Daily Bulletin

Bob Kerton will be dean of arts

"Throughout his career," says the president's memo, "Bob Kerton has been a strong contributor at all levels in the University. He is widely known and respected within the Faculty of Arts and beyond, and his own scholarly activities exemplify the outreach that we strive for at the University of Waterloo. He will provide strong leadership to the Faculty of Arts, and will be a tireless promoter of both Arts and the University of Waterloo."

Kerton is an economics professor who came to UW in 1967 with degrees from Toronto, Carleton and Duke. He was chair of the department from 1975 to 1978, was associate dean (undergraduate) in the arts faculty in 1985-86, and has served on endless committees, including the nominating committee that recently chose David Johnston to be UW's next president. Three times he had the thankless job of chairing the faculty salary negotiation process under the old final-offer-selection rules.

"Professor Kerton's scholarly and research interest is consumer economics," the president writes. "He is the author or co-author of three monographs and some 60 articles and reviews. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Consumer Policy and the Journal of Consumer Affairs."

And, most famously, Kerton has been active in the Consumers Association of Canada and related organizations such as the American Council on Consumer Interests and the North-South Institute. Says the president's memo: "He has frequently testified in the public interest before official inquiries on competition, pharmaceutical policy, taxes, free trade, banking, etc. He has also served as consumer researcher and advocate, often on matters relating to health and pricing, in the local area, and at the provincial, national and international levels."

He has the fattest file in the whole cabinet here in information and public affairs, with scores of clippings reporting his public comments about grocery store takeovers, bank mergers, government regulation, interest rates and the Goods and Services Tax -- even, back in 1973, the merits of childproof caps on medicine bottles.

He'll take over as dean on July 1, succeeding Brian Hendley of the philosophy department, dean since 1991.

Celebration for 47 young faculty

A total of 47 young faculty members are part of 11 UW projects that were supported with the "New Opportunities" category of CFI grants. Altogether more than 400 researchers across Canada are getting a total of $36 million under that heading, a CFI news release said in August.

Waterloo participants range from Baldridge (William, of optometry) to Yoon (Young, of electrical and computer engineering) by way of Gingras (Michel, of physics), Nica (Alexandru, of pure mathematics) and Parker (Beth, of earth sciences).

"These researchers are being recognized for their talents and their creativity in addressing problems in priority areas for Canadians," said CFI's president, David Strangway, who will be at UW for this afternoon's wine-and-cheese reception. It starts at 4:30 at the University Club.

Said Strangway: "Our support means that they will be able to undertake research that will help to, for example, better understand the molecular processes behind herbicide resistance, develop intelligent systems to enable robots to operate in dynamic or dangerous situations, and build better and safer roads."

The New Opportunities grants are to provide "infrastructure support for faculty members who have recently taken up their first full-time academic position". The CFI pays, on average, 40 per cent of the costs involved in the projects, with the rest of the money coming from the private sector, the Ontario government and other sources. CFI said 51 per cent of its support in this category was going to health research, 40 per cent to science and engineering, and 9 per cent to the environment.

Ten thousand job interviews were held

Over the month of interviews, Naese said, 1,220 employers had a total of 10,623 interviews. "There were 245 group (briefing session) interviews and 243 interviews conducted by telephone."

He said the overall co-op employment rate for the winter work term, including students returning to previous employers and those who arranged their own jobs, is currently 65%. Last year this figure was 63%. All these numbers don't include architecture students, who are just getting their job match results this morning (they'll be posted at 11:00).

For the 1,249 students still looking for winter co-op jobs, the "continuous phase" of the co-op interview process looks encouraging, Naese says. "There were 1,578 positions which were not matched with students, and many of these will be posted again for students still needing employment. In addition there are several postings' worth of new jobs. Of these there are some unique ones such as the Environment Co-op Intern at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, the Student Assistant in the Terry Fox Laboratory at the BC Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver, or the job with the Northwest Territories Power Corporation in Iqaluit, NWT, which involves travelling to remote Arctic communities."

A busy day in the neighbourhood

Holocaust lecture Concentration camp survivor Avrum Feigenbaum will be at UW tonight to give the annual Spinoza-Meir Lecture in Holocaust and Jewish Studies. His topic: "A Survivor's Account -- The German Persecution and Extermination of the Jews in World War II". Feigenbaum lives in Montréal and is active in Holocaust remembrance organizations there. He is a survivor of the Lodz ghetto, where Polish Jews were confined before being sent to death camps, and of the Auschwitz and Gross Rosen camps. He'll speak at 8 p.m. in Needles Hall room 3001.

Eating for Academic Success is the topic: "Health Services invites you to drop into our booth at the Student Life Centre to talk to a nutrition nurse and pick up pamphlets on healthy eating to help you achieve your academic goals. Bring a food diary to discuss and any questions you may have." The booth will be in the SLC from 11:00 to 2:00 today.

The series of films on media and consumerism, sponsored by the Waterloo Public Interest Research Group, continues today at 11:30 (Davis Centre room 1302) and 6:00 (DC room 1304) and tomorrow, Friday, at 11:30 (DC 1304). Among the titles: "Beyond McWorld" and "Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco".

Biology graduate student Scott Higgins will receive this year's Ram and Lekha Tumkur Memorial Graduate Scholarship at a presentation today. The $1,000 award is given in memory of Rammohan and Chitralekha Tumkur, who died in the June 1985 Air India crash off the coast of Ireland. They were the children of Nag Raj Tumkur, a retired UW biology research professor. The annual scholarship is awarded to a master's student in biology. Today's presentation comes at 2 p.m. in Biology I room 273.

Don Cowan of the computer science department will talk about "the LiveBOOK Approach to Computer-Based Education" in a teaching and learning workshop sponsored by teaching resources this afternoon. "This approach," says an abstract, "uses databases and a toolkit to provide an easy-to-use environment for managing the production and storage of educational materials without the worry of file and hyperlink management. A number of courses are already being offered using the Live BOOK approach." The workshop starts at 2:30 in Davis Centre room 1302.

Academic seminars at 3:30 today: in chemical engineering, Arnold Lustiger of Exxon talking on "Tie Molecules in Polyolefins" (Doug Wright Building room 2517); in physics, Adrian Parsegian of the National Institute of Health (Bethesda, Maryland) talking on "Forces Between Biomolecules: Where Physics, Chemistry and Biology Meet" (Physics room 145).

David Tilbrook, software guru described as "one of the first Unix users in Canada", will give a talk for the Computer Science Club today on "Software Hygiene -- An Achievable Panacea". I wasn't familiar with the concept of software hygiene, but I like the sounds of it: "Many of the difficulties encountered by systems and software projects are not the result of deep technical problems, but rather arise from a lack of basic project hygiene -- from failure to enforce various elementary principles and disciplines that are self-evidently prerequisite to a successful outcome." The talk starts at 4:30 in Math and Computer room 4063.

Jamey Rosen, graduate student in earth sciences, has another life -- he's active in musical theatre, and will be directing "One Bad Apple", staged tonight through Saturday and again next week by More Notes Productions and K-W Little Theatre. It's described as "a laugh-filled adventure" as "Adam and Eve discover life, love and apples," and ticket information is available at 886-0660. Location: the K-W Little Theatre building, 9 Princess Street East, downtown.

The Trellis library system will be unavailable from late late tonight until mid-morning tomorrow, a bulletin from the library warns. "Library staff recognize that this process is occurring at a peak period of the term but, in light of problems being experienced, felt it best to incur some downtime in order to address them as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience."

The stream of authors visiting St. Jerome's University to read from their works continues. Tomorrow at 10:30 a.m.: Miriam Toews of Winnipeg. ("You may have heard A Boy of Good Breeding this summer on CBC radio.") Next Tuesday at 8:30 p.m.: Christopher McPherson of Victoria. Both readings will be given in room 221 at St. Jerome's.

The career development seminar series continues tomorrow with a session on "Selling Your Skills in the Marketplace", at 9:30 a.m. in the multipurpose room of the Student Life Centre. Sign-up sheets are posted next to the elevator on the first floor of Needles Hall.

"Don't forget," says a note from the UW Shop, "to order your poinsettias by November 30. Proceeds go to the staff association scholarship fund." You'll find the UW Shop in the South Campus Hall concourse -- and you'll also find a poinsettia order table at the staff association craft sale in the Davis Centre next Thursday and Friday.

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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