![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Wednesday, December 4, 2002
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Black swirl on primary colours]](/images/2002/1204frankirk.gif)
Artwork
by Fran Kirk, graphic designer in UW Graphics, is on display through
January 3 at the Grad House. A "meet the artist" reception is scheduled
for tomorrow, Thursday, from 5 to 7 p.m.
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The event, co-sponsored by UW's department of political science and the History Heads' Association of the Waterloo Region School Board, has been an annual December event on the Waterloo campus for more than 25 years. This year, 18 delegations from 14 regional schools will be involved.
The role of Canada's prime minister will be handled by Jonathan English of Kitchener Collegiate Institute. Other KCI students will serve as federal ministers, with the responsibility to chair meetings of provincial ministers of finance, justice, health, social services, transportation and urban affairs, natural resources, aboriginal affairs and environment drawn from other schools in the region.
A delegation from Waterloo Collegiate Institute will articulate the views of the First Nations. Three schools, WCI, Glenview Park Secondary School and Bluevale Collegiate, will produce newspapers during the conference to promote debate and provide information on events over the two days. One of the schools will be the recipient of The Record Federal-Provincial Conference Press award, to be presented at the conclusion of the event.
The John Boulden Award, named for one of the founders of the simulation, will also be presented at the end of the conference to one of the student premiers on the basis of a ballot among all conference participants. This year's prime minister, Jonathan English, is a former winner of the award when he was the premier of Yukon in the simulation last year.
Working sessions will be held in several rooms in the Modern Languages Building on Wednesday and Thursday. The concluding plenary session will be held in the Theatre of the Arts, Modern Languages building, on Thursday from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
This morning, former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister Sean Conway, MPP for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke, will address the delegates.
A search for someone to take over from UW librarian Murray Shepherd, who retires next year after three decades in the job, has been under way for the past several weeks. Now the job is officially on offer: the list invites "nominations, applications, and expressions of interest".
It's ranked as a USG 18, the highest job classification to show up in the positions wanted list for quite some time.
What's the job involve? "The University Librarian is responsible to the Associate Provost, Academic and Student Affairs, for providing innovative information resources and services to the University and the community, for managing a budget of almost $14 million and for providing visionary leadership to a staff of 144, including 32 librarians. The University Librarian will be a seasoned professional librarian with a graduate degree from an ALA-accredited program in Library and Information Studies; a graduate degree in a subject discipline would be highly desirable.
"The successful candidate will have demonstrated the ability to promote and strengthen select resources and responsive and innovative services within a complex service culture; . . . active involvement with issues relating to the evolution of scholarly communication; progressive leadership and management abilities, including solid communications skills; the vision, enthusiasm, creativity and energy to foster new directions and forge new collaborations; the ability and commitment to develop external relations and partnerships, including success in fund raising, and achievement in and commitment to professional and academic activities."
Also in the positions list this week:
But there are a few events today, in the two-day hiatus between classes' end and exams' beginning. For one, because there's a sizeable number of co-op students who don't have work for the winter term, the co-op and career services department will hold a "job finding support and advice fair", under the title "Mission Possible". It starts with a gathering at 10 a.m. in Rod Coutts Engineering Lecture Hall room 101, "where information about letters of introduction, more about the continuous phase registration form and other instructions for the rest of the day will be given". Then there will be a series of workshops and access to coordinators who can advise on resumés and help "work out a plan of action".
The computer store is promising "Everything You Wanted to Know About Tablet PCs" at a show in the Davis Centre lounge today, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Representatives from five manufacturers will be on hand.
The Ontario Ballet Theatre is bringing its touring production of "The Nutcracker" to UW's Humanities Theatre. Children's performances are scheduled today at 1:00 and 7:30, Thursday at 1:00.
Another round of presentations from graduate students in the Certificate in University Teaching program is scheduled for today, 2:00 to 3:30 in Math and Computer room 5158. Speakers are Jason Foster ("Promoting Deeper Learning Through the Design of Learning Experiences"), Kate Hoye ("Psychological Constructivism and Its Implications for Engineering Capstone Courses"), and Heather Montgomery ("Teaching Science as Science Is Done: The Advantages of Problem-Solving Learning in the Laboratory").
| Faculty association president Catherine Schryer will report on a number of matters at today's meeting, and will announce that negotiations between the association and UW management are going to begin on a longstanding issue: the "academic status" of librarians. "We hope to bring the academic librarians under the Memorandum of Agreement," says Schryer. "Most faculty associations in Canada also represent academic librarians. We hope that sometime in the next year, the same can also be said of the University of Waterloo." |
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics -- independent of UW, but closely linked -- launches its public lecture series tonight with a talk by Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University. Topic: "Einstein's Biggest Blunder -- A Cosmic Mystery Story". He'll speak at 7:00 at the Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex, and free tickets are available from the box office there, or can be reserved by phone, 886-2375.
There's Christmas dinner from 4:00 to 7:00 tonight at Brubaker's cafeteria in the Student Life Centre. . . . The teaching resource office presents a workshop on "Understanding the Learner" from 9:00 to noon tomorrow (last-minute information, call ext. 3132.) . . . The annual Christmas choir concert in the Davis Centre great hall is scheduled for tomorrow starting at 12:15. . . .
The "faculty lounge" on the lower floor of the Modern Languages building -- a gathering place since the days when ML was one of about three buildings on the muddy UW campus -- is no more. Again, it's a space issue. "The faculty of arts has allocated a portion of ML 104 as a digital research lab," says Anne Harris, assistant to the dean of arts. "The remaining space will be used as offices for two Canada Research Chairs." Faculty and others who used the lounge, especially at lunchtime, will now take their chances with the general seating in the ML coffee shop (which is so busy I couldn't get a seat there for lunch one day last week) or retreat to the third-floor lounge in the Humanities building.
The department of kinesiology will host its annual Lab Days program today through December 18. More than 1,500 students will be visiting from 50 high schools across Ontario. Lab Days is a chance for high school students to visit the campus and participate in lab sessions under the instruction of graduate and senior undergraduate students in kinesiology and health studies. The mini-labs have been designed to introduce a wide range of topics in kin through hands-on participation. The six sessions range from fitness testing in "Pedal Power" to examining gait and posture in "Best Foot Forward".
Four years ago he was president of the Graduate Student Association, and now he's wearing the coronet of "director, undergraduate business and accounting programs" in the faculty of mathematics. He's Peter Wood, who spent a brief time on the faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University after finishing his PhD in pure math at UW, and then joined UW's math faculty in the summer of 2001. His appointment as director began December 1.
CAR
TODAY IN UW HISTORYDecember 4, 1975: Paul Meincke, who delivered the first lecture to a UW class in 1957, carries out his last instructional duty before retirement, administering an exam to systems design engineering students. |