Daily Bulletin

Co-op statistics, and other news

Seen on the scene Summer morning observations on the way to the office: The road work at the corner of University Avenue and Westmount Road is just about finished. One result: vehicles turning east onto University are forced to go much more slowly and cautiously, as the merge lane has disappeared. . . . Blue Dog Bagels says it's no longer accepting WatCards. . . . A brick commercial-style building is under construction on Phillip Street, between the plaza and UW's East Campus Hall. A sign from the contractor, Nith Valley Construction, gives no indication of the owner or future occupant.

Nine UW PhD students are among 599 Canadians who have been awarded 1998 doctoral fellowships by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Selected for having "demonstrated high standards of academic achievement in undergraduate and graduate studies" at Waterloo are Joanne DiNova and Jason Haslam (modern languages and literature), Sara Heimpel, Geoffrey MacDonald and Leanne Son Hing (psychology), Anthony Matarazzo (sociology), Thomas Matthews (management, business, administrative studies), Christopher Tucker (philosophy), and Nicole Culos (education). A total of 2,948 applicants took part in this year's competition for the SSHRC awards, worth $16,620 per year for up to four years of study at the PhD level.

History professor Wendy Mitchinson, a member of the Feminist Health Care Ethics Research Network, has produced a chapter in the network's recent collaborative work, The Politics of Women's Health: Exploring Agency and Autonomy, published by Temple University Press. Entitled "Agency, Diversity, and Constraints: Women and Their Physicians, Canada, 1850-1950," the chapter challenges the "overly dichotomize(d)" notion of women as "totally passive" and physicians as "all powerful." Placing the relationship in a social and historical context, Mitchinson suggests a "complexity of human interaction" characterized by varying degrees of constraints on physicians, who tended to have more power as a group than as individuals, and their patients, for whom the opposite was often the case.

Retirements of two staff members, as of July 1, are reported by the human resources department. UW says farewell to Bernard Verhagen, who came to the university in 1978 as a custodian and later worked on the grounds crew, and Graham Connor, custodian at Renison College, who joined the staff in 1987.

The latest book of the month from the teaching resource office is Designing and Assessing Courses and Curricula: A Practical Guide, by Robert M. Diamond. An abstract: "When significant problems are recognized in the content and design of curricula or courses, efforts toward change are often hampered by uncertainty about where to begin, the questions to ask, the options to explore, what outcomes to target, and what roles faculty, curriculum committees, and administrators should play. The book provides a model for this change and responds to the questions of faculty who see the need for change but are unsure of how to reach their goals. The model presented shows how to move from concept to actualization, from theory to practice. Features sections dealing with diversity, multiculturalism, critical thinking and technological innovations with assessment in the design process playing a central role. Checklists, tables, worksheets, and figures assist readers in the learning process." The book is available for loan from TRACE, phone ext. 3132.

Renison College has been mourning the death on June 30 of Colonel George E. Renison, Second World War hero and bookstore executive, who served a time as its chancellor; he was the grandson of the pioneering archbishop for whom Renison is named.

Bites from my summer reading

The personal finance columnist for the Toronto Sun said the other day that consumers should stay away from the new option of borrowing money from their own Registered Retirement Savings Plans for higher education expenses. "As his income after graduation will be high," Steve Ranot wrote about a hypothetical student, " he will eventually pay 50% tax to withdraw his RRSP. Therefore, the cost to withdraw that $20,000 from his RRSP will be $10,000 in the future." But just withdrawing the money now -- not "borrowing" it -- would cost only about $2,960 in tax, Ranot went on. "I know which path I would choose."

"In the big picture of downsizing, managers are situated between employees' reactions and executive leaders' visions, strategies and policies," writes Jeanetta Vena in the spring 1998 issue of a newsletter published by UW's Organizational Research and Consulting Group. The article is titled "Reducing the Pain of Downsizing". An excerpt: "Managers' top priority should be to achieve fairness in downsizing. Employees evaluate fairness not only in terms of personal consequences but also from the procedures used in making decisions. Was the process rational? Were all pertinent factors considered? Were employees' views heard? Managers enhance perceived fairness when they remain visible and accessible, and they listen, listen, listen. Above all, managers cannot say one thing and do another. Zigzags of this kind may stem not from a lack of individual integrity, but rather from lack of coordination between top leaders' statements or actions and what is happening on the ground floor. This means that communications and most of the other actions described in this article must be coordinated from the top."

The April issue of the faculty association's newsletter Forum presented an interview with Michael Bird of Renison College, whose words included these comments on campus architecture: "As people we have such an interesting range of views on the relationship of our surroundings to our ideas. On the one hand you have Ruskin who always advocated the notion that good architecture supports good ideas and then you have the rather cryptic comment of Sir Kenneth Clark that he doubted a great idea was ever conceived in a large room (with the possible exception, of course, of the reading room at the British Museum). It isn't necessarily to our detriment that we lack old buildings because we certainly still have old ideas. We do have those intangible buildings, the philosophical building stones which are with us, and this should never be lost in a university. We have a beautiful natural landscape on this campus which I think can enhance scholarly reflection. I find that Waterloo is a bit of an eclectic mixture but one that works quite well. There are some universities whose architecture and landscape do not greatly inspire historical thought. Happily, Waterloo doesn't suffer from that. Buildings are generally constructed to a human scale here."

In the next few days

The Shad Valley Program is under way at Conrad Grebel College, bringing bright and enterprising teenagers to campus for a month as it does every year. Tomorrow is "alumni day", when previous years' Shads get together -- this time for an outing to St. Jacobs. Andrew Kennedy has more information.

Annual maintenance is about to begin in Ron Eydt Village, in a break between conferences; water in the south and east quads will be shut down all next week, starting at 8 a.m. Monday, the plant operations department says.

A blood donor clinic is scheduled for next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the Student Life Centre. You can book appointments at the turnkey desk this afternoon, all weekend and on Monday, or of course you can drop by during clinic hours (10 to 4 each day) and take your chances. More information: 744-6110.

The summer concert of the UW Choir, plus glamorous soloists and a string quartet, is scheduled for next Thursday, July 30, at 8 p.m. in the Maureen Forrester Recital Hall at Wilfrid Laurier University. Tickets are $10 (students $8) from the music department office at Conrad Grebel College, or at the door.

UW web site of the day

If you'd recognized a picture of gooey printing ink when it was posted on this web page last month, you could have won $25. So, try again with another puzzling picture offered by the folks in UW's graphics department. There's a new one every two or three weeks.

The "Vague Visuals" are one small part of a new web site introduced by graphics this spring. A picture is worth a thousand words, says Colette Nevin, marketing manager for graphics. "The contest," she explains, "is an attraction for people to frequently visit our graphics web site and also profiles graphics' participation in the WatCard program. Reaction to the Vague Visuals site has been good. Lots of people enter the contest with some truly imaginative answers. The images we use are eclectic, visually stimulating and just plain fun."

The graphics site overall, Nevin says, "will create more awareness about the printing and new imaging technologies available to the campus community. The site provides general information about services offered in all our locations across campus." And if you get bored with information, you can just click on the little flashing icon in the top left corner of most pages across the graphics site, and jump back to the "Vague Visuals". What building is that, anyway?

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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