![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Wet road, snowy ground]](http://www.graphics.uwaterloo.ca/images/content/photo/assignments/2002
1126/images/DSC_0002.jpg)
Like Christmas lights,
signals at the entrance to the north campus -- where Columbia Street
meets the new Hagey Boulevard -- flash red against the snow.
Sierra Construction Ltd. is at work
putting in services for the planned
research and technology
park,
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"Your contributions," UW president David Johnston tells those donors, "make it possible for us to pursue the highest levels of quality in our teaching, research, and scholarship."
He reminds the donors: "We have also begun in earnest a major fundraising campaign to increase the concentration of talented people at Waterloo. Several contributions have already been received toward scholarship funds, new laboratories, library teaching facilities, and our entrepreneurship activities.
"We are making talent the focus of our campaign because we believe that Canada's ability to solve today's complex problems, to rise to future challenges, and to seize new opportunities depends not just on advances in science and technology but on people.
"We are building a talent trust, by attracting talented faculty members, staff, and students to Waterloo, by reaffirming our leadership in co-operative education, and by harnessing technology to teaching and learning."
The donor report lists names of hundreds of people who made gifts to UW over the past year, from two under the heading "$1,000,000 or more" to several pages of fine print under the $250 heading.
While almost $22 million of the money came from corporations and organizations, the largest number of donors are listed as "alumni and honorary alumni", 11,900 of them with gifts totalling $3.7 million. Other cheques came from "friends"; from faculty, staff and retirees (850 of those, for $1.3 million); from parents of students; and even from patients of the optometry clinic.
With some of the donations going into endowment funds, where they will generate interest year after year, UW increased the principal in those funds by some 10 per cent last year, to $75 million, the donor report says.
A number of new graduate programs have contributed to this enrolment increase, the GSO says. These include interdisciplinary research programs in behavioural neuroscience, tourism policy and planning, as well as professional programs in architecture, software engineering, design and manufacturing, taxation, and management of technology (offered by distance education).
The memo points out that Waterloo attracts excellent graduate students from universities in Canada and around the world. "Graduate studies recruitment manager Amy Aldous spent much of September and October visiting other universities to promote UW graduate programs, including Queen's, the University of Toronto and McGill. She found that Waterloo's reputation for excellence is well known by students at our competitor universities. She is often approached by undergraduate students who were offered admission at UW but chose another university to be closer to home, and now wish they had come to Waterloo. These students are ideal candidates for our graduate programs, as are Waterloo's own undergraduate students. Over 40% of UW graduate students also chose Waterloo for their first degree."
And more: "Expansion at the graduate level is vital to our success as a university. Graduate students make significant contributions to undergraduate teaching, and will play an increasingly important role as more and more undergraduate students are admitted in the double cohort year and beyond. At the same time, graduate research assistants are essential to the innovative research programs being carried out across the campus. The privilege of working with top graduate students is also a key factor in the recruitment and retention of outstanding faculty."
People interested in Ontario education are on the edges of their seats today. "Waiting for Rozanski," says the CBC. "That's what many parents and school trustees . . . are doing, anticipating the release of a report they hope will berate the Ontario government's allocation of education dollars." The report is to come today from the Education Equality Task Force, headed by University of Guelph president Mordechai Rozanski. He was assigned to do a review of the province's school funding -- a controversial issue, doubly so in double cohort times -- and may advise on what the total should be as well as on how it should be allocated.
A team of graduate students from UW's school of architecture has won the 2002 Metal Construction Association Student Design Competition. Andrew Lind, Anthony Round and Ivan Ilic placed first overall in the competition, sponsored by the Metal Construction Association, based in Glenview, Illinois, said Rick Haldenby, director of the school. This year's competition drew 94 entries from advanced-level students of architecture in North America and around the world. Students were challenged to design an outdoor band and performance pavilion by creatively utilizing metal construction components. The architectural firm of Otis Koglin Wilson developed specifications for the project and the Chicago Park District designated a site in Washington Park to give the competition a real-life context. Entries were judged by a panel of architects using criteria based on creative use of metal, effectiveness in meeting needs, efficient implementation of building systems and consideration to preserving and improving the surrounding environment.
Today brings the first of two "Know Your Workplace" sessions in the occasional series offered by the human resources department. Today's session deals with the UW pension plan; next Tuesday, December 17, it's the benefits program. Both sessions will start at 12 noon in Davis Centre room 1302.
The senate undergraduate council will meet at 12 noon today in Needles Hall room 3004. Among the agenda items: a proposal to change the "winter study period" in February to "reading days" in math and engineering, "reading week" in other faculties -- which is what a good many people call it already.
An open meeting to explain and demonstrate myHRinfo will start at 2 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1302. That's the new interactive system that lets individual faculty and staff members look at their payroll and benefits information online; it'll be in operation in time for December's monthly payday. Everyone is welcome at today's meeting, within the capacity of the room; there will be more information sessions after New Year's if people are interested, the human resources department says.
With the co-op department preparing to move to its new building this weekend, bulletin boards are coming down from the walls on the first floor of Needles Hall. . . . The elevator in Chemistry II will be out of operation from tomorrow morning until January 3 for servicing. . . . Pam Loucks, formerly of UW's staff and now working at Christ Lutheran School in Kitchener, sends word of an open house there tonight, providing information about studies in grades 7 through 12. "It's a great school," she writes, "and hopefully will turn out good students for UW." . . .
The health services clinic will be closed tomorrow (Thursday) from 11:30 to 2:00, and gosh, I wonder what the staff could be doing at lunchtime this season of the year. . . . Grades from last week's English Language Proficiency Exam are ready and can be seen in undergraduate offices or posted at PAS building room 2082. . . . The annual carol-sing in the Modern Languages lobby is scheduled for this Thursday at 12:15. . . .
CAR
TODAY IN UW HISTORYDecember 10, 1969: The play "Marat/Sade", produced by the Creative Arts Board, is the first production in the Humanities Theatre. |