Daily Bulletin

'Soft deadline' for 1999 applicants

The East Asian Festival at Renison College is in full swing today, with "a showcase of study, research and employment opportunities" in the college's chapel lounge from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. At 4:30, Korean architect Ju-Suck Koh will speak in Environmental Studies II room 286. And then tonight at 7:30 in the Theatre of the Arts comes the big event of the festival, the "literary evening" with authors Kerri Sakamoto (The Electrical Field) and Peter Li (The Chinese in Canada) and filmmaker Dora Nipp ("Under the Willow Tree: Pioneer Chinese Women in Canada"). Tickets are $3 at the door.

However, students shouldn't suffer, said Burroughs, pointing out that the December date "always has been a very soft deadline". Plenty of applications always come in after the published date, with no ill effects, he said.

OUAC director Greg Marcotte sent out a memo yesterday to say that the deadline hasn't been postponed, in spite of what the news reports said, but that it's "common practice" for OUAC to accept applications past the official date. "As in the past, we ask schools to contact us if they expect a delay in getting their forms to us. In fact, of the numerous school and board officials who have contacted us during the past few hours, days and weeks, virtually all indicated that it would be possible to get their forms in on time, that is, by December 4th."

"This year," Burroughs predicted, "we'll receive perhaps the bulk of our applications three or four weeks later than normal." He's hoping that decisions can still be made on schedule, so that answers to UW's thousands of applicants will go into the mail on the scheduled big day, Tuesday, May 18.

Legislation passed in Ontario on Monday put an end to strikes by teachers in eight school boards, affecting more than 200,000 students including 33,000 in the Metro Toronto Roman Catholic school system. Strikes and disruptions continue elsewhere in Ontario's troubled schools, including rotating strikes by elementary teachers in Waterloo Region that started yesterday.

"Our education is in jeopardy," Javeed Sukhera of the Ontario Secondary School Students Association told The Star earlier this week. A fellow-student, Deb Thompson of Oshawa, agreed: "We haven't even had a chance to go to the guidance office to see the choices for university and college."

Tens of thousands of students and their parents did show up for the Ontario Universities' Fair at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre last weekend, described as a huge success by school liaison staff from the universities who were there for three days to provide information. UW volunteers handed out some 20,000 brochures to interested students, registrar Ken Lavigne said.

The university admissions process has changed this year, under rules approved by the Council of Ontario Universities last winter. Starting in 1999, "universities are free to make an offer of admission to Ontario secondary school students at any time following the completion of the first semester" in late January. UW may make early "conditional" offers to students for a few of its programs sometime in March, Burroughs said.

Poster based on the "search piece" brochure that was handed out at the Universities Fair and is being taken to high schools across the province this month.

But for most programs, admissions committees will wait until they get second-semester marks, which are due at the end of April. The whole schedule could come unravelled if the after-effects of the strike mean those marks aren't available then. He noted that admissions committees typically look at such other information as scores on the Descartes math competition, details provided on UW's own admission information forms, and sometimes personal interviews.

Admissions committees would start meeting May 10, Burroughs suggests, with most offers of admission (as well as scholarships and residence rooms) going out May 18. Once the school year ends in June and final marks are available in August, the conditional offers can be made firm -- or rescinded, if the student doesn't make the grade.

Under the COU rules, universities can't "encourage or compel" a student to reply to an offer of admission before June 1, although students are free to say yes if they want to. Meanwhile, they can make campus visits (UW's Campus Day open house is March 16, 1999) and find out more about the institutions through the spring.

Building gets its Wright name

Wright was the university's first dean of engineering (1958-1966) and third president (1981-93), as well as the first chair of the department of civil engineering. He is often pointed out -- most recently in a feature interview in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record last Friday -- as the point man for UW's tradition of innovation and technology transfer.

At today's ceremonies, which start at 2:00 in the DWE lobby facing the Graduate House, speakers will include James Downey, UW's current president; Val O'Donovan, chancellor of the university; and Sujeet Chaudhuri, UW's new engineering dean.

Wright, now UW's president emeritus and still active in the department of systems design engineering, will also speak. He will then unveil a portrait of himself, a plaque and the building's sign.

The building was officially opened on December 3, 1958, by Ontario premier Leslie Frost. It still houses the chemical engineering department.

Cryptography research asks for funds

The money would be about one-quarter of the budget of the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research, along with $1.1 million from five companies, $525,000 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and $827,500 from UW (in the form of such things as faculty members' salaries).

Says the funding proposal that was submitted yesterday:

The goal is to make the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research the premier research and advanced training centre in the world for cryptography and information security by 2002. Cryptography, which provides the security for digital information and electronic commerce, is of critical importance in the information technology sector, and there are a number of internationally competitive, new companies in Ontario, including spin-offs from the University of Waterloo, marketing this expertise. Access to research and highly trained personnel in this rapidly changing area are vital to their success. . . .

Areas of application of cryptography include the Internet (secure electronic mail, home banking, Internet browsers); the financial services industry (electronic cash, credit card transactions, instant teller banking, wholesale banking); wireless communications (pagers, cellular telephones, smart cards); telecommunications (fax encryptors, modems, secure telephones, cable TV, and pay-per-view).

Two of the January projects were approved, the multi-million-dollars Bell Emergis laboratories and a welding project in the department of mechanical engineering.

One was turned down, the UW research office said yesterday: a project in "digital radiography", in effect development of "an electronic X-ray camera". The fifth project submitted in January involved groundwater research, and it is being reworked for resubmission next spring, the research office also said. Several other UW projects should also be ready to be sent to ORDCF then.

Events amid the falling leaves

Members of the Student Services Networking Group will take a tour of the renovated Village I today, starting at 1:30.

The Tamil Students Association will hold a celebration tonight of the Hindu festival of Saraswathy Poosai. Ranjith Nadarajah of the association explains that the goddess Sarasati (the spellings vary) is traditionally "considered to be responsible for giving blessings for her followers' education. This celebration is popular among students." Both Tamils and non-Tamils are welcome, he says. The event starts at 6:30 in Humanities room 280 and will include remarks by two faculty members, Palaniappan Kannappan of pure mathematics and Chettypalayam Selvakumar of electrical and computer engineering; a classical dance group from Toronto; a vocal music group from Cambridge; and "Pirasatham, the traditional religious food".

The Arriscraft lecture series in the school of architecture is running again this fall, and the first speaker is due in tonight: Dan S. Hanganu, Romanian-born and now practising in Canada "with projects ranging in scale from single family houses to entire city blocks". He'll speak at 7 p.m. in the green room of Environmental Studies II.

Mathematics undergraduate students are reminded that they can, if they like, reclaim their "voluntary student contribution" to the Mathematics Endowment Fund today or tomorrow, from 2:30 to 4:30 at the MEF office, Math and Computer room 4046.

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