Daily Bulletin

The spring term winds down

Getting ready for the fall term: visitors at Student Life 101 on Monday scan lists of textbooks outside the used-book store in the Student Life Centre. (Photo by Barbara Elve.)

Some implications of the term's end:

The libraries continue their "extended" exam hours tonight, with the Dana Porter Library open until 11 p.m. and the Davis Centre Library until midnight. Tomorrow it's back to regular hours: Dana Porter closing at 10, Davis Centre at 11, and circulation service available until 5:00 in Porter, 6:00 in Davis. Sunday, the libraries will be closed. Next week and until Labour Day, hours are limited: daytime only, Monday to Friday.

Food services outlets are open today if they've been open for the past few weeks. Tomorrow, the only food service is at Mudie's in Village I, and that's only until 2 p.m., after which Mudie's is closed until Labour Day. Next week and until Labour Day, most food outlets will be closed -- the only exceptions will be Brubaker's in the Student Life Centre, Tim Horton's in the Davis Centre, Double U's in South Campus Hall, and Pastry Plus in Needles Hall.

Now let's talk about the fall term. The registrar's office notes that the tuition payment deadline is August 31. "Please make fee arrangements now," a memo says. "Cheques may be postdated up to and including September 7 but must be received by August 31. Payment is accepted by mail, or drop off in one of the four express payment boxes located in Needles Hall. Late fees for the fall term begin September 1."

Fee receipts will be mailed to full-time undergraduate students whose payment is received by August 18 (next Wednesday). "Any received after this date will be available for pickup in the registrar's office beginning September 7. Fee receipts and validation stickers for part-time students will be mailed."

Students fight spruce budworm
-- by Amber Christie for the co-op and career services department

Robert Klose in a GLFC lab

Forestry is one of Canada's most important industries, and yet our forests are not protected effectively from the Spruce Budworm. In 1995 in Ontario alone, this species moderately to severely destroyed 3.5 million hectares of forests. Anna and Robert's supervisor, Dr. Basil Arif, claims that the Spruce Budworm is the most devastating of insect pests, with damages totalling in the billlions of dollars.

Traditional methods to manage infestations of the Spruce Budworm have not been effective in controlling the pest. Chemical insecticides have become ecologically unacceptable due to their association with environmental contamination, insecticidal resistance and the elimination of other insescts. Baculoviruses (a group of viruses specific to insects) are an attractive alternative to the use of chemicals because of their host specificity and proven to non-target organisms. Anna and Robert worked in the lab on the genetic engineering of these viruses to produce effective and environmentally safe viral control agents.

The students were able to apply some basic skills they learned in the lab at school to help research this problem of national importance. Under supervision from the personnel at the molecular virology lab at GLFC, Anna and Robert designed, set up and carried out experiments on the viruses. In addition, Robert co-authored a paper that was presented at an international symposium in Japan and will soon be published in an internationally reviewed journal.

"When I have funding for co-op students, my first recruitment choice has been University of Waterloo students. All of my Waterloo co-op students have been excellent!" claims Arif.

Anna and Robert admit that they learned a great deal on the job that the classroom could not offer. When they did return to class they felt a lot more focussed on academics, having seen how a real lab functions, and what they had to aspire to upon graduation. With Anna and Robert's work ethic and determination, Canada is bound to expect more great scientific achievements from them in the future!

Doctoral fellowships for 14 at UW

They're among 612 students across the country who "have demonstrated high standards of academic achievement in undergraduate and graduate studies" in fields supported by the SSHRC. The award, the agency says, "is worth $16,620 per year for up to four years of study at the PhD level. . . .

"Doctoral fellowships are intended to develop the skills of future Canadian researchers and to assist in the training of highly qualified personnel to meet Canada's needs in the public, private and community sectors."

The UW fellowship winners are Valerie Creelman and James Allard (English), Christine Knight, Emily Cripps, Avigail Ram, Afshan Siddiqui, Erin Strahan, Philip Toman, and Jessica Cameron (psychology), David Doloreux, Alice Nabalamba, and Ataur Rahman (planning), Carol Galway (Germanic and Slavic), and Alan Diduck (geography). Knight will be doing her PhD at Lakehead University; the other 13 fellowship winners are staying at Waterloo.

SSHRC also announced that a UW graduate is this year's winner of the Queen's Fellowship for "the top SSHRC doctoral fellowship candidate embarking on a program of Canadian studies at a Canadian University". Whitney Lackenbauer earned his BA in history at UW in 1998 and is now a graduate student at the University of Calgary. He will be doing PhD research about "the use by the Canadian Armed Forces of land belonging to aboriginal peoples".

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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