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Tuesday, August 25, 1998
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Pogo (Walt Kelly born 1913)While some departments enjoy a hiatus between terms, it's a mad scramble for plant operations to catch up on maintenance work done every year at this time, as well as special projects. With some 57 construction jobs scheduled for completion by the start of the fall term, plant ops is facing "a heavier -- up 30 per cent -- design and construction load than we have had in years," says director of technical services, Dave Churchill. "We've been understaffed for the workload that developed. We've just been swamped.
"In fact, the construction activity in all sectors of the region is higher than normal. This has made it harder to get competitive bids and to schedule work," he adds.
As a result, the long-awaited reconstruction of the stairway stretching from the Ring Road to South Campus Hall has been put on hold, maybe even until next summer. "Tenders were higher than anticipated, probably reflecting the super-heated construction environment," explains Churchill. "Everyone is so busy, the bids are not super-competitive." He expects there will be some redesign of the plans to get closer to the budget price.
Among the projects already completed this summer are the replacement of cooling towers on Biology 1 and Physics -- where two air-conditioning chillers were replaced with a more efficient one, and an upgrade of the equipment cooling water system performed; paving work in the Modern Languages courtyard, at South Campus Hall, Married Student Apartments, Village 2 and the Physical Activities Complex quadrangle; reroofing at East Campus Hall and Married Student Apartments; and brick repairs at Physics and Engineering 3. A number of similar projects involving rebricking and brick repairs, window caulking, paving, and roof replacement are still scheduled between now and early September.
A major renovation project at Village 1 is expected to be completed by next Monday. Also on tap are general renovations and installation of a water main at Federation Hall; replacement of lighting, the filter system and grouting at the pool, and the refinishing of gym floors at the Physical Activities Complex; replacement of the ceilings removed for other projects in Physics; an upgrade of Library fire alarm systems; replacement of ventilation ducts in Hagey Hall; and an upgrade of the chemical recycling facility's ventilation and exhaust system in Earth Sciences and Chemistry, scheduled for completion in late fall.
Other less visible projects are underway in labs and offices across campus, said Churchill, many designed to improve space efficiency in the wake of downsizing.
Readers may remember that the Gazette took a summer break to accommodate a new graphic design and a switch to fully electronic page makeup. Well, the redesign is still in progress and won't be ready in time, so the Gazette will have the same look it's had for the past few years. Watch for the new look in another month or so.
As in the past, the Gazette will be appearing each Wednesday, with campus news, texts of documents, photos, letters (when we get any), Cecilia's music reviews, classified and display advertising, the Positions Available list, and so on. If you have anything you'd like to have considered for the September 9 issue, now would be a really good time to send it along to our offices (information and public affairs, Needles Hall room 3041).
The Gazette includes a full list of UWevents, a week at a time -- and here's a reminder that UWevents is also available electronically through UWinfo. The database is updated daily, but only if organizers of events remember to submit the necessary information about their meetings, concerts, lectures, parades and parties.
Copyright; electronic publishing; jobs in the academic world; scholarly communication; style manuals; tuition fees. Those are the topics you'll find covered in this site maintained by the UW library, with links to various job listings, position papers on the funding of higher education, and reference documents about the wonderful world of intellectual property.
"The Issues in Academia web pages bring together in the UW Electronic Library many of the issues of concern to academics, researchers, students and librarians," says Margaret Aquan-Yuen, a librarian in the Dana Porter Library who maintains the site along with Jim Parrott of the Davis Centre Library. "With the widespread use of electronic resources, there have been extensive discussions on issues such the application of copyright laws on the new technologies, and the crisis in scholarly communication arising from the cost and the volume of academic publishing."
The "style manuals" section of the site is especially rich, with links to information from various presses about how academic text should be formatted, both in print and electronically. Guidelines on electronic citation "authorized by the Modern Language Association of America", which for decades has been the authority on how texts in the humanities are put on the page, appear right along with that classic on plain English writing, The Elements of Style.
Barbara Elve
bmelve@nh4.adm.uwaterloo.ca
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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