Daily
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About UW's record first-year class

• Goal for the number of full-time students: 4,322
• Confirmations (students who said they would attend): 4,780
• Actual arrivals: 4,751
• Total first-year students, including that 4,751 plus 429 students who were here last year but are still counted in first year: 5,180
• First-year students living in residence: 3,550

This was the first year UW had said it would guarantee residence space for all the new arrivals who wanted it (except a few hundred who were admitted late), and nobody knew just how many of them would accept the offer. In the end, Walker said, the "take rate" was 82 per cent.

Because the residence system has expanded this year, with renovations in UW Place and the construction of Mackenzie King Village, the demand for off-campus rooms actually went down somewhat, he told the senate. "There seems to be a fair amount of student housing available for this fall."

The senate was also briefed on this fall's orientation program. It attracted 3,554 participants, which is 77 per cent of the new students, including 95 per cent of engineers, said the coordinator of first-year student life, Heather FitzGerald.

The casualty total for the week: "one concussion, several ankle sprains, and several wasp bites".

Awards announced for convocation

Fall convocation is set for Saturday, October 20, in two ceremonies -- in the morning for arts and applied health sciences, in the afternoon for engineering, environmental studies, independent studies, mathematics and science.

Being named an "honorary member" is Ron Scoins, long-time associate dean of math and promoter of the mathematics contests that have linked UW with high school teachers and students across Canada. He retired earlier this year.

Being installed as distinguished professors emeritus are Grahame Farquhar, retired from the civil engineering department; Graham Gladwell, also from civil engineering; Josef Paldus, retired from applied mathematics; and Jiri Zuzanek, retired from recreation and leisure studies.

The awards, previously approved in confidential session by UW's senate, were announced this week, along with five honorary degrees that are to be awarded at convocation. The recipients:

• Sherwood Rowland, joint winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry, who helped discover the dangers chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) pose to the ozone layer. He is currently the Donald Bren Research Professor of Chemistry at the University of California at Irvine. Rowland will give the afternoon convocation address.
• A. C. (Albert) Hamilton, widely considered one of the most important Renaissance scholars of the 20th century, now Cappon Professor Emeritus of English at Queen's University.
• Paul Mitchell, who recently retired as chairman of the board of McNeil Consumer Healthcare in Guelph and who was the most recent chair of UW's board of governors. He will deliver the convocation address at the morning session.
• Bartha Maria Knoppers, president of the International Ethical, Legal and Social Issues Committee of the Human Genome Organization, who was recently appointed to the Medical Research Council's Standing Committee on Ethics, and serves as an expert to committees of the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health.
• Lawrence Morley, geophysicist and director of the Canadian government's Program Planning Office for Remote Sensing, the first geophysicist to be appointed to the Geological Survey of Canada, where he served as chief of the geophysics division for 17 years.

Insurance money goes to scholarships

The money comes from last year's "demutualization" of Sun Life, the company that provides low-cost term insurance, paid for partly by the university and partly by the individual employee.

Associate provost Catharine Scott, who chairs UW's pension and benefits committee, sent the letter to all staff and faculty. "The demutualization process," she explains, "involved either distributing shares or the equivalent funds to the various institutions who had been part of their mutual company." UW and all the other universities insured by Sun Life opted to take the cash, rather than getting involved in being a shareholder in an insurance company.

UW's allocation is approximately $400,000, Scott says, "of which the University's share is approximately $300,000 (UW paid about 75% and employees paid about 25%).

"The Pension & Benefits Committee spent considerable time in determining how best to maximize these unexpected one-time funds. Each individual's share of the $100,000, taking into account the human and financial resources required to do the determination, would be a very small amount. . . . The Pension & Benefits Committee has concluded that the most appropriate and positive use of these funds would be to convert them to scholarship and bursary monies. . . . The Faculty and Staff Associations, the Federated & Affiliated Colleges, and the University administration are in support of this endeavour to maximize these funds. As such, the Committee has requested that Sun Life release these funds."

Most of the money, the letter says, will go into the Staff and Faculty Endowment Fund, and the interest on it will provide graduate scholarships that will generate external matching funds. The income, plus the matching funds, is expected to be about $20,000 annually. "Priority will be to the children of UW faculty and academic support staff; if none are eligible, the awards would then be opened up," the letter says.

There's still some uncertainty about support for this plan from Canadian Union of Public Employees local 793. So the share of the money that represents insurance covering CUPE members "will be held in trust until a later date when a final determination is made", the letter says.

Student views sought tomorrow

The proposed expansion is part of the UW fund-raising campaign that's scheduled to begin this fall. It includes a variety of campus projects, and contributions will be sought from alumni, businesses, foundations, outside friends, and people within UW, including staff, faculty -- and students.

Says Iland: "The University has asked students to consider a donation that would increase student spaces on campus. The donation would allow renovations of the Student Life Centre to provide more meeting and lounge space as well as more rooms for clubs and studying, as well as a new gym, a lighted artificial turf field, a women's hockey dressing room and a fitness centre on the north campus."

He says UW has struck a joint committee with the Federation to oversee the student consultation. Iland and Feds vice-presidents Brenda Slomka and Mike Kerrigan represent students. Judy McCrae, director of athletics, and Ann Simpson, manager of the SLC, represent the administration, along with Catharine Scott, associate provost (human resources and student services).

Slomka, Kerrigan and Iland will be visiting student groups, collecting comments by e-mail and handing out surveys to gather student reaction to the expansion. "The proposal will be rewritten to reflect student opinion," Iland said this week, "and then put to referendum in mid-November."

A more detailed description of the proposal can be found in the "Incredible Guidebook" distributed by the campus recreation program at the beginning of this term.

The three student representatives will be available from 11 a.m. to noon on Thursday in the Federation office in the SLC to answer questions about the proposal and the consultation process, Iland said. The e-mail address for information is consult@feds.uwaterloo.ca.

Happening today and soon

The student awards office is closed today, so staff can catch up on the electronic side of their jobs; it'll also be closed next Wednesday, September 26.

An information session about the Certificate in University Teaching program, aimed at graduate students, is scheduled for 12 noon today in Needles Hall room 3001.

A surplus sale of UW property, from computer hardware to unclaimed lost-and-found items, will run from 11:30 to 12:30 today at central stores, East Campus Hall.

The funeral service will be held at 2:00 this afternoon in St. Paul's Station, Ontario, for Darren Hill, a first-year mechanical engineering student who died in a highway crash on Saturday.

"Statistical Issues in Fisheries Stock Assessments" is the topic of a seminar to be given today by Stratis Gavaris of the federal department of fisheries and oceans. The talk begins at 3:30 in Math and Computer room 5158 and is sponsored by the department of statistics and actuarial science.

It's "LGBT pizza night" starting at 5:00 this evening in Student Life Centre room 2101, the office of Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo. "Come out and meet some of the newest members of our community," a memo says, "and find out about some of the exciting events we have planned for the term." Pizza and pop are being "generously provided by UW's new LGBT committee". (Still lost on the initials? LGBT is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered.)

Hot water will be shut off in the Physics building from 8 a.m. to noon tomorrow, the plant operations department says. Repairs to the hot water tank are planned.

The Downey Tennisfest will take place on Sunday, September 30. This year for the first time, I'm told, there will be a silent auction --a fund-raiser to send a financial disadvantaged child to tennis camp. Items to be auctioned include a stay at a bed and breakfast, art prints and various gift certificates. The Tennisfest format is round robin doubles, with players guaranteed at least three matches. Deadline for registration is Monday, September 24. Cost is $20 for tennis, $20 for dinner or $35 for both. To register for the "fun and friendly competition", call Shirley Fenton at ext. 4074.

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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