Daily Bulletin

Waiting patiently for a cheque from Great-West Life -- that's Lumpy, who's been occupying a chair in the human resources department for some days now. Checking out the state of the dummy's health, if not his health insurance, are HR staff members Neil Murray and David Dietrich. There have been some problems since Great-West Life Assurance Co. took over the extended health care plan on May 1, but things are gradually improving, Dietrich says. "The backlog of paper claims has been cleared up, and currently adjudication and reimbursement is occurring within the 5-day targeted turnaround time. More improvement is needed on the help line, however. Although there has been an improvement from an average wait time of 14 minutes at the end of August to 7 minutes in mid-October, our expectation is that the wait time should even be less." He sends thanks to Lumpy -- and legitimate UW staff and faculty members -- for their patience.

NDP economist speaks tonight

A University of Toronto professor emeritus of economics, and now president of Science for Peace, Watkins is best known as a New Democratic Party theoretician. He was a founder of the Waffle movement, has been a national vice-president of the NDP and ran for Parliament in the 1997 election. He was the chief author of the 1968 federal report on "Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Canadian Industry".

His research has focused on the economic history and contemporary political economy of Canada, and he has served as a consultant on economics, free trade, and aboriginal issues.

He's on campus this fall as the Stanley Knowles professor in Canadian studies, based at St. Paul's United College, which is the home of the Canadian studies program at UW. In addition to giving the public lecture, he's teaching Canadian Studies 365K, on "Globalization and Social Democracy", on Tuesday evenings at St. Paul's.

Tonight's lecture, at 7:30 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre, is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and can be reserved by phoning St. Paul's at 885-1460, ext. 212.

A pause in the payroll system

Sandra Hurlburt, assistant director (information support systems) of the human resources department, notes that it's been a year since the new human resources management system was introduced, and it's time for an upgrade, from version 6.02 to version 7.51 of PeopleSoft HRMS. The new version will let UW plan to do some things that the old version won't -- and even more important, she said, the company will no longer be providing support for the older version.

"We have to upgrade in order to maintain our PeopleSoft support and receive regular fixes for things like tax changes," says Hurlburt. "PeopleSoft releases major upgrades about once a year, so we'll likely be going through this at the same time next year."

Pay dates for the rest of 1999 Monthly October 29 November 26 December 22 (Wednesday) Biweekly November 5 November 19 December 3 December 17 December 31 Casual October 29 November 19 December 10 December 22 (Wednesday)

The shutdown is scheduled for the week of November 8-12, with the upgraded PeopleSoft in operation on Monday, November 15. The project team, made up of human resources and IST staff, "is currently testing the new version of the application to make sure everything is working properly," Hurlburt said, and while she's not complaining about overtime hours just yet, she's not ruling them out either. "We did do a lot of weekends last year," when the system was first installed, she recalls.

Once the new system is in place, HR staff will face the end of the year, "a really critical time", with the necessity to issue UW's thousands of T-4 tax statements. After that, she said, staff from human resources, IST and finance will be looking into new services that PeopleSoft 7.51 makes possible, starting with "budget and encumbrance functionality", a way for department heads to see the state of their salary budgets and unspent funds. Coming later, maybe: a Web-based way for individuals to update their addresses and other information. "We hope to provide much better service to individuals," Hurlburt says.

Because of the mid-November shutdown, there's a change to the scheduled payroll dates. Normally, casual employees go two weeks between cheques. But after this Friday's casual pay, there will be a three-week wait for the next casual payday -- Friday, November 19 -- and then a three-week wait again, until Friday, December 10.

A memo to departments (also available on the Web) lists the cutoff schedule for each of the revised pay dates.

Paydays for monthly and biweekly paid staff are not affected.

Archaeologists gather at UW

Projectile points found by Park and a group of students in a 1995 dig near Brantford.

A free public lecture, "Ice Age Beginnings: The Archaeology and Natural History of Ontario's First People," by Peter Storck of the Royal Ontario Museum, will open the event on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1350.

"Pondering Paleosols and Paleoenvironments at the Peace Bridge" Site, and "Early Post-glacial Ecology of the Lower Great Lakes" are among the papers which will be presented on Saturday and Sunday.

A ceremonial keg tapping and entertainment by the Beirdo Brothers will highlight the Saturday evening banquet.

UW anthropology professor Robert Park will co-chair the symposium, and can be reached at rwpark@watarts or ext. 5666 for more information.

The Ontario Archaeological Society "promotes the ethical practice of archaeology," with membership open to professionals, as well as students and the general public.

What's happening on a Thursday

Two officials of Health Canada visit today, Andrew Siman of the Office of Health and the Information Highway and Janice Hopkins of the Knowledge and Policy Division. They will give a presentation and answer questions about the Canada Health Infoway. proposal that promises to become "the key information and communications foundation for our health care system in the 21st century". The hour-long presentation will be held in the Clarica Auditorium of the Hallman Institute (Matthews Hall) starting at 9:30.

Today's the last day of a four-day blood donor clinic in the Student Life Centre, seeking to collect 200 units of blood to keep people alive in local hospitals.

And speaking of keeping people alive: Jan Livingston, a UW graduate and actor in the play "Handle with Care?", about women living with breast cancer, will make a special appearance on campus this morning to talk about the impact of cancer on her life. She's officially speaking to the members of a therapeutic recreation class, but others are invited to attend; the session runs from 10:00 to 11:30 this morning in Optometry room 347. "Handle with Care?" will be performed this evening at 7:00 at Waterloo Collegiate Institute on Hazel Street (886-8888).

The drama department production of "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" continues in the Theatre of the Arts, with a school matinee today at 11:00 and the regular 8 p.m. performance. Same schedule tomorrow; Saturday, 8 p.m. only; Sunday, 2 p.m. only.

The department of psychology presents a talk by Chip Heath of Duke University, at 2:30 in PAS room 3026. Topic: "Emotional Selection in Memes: The Case of Urban Legends".

Also at 2:30, Steve Drekic of the department of statistics and actuarial science will be speaking, on "Preemptive Priority Queues with Hybrid Service" (Math and Computer room 5158).

The survey research centre presents a talk at 3:30 (Math and Computer Room 5158) by three leaders of the Federation of Students, on "The Long Walk Home: A Student Perspective on Survey Research at UW".

The Business and Investment Club presents a talk by Larry Smith, of UW's economics department, at 4:30 in Math and Computer room 2066. Topic: "Computing's Next Great Empires". Admission is $3 for those who aren't members of the club, and there will be refreshments. (Earlier in the day, at 12:15, Smith is giving the same talk for co-op employers, as part of the co-op department's "Chew on This" series.)

The Federation of Students will hold its annual general meeting at 7 p.m. in the multipurpose room of the Student Life Centre.

Also at 7 p.m., in the "green room" of Environmental Studies II, the Arriscraft Lecture series continues with a talk on "Urban Strategies" by Toronto consultant Joe Berridge, who headed the 1992 project to write UW's campus master plan.

Finally, the staff association sends a reminder that tomorrow is the deadline to register for Winterfest, its annual seasonal party, to be held Sunday, December 5.

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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