Daily
Bulletin

Amit Chakma comes to Needles Hall: The university's new provost takes office today, and he's really here; I saw him with my own eyes at about 8:45. Previously vice-president (research) at the University of Regina, he was chosen earlier this year as the long-term successor to Jim Kalbfleisch, who retired at the end of 2000. Alan George, dean of math, has been acting provost since January. Besides becoming vice-president (academic) and provost, Chakma will be a professor of chemical engineering; his specialty is natural gas engineering and petroleum waste management. He also has an interest in atmospheric pollution, with a focus on finding solutions to carbon dioxide-induced global warming. Photo by Barbara Elve.

Some UW systems vulnerable to worms Several of UW's computing systems are "vulnerable" to the Code Red worm or other viruses and hacker attacks, says Reg Quinton, who's in charge of security for the information systems and technology department. A recent scan for "vulnerable" systems on campus found "at least 35 compromised systems, of 99 possibles", Quinton said. He noted that IST maintains a web page about various worms, including Code Red, that threaten central computers (rather than individual users' desktops). "Basically," he said, "the problem is sites who don't keep their systems patched! The fix is patch your system and reboot. Everyone has been notified (ad nauseam) and systems have either been patched or taken off the net -- or that's what people tell us." So UW should now be immune to the Code Red plague? "I expect to see some problems when the worm activates," Quinton was saying yesterday, "but it ought to be only a few foolish souls." Worldwide, there was far less Code Red trouble overnight than had been predicted yesterday, and experts are saying it's because the administrators of most servers have installed the patches they needed.

Staff union campaign called off

Szalai says staff members who have signed CAW union cards over the past year will receive a letter this week telling them that "the time is not right to continue this campaign." Says the letter:

"Thank you so much for the interest and support you have shown to unionize and become part of the CAW union. At this point in time, we have not achieved anywhere near the 40% required for an application for a secret ballot vote.

"Collectively, your committee and I believe that the time is not right to continue this campaign. Please don't feel defeated, as there is always another day to achieve our united goal of having negotiated wages, not merit driven wages; respect, dignity and a legal agreement. I look forward to working with you in the near future."

It's signed by CAW national representative Tamara Heller, who is based in the union's Cambridge office.

The proposal to unionize staff members dates from the winter of last year, when Szalai announced himself as a candidate for the presidency of UW's staff association on a platform of unionization. He lost the election by a margin of more than two to one, but launched a unionization campaign anyway.

Through the fall and winter, the Gazette published occasional CAW ads and a number of letters to the editor discussing the issue. As recently as January, Szalai said the campaign would continue "until we win".

Thompson is free of dean's duties

Thompson was chair of the department of statistics and actuarial science when, at the end of 2000, she was asked to take on the dean's duties while the regular dean, Alan George, was filling in as UW's acting provost. As of today, George is back in the dean of math job, and in January the stats department got a new chair (David Matthews), so Thompson can now get back to research and, eventually, teaching.

On September 1 she'll start her sabbatical (which was originally supposed to begin in July). She said this week that she'll spend much of it learning more about statistical methods in the social sciences, a field where she hasn't done extensive work. She has plans to be involved in a "collaborative teaching effort" at the graduate level, associated with UW's Survey Research Centre (see the next article in today's Bulletin).

On Monday I asked her about the experience of being a dean. "You get your wastebasket emptied every day," she laughed, before mentioning some of the more serious features of the job: "Many more compulsory meetings to go to . . . lots of delegating, and that was kind of fun . . . fewer small decisions," with more time devoted to large issues instead.

Much of a dean's work involves contacts outside the university, with alumni, industry, government and schools, she noted. "It's physically very taxing."

And she spent a good deal of time getting to know the department of computer science, the largest unit in the math faculty and one that she hadn't previously been closely involved with.

Anything unexpected in the job? "I was surprised at how supportive the other deans were," Thompson said, noting that although UW's six faculties do compete for resources at times, the deans also work together for the university as a whole. UW's week-to-week management body is the "deans' council", consisting of the six faculty deans and three or four other academic leaders.

Centre does 'omnibus' local survey -- from the UW news bureau

About 100 researchers are involved, with key faculty members from sociology and statistics and actuarial science, along with geographers, urban planners, economists, political scientists and psychologists. Its co-directors are John Goyder, sociology, and Mary Thompson, statistics and actuarial science.

The centre has close ties, and some shared members, with the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy at WLU. As well, there is involvement on the part of Roy Cameron of UW's health studies and gerontology department. He is the director of the Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation, which is much involved in survey work, some of it having to do with smoking cessation studies.

The centre has already undertaken a number of such projects. Also, it conducts an "omnibus" survey of the Kitchener-Waterloo area every second year, in which clients can have their questions included. So if there is something a municipal government, school board or hospital board wants to find out about, the centre can undertake to get the answers for them.

"We wouldn't get involved in the kind of research done by private companies that are hired to help promote the sale of consumer products," Goyder said. "The idea of the omnibus survey is to provide a service that any group in the local area can use to get at information. Part of our Year 2000 Kitchener-Waterloo Metropolitan Area Survey for instance, which has just been finished, involved the efforts of a researcher who was much interested in the public reaction to anti-smoking bylaws -- the cigarette smoking ban in public places."

The centre has a site licence for the sophisticated Sawtooth software, a state-of-the-art way to collect and handle survey data. "Sawtooth enables us to set up a telephone survey and transmit data from the person being interviewed right into our (electronic) files," Goyder said. "Thus there is no need for us to transcribe data into these files manually; it is done automatically." As well, Sawtooth permits researchers to time the length of each interview and to randomize the order of the questions.

The centre has access to a "CATI" (computer-assisted telephone interviewing), a laboratory run jointly with UW's Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation. "We have experience with mailed questionnaires, personal interviews and web surveys," Goyder said. "Our work aims for the highest quality. We do not attempt to match the speed of commercial firms, but we think we do offer an edge to clients who may be looking for higher-than-average response rates, special attention to sources of error and bias, and a full range of follow-through services."

The centre's members are involved in setting up the Southwestern Ontario Research Data Centre, also to be located at UW. The centre will contain many important Statistics Canada data sets of interest to local researchers, but in more detailed format than the version available to the public.

Also today Techworx, the outlet for stationery and computer supplies in South Campus Hall, is scheduled to reopen today in its new space, just outside the concourse on the north side of the building. Central stores will hold one of its regular surplus sales today, from 11:30 to 1:30 at East Campus Hall. And surprise . . . a smog alert is still in effect for Waterloo Region. At 8 a.m. the UW weather station was calling it 18.2 degrees Celsius, and the Environment Canada forecast starts off with "sunny, hazy and hot".

Today's staff positions available

• Lab instructor, systems design engineering, USG 10
• Records assistant, development and alumni affairs, USG 4
• Assistant registrar, registrar's office, USG 11 (two positions)
• Bookings clerk, audio-visual, USG 3
• Development officer (faculty of mathematics), development and alumni affairs, USG 10
• Casual position: dishwasher, food services, South Campus Hall

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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