February 22, 2002

Friday, February 22, 2002

Moving ahead to Windows 2000
Thesis defence by video link
A weekend to catch our breath

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

Ottawa announces fellowships to bear the Trudeau name

[Cone] Smoother ice cream is on the way, thanks to the same protein that keeps Ontario winter wheat from freezing in the early weeks of the year. That scientific development was presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science this week by Douglas Goff of the University of Guelph. But it turns out there's a UW connection as well: Goff says the patent for the extract is owned by Ice Biotech Inc., founded by a group of scientists that include Marilyn Griffith and Barbara Moffatt, both of UW's department of biology.

Moving ahead to Windows 2000

Computer users in UW's non-academic departments will mostly be working in a "new environment" soon, as the supported system becomes Windows 2000, a memo from the information systems and technology department this week notes.

The shift to Windows 2000 from earlier versions of Microsoft Windows is nothing new -- it's been talked about since 1999, and work has been going on in IST. Now the results are about to appear, in the majority of departments that use PCs on Windows rather than a Macintosh system.

Says the memo, sent across campus by Bob Hicks of IST:

The computing environment in the Academic Support Departments has been in place for a number of years. It primarily consists of PCs running the Windows 95/98/NT operating system, the Microsoft Office 97 suite, and NT servers that look after file, print and authentication services.
IST has been working on the building blocks for a new computing environment. Since the Fall of 2001 we have piloted this new environment and are now ready for deployment to Academic Support Departments. This new environment consists of the following:

PCs primarily running Windows 2000
the Microsoft Office XP Suite
file services provided by the NetApp filer
services provided by Windows 2000 Servers and Active Directory
This major change will require extensive planning to minimize disruption to your department. The first steps involve moving your file services to the NetApp filer and changing authentication to Active Directory. Then, PCs that are capable of running Windows 2000 (minimum PII-200 Mhz with 128 MB of memory) can be migrated to Windows 2000.
Our first task will be to work with you to establish an initial schedule for these changes. Some of the factors affecting this will be your work schedule, existing Windows 2000 workstations that are not in Active Directory, your plans to purchase new PCs, and the obsolescence of NT servers. Some NT servers are very old and becoming unreliable.
New PCs will be configured with Microsoft Office XP and other standard software. As always, software licensing costs are the responsibility of each department. At the present time a Windows 2000 license costs $105 and Office XP costs $102 (prices are subject to change). We are working on converting our Skills for the Electronic Workplace (SEW) courses to Office XP.

The memo adds that key people from administrative departments are invited to a seminar on Thursday, February 28, "to get the latest information about the UW Windows 2000 deployment project. We will review the information in this memo, as well as talk about other issues (e.g. applications, support, training, cost)." The seminar starts at 1:30 Thursday afternoon in Math and Computer room 2009: "Please RSVP by sending email to Pat Lafranier (pllafran@uwaterloo.ca)."

Feds' voting begins (again) today
The Federation of Students makes a second attempt at holding its annual election, starting today. Electronic polls opened at 8:30 this morning and continue through 4:30 p.m. on Friday, March 1. On-line voting continues around the clock; there will also be on-campus polling stations next Tuesday through Friday during the day. The election -- for Feds leaders 2002-03 -- was begun two weeks ago but stopped abruptly when technical problems surfaced.

Thesis defence by video link

An ancient academic custom will get a high-tech twist when Jennifer Ellis turns into a doctor on March 8.

Ellis is completing her PhD in UW's geography department -- her supervisor is Bruce Mitchell, who is also UW's associate vice-president (academic) -- and at 10:00 that morning she faces the last hurdle, the "oral defence" of her thesis before a panel of faculty members. Would-be doctors have been doing the same thing for centuries. But few of them, and certainly none from Waterloo, have done it the way Ellis will do it: over a videoconferencing link, in this case connecting UW with the campus of the University of British Columbia.

Ellis herself, who now lives in Victoria, will be at UBC along with the external examiner for her thesis, a UBC planning professor, and one of the UW members of her panel, Bob Gibson of environment and resource studies, who happens to be on sabbatical at UBC. At Waterloo -- in the videoconferencing room in Engineering II -- will be Mitchell and three other UW faculty involved in the defence.

Over the miles, they'll ask Ellis to talk about her research, they'll ask questions and then they'll formally vote on awarding her PhD.

Ellis's years of research and writing have produced a thesis titled "Empowerment Through Shared Decision Making: A Case Study of the Okanagan Shuswap Land and Resource Management Planning Process".

She's already the author of a long case study as part of the Assessment and Planning Project in the environmental studies faculty. Ellis explains: "The process is based here in BC in the Okanagan-Shuswap sub-region which is located in the south central part of the province. "There were about 50 public and government participants in the process. I focused on 30 of them who participated from the beginning right through to the end (although I collected data on all 50). I interviewed the 30 participants at the beginning of the process (it started in February 1996) and near the end of the process (it ended in November 2000) to see how their level of empowerment had changed. I also interviewed 12 of them in the middle of the process and attended about 76 days of meetings over the course of the process. Needless to say I had a lot of data.

"I defined empowerment based on 6 components -- self-efficacy, knowledge and skills, opportunity, resources, action and impact. I concluded that about 10 of the 30 participants experienced large increases in empowerment as a result of the process and 11 experienced moderate increases."

The video arrangement means that Ellis and the UBC-based examiner won't have to fly from British Columbia to Ontario. But, she says, "the real reason is that I will be in my 8th month of pregnancy on March 8 and was not very keen to fly at that point. Although I am fairly low risk, preterm labour can be brought on by stress."

In fact it was her idea to use the video link; Mitchell supported the idea, as did Jake Sivak, UW's dean of graduate studies, and Larry Martin, associate dean (graduate studies) in the environmental studies faculty. "I will pay the charges on the UBC end," says Ellis, "and Waterloo is picking up the charges on the Waterloo end (as Waterloo will be saving the costs of flying the external out).

"I also think it is a great pilot project for video conferencing for this type of thing. Who knows? Perhaps in the future, externals, folks on sabbatical, or even the student defending will connect by video conference on a regular basis."

Like any graduate student facing the oral defence, she'll be glad when it's all over. "My committee to date has been quite supportive of my work in terms of their comments on my drafts," she said by e-mail, "so I do not expect it to be a terrible experience. However, I do expect that they will pose difficult questions and hope I can answer them. Also what the external reader will think of it is always an unknown.

"I also expect it to be enjoyable in some respects. It is the opportunity to discuss something that I have spent the last five years of my life working on with a group of people with similar interests. But of course there are always the natural fears e.g. what if I draw a complete blank on something, what if I have not thought of something or read some critical piece of the literature, what if there is some major error in my thesis that nobody has noticed until the day before the defense, what if my brain does not function at 7:00 in the morning, (which is when the defense starts here in BC)? So it is a combination of looking forward to the discussion and getting it done and apprehension regarding what might happen.

"The video conference aspect of it adds an additional element of concern because it is so different and so new. There is obviously the fear that for some reason just on that particular day the technology might not work. There is also the concern that the rapport that would be there in a traditional defense might be lacking if we are communicating via technology. But I am sure that it will all go well and hope that it proves to be a valuable experiment in whether video conferencing is a viable option for the future."

A weekend to catch our breath

Classes resume on Monday after the current "reading break", and some of the staff members who have been taking the opportunity for a couple of days of vacation will be back at the grindstone too. (I heard just this morning that one athletically-minded staff member is away at "an old guys' tournament, but don't tell him I said that".)

Meanwhile, the work of the university goes on, and the celebrations too. Today, Kuntz Electroplating Inc. of Kitchener and UW jointly launch a new research initiative "to investigate and develop state-of-the-art robotic polishing technologies". The project is led by Jan Paul Huissoon, of the mechanical engineering department. The event starts at 10:00 in Davis Centre room 1709.

Even before co-op job matches for the coming term are official, more jobs are being posted. Says the co-op department: "For students who took part in the initial interview phase and did not receive interviews, were not ranked, or who believe that they will not achieve a computer job match, co-op job posting #1 (continuous interview phase) will be available by 12:00 noon."

A farewell party will be held this afternoon for Kim Martin, 20-year staff member in the Math Faculty Computing Facility, who's off to the private sector. The reception starts at 3:00 in Davis Centre room 1301.

Tomorrow brings the Hagey Bonspiel, one of UW's most venerable traditions. This year's is the 32nd annual bonspiel, and is being held at the Ayr Curling Club, with 64 staff, faculty and retiree participants.

Also tomorrow, the computer science department will hold a day-long (9 to 5) "open house on graduate studies". Says a memo: "We will feature research presentations by faculty members, opportunities to talk to staff, faculty and graduate students about graduate studies in CS at UW, and guided tours of some of our labs." Advance registration is requested.

Must be recital season again already: "Let's Dance" is scheduled in the Humanities Theatre on Sunday, following rehearsals on Saturday.

Sports this weekend are very limited, as the competitive season is just about at an end. The basketball Warriors will host Windsor on Saturday afternoon in the Physical Activities Complex. The men's teams play at 2 p.m., the women's at 4 p.m.

Looking ahead: there's a lecture of some interest on Monday, as Alasdair Roberts of Syracuse University will be here to speak on "Code of Silence: Government Secrecy and Access to Information" (3:30 p.m., Davis Centre room 1304).

And with Black History Month winding down, the bookstore will have a special event Tuesday at noontime. Special guests are to include Karolyn Smardz, speaking on the history of the Underground Railroad in Canada, Caribbean student Asha Stewart, and local author Adwoa Badoe, who will read selections from her book The Pot of Wisdom and lead an African dance workshop. I'll say more about this event in Monday's Daily Bulletin.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
February 21, 1994: The university closes on Monday of reading week, giving faculty and staff an unpaid day off as part of the Social Contract.