Audio-visual correction It seems I was given the wrong "emergency" phone number for the audio-visual department, so please take note of this correction to the information given in yesterday's Daily Bulletin. Rush calls to the A-V department should go to ext. 6197, not 6198. (Yes, 6198 will still reach the department, but not necessarily the right people.) As yesterday's Bulletin correctly said, less urgent service requests can be sent to A-V by e-mail, avfix@uwaterloo.ca.

Ann Roberts retired from UW's fine arts department on September 1, after 29 years of teaching. She's seen leaning over one of the kilns in the department's East Campus Hall studios. Retirement celebrations are set for Saturday, October 13, with an open house (2 to 5 p.m.) in ECH and a party (7 to 10 p.m.) at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, which Roberts helped to found. An annual award in her name is being created for volunteer activity at the Gallery by a UW fine arts student.

Target: more international students

The document is the third annual report on what various parts of UW are doing to implement the recommendations from Building on Accomplishment, the "fifth decade" planning report issued in 1997. One of the recommendations in that report was that Waterloo should "vigorously recruit" top students from outside Ontario and outside Canada.

Here's what's happening, according to the new report:

"In May 2001, Deans' Council endorsed making all undergraduate co-operative education programs accessible to international visa students, effective in September 2002. Each Faculty will determine how many such students it is prepared to admit and Co-operative Education & Career Services (CECS) will determine how many job placements it can arrange. Formerly, international students were not normally considered for admission to co-op programs.

"Deans' Council has confirmed the following targets for recruiting international students: 500 undergrads by 2006 (compared to 244 in 1997 and 383 last fall); 450 grad students by 2006 (compared to 187 in 1997 and 288 last fall).

"The Faculty of Mathematics has exceeded its target of recruiting 60 to 100 new international undergraduate students annually, including both direct admissions and deflections to the Math/ELAS program at Conestoga College, and is currently reviewing its target and approach; other Faculties are considering targets."

The progress report also talks about graduate students, saying grad recruitment and scholarship support "are current areas of weakness" for UW. There is, it goes on, "widespread agreement on campus" that graduate enrolment should exceed 10 per cent of total enrolment.

As a result, UW is aiming to increase the number of graduate students by 30 to 50 per cent, with an emphasis on international students. A document last year titled Beyond Borders dealt specifically with efforts to increase UW's international role.

As part of the recruitment effort, the progress report says, "the Graduate Studies Office has developed a new and more informative website with direct links to departmental graduate studies sites. . . . Display material for international education fairs and information sheets [has] been translated into Mandarin and Korean, to supplement material prepared earlier in Spanish and Portuguese."

The grad studies office, it says, "has participated in a growing number of national and international academic fairs which target potential graduate students. Participation in such fairs is increasing exponentially as the competition for graduate students heats up in Canada and the US. A new GSO staff recruitment position has been created to enable increased fair participation and to assist in the coordination of recruitment strategies across campus."

Other notes in the "fifth decade" progress report:

• "A Task Force on Diversifying Income is exploring possibilities that could increase UW resources. Issues under discussion include: increasing private sector support, ensuring that students have access to adequate financial aid, deregulated tuition increases, full cost recovery programs, and related matters."
• "A Task Force on Teaching is currently exploring ways in which teaching at UW might be made more effective and efficient. Topics under discussion include employment of new technologies, reduction in the number of low-enrolment classes, streamlining or eliminating co-op streams with low enrolments, and related matters."

88 try first-year math challenge

Saturday's event was dubbed the "Small c Competition", presumably as a contrast to the existing Big E and Special K.

VanderBurgh says a total of 88 first-year students from four faculties showed up to write the hour-long test with its 25 multiple choice questions. Top finishers were Yufang Hao, Shu Niu (tied for 1st); Xiannan Li (3rd); Lino Demasi (4th); Stephen Bahun, Michael Huang, Derek Kwok (tied for 5th).

The three students tied for 5th place competed in a tiebreaker, and Stephen Bahun correctly answered the question:

In Athabasca, some of the animals are really strange. Ten percent of the dogs think that they are cats, and ten percent of the cats think that they are dogs. All the other cats and dogs are perfectly normal. One day, Byung tested all the cats and dogs in the town and found that 20% of them thought that they were cats. What percentage of all of the cats and dogs really were cats?

Says VanderBurgh: "Thanks go to co-organizer Peter Crippin, as well as to Christopher Small, Barry Ferguson, Ruth Malinowski, Carolyn Jackson, Mark MacDonald, Dave Nicholson, and Masoud Kamgarpour for all of their assistance."

Eating gracefully Career services has announced a workshop on "Dining Etiquette", with the emphasis on business meals, to be held next Tuesday, October 9, at 4:30 p.m. It costs $5, and advance registration is at Needles Hall room 1115. I'm looking for a student who will attend (we'll buy the ticket) and write a report on the event for the Gazette. If you're interested, send me e-mail at credmond@uwaterloo.ca.

Tell me what's a-happening

Post-secondary and experienced professionals pursuing high-tech careers are encouraged to attend. Positions are available in the areas of engineering, computer science, technical training, quality assurance, technical support, technical writing, sales and marketing. Individuals visiting the career fair can learn about what companies look for in an employee, immediate and future job opportunities, careers with travel and Waterloo region's respected high-tech community. Free, limited supply of promotional mugs available.

The "Bridging the Gap" lecture series in the faculty of engineering gets going for this term with a talk today by Kenneth Foster of the University of Pennsylvania. Title: "How to Make Medical Technology Work". Foster, who is in Penn's department of bioengineering, is interested in technological risk and the impact of technology. Using breast cancer as an example, he will describe "how doctors and patients have needs that are largely invisible to engineers, and the costly effects of these discrepancies". His talk starts at 11:30 a.m. in Carl Pollock Hall room 3385.

The career workshop series continues today with sessions on interview skills -- "the basics" at 10:30, "questions" at 11:30. Tomorrow, it's "selling skills" at 4:30. More information is available from the career resource centre in Needles Hall.

The local branch of the Society for Technical Communication meets in the Davis Centre each month, and tonight's the night (7:00, room 1302). The speaker is Robert Milkovich, of Research in Motion's Mississauga office, who will talk about working with SMEs -- "subject matter experts" -- and his interviewing techniques. Everyone is welcome, and it's free.

Tomorrow brings another surplus sale of UW furniture, equipment and impedimenta -- 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at central stores, East Campus Hall, off Phillip Street.

I haven't been too diligent lately about listing the volunteer opportunities from the local Volunteer Action Centre, but here are a couple:

• Volunteers are always needed to assist with childcare and/or transportation for Live and Learn groups on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday afternoons. A few hours of your time will help low-income mothers and their preschool children receive support and personal development opportunities in this House of Friendship Program. Scheduling can be flexible.
• Art teaching assistants volunteers provide valuable assistance at Homer Watson House and Gallery. Mature volunteers with an art or art history background are needed to help with educational programming for school groups one morning or afternoon a week (Tuesday-Friday). They work with students as they participate in a session with a studio artist and in a gallery program. This is a great opportunity to work with children, gain valuable teaching experience and be actively involved in a stimulating arts environment.

CAR