New clients for the writing clinic

Barrett is manager of the UW writing clinic, based in the PAS (Psychology) building. It's her ambition to get the clinic a new name and a broader role on campus, but right now the emphasis is on helping students who fail the ELPE and need to brush up on their English so they can pass the exam next year and hand in passable essays in the meantime.

"Right now we are called the Writing Clinic," says Barrett, "because we fix what is wrong with students' writing. We have six tutors who are permanent, part-time staff and who hold all kinds of degrees including PhDs, MAs, TESL and teaching certificates, and who also teach a variety of courses on and off campus.

"We have space for about 100 students in the winter term, and those students will attend two hours per week for eleven weeks."

She says 99 per cent of students who come to the clinic are there because they failed the ELPE -- the failure rate is about 20 per cent every time it's offered, each September, December and April. "Most," says Barrett, "are working toward a pass of 60, but some students are trying to achieve higher pass levels as dictated by their faculties. We have a very good success rate: 80 per cent of those who attend all their scheduled appointments will pass and be given the ELPE credit. Ten per cent must continue to another term and the other ten per cent are dropouts.

"We also have six hours set aside for students who can drop in for help with any type of writing problem. This is an area where we would like to offer more help, but there is not enough funding in place at this time. We are hopeful that the administration will grant more funding to expand our services.

"When we are able to offer full service to all UW students, we will be changing our name to Writing Centre."

Of interest on the UW web Watch out for the Goner virus In honour of the three-storey rock ExpressBooks orders for winter term texts

Johnston and Chakma face the crowd

"We don't have any room for that," he told an audience that filled the main level of the Humanities Theatre for a "town hall meeting" with himself and president David Johnston.

The immediate prospects look tough, he made clear, but he also insisted -- with exclamation marks in his PowerPoint presentation -- that there are exciting opportunities for the university to do new things, grow in various directions and build an international reputation.

The president and provost gave much the same presentation that has been heard over the past few weeks by UW's governing bodies and by a meeting of department heads. Johnston gave a rundown on Canadian economic conditions, the contribution that universities can make to improving the standard of living, and programs that governments have introduced or are promising to help that happen.

In particular, there's "a climate of intent" to find government funding for the "indirect" costs of research, he said. But whether any actual spending for that purpose shows up in next Monday's federal budget will depend on how much Ottawa decides it has to pony up for new security measures in a post-terrorist world.

Funding for those costs would certainly help, Chakma agreed, as he ran quickly through some other aspects of UW's working environment: the imminent retirement of a whole generation of professors; Ontario government funding for university operations that takes no account of inflationary costs; last-minute funds intended to help make room for the "double cohort" of students in 2003; departments that already are trying to do too much.

A university that was already squeezed tight went through a 3.5 per cent budget cut for the current year, Chakma noted -- saying definitely that last spring's "clawback", meant to be a one-time exercise, is now "a permanent cut".

Enrolment growth is at least part of the solution to UW's troubles, he said as he has said before. "We can only grow," he added, "in programs based on academic priorities -- but subject to a budgetary check." To put it another way: there's no point in trying to grow in areas where growth will cost more than it brings in through new fees.

"One way or another, quality has to suffer," he admitted. "Our challenge is to minimize that -- and even to improve!"

During the question period, someone asked whether decisions about UW's future are going to be made centrally or in the various parts of the university. "Universities cannot operate in a top-down fashion," Chakma said. "We can raise questions, but no more than that."

Supercomputer flaunts 40 processors -- by Robyn Landers, Math Faculty Computing Facility

There's still room for some last-minute students, says Colin Campbell of IST.

The computer, called "flexor.uwaterloo.ca", is an SGI Origin 3800 supercomputer with 40 MIPS RISC processors and 20 gigabytes of memory, plus almost 300 gigabytes of fibre-channel disk. It represents SGI's latest advance in cache-coherent non-uniform memory access (cc-NUMA) designs, called "NUMAflex". Such computers offer excellent scalability to large numbers of processors while preserving the easy programmability of conventional shared-memory symmetric multi-processing systems. The modular design of the Origin series allows customization of the number of CPUs, amount of memory, and input-output capabilities to suit the customer's needs.

Hosted by the Math Faculty Computing Facility, the machine was obtained this past spring thanks to a joint CFI proposal primarily by Alan George and Peter Buhr, both of the computer science department, and Robert Le Roy of chemistry. It's the new flagship of a small but growing fleet of high-performance computing systems at UW.

Along with the CFI funding comes a cooperative association with the C3.ca organization, which is devoted to developing a nation-wide collection of high-performance computing resources.

"This machine is a wonderful addition to our computing infrastructure on campus, and serves the needs of algorithm and software developers as well as those who simply need vast computing power," says George, who is the dean of math as well, and whose own research involves the development of parallel algorithms for solving very large sparse systems. "Access to the 40 processor SGI machine is essential for testing the scalability of my software."

Le Roy, whose work involves molecular analysis, uses various popular powerful electronic structure programs that have been optimized for a parallel computing architecture. "I can get much faster results," he says, "by almost a factor of 1/N, where N is the number of processors used simultaneously. It's now much more feasible for the use of high-quality chemical reaction calculations to become routine."

Computational fluid dynamics is the interest of applied math professor Kevin Lamb, who has been using flexor to study the behaviour of internal waves in the ocean as they propagate from deep to shallow water. Internal waves occur beneath the surface of the ocean and exist because of density variations. "You can see these waves when you pour cold cream into a cup of hot coffee," he points out.

"My code runs faster on flexor than on any other machine on campus," says Lamb, adding that the large memory and multiple fast CPUs of this system enables him to run higher-resolution simulations than he otherwise could. As a member of the Canadian Climate Variability Research Network, he has other projects in mind involving ocean circulation models that will make use of flexor's computing power.

While George, Le Roy and Lamb could be considered tool users, Buhr is a tool builder. His uC++ project is aimed at facilitating the development of concurrent (parallel) programs in the computing language C++. His PLG group, with help from the Shoshin research group, has also developed MVD -- a collection of software tools to monitor, visualize and debug concurrent uC++ programs.

"My tools span the entire software development process from construction of the concurrent program, testing and debugging of the software, and finally, performance analysis of the final software on large datasets." says Buhr. "A large system like flexor allows the use of very large amounts of data, which in turn allows the effect of small flaws in algorithms or implementations to be magnified. My tools help programmers understand these problems and make appropriate modifications."

Le Roy sums it up: "With the combination of this remarkable new machine and the large IBM-SP system 'isenguard' (18 CPUs and 18 GB of memory) installed last year, UW researchers now have ready access to computing capabilities which will allow them to address some of the largest-scale, most demanding computational problems in the world."

In today's Gazette Physics professor Michel Gingras with insights into a surprisingly obscure molecule: ice "The art of being a competent colleague": report on the recent workshop on getting hired for a faculty position Warrior all-stars from fall term sports

Faculty association meets today

A major item on the agenda will be a briefing by chemistry professor Fred McCourt, a past president of the organization, about negotiations between the faculty association and UW management on several new articles for the Memorandum of Agreement that governs professors' working conditions.

Under discussion are three proposed articles about the difficult circumstances in which faculty members could lose their jobs: article 15 (program redundancy), 16 (financial exigency), and 17 (layoffs).

Always an important part of the agenda is a report from the academic freedom and tenure committee, currently chaired by Len Guelke, a geography professor and another past president of the faculty association. From his written report in the agenda documents: "Recent and current cases, including cases reported on in the Spring, involved the following grievances:

1. The faculty member who successfully contested his right to have an appeal hearing of his tenure case was unsuccessful in achieving tenure. This case is currently under review by the AF&T Committee in terms of what we can learn about improving the procedures for appeals in such cases.
2. This grievance, involving a faculty member who was appealing an administrative decision relating to his retirement entitlements, is now before the arbitrator for a decision. . . .

Another committee, the political relations committee, says in its report that it has been "trying to arrange a Parent/Professors/MPP night to discuss the double cohort. Tentatively, it is scheduled for mid-February."

Noon concert in Davis; other notes

It's the day for the annual Christmas concert in the Davis Centre great hall, presented by the University Choir, Chamber Choir and chapel Choir. "At the conclusion of the program," writes Leonard Enns of the music department at Conrad Grebel University College, "we will include several traditional Christmas carols and invite audience participation. The programme will be 45 minutes, beginning at 12:15."

The psychology department will hold its holiday reception and award presentations today starting at 3:30 in the departmental lounge.

This evening brings the inaugural lecture for the Munich Re Chair in Insurance, held by Gordon Willmot of the department of statistics and actuarial science (not, as I said on Monday, the school of accountancy). He'll be speaking on "The Nature of Modelling Insurance Losses", and the lecture will be given in Toronto -- at the Munich Re Centre, 390 Bay Street, 26th floor, starting at 4 p.m. A reception follows.

The bookstore is holding its "Faculty and Staff Appreciation Night" from 5 to 7 p.m. Special guests are Jim Downey, former president of UW; Monica Leoni of the department of Spanish and Latin American studies, who will speak about her new book on Spanish drama; and Melissa MacLean and Keith Wilson, co-authors of In Our Midst: Stories from the Waterloo County Jail. There will be music (by the Chambers Family Quartet), discounts, draw prizes, and refreshments.

A half-day workshop on learning styles -- "Understanding the Learner" -- is going on this morning, sponsored by the teaching resources and continuing education office, and will be repeated next Tuesday, December 11. More information is available at ext. 3132.

Finally, I thought this note in last Friday's Imprint was of particular interest: "The Feds Environment Commission, along with Food Services and UW Purchasing, are looking to retrofit two of Food Services' vehicles with compressed natural gas engines in order to help reduce UW's greenhouse gas emissions. The commission hopes that this will raise environmental awareness, while raising UW's profile as a progressive, technologically advanced and environmentally-friendly campus. The project has been met with support and, if all goes according to plan, will be completed by next term. . . . UW already has a slow-fuel natural gas station on campus, which would allow for these natural gas vehicles to be filled overnight." It's from a report on alternative fuel use, by Patrick Quealey and Kirk Schmidt.

CAR