No decision on student vote Students' council has called a special meeting for October 22 to make a decision about proposed student projects in Campaign Waterloo. Federation of Students president Yaacov Iland said this morning that council voted to put off a decision about a student referendum until there is "fuller information" about student opinions. The proposal before council was to call a student referendum on a $20-a-term fee that would finance $7 million worth of new athletic and social space on campus. A report of yesterday's council meeting is available this morning on 'uwstudent.org'.

Senate hears about Campaign Waterloo

Tonight's senate meeting starts at 4:30 in Needles Hall room 3001. Besides the campaign, agenda items include a progress report on the "Fifth Decade" long-range plan, a briefing on the recent "economic benefits study", and approval of the degrees to be presented at Saturday's convocation.

The subject has come up before, of course, but tonight's briefing comes as development staff are actually out there asking for "pace-setter" gifts before the campaign gets to its public launch some time next year. Kieswetter says she and her colleagues have already visited faculty councils and such other groups as department chairs, library staff and senior administrators "to give all faculty and staff the opportunity to hear about and have input into the campaign process".

Distributed with the agenda for tonight's meeting were copies of the recently published campaign brochure, which summarizes its goals (based on the slogan "Building a talent trust") and lists some of the projects for which the campaign is raising money.

For example, funds are wanted to support a second UW chair in entrepreneurship, to "undertake a research and development role in entrepreneurship at the university, in the local community, and across Canada. The Chair will help to develop entrepreneurship studies and assist the development of start-up companies initiated on campus."

Also planned are a chair in women's health, an endowment for the architecture school's Rome program, expansion of the Optometry building and improvements to its equipment, library renovations, and creation of an "East Asian studies learning centre" at Renison College, including "a new 1,300-square-foot resource centre, multimedia language and culture centre, and a dedicated classroom".

All across the university, the campaign is putting an emphasis on scholarship funds at the graduate and undergraduate levels. "Scholarships," says the brochure, "attract and encourage high-quality students and put Waterloo in a good position to compete for the very best."

The campaign is also seeking to raise funds for the co-op and career services building and the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology, both already under construction.

Glider team wins design award

Pressure distribution on the wings of the glider, as shown in a graphic from the report submitted to Design Engineering.

Robert Ripley (mechanical engineering), Greg Thompson (mechanical), and Sanjay Singh (electrical and computer engineering) were responsible for creating Eclipse, a scale model glider originally intended for the 1999 Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute national free-flight competition.

Says their submission to the contest: "The Eclipse is a significant advancement over a previous design that won the competition in 1997. The design is innovative because it is one of the few high-performance low-drag blended wing body or 'flying wing' designs that does not rely on a separate control system to maintain stable flight. All necessary corrective and restoring moments are created as a result of the rigorous analysis of the wing aerodynamics at free flight speeds. In this sense, free flight aeronautical design is a more difficult undertaking than powered flying machines. Moreover, this design has introduced winglets and a Horten tail to further reduce drag on an already sleek planform. Use of both empirical, analytical and computational methods made this feature possible to include for the first time in the competition's history.

"In addition, the large wing area was nearly twice that of the nearest competitor, implying a very large payload carrying capacity, given the design size constraints of the competition. The design is built for survivability, being constructed of advanced composites in an epoxy matrix, overlaid on an accurately cut foam core wing section, itself the basis for rapid prototyping during empirical testing.

"Our team relied on varied knowledge and skill to do the research and build something this intricate. Skill sets that seemed outside the scope of a mechanical engineering project such as power electronics and computer software were leveraged to make a truly elegant glider."

The judges, in the fourth annual competition sponsored by Design Engineering magazine, clearly agreed. Winners' certificates and cash prizes are being presented today during the National Factory Automation/Canadian Machine Tool Show.

A list of recent achievements -- from the UW news bureau

John McPhee of systems design engineering was given the I.W. Smith award from the Canadian Society of Mechanical Engineers for "outstanding achievement in creative mechanical engineering within 10 years of graduation" from his PhD program.

Christopher Richter, a UW political science and economics student, is a winner of the Export Development Corp. International Studies Scholarship. It's valued at $3,000 with an opportunity to complete a paid work term with the corporation.

Barry Warner, director of the Wetlands Research Centre at UW, is the current president of the Society of Wetland Scientists. This is the first time a non-U.S. resident has been elected to the position.

Janusz Pawliszyn of chemistry is a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award. This is to recognize his contributions in research and teaching, and allows periods of collaboration with colleagues in Germany.

Keith Hipel, systems design engineering, has received the Norbert Wiener Award for his contributions to research in conflict resolution and systems design with application to water resources management, environmental engineering and sustainable development.

Jack Trevors of the University of Guelph, who earned his PhD in microbiology at UW, was elected to Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology.

Surfing for the news Native people in Canada make use of distance education Arabic language studies are booming this fall Tiny Collège des Grands Lacs will close Toronto offers funding to all PhD students Study says men learn more than women in university U of T hiring dispute heads for court

Ozone specialist will speak Friday

Rowland is credited with a major role in finding the cause of ozone depletion in the atmosphere. He'll give his talk at 2:00 Friday afternoon in the Humanities Theatre.

Rowland is the Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry and Earth System Science at University of California at Irvine. He will speak on "Stratospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Warming" -- two of the most important current atmospheric problems.

"Dr. Rowland's public lecture will be of interest to everyone in the general public, because these issues affect nearly every aspect of our lives including our future lifestyles, food supply and weather." says chemistry professor Jim Sloan, who will head the new Waterloo Centre. It seeks to combat air pollution through gaining a comprehensive understanding of its sources and providing accurate, timely air quality assessment and forecasting.

In his general-interest public lecture, Rowland will discuss the connections between ozone depletion and the effects of pollution, including the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases and the changes in cloud cover. The complex interactions among these large scale atmospheric systems govern both long-term climate and the short-term "extreme weather" events that are occurring with increasing frequency.

A specialist in atmospheric chemistry and radiochemistry, Rowland -- together with researchers Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen -- received the Nobel Prize for "work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone." That research revealed the potentially catastrophic danger that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) pose to the earth's ozone layer. One result of the studies was the 1987 Montréal Protocol of the United Nations Environment Program, the first international agreement for controlling environmental damage to the global atmosphere by reducing the manufacture and release of CFCs.

Subsequent studies by Rowland have revealed the impacts on the atmosphere of methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and refrigerants. These create a greenhouse effect by trapping heat in the lower atmosphere. This makes the Earth warmer (global warming) because the sun's rays are allowed into the lower atmosphere but the heat from these rays isn't able to escape.

Just a little of this and that

The Jewish studies program presents a lecture tonight under the title "Scholars, Scrolls and Scandals: Judaism, Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls". The speaker is Lawrence Schiffman of New York University. He'll speak at 7:30 in Siegfried Hall of St. Jerome's College; admission is free.

The teaching resources and continuing education office will offer a workshop Wednesday on "Question Strategies"; like other TRACE events, it's open to everybody who teaches at UW. "When you ask your students questions," an invitation to the session asks, "are you often met with blank stares and no response? How can you use questions effectively to elicit responses and facilitate learning?" The answer might come at noontime on Wednesday; the TRACE office, phone ext. 3132, is taking reservations.

Staff, faculty and retirees continue to send in their contributions to the United Way for this year. As of Friday night, gifts and pledges were into six figures, at $100,748, more than two thirds of the way to the $150,000 goal. And special events will swell the total: the arts faculty's United Way committee sends word that "our famous chili lunch" is scheduled for October 31, with tickets priced at $4.

CAR