Daily Bulletin

Talking about a Cambridge campus

The library is "enthusiastic" about the prospect of developing a first-class design library at the new location, and student services departments are discussing how they will look after students' needs for counselling and health, the UW senate was told last night.

Electronic links are the beginning, but not the end, of what will be needed, the senate heard as it discussed tentative plans for the architecture school to find a new home beside the Grand River in picturesque downtown Galt. Rick Haldenby, director of the architecture school, said there may be shuttle buses, there may be arrangements for other departments to teach courses in Cambridge, and there definitely will be "some vestige" of the architecture school back on the Waterloo campus even after the move.

"We intend to be fully citizens of the university," he promised.

But a myriad of details still have to be worked out, he said, and there's time for doing that, since an "optimistic" date for a Cambridge building to be ready would be September 2003.

After more than an hour's discussion of the proposal, the senate voted to give its approval of the Cambridge move "in principle", on condition that the necessary arrangements can be made for meeting student needs and keeping the architecture school in touch academically with the rest of the university. With only two dissenting votes, it recommended the plan to the board of governors, which will deal with financial and property matters.

Earlier yesterday, the faculty council in environmental studies -- the faculty that includes architecture and three other departments -- voted unanimously in favour of the plan.

There are still huge uncertainties over the proposed move. The school has been invited to Cambridge by a consortium of business leaders there (an invitation that Haldenby assured the senate was "unsolicited"). Cambridge city council has signed on with an offer of $7.5 million in municipal funds, and is planning to make the UW project the heart of its application to the Ontario government SuperBuild program.

The goal, provost Alan George told the senate, is "a showpiece building of perhaps 80,000 square feet" that would give the architecture school everything it doesn't have in its present cramped quarters in Environmental Studies II. Altogether, he said, Cambridge sources need to provide "on the north side of thirty million dollars" in land, construction funds, and endowments in order for the project to go ahead.

Residence fees to include net cost -- from last week's Gazette

Where once barns and silos may have stood, silo stairways now rise as part of the new 320-bed Mackenzie King Village residence. Construction has been continuing all winter to ensure the building is ready to house first-year students come September. Check out tomorrow's Gazette for some striking photos of the site.

Up to now, ResNet has been an optional service available for $50 per term. Under the new system, the price will rise to $75 per term -- a cost that will be "bundled" into the room fee.

According to Gail Clarke, director of housing and residence administration, more than 80 per cent of students in rooms that are wired now subscribe to ResNet. "It makes sense to bundle the service into the residence fees as we do with phone and cable TV. It also allows efficiencies in administering the service," she added, eliminating the staff time needed to carry out the billing for ResNet at the beginning of each term.

As for the cost of ResNet, "it was too cheap, way too low," says Clarke, referring to what it costs to support the service and how much other universities are charging for a comparable system. "It's a tremendous deal for our students" compared to private Internet service providers, she insists. Over a four-month term, $75 amounts to $18.75 a month.

While some students have expressed concerns about the mandatory fee -- which does not allow opting out of the service -- most feedback has been "extremely positive". She said including ResNet in residence fees has worked well at the two church colleges that have the service, she said -- Conrad Grebel College and St. Paul's United College.

Starting next fall, ResNet services will be available in all dorm and suite-style residences on campus, including the newly renovated Wellesley Court and Beck Hall at UW Place. ResNet will be added to Eby Hall (formerly West Tower) following renovations there next year. There are no plans to wire the apartments at UW Place.

Clarke said a Residence Networking Advisory Committee was formed in January to address student issues concerning ResNet and to make recommendations about computing network services for students living in UW housing and residences. It includes housing staff, people from information systems and technology, administrators and several students.

Most room rates rise 4 per cent

While the increase last year was about 2 per cent, housing director Gail Clarke noted that the bigger jump this year covers "increased costs to the university. We're a break-even operation," she added. "We're not in the business of making a profit."

The increases range from zero for the UW Place apartments rented to non-UW full-time students -- who are already paying between $1,200 to $1,500 per month -- to 13.9 per cent for single rooms in the two-bedroom suites at UW Place. The big jump there, says Clarke, is designed to align the fees with comparable accommodations across campus.

Mackenzie King Village rooms (in a four-bedroom suite) will cost $4,150 for two terms when MKV opens for business later this year, making them the most expensive rooms on campus. Students will pay $3,750 for newly renovated units in the two-bedroom suites at UW Place, with single rooms at the Villages priced at $3,510 for two terms. The residence fee for rooms at Columbia Lake Townhouses is $3,350.

Apartments at UW Place will range from $520 per month to $1,200 for one bedroom, and $560 to $1,500 for two bedrooms. Graduate students will pay $1,582 per term for rooms at Minota Hagey residence.

Joy in the land of the Midnight Sun

Arrival of the aerobody is a big step forward, both technically and for team morale, as the Midnight Sun project works on getting the car ready for the American Solar Challenge in July.

Thompson -- a master's degree student in fluid dynamics, and a Midnight Sun veteran since 1999 -- wrote in his electronic memo: "Over the last many months a lot of you have put hours in here and there working on the plugs and the moulds, items which were not the solar car and are going to be thrown away; however, all the time spent was not wasted as these plugs bore the moulds and the moulds bore the aerobody!"

He noted that just before February reading break last week, a dozen members of the team went to Fleet Aerospace in Fort Erie "and spent three exhausting days building from the moulds the actual aerobody fairings, bulkheads, battery box panels, and the two big aerobody halves. We brought back all the fairings and the small panels, and left the upper and lower aerobody halves down at Fleet.

"Tonight the two big pieces of the aerobody were brought back from Fleet and are perfect! Finally the shape and form of the aerobody can be seen."

While one group of students were in Fort Erie for that effort, another group -- headed by third-year mechanical engineering student Vince Lo -- was at work back in Waterloo: "The frame of the car which serves as the backbone for every major system, was being welded up and is taking shape quite quickly. Vince deserves a major pat on the back for completing all the necessary analysis of the frame design for the structural requirements of ASC. Vince spent countless hours during midterm week running all the FEA cases so that welding can proceed."

The events of the day and week

Susanna Heller, a painter now living in New York, is paying a three-day visit to UW's fine arts department, and will give a public lecture about her work today at 1:30 in East Campus Hall room 1219.

Gerardus 't Hooft, 1999 Nobel prize winner in physics from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, will give a talk today for the Guelph-Waterloo Physics Institute, starting at 4 p.m. in room 113 of Guelph's MacNaughton Building. Topic: "From Subatomic Particle Physics to the Gravitational Force -- A Path Through the Desert".

The student-organized peace conference at Conrad Grebel College gets going tonight with a presentation by the much-publicized Falun Gong (Falun Dafa) group, at 8:00 in Grebel room 151. Tomorrow, things run all day in Grebel's great hall, and in the evening former Ontario premier Bob Rae speaks in the Humanities Theatre.

Tomorrow brings a noon-hour presentation about "How to Put the Brakes on Depression", by Tom Ruttan of UW's counselling services. The session, sponsored by the Employee Assistance Program, will start at 12 noon in Engineering Lecture room 211.

Coming Friday: the first in a series of Learning Technology Faculty Institute sessions, sponsored by the LT3 learning centre. Roger Suffling of the school of planning will demonstrate technology used to teach the concept of life tables. The session starts at 1 p.m. Friday in the videoconferencing room, Engineering II room 1307G. People who want to attend should register by calling ext. 3851.

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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