Daily Bulletin

Enrolment growth had 'major' sponsor

It's now the school of . . . planning UW's school of urban and regional planning got a new name yesterday. It's now just the School of Planning. The change was approved by the board of governors after Geoff McBoyle, dean of environmental studies, said its scope now includes much more than just "urban and regional" planning -- including social planning, information technology and design. Professionals in the field are generally designated just "planners", he added.

"We had a major commitment of funds," said Jim Kalbfleisch, telling the board of governors that Waterloo officials had proposed an increase of almost 30 per cent in first-year enrolment in computer science and electrical and computer engineering.

In a statement also issued yesterday, he says UW "had been working on expansion plans since last fall." Because Waterloo is "the largest source in Canada of high-quality graduates in Information Technology", the 30 per cent expansion "would represent more than a doubling at most Ontario universities. However, it is less than a doubling for Waterloo."

Instead of approving government money to support UW's plan, the province announced its Access to Opportunities program, under which universities will get extra funds -- plus permission to raise their fees in CS and high-tech engineering -- only if they double their enrolment in high-tech fields. But the provost pointed out that CS and E&CE already make up 18 per cent of UW's first-year students. "To double that number would profoundly change the nature of the University of Waterloo."

Besides that, "we would have needed to hire scores of faculty members in the very areas where high-tech companies are having trouble finding people," he said. Other difficulties would have included finding thousands more co-op jobs and getting laboratories set up.

And then there were the financial issues. The government is offering $5,000 a year for each new E&CE student and $3,500 for each new CS student -- significantly less than the current grants of about $7,000 for engineering students and $5,000 for students in CS.

"We decided that we could try an expansion of the order of 30 per cent, and still maintain the quality of our programs," Kalbfleisch said. The first-year enrolment would have risen from 435 to 550 in CS, and from 240 to 320 in E&CE. But the government wasn't interested.

"It frankly doesn't make a lot of sense," said the provost, "to have major expansion in the high-tech areas without Waterloo part of it! But our sheer size makes this a very different undertaking."

UW president James Downey told the board that he's hopeful the government will become more flexible and find a way to support what UW is able to do. "If you ask me to predict," he said, "I predict that a year from now, we'll be in."

So far Waterloo is the only university to decide that Access to Opportunities is an offer it can refuse. University of Toronto provost Adel Sedra told the Ottawa Citizen this weekend that "we will do our damnedest" to double enrolment:

He said he understood Waterloo's problems, but said it would be unfair to have different rules for different universities. "If the government is going to agree (to less than 100 per cent), I want to know that now, because it is not no easy to double. I am getting a lot of resistance from my own colleagues."

Budget and Memorandum approved

Also approved was the Memorandum of Agreement between UW and the faculty association. "We've put together a number of items into a complete package, which is something the faculty have been looking to for a long time," said faculty association president Fred McCourt. Approval of the Memorandum brings a new set of rules on discipline and grievances for faculty. As part of the package of changes, UW's ethics committee has been abolished. And there will be a vote by faculty members early in the fall term on whether to introduce the Rand formula for payment of faculty association dues.

The board heard a briefing from Ian Lithgow, vice-president (university relations), on the state of UW's fund-raising and the outlook for the years ahead. In about three years Waterloo will probably want to launch another major campaign, Lithgow said, but between now and then, his staff need to concentrate on developing individual donor prospects, because individuals, not companies, are the truly promising field for big money. "We have to pay attention to our own millionaires," he said, flashing a chart on the screen to show how many UW alumni will be getting into their fifties, sixties and beyond over the next decade.

President James Downey gave a "year in review" report, calling 1997-98 "the year the tide turned" for public and government support of post-secondary education. "There's a load-bearing beam missing," he said, switching metaphors, "and that's some form of income-contingent debt remission for students."

Another comment from the president, about how UW has coped with hard times: "We have had to ask our employees to accept wage increases lower than they might have wished, and workloads greater than are desirable."

15 projects sent to Ottawa

Some of them have also been put before the CFI's provincial equivalent, the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund, and ORDCF has already given a yes answer to one of them, the multi-million-dollar Bell Emergis laboratories. All are also to get funding from industry and, in the form of faculty salaries and other participation, from UW.

Here's a list of the projects and the lead researcher in each one, as provided by UW's vice-president (university research):

• Waterloo Centre for High Performance Computing (Alan George, computer science).
• Digital Cities/3D-GIS (Tom Seebohm, architecture).
• Bell Emergis University Labs (Jon Mark, electrical and computer engineering).
• Materials Technology and Analysis Facility (Tong Leung, chemistry).
• Synthetic and Biosynthetic Materials Research Facility (John Hepburn, chemistry).
• Improvements to UW Network and Cabling Infrastructure in Support of Research (Jay Black, associate provost, information systems and technology).
• Institute of Vision Science and Technology (Jake Sivak, optometry).
• Instrumentation for the application of high-throughput molecular biology and biotechnology to environmental problems (Patricia Schulte, biology).
• Centre for Environmental and Information Technologies (Ed Sudicky, earth sciences).
• Gas Chromatograph/Fraction Collector (Shaun Frape, earth sciences).
• Infrastructure for Research in Communication Software and Wireless Communication (Rudy Seviora, electrical and computer engineering).
• Canadian Cryosphere Information Centre (Ellsworth LeDrew, geography).
• Advanced Machining Laboratory (Sanjiv Bedi, mechanical engineering).
• Cluster System for Advanced Microelectronic Manufacturing (Arokia Nathan, electrical and computer engineering).
• Facility for the Isolation, Characterization, and Functional Studies of Proteins of Therapeutic Potential (James Lepock, physics and biology).

A correction, and coming events

The pension and benefits committee holds a day-long meeting today in Needles Hall. Among the agenda items: the annual valuation of the pension fund (latest figure I've seen is a modest $618,913,000); details of the "flexible" feature that will let some staff and faculty make extra pension plan contributions; the perennial issue of "purchase of past service" for people who were out of the pension plan for a period of time.

The senate executive committee will meet at 3:30 today in Needles Hall room 3004 to set the agenda for the June 15 meeting of senate itself. Among the agenda items is an annual report on scholarship fund donations and scholarships awarded -- and I was interested to see that the fund collected $79,238 last year from campus parking and traffic fines.

A surplus sale of UW property will be held tomorrow from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at central stores, East Campus Hall (off Phillip Street).

The career development seminar series continues tomorrow with "The Work Finding Package" at 10:30 and "Interview Skills: Prepare for Questions" at 1:30, both in Needles Hall room 1020.

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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