Daily Bulletin

IST tells of goals and 'constraints'

The draft statement, available on the Web, bears the name of Jay Black, associate provost (IST). It gives some context for the work of IST in supporting a large part of UW's computing activities, including the campus network, administrative computing, the major central systems, the "electronic workplace" and telephone services. The statement presents a "sliding window" analogy to show the biggest challenge: new technology keeps coming along, and while IST is trying to understand the "bleeding edge" of brand-new ideas, it's also trying to manage the "trailing edge" of well-established systems that may already be obsolete.

"Priorities and timelines" are essential, the statement says, calling for "sustainable systems and technology". Among the guiding principles:

• "Support standards: help reduce the complexity, and hence the cost, of maintaining and managing the evolution of our portfolio."
• "Encourage and facilitate the move of faculty, staff and students towards self-reliance in their use of systems and technology, so that IST support can provide depth as well as breadth."

It's important, the statement says, to "manage conflicting simultaneous demands by following established and articulated IST and group priorities" and "maintain significant IST support resources, beyond those committed to major projects, for supporting other needs."

Among the goals listed for IST:

• "Reduce the number and complexity of supported environments."
• "Make a transition to NT Workstation as the primary desktop environment."
• "Ensure IST clients are aware of our services, costs, priorities, and expected response times."
• "Empower staff to refuse requests that are inconsistent with our established goals and priorities."

Friday morning's open house will discuss more than just the draft directions statement. "A number of important milestones have been passed this term on strategic initiatives," says Paul Snyder in IST. "This talk will use the IST Directions statement and moving-window analogy as a framework for presenting information on recent successes, current activities, and future goals. It will include most of the major information systems and information technology projects underway and planned for the near future."

Friday's open house will start at 10:00 in Davis Centre room 1302.

Librarian talks have stopped

There has been no statement from management, but John Wilson of the political science department, who is chief negotiator for the faculty association, said he and his colleagues had met twice with management, had presented their proposal and had been told that management didn't like it. "That was it -- that's all that happened," Wilson said.

He added that the faculty association board, which met late last week, unanimously declared that management is in "complete and total violation" of the Memorandum of Agreement, the framework for discussions between UW and faculty. The Memorandum says that negotiations about professional librarians are to be held this fall, and Wilson maintains that management is refusing to negotiate. However, he added that association president Fred McCourt raised the matter directly with UW provost Jim Kalbfleisch yesterday, and "maybe the door isn't closed" to more talks.

Wilson said his negotiating team (two members of the faculty association board and two librarians) presented five main arguments to the management negotiators (two UW senior managers and two top managers from the library). "The principal reason," he said, "is that the librarians want it." He said the 30 librarians took a vote last month, and the outcome was 20 votes in favour of being represented by the faculty association and 5 opposed, with one abstention. The other key argument, Wilson went on, is that librarians are much like faculty members, particularly in the role scholarship and academic judgement play in their work, and in their need for protection of academic freedom. Other issues include study leave and the grievance procedure.

At the majority of Canadian universities, librarians are already part of the faculty association.

In last week's meetings, Wilson said, management negotiators told him librarians don't have as much in common with professors as much as they do with the 100 non-librarians who also work in the UW libraries. And the head negotiator for management, associate provost Gary Waller, said librarians don't stand ahead of some other UW staff groups, such as computer systems professionals, in their resemblance to faculty.

"They're not professionals, they're technicians," Wilson retorted, and said the faculty association has no ambitions of representing computing staff, senior laboratory demonstrators or language lab staff, some other groups that were mentioned in the negotiations.

At present librarians, like non-professional library staff and staff at all levels elsewhere in the university, are represented by the staff association, which has voluntary membership and dues. Faculty association membership is also voluntary, but as of January 1, payment of dues "or equivalent amount" is required from all faculty members.

The talk of the campus

I had the chance last week to ask Pat Rowe, the dean of graduate studies, why enrolment at the graduate level is up at UW this year (by 3 per cent for full-time students, 18 per cent for part-timers). Several reasons, the dean said, ranging from new programs (a new cohort of students in the Management of Technology and Master of Taxation streams) to bigger efforts at recruiting. "During the past year," she says, "members of my staff and faculty members have participated in educational fairs in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, as well as Canada and the United states. As well, we have produced a University brochure for graduate studies at Waterloo." Other universities are also making efforts, and graduate enrolment seems to be up this year at most Ontario universities -- "despite the economy", said the dean, meaning that enrolment usually rises in hard times and goes down when jobs are easy to find. The number of grad students at UW sagged a bit after the 1996 early retirements, when many senior professors suddenly weren't here to supervise students, and is now rising as their young replacements are "getting established" and receiving grants that can help pay for grad students, Rowe added.

A serious incident of vandalism at a day care centre on Erb Street in west Waterloo made big news a couple of weeks ago, and help in cleaning up and re-equipping the place came from all over -- including, it turns out, the Hildegard Marsden Co-operative day care on UW's north campus, and the Early Childhood Education Centre in the psychology department. "The Waterloo Infants and Toddlers Centre found all of their supplies, food, books and computers destroyed," says Sharon Adams in the psych department, who reports that ECEC supervisor Ann Marie Gillen was able to provide "food and a variety of supplies" to help the Erb Street centre get going again.

Cryptography research and other events

The fall meeting of the Waterloo Advisory Council, representing employers of co-op students and UW graduates, continues today, with morning sessions in the faculties and afternoon meetings in Needles Hall.

A lunch-hour information session is being held today by TLC The Laser Center, the company that recently announced a link with UW's school of optometry to provide laser eye surgery. Latest development: "We have decided to offer a total discount of $400 ($200/eye) on the cost of laser vision correction for immediate family members of UW staff, faculty and Optometry students." Today's session starts at 11:30 in the third-floor lecture hall in the Optometry building. More information, for those who can't get to the session: call ext. 4502.

The Films for Awareness series continues at Conrad Grebel College. Today at 12 noon (room 267): "Black Sugar", an hour-long film about Haitian migrant workers who journey to the Dominican Republic each fall to harvest sugar cane. "This film," a flyer says, "will disturb fair-minded people." Tomorrow at 7 p.m., the series continues with "Who's Counting: Sex, Lies and Global Economics".

The career development series continues with a workshop on resume writing at 1:30 today and one on letter writing at 2:30, both in Needles Hall room 1020. Thursday, the series winds up for this term with "The Work Finding Package" at 10:30 a.m., again in NH 1020.

The statistics and actuarial science department presents a talk at 3:30 today (Math and Computer room 6091A) by Philippe Artzner of the Université Louis-Pasteur, Strasbourg, France. Topic: "Risk Based Capital in Insurance".

Victoria author Christopher McPherson will give a reading at St. Jerome's University tonight at 8:30 (room 221). He is touring, with support from the Canada Council and the Writer's Union of Canada, to read from "a short dark novel about light called Dragons".

And, an infallible sign that exams are near: the UW libraries will offer extended hours from today through December 21. The Dana Porter Library will be open Monday to Thursday, 8 a.m. to midnight; Friday, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to midnight. The Davis Centre Library will open at the same time as Dana Porter each day and stay open one hour later each night.

CAR

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
| Yesterday's Bulletin
Copyright © 1998 University of Waterloo