Ontario awards first-year scholarships

Daily Bulletin

UW meets 30,000 potential students

"For the fourth year in a row we were one of the busiest booths at the Fair. Some of the universities actually joked with us and said at the non-peak times, that we were stealing all the students. Approximately 43,000 people attended the Fair (up 5,000 from the year before) and we're estimating that close to 30,000 visited the Waterloo booth."

She said UW representatives at the Toronto fair gave out approximately 20,000 brochures and brought back inquiry cards from more than 6,000 students, who are now getting letters and more detailed UW publications.

Roberts credited "great organization on the part of Julie Primeau -- the team leader for the Fair -- and the outstanding team that represented Waterloo", some 120 faculty, staff, students and alumni from the faculties, colleges and many other departments on campus. Central stores, graphics, food services and the UW Shop also helped make the booth a reality, she noted.

Another million over the phone

As well, the student callers reached the "million dollar mark," the benchmark set each term, earlier than ever before.

Most of the money raised by the call centre in the office of development and alumni affairs was donated by graduates of the classes of 1965, '70, '75, '80, '85 and '90 -- all celebrating significant anniversaries this year. The funds go to priority projects on campus, earmarked for need by the deans.

"The success of UW's call centre lies with our students," Charette adds. "It isn't enough to have a great school with successful graduates. You need enthusiastic, highly professional student callers to bridge the gap between the UW that graduates remember years ago, and UW's exciting future."

Waterloo's program is unique, he says, in that students are not given a script for calls, just guidelines to be used when asking for pledges. Student develop their own personal calling style. Each term, the call centre hires up to 75 students starting at $8 per hour, who make phone calls two nights a week between 6 and 10 p.m.

Career fair set for tomorrow

Students will have the opportunity to meet with a variety of employers and gather important information on careers. Employers can take advantage of the opportunity to interview potential candidates for current and future needs.

"While numbers of participating employers have been growing annually, with over 260 organizations currently represented, this is by far our biggest career fair yet," says Carol Ann Olheiser, UW's graduating student and alumni employment advisor. "It's appropriate that this is occurring in the year 2000: It signals excellent prospects for our students as we enter the new millennium."

"More than 50 of the organizations attending are from outside of Ontario, 34 of whom come from outside of Canada," says Jan Basso, director of co-operative education and career services at Wilfrid Laurier University. "This clearly attests to the quality of our grads and the academic programs at the local postsecondary institutions."

Free buses between the Student Life Centre and the fair site will run from 9:30 to 2:30 tomorrow. Admission to the fair is free on presentation of a WatCard.

Here's a sampling of the participating companies at the fair: 3M Canada, Alcatel Canada Inc., Bayer Corporation, Celestica International, Clearnet, COM DEV Space Group, Dell Computer Corporation, Ernst & Young LLP, FedEx, GE Canada, Honda of Canada Manufacturing, London Life, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, NCR, Ontario Power Generation, Open Text, PMC-Sierra, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Sapient Corporation, TD Bank Financial Group, United Parcel Service, and Weston Bakeries Ltd.

They'd pay more for green hydro -- from the UW news bureau

Environmental studies professors Paul Parker, Ian Rowlands and Daniel Scott have reviewed the responses from 500 surveys completed by Waterloo Region residents who had a home energy evaluation through the Residential Energy Efficiency Project (REEP).

"Our findings indicate that Waterloo Region residents are willing to take action to reduce energy consumption. They are also looking for innovative responses on the part of governments and businesses to improve energy efficiency and increase the use of renewable energy in the Region," Rowlands said.

More than 90 per cent of respondents felt that governments should have stronger energy efficiency standards for new homes. And approximately 75 per cent of respondents felt that the EnerGuide for Houses home energy evaluation (what is being used for REEP) should be made mandatory for real estate full disclosure requirements. An overwhelming 95 per cent of respondents indicated they felt that energy suppliers should be required to report sources of the electricity they sell when full deregulation of the electricity sector occurs.

Technical findings of the project indicate that the average home in Waterloo Region could reduce energy consumption by approximately 20 per cent. More energy efficient homes will help reduce impacts to the atmosphere by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, and reducing other pollutants that contribute to poor air quality.

REEP has been evaluating homes in Waterloo Region since May 1999 and has visited more than 1,400 homes. This joint project of the faculty of environmental studies at UW and the Elora Centre for Environmental Excellence has received significant funding from the federal government's Climate Change Action Fund. The cities of Cambridge, Kitchener, and Waterloo, the Regional Municipality of Waterloo and local utilities including Union Gas have endorsed and supported the project with financial contributions.

REEP will be holding two open houses in Waterloo Region to share these research findings and information about energy efficiency. All are welcome to attend. The first session will be tomorrow from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Kitchener Public Library main branch; the second will be Thursday from 6:00 to 8:30 at the Cambridge Public Library. Nationally certified home energy advisors will be present at these open houses, as well as UW researchers and students studying energy efficiency issues.

Based on the analysis of approximately 800 homes evaluated for energy efficiency, REEP experts say the average home in Waterloo Region could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent, cut energy consumption by 23 per cent, and reduce energy bills by 17 per cent. REEP anticipates visiting the 2,000th house in its studies in January 2001.

Hack attack from UW machines Doug Payne of the information systems and technology department told readers of the newsgroup uw.network yesterday that several UW computers have been used in a "denial of service attack" against computers elsewhere. Payne didn't compare it to other, much-publicized incidents of computer mischief, but Jay Black, associate provost (information systems and technology), said "denial of service" is the same general kind of attack as the one used against Yahoo and other major web sites earlier this year. There have been warnings from computer security experts that more denial-of-service attacks can be expected across the Internet. Payne said the attack involved "several Linux machines on campus which have been broken into via a known hole in older versions of the FTP server. Three such systems have been identified and shut down. However, several others are vulnerable. . . . The owners of the vulnerable systems are being notified. The attacks were sufficiently large and long-lasting to cripple both the campus external router and at times the two core routers, as well as the off-campus targets of the attacks." Some of UW's network "ports" have been temporarily shut down as a result of the problem, Payne said, making some Internet services slower or unavailable to campus users.

The Bulletin's bulletin board

The career development workshop series continues. Today at 10:30, it's "The Work Finding Package"; the career resource centre in Needles Hall has more information.

The teaching resource office (TRACE) presents a workshop on "Polishing Your Presentation Skills" at 12 noon today in Biology I room 271 (a change from the original location, because of heavy demand). Facilitator will be Donna Cooper of the TRACE staff.

John Reid of JDS Uniphase will speak today on "The Fiber-Optic Revolution: Exciting Technology and Great Career Opportunities". The talk, at 4:30 in Davis Centre room 1302, is sponsored by the electrical and computer engineering department.

There will be a meeting tonight for students interested in writing the Putnam math competition a few weeks hence. "If you love math problems, why not come out and register?" asks Christopher Small of the statistics and actuarial science department, who organizes UW's involvement in the Putnam. The meeting will start at 6:00 in Math and Computer room 5158, and there will be free pizza.

The Outers Club has activities almost daily. Today at 6:30, it's a "ball game and bonfire" at Columbia Lake.

Tonight from 7:00 to 9:00, LT3 (the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology) presents a session on "Finding Learning Technology": "Participants will hear about current types of tools and nicheware for learning and teaching, and be introduced to ways and places to find software for specific disciplines." (Nicheware?) The session will be held in the FLEX lab, Dana Porter Library room 329. Tomorrow at 11 a.m., in the same place, LT3 staff "will be demonstrating web course management systems featuring WebCT and CourseInfo".

The Pocket Dwellers play the Bombshelter, in the Student Life Centre, again tonight.

Tomorrow, the Personal Safety Advisory Committee will meet at 9:15 a.m. in Needles Hall room 3043.

Tomorrow and Thursday bring three public meetings that will air possible changes to UW's extended health care and dental benefits, as announced a few days ago. Meetings will be held Wednesday at 3 p.m. in Physics room 145; Wednesday at 9 p.m. in Arts Lecture room 116; and Thursday at 9 a.m. in Davis Centre room 1302.

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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