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Midnight Sun update: UW's solar car team is running in third place overall in the American Solar Challenge. The race down Route 66 will wrap up on Wednesday. Here are the latest checkpoint results: Barstow checkpoint Kingman checkpoint

LT3 summer co-op students and other temporary staff have taken up residence at St. Paul's United College where they are spending this term working on developing courseware for UW faculty as well as for exchange with other institutions. St. Paul's principal Graham Brown, back row at right, welcomes the LT3 West staff (from left, back row) Tom Voll, Peter Goldsworthy, Neil Malcom, Jill Porter, Lauri Koziar, Liwana Bringelson, Graham Carey, (front row) Kevin Leung, Allison Salter, Zal Petrowich, and Mike Sop. Not pictured are Cindy Poremba, Paul Ottaway, and Michael Roberts.

Making the transition to first year

Your Child's Transition to University was the title of a talk by Theresa Casteels-Reis at an Employee Assistance Program brown bag lunch.

She has taught a course in Adolescence Development for the psychology department at St. Jerome's University, and has experience dealing with the challenges of that adjustment throughout her 15 years of counselling at UW. While she has worked with residence dons, students, their parents, and staff, the largest group seeking help is first-year students.

Not everyone experiences the transition in the same way, she adds. For some parents, having a child start university means more freedom and independence; for others, there may be a major sense of loss.

Likewise, new university students may deal with major changes in the areas of identity, independence and intimacy very differently. Entering what is, for many, an alien environment, students "may feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them. The time is ripe for focus on self-definition."

In response to an altered social reality and exposure to different ways of thinking, first-year students may take on new philosophical or value positions, engage in new behaviours, or change their career paths.

"Abrupt changes can be very challenging for the family," says Casteels-Reis, and lead to a redefinition of the relationship between parent and child.

"We can't predict how a student will change, but change is unavoidable."

Handling greater independence requires the development of what -- for many students -- is a new set of skills: learning when to get up or come home, how to manage money, deciding when or if to study, eat, or do laundry, how to deal with illness and medication on their own, and how to handle deadlines.

"Most of them thrive and grow," she assured parents. "For some, it's a very scary, difficult time.

"Relationships are critical to the learning and growth that takes place during university years," she adds. "We refine aspects of identity through relationships and develop a clearer sense of self and how we fit into the world."

During this time, young people tend to develop intense friendships, but relationships also become more complicated because of the greater diversity of the university environment. Most students are exposed to a wider range of socio-economic groups, religions, cultures, political and sexual orientations than ever before.

While premarital sex is the rule rather than the exception, on the positive side, students are more aware than ever of safety issues related to both sexual relationships and alcohol use, she says.

One of the most complicated relationships is often with a roommate -- which Casteels-Reis compares to an "arranged marriage." Students may experience conflicts over social and privacy needs, personal habits and backgrounds.

The challenge is: "How much of myself am I willing to give up to live peacefully?" In the end, Casteels-Reis finds "the vast majority of people negotiate the roommate situation extraordinarily well."

Photo by Barb Elve Turquoise turf: A seed mixture of a particularly vivid hue was applied to the construction site of the new co-op building last week. The substance is meant to ensure what's left of the pared-down hill doesn't wash away.

UW wins research awards

Waterloo recipients of the research chairs are:

• David Blowes, for work in earth science -- $200,000 per year for seven years
• Mohamed Kamel, for work in artificial intelligence -- $200,000 per year for seven years
• James Kuo, for work in electrical and electronic engineering -- $200,000 per year for seven years
• Elizabeth Irving, for work in animal biology -- $100,000 per year for five years

The Canada Research Chairs program is intended to support excellence in university-based research, and chair holders are world leaders or rising stars in the natural sciences and engineering, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities.

Further awards announced earlier this spring from federal and provincial governments will assist 10 UW faculty members with their research projects.

The UW office of research says four Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) New Opportunities Awards, which are being matched by Ontario Innovation Trust (OIT) awards, will fund the following projects:

• Infrastructure for Integrated Reaction Engineering and Membrane Separation Research Applied to Pollution Control, Eric Croiset and Xianshe Feng (chemical engineering); CFI $169,141, OIT $169,140;
• Facility for Fabrication and Characterization of Advance Solid-State RF/Microwave, Sensoric, and Imaging Micro-Devices, John Hamel, Siva Sivaththaman, James Kuo, and Andrew Sazonov (electrical and computer engineering); CFI $400,000, OIT $400,000;
• High Temperature Materials Centre, Holger Kleinke (chemistry); CFI $154,989, OIT $154,988;
• Molecular microbiology and bioinformatics, Kesen Ma, Kirsten Muller, and Bernard Duncker (biology); CFI $147,525, OIT $147,525.

These government awards represent about 80 per cent of the research budgets, with the remaining 20 per cent coming "from additional sources," according to a research office spokesperson.

Additional CFI funding of $576,756 was announced this month for another five UW research projects:

• $35,000, Infant Cognition Laboratory for the Study of Problem-Solving, Learning and Physical Reasoning in Humans;
• $84,352, Multimedia Interaction Design Research Project;
• $115,517, Quantative Geophysical Characterization of In Situ Aquifer Conditions;
• $150,000, Facility for Characterising Structure and Dynamics of Complex Physical Systems;
• $191,887, Facility for Characterising Properties of Innovative Materials for Durable Infrastructure.

Matching OIT awards are expected.

From the registrar: For those students who were not able to complete class selection for winter 2002, open appointments on QUEST have been scheduled from 8:30-4:30 on July 26, 27, 30, 31, and on August 1, 2 and 3.

Monday notes

Also tonight the City of Waterloo's Free Summer Concert Series features jazz and folk music at Brewmeister Green -- at the corner of King and William Streets. The Monday Melodies concerts on the green will continue through August 20 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. each week.

And the student awards office sends advance word that it will be closed all day Wednesday, July 25. The office will re-open on Thursday at 10 a.m.

Avvey Peters

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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