Daily Bulletin

Carolyn Hansson will be guest of honour tonight at a reception marking the end of her term as vice-president (university research). Hansson, a professor of mechanical engineering, will be succeeded as VP on January 1 by Paul Guild of the management sciences department. Today's reception runs from 4 to 7 p.m. at the University Club.

Three faculty grievances under way

"Two of these grievances are going to external arbitration, and will provide a first test of Article 9 of the Memorandum of Agreement," says the report, from geography professor Len Guelke, the chair of the AF&T committee.

Article 9 of the Memorandum, the 1998 agreement between UW and the faculty association, prescribes how faculty grievances are handled. In most cases, a faculty member filing a grievance can choose whether to have it considered by "an internal Tribunal" or "an external Arbitrator", and "The decision shall be binding on the Grievor and the University."

The AF&T report gives a couple of details of what the grievances are about: "Earlier in the year the Committee provided an advisor for a faculty member appealing negative promotion and tenure decisions to [the University Tenure Appeal Committee]. A positive outcome was achieved in both matters. In another case, supported by the Committee, a faculty member was unsuccessful in seeking to have a tenure appeal re-opened by UTAC. This case has now become the subject of one of the formal grievances mentioned above.

"The Committee is also keeping a close watch on an Association grievance . . . seeking to establish that the academic freedom of faculty members includes the freedom to determine the grades of students in their courses according to principles of fairness and subject to student rights of appeal. The Association maintains that this freedom is violated when administrators alter grades submitted by faculty members without consultation."

Other written reports for today's faculty association meeting deal with pensions and benefits, political relations, the Forum newsletter, association membership and finances, and other matters. Orally, Fred McCourt of chemistry, past president of the association, will report on the progress of negotiations for new sections of the Memorandum of Agreement.

The general meeting will be held in Math and Computer room 4021 at 2:00 this afternoon -- a change from the previously announced 2:30 start time.

June Lowe, "head teaching assistant" in the engineering faculty, is featured in today's Gazette, in an interview reprinted from the Iron Warrior. Also in today's paper: a report on wolf conservation, from John Theberge, a faculty member who is retiring after decades of work in the field; an interview with Illona Haus, a former staff member who writes romance novels and is teaching "Writing Popular Fiction" for the continuing education program.

CD-ROMs show off campus photos

"The concept for this project was the desire to provide royalty-free images of the UW campus for internal use," says Chris Hughes, manager of photo-imaging for the graphics department. "We are routine asked for images for PowerPoint presentations, BW newsletters, etc. Rather than have customers spend hours looking through our files, we decided to produce CD collections of recent images."

The pictures were taken by Hughes himself and his colleagues Mike Christie and Sherri Bowen. "Over the course of the summer," he says, "we updated all campus building shots, and through the fall we updated fall scenes and student activities. The CD's are selected images of what we consider to be the best images captured."

So far there are two volumes: campus buildings (CD cover at left) with 157 images, and campus scenes, with 94 images. Says Hughes: "We will be continuing to shoot throughout the winter (most probably the theme for shooting will be winter scenes and sports). We hope to have Volume 3 ready for April 2001."

The images on the CD-ROMs are 1024 x 1536 medium quality jpeg files ("viewing software is not included on the CD at this time"). The CDs are available to faculty, staff and students for "the low, low price of $29.95 each" at the Pixel Pub. in the Student Life Centre.

Fourteen not forgotten after 11 years

The events of that Wednesday afternoon were mourned across Canada. The flag at the main entrance to UW was lowered as part of the national grief, and a memorial service was held in Federation Hall. Eleven years later, the grief is still felt, and the incident is the focus for strong feelings about violence, feminism, gun control, politics, tragedy and evil.

Today's service starts at 5:30 p.m. in Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's University. "The event," says organizer Brenda Beatty, "will feature a candlelight vigil, speakers and a discussion group afterwards in the Womyn's Centre (SLC 2102). Everyone is invited to attend."

Two years ago, the UW commemoration was organized by Christine Cheng, a fourth-year systems design engineering student who would soon be elected president of the Federation of Students. She wrote then:

When a male classmate jokingly says to me that I won my scholarship because I am female, how am I supposed to interpret that? How does that relate to the fact that the killer felt that these women got into engineering because they were female? He certainly felt that they were taking up his "rightful" place in the program. Am I taking up the "rightful" place of another disgruntled male in systems design engineering? . . .

Fourteen women were killed, but hundreds, maybe thousands of people were affected, men and women. What could my male classmates have possibly done if I was being shot at? Not too much. And how can we accept this conclusion: that we are helpless in the face of irrational evil? That is why we remember December 6.

A correction In yesterday's Bulletin I mentioned a workshop on Macromedia Flash 5, being given at the LT3 teaching-and-learning centre, and said that the workshop leader, Brad Miller, was from UW Graphics. In fact, he's not, says a correction from LT3: he's a graphic designer in UW's distance education department.

Noon concert, and other events

The monthly sale of surplus UW property, at central stores in East Campus Hall (off Phillip Street), is scheduled for today from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

UW nutritionist Linda Barton will give the first of two talks today under the title "Fighting Fat After 30? Or, Yes, You Can Eat That!" She'll speak -- sponsored by the Employee Assistance Program -- at 12 noon in Math and Computer room 1085. Her second talk is scheduled for next Wednesday, December 13, also at noon but in Davis Centre room 1302.

A talk in the cancer control seminar series is scheduled for 12:30 today in the Clarica Auditorium of the Lyle Hallman Institute (Matthews Hall west wing). The speaker is Brian Dingle, chief executive of the Grand River Regional Cancer Centre; his topic is "Serotherapy in Malignant Disease: Herceptin in Breast Cancer".

The two-hour course for graduate students on "Submitting Your Thesis Online", being offered today by the information systems and technology department, is full and has a waiting list, Bob Hicks of IST reports. "We will be repeating it a couple of times in the winter term," he promises.

The English Language Proficiency Exam will be given at 7:00 tonight in the Physical Activities Complex, for students who have yet to satisfy their faculty's English requirement.

Saturday evening will bring a downtown event with some campus connections: a dramatic reading of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" at St. John's Church on Duke Street. Brian Hendley, UW philosophy professor and former dean of arts, is among those involved, and UW president David Johnston will be among those reading (sorry, I don't know which ghost he'll be). The event was to be directed by Maurice Evans, who was UW's resident drama director in the 1970s and went on to involvement in theatre companies in Thunder Bay, Edmonton, Toronto and other places before returning to Kitchener-Waterloo. But Evans suffered an accident at home last week and died in hospital Saturday, aged 72. The "Christmas Carol" production will go on, as a memorial to him as well as a fund-raiser for the St. John's Kitchen. Saturday's performance is at 8 p.m.; tickets are $20 (743-7275).

Another dramatic reading of "A Christmas Carol", this one part of a series involving CBC personalities and intended as a fund-raiser for children's charities, will be held Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at St. Agatha Roman Catholic Church just west of Waterloo. Among those selling tickets is Annette Dandyk in the UW library (ext. 2661).

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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