Daily Bulletin

Environmental engineering: Jeremy Steffler -- one of the first students to complete the undergraduate program in env eng at Waterloo -- is a graduate student in chemical engineering now. Featured in the recent annual report of the faculty of engineering, Steffler speaks highly of the interdisciplinary program in which he was a pioneer: "These courses expose us to different approaches to problem solving and provide an alternate set of skills. These skills have proven invaluable in working with professionals in other fields."

My desk was waiting for me

The campus looks pretty much as it did when I left, with construction moving along here and there. There's a nice mess at the Psychology corner where work continues on the ring road sidewalks, and a fascinating view of the top of the Arts Pedestrian Tunnel where roadway is being rebuilt next to the Modern Languages building.

My desk was a fascinating view too when I arrived, with accumulated mail and reading matter, both real and virtual. Some notes that have surfaced so far:

Fall term fees are due today -- "fee payment documents must be received by August 29," writes Wayne Gadsby of the finance office. "Late fees begin August 30. If you have not received your fee statement, please contact the cashier's office, first floor, Needles Hall." (And here's a reminder that some transactions that students previously did at the registrar's office are now handled at the cashiers' office.)

The Carousel Dance Centre will hold an open house tonight (6 to 9 p.m.) and again Thursday evening at its studios in East Campus Hall. "Come discover the art of dance with us!" says a flyer introducing Carousel's training for children (from age 3) and adults. "Careful design ensures that students are appropriately challenged for their age and can enjoy the art of dance and experience success."

The conference season in Ron Eydt Village is just about at an end. The final event for the summer began yesterday -- a four-day high school field hockey camp.

A farewell party is to be held tomorrow for Dawn Ciupa of the human resources department, who's been helping to manage the UW payroll for the past 13 years. The open house will be held from 3:30 to 4:30 tomorrow at the HR offices in the General Services Complex; RSVPs go to Sandie Hurlburt at ext. 3104.

And it's been announced that David Churchill, technical director of plant operations, will be retiring September 30. A reception in his honour is scheduled for September 12 -- watch for more information.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Record reports that a UW student has been charged with fraud "after more than $11,000 in Ticketmaster orders were made online with unauthorized Toronto Dominion Visa cards". The orders were placed in June and early July, said detective Tom Berczi of the Waterloo Regional Police: "He said the orders were made from a Waterloo computer, but he would not indicate where that computer was located. He did say, however, that it was not a University of Waterloo computer."

Lastly . . . I spent some time yesterday changing entries in the UWinfo keyword index to let people find various units in the faculty of mathematics more reliably. The proper URLs for most departments in math start with "http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca", and pointing your browser at "http://math.uwaterloo.ca" instead gets you there only after a redirection message (or won't work at all if the real machine called "math.uwaterloo.ca" is down, as it's going to be at times in the next month). The folks in the Math Faculty Computing Facility are urging everyone to update bookmarks, web page links and their brains to http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca.

There was a meeting on benefits

Association president Walter McCutchan summarized quite a number of the comments in a report posted to the newsgroup uw.staffassoc yesterday. Let me quote:

"Ed Chrzanowski made some opening remarks, among other things addressing why costs to the plan are rising so rapidly -- possible reasons include advances in medicine, aging population, SERP (resulting in relatively more non-contributing members of the plan drawing on it), cost of drugs.

"What exactly is being proposed? Marius Van Reenen said that there were [no] specifics but that the University's administration is keen to find cost savings, in the face of rapidly rising costs. Marius mentioned that the administration is on record as wanting to limit benefit cost increases to 5%/year. . . . Marius Van Reenen is a staff rep on the university pension and benefits committee, as is Angela Googh. . . .

"It was noted that for many years the standard response to comments about low wage increases was that 'our great benefits package' was a compensating factor. Given that our wage increases continue to be barely adequate (many would argue inadequate) how can the U be contemplating cuts to the benefits package? . . .

"It was asserted that many staff are overworked and/or stressed due to the accumulated effects of cutbacks. The rising costs to the benefits package is merely the University paying these costs. . . .

"Information we have to date indicates items that may be considered are dispensing fee limits; elimination of out-of-country medical; elimination of para-medical coverage (e.g. massage therapy); less generous dental coverage."

Work is still going on, the meeting was reminded, with the pension and benefits committee scheduled to hold its next meeting on Tuesday morning. The P&B committee has already said it will bring ideas to a series of campus-wide open meetings this fall before decisions are made.

Everyone's ancestors on the web

Marj's Genealogy Page (no fancy title needed) has grown considerably since it was featured in the Daily Bulletin three summers ago. And while it may not provide an instant list of all your ancestors, it's rich with the links and tools that can help people get started on the search. The result: scores of other genealogists around the world have included links to Kohli's site on their own web pages.

Marj Kohli -- whose working day in IST is involved with site-licensed software and user training -- explains a little about her site and how it came to be:

"My web pages began because of my interest in genealogy and family history. I became interested in the immigration of children in 1990 and wrote an article for the Waterloo Historical Society about a home in Hespeler (now part of Cambridge) which housed children sent from Dublin, Ireland. I continued researching the topic and when the web came into being used it to publish some of the information I had on child migration. The pages grew and the research continued.

"Then, in 1998, the British Government set up a committee to investigate the part they had played in child migration. Out of that came a report and a demand that information be more readily made available to the children and their descendants. (That is when the British High Commissioner's Office contacted me and put a link from their page to my pages.) I was also contacted by the Canadian Government about the placing of an historical plaque for the children.

"As I was researching the immigration of the children I found all sorts of other items dealing with 19th century immigration that were fascinating. From this came my 19th Century Immigration pages, which were used by History 108, here at Waterloo, and by another history course offered at Simon Fraser.

"The pages on the children are linked to by the National Archives of Canada, the Museum of Civilization in Hull, the University of Liverpool School of Social Work Archives and many other sites. The 19th century immigration pages are also in great demand. Between them, there are over 100,000 hits in a month on these pages. Many of the people using them are genealogists but I have also heard from many students working on projects. For example, I received email from a group of high school students in the US working on an immigration project and they thanked me for the material on the voyage accounts. Another group in grade 8 were working on a project about transportation in the 19th century and found these pages very helpful. I have found this type of interaction very rewarding."

Kohli notes that the number of genealogy web sites "has grown by leaps and bounds and what use to take a genealogical researcher months or even years to research can often be done with a few visits to a few sites. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have long had a special collection on genealogy and now they are offering much of their collection on the web."

Archives all over the world have been putting materials online, she says. For example, the National Archives of Canada recently put up the 1925-1935 immigration database, "and the Early Canadiana Online has given us access to hundreds of old manuscripts that have been out of print a good long time.

"One other item that has come out of all of this is the Sessional Paper pages I have. The Sessional Papers are the annual reports of various government departments. I have found them to be a goldmine! For example, where else can you learn the names, and what high school they graduated form, of the students who went to the Royal Military College in Kingston in the 1870s and '80s? Where else can you find the names of pensioners from the War of 1812 that were still living in 1884? And, where else can you learn the names of all the licensed tavern keepers in 1868, names of teachers who earned certificates in 1868 and the names of the 1887 Icelandic, Scandinavian, German, Hungary and Bohemian settlers in the then Northwest?"

Where else, indeed? Says Kohli: "I have learned more about the true history of this country through these pages than I ever did in school. There are no explorers, no politicians, just real people. And, if you would really like to have a good read, have a look at another project I am working on with a friend and learn about 1847 in Canada."

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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