Daily Bulletin

Chairs for the chair: As he stepped down as chair of the psychology department this summer, Mark Zanna found time to catch up on his reading in one of the new Muskoka chairs on the psych patio. The chairs, purchased as a psych fund raising project, were a gift of appreciation to Zanna for his three years of service as chair. He'll share the chairs with colleagues, of course, including Yvonne Weppler, secretary to the chair.

Students develop program for CECS

During the skills phase, students submit résumés and a student skills sheet to CECS. Unlike the other phases of the co-op process, the skills phase requires co-op coordinators to respond to job postings of potential employers by conducting an electronic search for keywords in the student skills sheets. Coordinators then send copies of the students' résumés to employers -- which can be a time-consuming and somewhat costly process.

The students, who have dubbed themselves the Open CECS Online Project Group (OCO), developed an online system to streamline the skills phase. They call the system Précis -- Paperless Résumé and Coordinator Inquiry System. Essentially, Précis allows students to upload their résumés to a secure database. Then, using a set of ID numbers, coordinators can search and preview résumés and can choose to email a selection of them directly to an employer.

George Roter, one of the students involved with OCO, says "Although students won't have the advantage of seeing the OCO-Précis system in use every day, the system will enhance the overall skills phase process by ensuring that their most up-to-date résumés are immediately available to coordinators, and thus, employers."

CECS tested the new system this summer with a pilot group of students in the skills phase. Dave Thomas of CECS says the project was "a joint effort -- we gave [OCO] our requirements and they built it." Far from a permanent solution, he sees the program as a "stopgap" that is "an enhancement to an existing process."

Early response to the test project has been positive, according to Roter. And he thinks more good will come of the relationship between OCO and CECS. "This project will pave the way for greater cooperation between students and administration that will ultimately result in enhanced education at the University of Waterloo," he says.

Thomas is more cautious: "Whether [Précis] will be integrated into the bigger project is debatable," he says.

More specifically, OCO hopes to be involved in a project to replace the complete CECS information system. The students are engaged in ongoing discussions with CECS and IST to determine the scope of their potential involvement.

Looking at the ethics of nationalism -- by Bob Whitton for the UW news bureau

Moore says she has been looking hard at the arguments being advanced both for and against the nation state and nation-building, to see what validity they may have. This area of research could be of considerable interest to Canadians, already much concerned with the desire of many Québeckers to form a separate nation. Even within Québec, Moore notes, there are groups that disapprove of the separatist program of the Bouchard government because they have their own self-determination agenda.

She argues that there are two projects associated with nationalism: national self-determination projects aimed at achieving some form of autonomy or independence for national minorities, so they can be collectively self-governing, and nation-building projects which are mainly aimed at ensuring that all people within the territory share the same national identity -- and this sometimes involves ensuring cultural and linguistic uniformity.

"Nationalism, which was such a strong centralizing force pretty well throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, is now mainly associated with secessionist movements, aimed at breaking up existing states," she says.

The challenge posed by multiculturalism is also interesting because it parallels the demands of minority national groups who also claim that the state is biased against them. (Of course once minority national groups get autonomy they frequently want to use their political power to embark on their own nation-building projects, which may also disadvantage minorities in their midst.)

Moore says her interest in the ethics of nationalism developed out of a longstanding interest in liberal theory and liberalism, which was the subject of her first book, also published by Oxford. As a political philosophy, liberalism has tended to ignore state boundaries. Since 1994 Moore has begun asking questions that, she hopes, will help find out why there has been this lacuna, and why there has not been more concern about national identity on the part of liberal theorists, or an ethical defence of something as central to political theory as the issue of where boundaries should be drawn.

Volunteer opportunities and other notes

• Volunteers for physiotherapy, speech therapy and computer tutoring for adults with brain injuries;
• Special event volunteers for the Heart and Stroke Foundation's mother-daughter walk, and big bike event;
• Artists or those passionate about the arts to join the board of directors of the Waterloo Community Arts Centre.

The GSA sends word that the Grad House BBQ Lunch runs all this week from 11:30 - 1:30. Eat in or take out burgers, sausages, ribwiches, veggie burgers, and salads. The Grad House will be closed from August 28 - September 5 for kitchen renovations.

And tomorrow the Staff Association will host an open forum on university benefits in DC 1302 from noon - 1:30. There will be a presentation on the current status of the benefits package, and participants will be encouraged to share their ideas on the program.

Avvey Peters
alpeters@uwaterloo.ca

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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