Daily Bulletin

The United Way campaign on campus is warming up, day by day. As of noon on Friday, gifts and pledges had reached $88,991, which is 63 per cent of the goal, organizers say. That'll include $642 raised at the annual chili luncheon in the faculty of arts, held Thursday. Dag Balzer, a carpenter with plant operations, raises the temperature on one of the United Way thermometers to reflect the new figure.

'What does California know?'

The UW senate meeting today will begin at 4:30 in Needles Hall room 3001. Also on the agenda: a progress report on the "Building on Accomplishment" planning document from 1997; an update on this year's university budget; degrees to be awarded at Saturday's convocation ceremonies.

Woolstencroft notes in his report, distributed with the senate agenda, that COU held a news conference two weeks ago "to present its case for increased capital and operational public funding" and to warn that the demand for student spaces is going up rapidly.

He says: "Academic colleagues, while agreed that Ontario's universities have suffered considerable damage because of the government's funding policies, especially since 1995, expressed a range of views about the desirability of COU's public and assertive stance.

"Amongst other things, colleagues were concerned that a newly re-elected government, with promises and declarations about tax cuts to honour, would look to such policy instruments as private universities, the expansion of the college system and the granting of degrees by colleges as a way of handling the enrolment surge.

"Some colleagues argued that parents of potential university applicants and students have to be mobilized. However, costs of a well-grounded campaign would be very high. It is also difficult to specify arguments about declining quality when each year the university system handles increasing demands for spaces without more than vignettes and narratives."

Woolstencroft also tells the senate about a report done for COU by Heather Monroe-Blum, a vice-president of the University of Toronto: "an investigation of Ontario's approach to investments in post-secondary education". The draft report, he says, declares that "sustained and effective public investment in university research is imperative. . . . Ontario must value competitiveness, excellence, and academic autonomy. . . . Students must be beneficiaries of research investment policies."

COU also has a "task force on university advancement", he says, "to analyze how COU has been advocating the case for increased public support". Among its recommendations are a theme for future campaigning: "Making Room for You", in reference to the likely surge in enrolment.

He says the task force also advised COU to "emphasize the 'what does California know that we don't?' argument that builds on the [government] interest in developing Silicon Valley North in Ontario."

Says Woolstencroft, summarizing COU's direction: "We have a first-class system in Ontario, we want to enhance accessibility to it, and strengthen what we have. Investment in post-secondary education pays off for the state and its citizens."

Student charged in stabbing

Lawrence Pogany, who lives at Renison College, was arrested by Waterloo Regional Police early Friday morning. He spent the weekend in jail and is expected to appear in a Kitchener court today.

The victim of the Tuesday night attack, who is recovering in hospital, has not been publicly identified except as a second-year science student.

Said a police statement: "With the assistance of the University of Waterloo Police a search warrant was executed at the residence of the accused early this morning. Although both the victim and the accused are students of the University of Waterloo, investigators are still gathering information to determine a motive for the senseless attack.

"Waterloo Regional Police wish to thank the University of Waterloo Police who played an integral part in the investigation."

Christian lecturer here this week

Howard Van Till (pictured below), emeritus physics and astronomy professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is this year's Pascal lecturer. "Is Science Held Hostage?" will be his topic Tuesday at 8 p.m. in the Theatre of the Arts, Modern Languages Building. His second lecture, "The Universe: Accidentally Robust, Intelligently Designed or Optimally Equipped?" will be given Wednesday at 8 p.m., also in the Theatre of the Arts.

Van Till, a member of the American Astronomical Society and the American Scientific Affiliation, has devoted much of his career researching the relationship between science and religion, including the controversy between creationists and evolutionists. His stated goal is to encourage a non-adversarial and mutually informative engagement of Christian theology and the natural sciences.

While visiting UW, He will also give two seminars: "The Fully Gifted Creation Perspective" on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. in the Student Life Centre, and "Augustine, Evolution and the Functional Integrity of Creation" on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. at St. Jerome's University (common room).

He is the author of Science Held Hostage: What's Wrong with Creation Science And Evolutionism, and Portraits of Creation: Biblical and Scientific Perspectives on the World's Formation.

The Pascal Lecture series was established to create a forum for Christian issues in an academic environment by inviting outstanding individuals who have distinguished themselves in both an area of scholarly endeavour and an area of Christian thought or life. It is financed by donations and royalties from published lectures. The series is named after Blaise Pascal (1632-1662), a French academic and Christian best remembered as a forerunner of Newton in the establishment of calculus. Pascal was also the author of his Christian meditation, Les Pensées.

A reminder of the year 2000

Says Markan: "Computer support staff (and that isn't just IST staffers!) have been hard at work all across campus making sure that the UW computer desktop will be up and running on January 4, when we all come back to work. Most of the Year 2000 issues relating to hardware, operating system, and supported application software have been addressed. For many of these computers there is only one Y2K issue left -- the data.

"UW computing support personnel cannot fix the data created by individual computer users. The person that knows the data best is the person that created the Excel spreadsheet, or entered the data into an Access or FileMaker database. Remember your data has potential Y2K problems only if you use and manipulate dates in your files. If you don't use dates, or the dates are purely informational (i.e. not used in calculations), there is no problem.

"If you would like to learn more about Year 2000 Data Issues you should attend the IST seminars on Wednesday, October 20."

Topics include Y2K Data Issues -- Basic Concepts [500]; Making Excel Data Y2K Ready [501]; Making Access Data Y2K Ready [502]; Making Filemaker Data Y2K Ready [503]; Making Statistical Data Y2K Ready [504]. Handouts for these courses are available on the Web, Markan notes.

The events of the day

A computer graphics seminar, scheduled for 2:30 today in Davis Centre room 1304, sounds a little out of the ordinary. Blair MacIntyre and Elizabeth Mynatt of Georgia Tech will be speaking on "Living Laboratories: The Future Computing Environments at Georgia Tech". The Future Computing Environments Group at that institution describes itself as "a collection of faculty and students that share a desire to understand the partnership between humans and technology that arises as computation and sensing become ubiquitous. With expertise covering the breadth of Computer Science, but focusing on HCI, Computational Perception, and Machine Learning, the individual research agendas of the FCE faculty are grounded in a number of shared "living laboratories" where their research is applied to everyday life in the classroom (Classroom 2000), the home (the Aware Home), the office (Augmented Offices), and on one's person. Professors MacIntyre and Mynatt will discuss a variety of these projects, with an emphasis on the HCI and Computer Science aspects of the FCE work." Undergraduates are particularly welcome at the talk today, with the note that MacIntyre -- a UW graduate -- "would like to let them know that they need not have an inferiority complex when thinking about going to universities in the United States for graduate school. He knows from experience that UW grads compare favorably with grads from MIT and other top American universities."

The tourism lecture series continues today with a talk by Dallen Timothy of Bowling Green State University. He'll speak at 3:30 (Arts Lecture room 124) on "Borders and Tourism".

Tonight brings "essentially the first event that is being held by the WatCHI group", I'm told. Says Antonia Palmer, a graduate student in systems design engineering: "The WatCHI Group is an ACM student interest group that focuses on human-computer interaction. We are active with a variety of faculties and are slightly connected to the TRACE office." This evening's event is an information and recruiting session for the software firm Cognos, which specializes in "enterprise business intelligence solutions". Says Palmer: "Cognos will be presenting on their HCI/ Human Factors operations within the company and will be providing a practical look into how they institute the theoretical operations that we learn here." Tonight's event takes place in Davis Centre room 1302, with a presentation at 6:00 and a reception from 6:45 to 8:00.

A reception for alumni and friends of Concordia University College of Alberta starts at 7:30 this evening at the University Club.

And finally, the World Solar Challenge race is under way someplace outside Darwin, Australia. I have this report from Connie Kwan, business manager of UW's Midnight Sun V race car team: "The team is all settled in in Australia right now, and are all geared for the big race. We passed scrutineering with no problems on Friday. We went to the Hidden Valley Raceway for our speed trial on Saturday. All solar cars must pass a road train going in the opposite directions to check the stability, and have their speed taken after that to determine its grid positions. The Midnight Sun solar car achieved a speed of 94.24 km/h, and it will start at ninth place on Sunday. The race will officially start at 8:00 a.m. CAT on Sunday. The Canadian Army has arranged to have some soldiers to cheer for us at the starting place."

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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