Daily Bulletin

Changes to sabbatical policy Faculty members are invited to comment this week on a proposed rewriting of UW's Policy 3 about leave of absence for faculty members. The revision comes from the Faculty Relations Committee, which "generally felt that Policy 3 would benefit from more extensive changes to improve its structure and clarity", says a memo from the committee's co-chairs (the UW provost and the president of the faculty association). "The Policy 3 rewrite was one of FRC's main preoccupations during the fall term and has now been completed. We believe that the restructured version . . . is clearer and easier to read. . . . Substantive changes are not being proposed." The revised policy is available for examination on the secretariat's web site.

Villagers tested after TB diagnosis

The student has moved out of residence, says Barbara Schumacher, medical director of UW's health services, and is being treated with antibiotics. "This person will be kept isolated until they're no longer contagious," she said. That typically takes about two weeks.

"This is not an emergency," Schumacher said, stressing that everyone who has had close contact with the patient has now been found, briefed on the problem, and given a first skin test, which will indicate any past exposure to TB. Skin tests will be repeated in about two months -- that's how long it takes for someone who is exposed to the disease to begin testing positive.

"Pulmonary tuberculosis is spread through coughing or sneezing -- even shouting could disseminate the bacteria into the air," Schumacher said yesterday, the morning after a meeting at which W4 residents were briefed on the situation by a nurse from the Waterloo Region community health department.

"It's much more contagious in very closed-in spaces with poor ventilation," she said, so authorities aren't very concerned about people who happened to be in a larger area, such as a classroom or cafeteria, with the patient. However, anyone who has concerns is welcome to get in touch with health services and can be given the TB test. More information is available at ext. 3543.

People who test positive can be given drug treatment to kill the disease -- which becomes active in fewer than 10 per cent of those who have the bacteria in their bodies. An information sheet provided to Villagers this week explains that "Should you have a positive TB skin test result, further medical assessment of your health would be necessary and a preventative course of anti-tuberculosis drugs would be highly advised to prevent the small chance of infection developing into active TB."

Rain cuts Campus Day attendance

She said an estimated 3,000 high school students and parents visited UW for yesterday's tours and special events, down by about 1,000 people from a typical year's figure.

Roberts blamed the weather and poor driving conditions in the wake of Monday night's ice storm, and noted that some visitors may have come to last fall's You@Waterloo Day instead -- in just its second year, the fall event drew a bigger crowd than the first time round.

"The students that did attend enjoyed their day," Roberts added in an end-of-the-day memo. "We anticipate that the rest of the week will be busy with students and parents visiting on days where there will be better driving conditions and hopefully no rain. We expect the busiest day to be on Friday.

"A special thank you goes to our Campus Day organizing committee, which consists of virtually every department on campus, and to our many staff, students and professors who were involved in making this day such a success.

"The Campus Day committee would also like to extend a special thank you to our professors and students who moved their classes on Campus Day to accommodate the faculty and program sessions. One of the key components of Campus Day are these sessions -- last year's survey indicated that 97 per cent of our visitors attended these sessions. And not only are these sessions well attended, they're also extremely well received."

News from elsewhere McMaster staff to get strike pay | MUSA site Investigation at U of T law school Retired women profs sue Toronto Trouble at Trent (Globe commentary)

Architecture may seek temporary space

Rick Haldenby makes the suggestion in comments reported in today's Gazette. The space crunch at the school of architecture has been an issue since the mid 1980s, he says. "Efforts to gain support for improved facilities on campus have been unsuccessful."

In UW's most recent applications for SuperBuild funding, the school of architecture's needs were not included because the need for expansion "didn't meet the province's criteria of undergraduate expansion. Our expansion is primarily at the graduate level."

In fact, with the launch of the Master of Architecture program this year, an additional 80 students will arrive on campus this September, said Haldenby. "We're attracting a great deal of interest from graduates of professional and pre-professional programs both here and abroad." The program is still five years from university entrance to the final architecture degree, but most students will now spend twelve terms on campus rather than ten over that period, he notes.

As an interim measure, "we will try to accommodate them in Environmental Studies I and II, but we don't know if it's viable. We have, in the past, leased off-campus studio space," although that's an expensive option.

And if the Cambridge proposal doesn't fly, "unfortunately at the moment, we have no clear plan B. If it falls through, we will have great difficulty in accommodating incoming graduate students."

A formal agreement between UW and the city of Cambridge, for the planned site beside the Grand River, is to be signed tomorrow night.

Hard cases: Paul Royston, back left, and Ed Schmidt had just passed the half-way point of their 50-hour charity marathon stint in trophy cases on the third floor of Math and Computer yesterday when donations reached the $1,500 mark -- surpassing the $1,000 goal set for the stunt. Andrew Knapp, seated in foreground with Mike Chen, are accepting donations for the St. Mary's Cardiac Care Centre and the K-W Cancer Care Centre. Until the case sitters emerge at noon today, donations can still be made by visiting the site of the sit-in or by phoning the Math Society at ext. 2340 with a pledge.

Other notes on a chilly Wednesday

Also in yesterday's Bulletin, I said that the Jewish studies public lecture by Stephen Katz, on "Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust", was to be held today. That was an out-of-date date: the lecture is actually scheduled for Monday, March 19, at 7:30 p.m.

As co-op students who were matched with spring jobs start doing the paperwork, the career development series offers a workshop today on "Negotiating Job Offers" -- 10:30 a.m. in Needles Hall. The career resource centre can provide details.

At noontime today (and I expect it's full to capacity as usual), the teaching resource office presents a workshop on "The Craft of Research Writing: Exploring the Process".

David Johnston, president of UW, is off to Ottawa today for the twice-a-year meeting of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. A highlight on the agenda: university leaders will have an hour and a half with federal finance minister Paul Martin, presumably to thank him for the latest disbursements and ask for more. Mark Schaan, vice-president (education) of UW's Federation of Students, is also in Ottawa this week as part of the annual government lobbying blitz by the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations; CASA leaders will also have some time with Martin to talk about student funding issues.

Wasn't Mardi Gras last week? Anyway, the Ron Eydt Village cafeteria is promising a "Mardi Gras Night" this evening; or in Mudie's in Village I, you can visit the Big Easy with "New Orleans battered fried chicken" and green pepper corn quiche. (Elsewhere on campus: it's Vietnamese at the Davis Centre cafeteria today, and a "Texas lunch" at Brubakers in the Student Life Centre.)

"Men's Sexual Health" is the topic, as retired psychologists John Theis and Peter Naus of St. Jerome's University speak at 7:00 tonight at the main branch of the Kitchener Public Library.

An international student "presentation night" -- the first of a planned series -- will run from 5:00 to 7:00 tonight in Engineering II room 1307C. Students will tell something about three lands: England, Mexico, and Switzerland. "Food and drinks are provided after the first hour of presentation," a memo says. The event is sponsored by the Sandford Fleming Foundation.

Well, tonight's the big night for the hockey Warriors, as they meet the Guelph Gryphons in game two of the "host berth" series leading up to the University Cup national championship next week. Guelph lost to Laurier 2-1 last night in the first game of the series. The Warriors will face Laurier tomorrow night, again at the Aud, to finish up the series; one of the three teams will make it into the nationals next week.

Coming soon:

• The Entrepreneurs Association presents a talk by Jim Tobin of Itemus, tomorrow at 5:30 in Davis Centre room 1302.
• The President's Circle -- a group of major individual donors to UW -- will hold a breakfast event Tuesday, March 20, at which the speaker will be Ray Dugan, retired professor of French at UW and creator of a remarkable facsimile of the Bayeux Tapestry, which has received broad publicity. Details about the breakfast event are available from the development office.
• The English Language Proficiency Exam, for those who need it, is set for Thursday, April 5, at 7 p.m.

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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