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Thursday, July 23, 1998
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Elora Festival
The ranks of mature students are declining, with enrolment down by one-quarter in the past three years, but a get-together like today's is as important as ever, says Isobel Mackay, UW's coordinator of mature student services. Her office organizes the lunches every term.
For mature students, she says, meeting for lunch is more than just a social event. It can be a way to forge friendships and share information about courses, careers, and coping with the challenges of parenting or making ends meet.
"Mature students are not coming to university directly out of high school," Mackay explains. "They've been away from school for at least two years, and their needs are different from regular post-high school students. " Such students usually live off campus, and many are parents. Because of age and lifestyle differences, mature students don't easily fit into the formal and informal networks of younger students.
"The lunches give students an opportunity to create their own supports, to help each other. . . . We can't help everyone," she says, referring to the budget-strapped service, "and the lunches are a marvelous way to stretch resources."
Aside from the challenges of juggling jobs, families and studies, many mature students have been hit hard by tuition fee increases. They're not yet an endangered species, but the population of mature students is dropping. During the winter term, there were 1,726 full- and part-time undergraduates ages 25 and older on campus. That's down 25.6 per cent from the winter of 1995.
"Tuition increases have had an impact on everyone, from single parents to middle-income parents who have kids at university," says Mackay. "We're losing part-time older students as a result of higher costs."
She would like to see the faculty of arts offer more diploma and certificate programs which would allow greater flexibility for part-time students -- many of whom are post-degree students -- to pursue professional development opportunities without enrolling in a degree program.
Mackay and her sidekick Ann Reed have run mature student services since 1983, publishing a newsletter -- "the glue that keeps everything together" -- as well as providing a "Preparing for University" orientation to campus life, offering a collection of extended course descriptions and networking files, and generally helping with the culture shock and red tape of returning to school. With the aid of some half-dozen volunteers, mature student services collects Zehrs cash register tapes and runs used book sales to fund a bursary to assist struggling students.
"When they start lurking around, they're generally lurking for a reason -- criminal intent," said UW police sergeant Wayne Shortt. Under the Trespass to Property Act, the trio was given written warnings that they would be charged if they reappeared.
The number of intruders peaks in the winter when the transient population is looking for a warm place to spend the night, said Shortt, but a number of recent thefts have highlighted the need to be vigilant.
Since the police can't be everywhere at once on campus, they rely on the eyes and ears of others, particularly those of custodial staff who "are very protective of their buildings, very aware of what's going on," the turnkeys, who "are trained observers," and indeed everyone in the university community.
Wrong departmentIn yesterday's Bulletin, I referred to Roydon Fraser as a member of the systems design engineering department; in fact, he belongs to mechanical engineering.There is, of course, no similarity to the old story about the fellow who transferred from the University of Waterloo to [insert name of rival campus here] and raised the average intelligence at both institutions. |
A 55-year-old electrician who was injured on the job at UW on Tuesday is recovering at home, UW police said this morning. The worker, employed by Danco Electric on a renovation project in Environmental Studies II, was using a stepladder to work on wiring inside a suspended ceiling. He received a shock and fell about nine feet to the floor, suffering a fractured right wrist and a long cut to the side of the head. He was treated at St. Mary's Hospital and released. The incident was investigated by UW police and the Ontario ministry of labour.
The Graduate Student Association holds its summer golf tournament starting at 12:30 at Merryhill Golf Course, with a barbecue following, back at the Grad House.
The Math Grad Committee has a faculty-vs.-undergraduates softball game scheduled for 3:00 at Columbia Field, and a barbecue will follow. The event was postponed from last week. "All faculty and class of '99 grads" are invited, MGC organizers say. "If you don't want to play, come and cheer on your team!"
But some mathematicians have a conflict: Jerry Lawless, of the department of statistics and actuarial science, will be giving a talk at 3:30 in Math and Computer room 5158. Topic: "Semiparametric Methods for Missing Data and Response-selection in Regression". A notice says that "coffee and cookies" will follow, but apparently no barbecue.
About that PhD thesisA correction has arrived to a PhD thesis listing that was included in the Bulletin yesterday. Correct title of the thesis by Pam Bryden is "The Origins of Manual Asymmetries: What Is Revealed by Pushing the Limits of Task Difficulty". And the PhD is jointly in kinesiology and psychology, not in kin alone. The oral defence is scheduled for August 25 at 10 a.m. in Matthews Hall room 3119. |
A production of the musical "Fame" by the separate school board's performing arts summer school continues tonight (and tomorrow) at 7:30 in the Humanities Theatre. Tickets, at the door, are $12, students $10.
And here's the weekly list of opportunities from the local Volunteer Action Centre. Tutors are wanted by Core Literacy to help work with a small group on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for the rest of the summer. The city of Waterloo needs members for several committees to help review funding requests. And "Volunteers with good listening and communication skills are needed to help victims prepare Victim Impact Statements." More information: 742-8610.
"Many students are intrigued by the scientific, visual, and computing aspects of chaos and fractals, but do not have much idea of the mathematics involved," says the web page for Pure Mathematics 399C.
Will Gilbert of the pure math department, who teaches the course, says his URL points to "a web page in transition from the first time I gave the course Chaos and Fractals in Winter 1997 to the second time in Fall 1998. It contains the usual course outline, plus a list of resources and references, many of which are on the Web. I keep this reference list up-to-date for my research as well as for this course.
"The design is simple, and can be used as a template for my other course pages, such as the Topology course."
He continues: "I put the assignment questions on the Web in LaTeX form and in GIF format. The GIF files from Winter 1997 have been deleted by now to save space. Students have to do a project for the course and quite a few produce their own Web pages for their project; I add links to these pages."
CAR
Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
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