May 7, 2002

Tuesday, May 7, 2002

Hot dog! The wagon's out there
Non-credit courses for spring
Ten lectures in one volume
The right date, and other notes

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

[Quinn]
Valedictorian: Jennifer Quinn, graduating with a degree in biology, will be the valedictorian on behalf of science students at next month's convocation ceremony. The science convocation, one of five ceremonies in the 84th Convocation, is scheduled for June 14.

Hot dog! The wagon's out there

You can buy sausage in the open air again this summer, as food services says its Weenie Wagon will have its first outing today during the lunch hour (11:30 to 1:00). "It's located," says marketing manager Jeannie Watt, "in the green area between the Student Life Centre and Math and Computer buildings. The WatCard is accepted for payment." On the menu: hot dogs at $3 (including tax), honey-garlic sausage at $3.50, canned pop at $1 and bottled water at $1.50.

Also at food services:

A contest is under way to find a new name for the Ron Eydt Village cafeteria when renovations are finished there. "The winner is awarded $200 meal money," says the weekly food services menu flyer. "Contest open from May 6 to May 31."
BookEnds (located in the bookstore at South Campus Hall) now offers bubble tea. "There are five great flavours available," says Watt, listing them: strawberry, mango, passion fruit, green apple, and taro milk. Price is $2.99, $3.49 with tapioca pearls (plus tax).

Glancing at the menu again, I noticed today's entree at Bon Appetit in the Davis Centre. Thought for a disorienting moment that it said "Human Beef", but that's "Hunan Beef".

Non-credit courses for spring -- from the UW news bureau

Effective performance appraisals and achieving success with difficult people are among the new offerings in the University of Waterloo's Continuing Education program.

"People interested in strengthening their professional skills or needing to increase their confidence with the latest piece of software should take a look at our course offerings," said Maureen Jones, manager of continuing education.

"Perhaps you are working in a new field, preparing for promotion or hoping to improve your skills and efficiency on the job," she said, offering the following choices: Listening With Understanding; Selling Skills to Improve Your Future; Innovation: Thinking Out of the Box; and Team Building.

For those creating their own Web site or designing a brochure, there's Creating Web Pages; Macromedia Flash 5.0; and Dreamweaver.

Among the on-line course offerings are Achieving Success with Difficult People; Your Screenwriting Career; and Photoshop 6 for the Absolute Beginner.

There are also on-line personal enrichment courses available entirely on the World Wide Web. Each course runs for six weeks, with two lessons each week. Assignments, quizzes, discussion groups and the final exam are all on-line. The offerings are Genealogy Basics and Guiding Kids on the Internet while the Web business courses are Managing Technology and Achieving Success with Difficult People.

There is a growing number of people taking advantage of the on-campus and online non-credit courses, which bring the resources and expertise of UW to the community, Jones said. Currently, there are about 1,600 people enrolled in the courses annually.

Ten lectures in one volume

Besides a lecture and an authors' display, there will be a third attraction at the annual Friends of the Library celebration at noontime on Wednesday: a book launch.

The Friends, who have been sponsoring the so-called "authors' event" in early May each year for a decade now, have published the texts of the ten lectures in a single volume under the title Ten Talks: Celebrating the Creative Process. It's priced at $18.99, and copies should be available tomorrow.

Among the lecturers featured are a "humanist" -- James Downey, who was UW's brand-new president when he gave the first Friends lecture in 1993 -- plus a scriptwriter, an artist, a mathematician, two novelists, a composer, a scientist, a journalist and this year Christine Cheng, a recent graduate from systems design engineering.

The book also comes with a CD that includes the music presented during the lecture by composer Leonard Enns.

Cheng, this year's speaker, served as president of the Federation of Students (2000-01) after earning her degree in systems design. Since then she's earned a graduate degree in international relations at Princeton. Her public lecture, "Transforming Technology: A Social Dilemma", will start at noon tomorrow in the Theatre of the Arts, Modern Languages building.

Mary Stanley, the UW library's manager of communications and development, noted that books, art and music by UW faculty, staff and students will be on show tomorrow as they are every year. "The event is held to celebrate the creative process at Waterloo," she said. "It is a time for the entire campus to come together to be inspired and entertained and to applaud the creative works of our campus community."

Since the first authors event in 1993, the Friends of the Library have displayed the published works of more than 200 UW authors, musicians and artists.

The Friends of the Library is an association representing people who contribute, either financially or through gifts of collections, to UW's library. The group is interested in the library's well-being as well as promoting the role it plays in academic and creative pursuits.

The right date, and other notes

I had this announcement in yesterday's Bulletin, a day early -- sorry to anybody who was misled. Happening today -- really today -- in the LT3 technology centre is an information session on "T-5 for Science", where T-5 is a model that includes Task, Tutoring, Topics, Teamwork and Tools. More information: ext. 6832.

Today is the day to sign up for campus recreation instructional programs for the spring term. Says a note from Annette Bryndza over in the Physical Activities Complex: "You can sign up for swim lessons, fitness classes, yoga, weight training, bike maintenance, golf, skating, dance, etc. Come to the athletics office Tuesday morning between 8:15 and 11 a.m. to pick up a time card. This time card will list a time for you to come back between 4:30 and 9:00 to register for any and all Campus Recreation Instructional programs! Staff registration for Staff Fitness and Fitness Step will take place from 12 noon to 1 p.m."

Co-op students taking part in the employer interview process this term can pick up "the master copy of their co-op record" in Needles Hall today, any time after 10 a.m. Job postings will start Wednesday, and interviews begin May 27. And work reports from the winter term are, in most programs, due tomorrow at 4 p.m.

Clubs Days will take place in the Student Life Centre from 10:00 to 4:00 today and tomorrow, says Federation of Students clubs director David Romanyk -- a chance to find a new activity for the spring term.

Library books that were signed out by faculty, graduate students, and staff on term loan before the beginning of April are due on Wednesday, May 8, which is tomorrow. Borrowers who still have such books should return or renew them, the library says: "If If they are renewing on-line, the name of the tab in Trellis to go to is 'your library account'. On-line help for renewing is available. Patrons should not try to renew more than 50 books at a time."

An "ad hoc committee on math and CS governance" is at work, and has lately proposed a change to the operations of Math Faculty Council so that, intead of including all the faculty members (the present unwieldy rule), it would be a representative council like the ones in engineering and science. But -- rather than each of the five academic departments sending one-fifth of the total council membership, or anything obvious like that -- the current proposal is that the number of representatives be the square root of its number of faculty members. According to the committee's report, the proposed formula "has aesthetic appeal to a Faculty of Mathematics, as well as considerable theoretical and practical benefit. . . . In practical terms, this formula allows for increased representation from Computer Science without having them dominate Representative Council. Computer Science does not want to run the Math Faculty, a sentiment heartily shared by the rest of the Faculty."

Another conference gets rolling today at the Ron Eydt Village conference centre: "Camp Enterprise", a Rotary Club gathering with some 60 participants expected.

It's open house at the Graduate House this week, chiefly for the benefit of new and returning graduate students; a number of special events are planned. "Drop in to pick up your pizza coupons!" an ad notes.

Coming on Monday: "a special funding announcement" at the future site of UW's school of architecture, on Melville Street South in Cambridge. Since a featured participant, according to invitations, is federal cabinet minister Andy Mitchell, one might infer that some federal government support for the project is on the way.

And Tuesday, a week from today: "Get to Know Your Credit Union", a noontime session sponsored by the staff association and starring Vaughn Sauve of the on-campus ranch of Waterloo County Education Credit Union Ltd. The brown-bag session will start at 12:15 in the multipurpose room of the Student Life Centre.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
May 7, 1958: Seagram Stadium and gymnasium, UW's first building, is formally opened.