Daily Bulletin

More have co-op jobs, but more don't

"There are 3,075 co-op students scheduled to be on a fall 1998 work term. Of these, 1,957 took part in the initial round of employer interviews in June. As a result of the computer match, 65% of those interviewed now have employment. The overall co-op employment rate for the fall work term, including students returning to previous employers and those who arranged their own jobs, is currently 73%.

"At the moment there are 674 students still requiring fall work term positions. This figure does not include Architecture students since initial interviews for that program are underway this week.

"Compared to last year's computer job match rate of 67%, it appears we have lost some ground. But this year there was an increase of 16% in the number of students looking for employment. CECS was able to develop 8% more job openings over last year. The result is that there were fewer jobs per student in this year's initial round of interviews, which contributed to the somewhat lower overall match rate.

"Last year students were permitted to apply to 30 jobs before the computer match, versus 21 jobs this year. The reduction in applications was designed to increase the number of jobs filled by spreading out the applications over the available positions. It appears to have been successful, since 76% of the positions were matched compared to 73% at the same time last year.

"The Continuous interview phase is now underway. Co-op interviews begin again on Friday and will continue through exams." Posting #3 in the "continuous" phase expires at 8:00 tonight. (Also today, work reports that were marked by coordinators are available for pickup in Needles Hall, the co-op department says.)

The end of 'liberal science'

NSERC reallocates millions The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council -- which spends more than $200 million a year on university-based research across Canada -- has announced a "reallocation" of some $25 million to support "the most important new developments in university research in science and engineering". "As part of the reallocations exercise, each discipline that we fund returned 10 per cent of its annual budget to NSERC," says NSERC president Tom Brzustowski. "Then we asked researchers to identify their priorities and present their cases for new initiatives that would be important to Canada." A total of 71 proposals were considered, NSERC says, and 33 were approved. Says Brzustowski: "The effort required to prepare these submissions was remarkable; therefore we are taking the unprecedented step of publishing them all on our Web site. They present a unique and comprehensive overview of Canadian science and engineering - something every Canadian should be proud of. They also make a convincing case that basic research in Canada's universities is very important for the country, and that it needs to be funded at a much higher level,"

Hardly any students were taking the option, says Morris Tchir, associate dean (undergraduate studies) in the science faculty. "We are trying to rationalize those programs, including options, that have had small numbers of participants. A quick glance at the statistics book put out by the registrar indicates that eight people have ever graduated with the liberal science designation," he says. The most recent was in 1993.

And it's getting hard for science to offer the necessary courses. The option had a core of five courses, with courses like "Models in Science" and "Scientists and the Science Community", and students had to take three of the five. "Two of the courses were dropped some time ago," Tchir notes. "Now the person that taught two of the remaining courses is no longer available. We are not in a position to replace him and we do not have the spare manpower to assign another professor to these courses. The option was tricky to arrange with no choice in the core and it becomes impossible with only one course left."

News from across Ontario

York University has approved in principle the introduction of a Doctor of Chiropractic degree program, to be offered in partnership with the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College.

The provincial government has decided not to "privatize" TVOntario, the educational and "public" television network in the province. Some changes are coming, though: TVO, currently responsible to the ministry of culture, will be passed to the ministry of education and training, and is to be divided into two units, TVO Broadcasting and a new Ontario Centre for Advanced Technology in Learning.

Wilfrid Laurier University has announced that "twenty-five rooms, buildings and public spaces are being named" to honour donors to its recently concluded $16 million Campaign Laurier. Among them: the Deloitte & Touche Case Room in the business school, and the Dr. Alvin Woods Building, formerly the Central Teaching Building. Also to be named (in honour of the Royal Bank Financial Group) is the University Stadium scoreboard.

Construction has begun on Brock University's wine building -- Inniskillin Hall, home to the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute.

Events and other notes

The badminton club will hold its termly tournament today and tomorrow, with players coming from out of town to challenge the locals. Singles play is scheduled for tonight (starting at 5:30) and doubles play for tomorrow (from 9 a.m.) at the Columbia Recreation Complex. Organizer Dennis The is promising "awesome prizes".

The career development seminar series will resume on Monday, with a session on "The Work Finding Package: Job-Work Search Plus Networking Plus Employer Research". It starts at 11:30 a.m. in Needles Hall room 1020.

The Federation of Students has announced a forum about tuition fee deregulation, to be held Wednesday, July 15, at 5 p.m. in Arts Lecture Hall room 105. Scheduled speakers are UW's provost, Jim Kalbfleisch, and "a representative from CIBC", one of the major banks that weren't keen to get into an income-contingent student loan program. Says Robin Stewart, the Feds' vice-president (education): "At a time where many people are uncertain of what is occurring to university tuition, we believe that this forum will be informative."

Word has arrived that Al Romenco, a well-known figure on campus as UW's director of security from 1966 to 1986, died on May 31. He was 77. He is survived by his wife, Terri Romenco, who also worked on campus for a time. There will be no funeral service, an announcement says; memorial donations to the Parkinson Foundation of Canada are invited.

UW web site of the day

The home page for Chemistry 129 has the sort of thing you might expect -- assignment solutions, addresses of teaching assistants, links to more information about spectroscopy -- and just a hint of the offbeat with "The Dream Team of Quantum Mechanics", dating from 1927.

Bill Power, instructor for the course, explains that he created the page in 1995 "to provide access to all components of the course when I first started teaching it.

"The web was starting to gain prominence at that time, and since this first-year course included a computer lab, it seemed an obvious place to try out a course web page. At the same time, I wrote a new set of course notes, in LaTeX, which allowed me to easily add those to the web page. All assignments, solutions, illustrations used in class, etc, are available on this page, and the feedback from students has been great."

Like most other home pages for UW courses, it can be found through a list maintained by the teaching resource office.

CAR

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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