Natal, and Australia's Edith Cowan University.
Writing in the conference program book, Downey tells delegates that "the deeper questions about how to manage and govern universities" are pretty much what they were when ACU last met in Canada twenty years ago, "even if the circumstancs in which we must answer them have altered dramatically." He cites a few:
How do we preserve and transmit what is best about our intellectual and cultural traditions while cultivating a spirit of scepticism and dissent? How do we remain independent institutions while accepting to be an integral part of the state's or industry's plans for prosperity? How do we maintain the spirit of community against the centrifuges of demography, technology and specialization? And preeminently, what qualities of leadership will be necessary to chart a sound course into a new century for institutions of such strategic social and economic importance not to mention increasing complexity?Universities from developed countries and the less-developed "south" have plenty to say to each other on such questions, Downey has suggested. Canadian universities may feel under pressure from government, he said in an interview last month, but things can be vastly tougher in a third-world country where there are no traditions of autonomy and where the university is seen as the only hope for economic progress.
The ACU, which traditionally has put much of its effort into administering scholarships and exchanges, has been moving in new directions with the creation of a "higher education management service". The ACU, says Downey, "should have the capacity to respond to the information needs, and to a limited extent to the consulting needs, of the member institutions" and do "serious research into the management and governance of institutions".
He noted that the ACU "is not, for the most part, a decision-making body", but it provides an opportunity for several hundred senior university leaders to stimulate one another. Their keynote speaker in Ottawa this morning will be Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania.
Charged with finding a replacement for UW president James Downey -- who has announced he will step down from the post next year -- the committee has released a description of its most-wanted candidate.
"The President is expected to provide outstanding academic leadership within a vibrant and complex culture, maintain the intellectual independence and integrity of the University, and anticipate and invoke a visionary approach in all matters both internal and external as the University of Waterloo enters its fifth decade."
Expected to "improve the financial health of the University (this will include planning and launching a major fund-raising campaign)," the ideal candidate will bring "strong, creative and innovative leadership" abilities to the job, as well as "demonstrated excellence and a record of significant achievement in administration within a university setting, the business community, or the public sector." He or she should be "highly principled, (a) risk taker with integrity and a high level of energy."
Designed to provide physical research infrastructure funding for new university faculty and new researchers at other institutions, the CFI approved 11 of the 14 applications submitted by UW on May 1. That represents an 80 per cent success rate at UW, compared to an overall application success rate of 71 per cent. The total value of the UW projects -- involving 47 new faculty members -- was $4.76 million, of which $1.84 was requested from the CFI. The actual amount of the CFI contribution will be finalized later this month.
The 1998 CFI Institutional Innovation Fund awards are expected to be announced in October. UW has submitted 15 applications for a total value of $70 million for that competition.
University of Illinois (Urbana/Champaign) professor Dan Roth will discuss this question in "Learning and Managing Knowledge in Large Scale Natural Language Inferences," a seminar sponsored by UW's Institute for Computer Research today at 2 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1304.
Says Roth: "We present an architecture and learning algorithms that support large-scale inference problems. The emphasis is on learning techniques that can tolerate data of high dimensionality, and on incorporating additional knowledge, acquired as the system interacts with various information sources.... Applications of these techniques to intelligent user interfaces and intelligent information access will be discussed." All are welcome.
Here's the oddest feature of this page: it announces a conference that's being hosted by UW this week . . . in sunny San Diego. Sally Gunz of UW's accountancy school is the program chair for the event, the annual meeting of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business.
The web page is "the primary information source" about the conference, says Gunz, who notes that she is the first Canadian officer of the ALSB, a primarily American organization. The web page has the predictable information -- about registration, hotels, "the famous San Diego trolley", where to eat, and of course what's on the ALSB program, including a research symposium, student papers, computer workshops, and an opportunity to meet with the "ethics scholar-in-residence" for this year.
Says Gunz: "The skeleton outline of the site came from the prior chair at the University of Georgia. However, Colin Wallace, webmaster for the School of Accountancy, designed this year's web site, inputting points of interest, and generally is the creative and technical force behind the site. We have had numerous compliments about the effectiveness of the page -- many if not most of our attendees register by web now. The page has also helped promote the University of Waterloo."
Among its other novelties: links to live cameras at San Diego International Airport and at Del Mar Beach.
Barbara Elve
bmelve@nh4.adm.uwaterloo.ca
Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information
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