November 11, 2002

Monday, November 11, 2002

Today Canada mourns its war dead
Maclean's rankings out today
New language labs are in use
Programmers come third and fourth
Other notes and events today

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

[Poppy] No words can add to their fame, nor so long as gratitude holds a place in men's hearts can our forgetfulness be suffered to detract from their renown. For as the war dwarfed by its magnitude all contests of the past, so the wonder of human resource, the splendour of human heroism, reached a height never witnessed before.
-- Arthur Meighen, prime minister of Canada

Today Canada mourns its war dead

. . . and honours those who, daring to die, survived service in the First World War, the Second World War, and Canada's more recent conflicts. At 11 a.m., allowing for time zone variations, it will be precisely 84 years since the guns fell silent over Flanders, marking the armistice that ended the First World War.

There can be no one left on the active staff or faculty at UW who served during the World Wars, although there are certainly retired professors and staff members who bore arms. And still among us are some whose childhood memories include the bravery of the home front, the furor of the Blitz, even in a few cases the horrors of the Nazi camps. For their sake, and for the sake of those who are no longer among us, we remember.

Two events on campus this morning will mark Remembrance Day. A service begins at 10:45 a.m. at the Chapel of St. Bede at Renison College, with music, prayers and a speaker (this year John Toews, president of Conrad Grebel University College). A ceremony in the foyer of Carl Pollock Hall begins at 10:50, organized by the Engineering Society, and includes several brief student presentations.

In ceremonies this morning at the Cenotaph in downtown Waterloo, Martin Van Nierop, director of information and public affairs, will place a wreath on behalf of the university.

Maclean's rankings out today

The annual "Universities" issue of Maclean's magazine is due out today, and in a few hours we'll know whether Waterloo has maintained its status as "best overall" university in Canada for an eleventh consecutive year.

The magazine gives a preview of some of its findings to university officials the day before the issue comes out, but the national rankings of institutional reputations are held as a surprise until copies are actually on the newsstands.

(Maybe not such a big surprise, though: The Record reports this morning that it has learned that UW is indeed "best overall" again this year.)

Martin Van Nierop, UW's director of information and public affairs, got a look yesterday at the numerical rankings in the "comprehensive" category of universities, where UW is compared with such rivals as Guelph, Victoria and Simon Fraser. He reports that UW is number 2 this year, a drop from number 1 in 2001. Waterloo was ranked third among comprehensive universities in 2000, tied for second in 1999.

The University of Guelph comes first this year, up from last year's third place.

The numerical rankings are based on some 22 specific measures. Van Nierop reports:

We actually captured more #1's than Guelph (7 to 3) in the individual measures. We came first in average entering grade, student awards, classes taught by tenured faculty, faculty with PhDs, awards per full-time faculty, alumni support and reputational survey.

Separate from the magazine's numerical rankings are the "reputational" rankings, and there Waterloo has a sweep of the "comprehensive" group: number one for quality, number one for most innovative, number one for "leaders of tomorrow", number one for best overall.

[And still she's smiling]
Flu shot clinics will run today through Thursday, 10:30 to 5:30, in the Student Life Centre. There's no charge for the shot, which "dramatically reduces the risk" of getting winter's common and ugly respiratory disease. (We have the government's word for it.) Health services nurse Linda Grant is seen practising on colleague Sandy Kennedy.
"We're pleased to be in the top two in our category and note especially that the two top comprehensive universities are in our region of Ontario," said UW president David Johnston. "It's also especially gratifying to see that our reputation as a first-class institution is so high, number one across the board in our category, because that's the measure of what people across Canada think of us."

New language labs are in use -- by Barbara Elve

Students learning French, German, or any of seven other languages taught at UW are practising their pronunciation in "brighter, more comfortable, better equipped, and more functional" language labs, thanks to major renovations last summer to the facilities in the Modern Languages building.

The newly upgraded labs will open their door for tours on Friday from 1 to 2 p.m. On display will be two 25-workstation computer labs (ML 109 and ML 113) on the Nexus Windows 2000 domain, as well as a drop-in study lab (ML 110) with three computer workstations and a variety of audio-visual material for language learning.

"It was the first major renovation carried out on the language laboratory," says language computing consultant Todd Marshall-Taylor. The work "followed an important upgrade of computer equipment aimed at having the lab join UW's Nexus domain.

"New equipment was purchased from Robotel Electronique, allowing the use of distributive switching technology," he adds. "Sound and video can be shared from one workstation to another or to all in the ML 109 lab with little or no loss of signal quality. This equipment has proved of great value in assisting language teaching and learning."

Robotel equipment was also added to the ClassNet system already in use in ML 113, allowing sharing of video signals between computer workstations.

The work was funded with the help of an $8,000 grant from Robotel toward the purchase of the equipment, as well as a donation from arts alumni to assist in the renovations.

[Sleep and draperies]
Drama students Andy Trithardt (as Oberon), Lesley Tumber (as Titania) and Jef Gagnon (as Puck) rehearse for "A Midsummer Night's Dream", opening tomorrow night for an invited audience in the Theatre of the Arts. Public performances are Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m.

Programmers come third and fourth

Waterloo's two teams placed third and fourth in the regional competition of the ACM programming contest over the weekend, making it likely that the Waterloo "Black" team will go on to the world championships in Beverly Hills in March.

Members of the "Black" team are Gordon Chiu (undergraduate, electrical and computer engineering), Denis Dmitriev (undergraduate, computer science), and Lars Hellsten (graduate, computer science)

The team solved all eight of the problems posed on Saturday at the regional competition, which was held at Sheridan College and three American locations. It had 1,318 "penalty minutes", putting it in third place behind Carnegie Mellon University (1,143 minutes) and a University of Toronto team (1,231 minutes).

UW's "Gold" team of computer science undergraduate students Bryan Chan and Neil Girdhar, plus graduate student Michael Laszlo, placed fourth in the competition, solving seven problems with 1,229 penalty minutes.

Hagey lecture tickets now available
Free tickets are available now for the Hagey Lecture to be given Thursday, November 21, by microbiologist John Stanford.
Stanford, whose work concerns the role of the immune system in the control of infection, and the interactions between bacteria and human physiology, is to speak under the title "Environmental Echoes".
Tickets are available from the Humanities box office or from the faculty association office in the Math and Computer building.

Other notes and events today

Today brings "a show-and-tell visit" from Sun Microsystems, starting at 9:30 in Davis Centre room 1304. The presentation will be repeated at 1 p.m. RSVPs are "appreciated, especially if you want there to be enough donuts', and go to Robyn Landers, rblanders@math.

Christine Donat of Germany's University of Hohenheim will give a presentation about her institution and opportunities for Canadians to study there, at 11:45 this morning in Needles Hall room 3004.

[Book cover] Eric McCormack, English professor at St. Jerome's University and author with a gruesome shade to his ink, has a new book in print, The

Correction: The McCormack reading at the bookstore will take place tomorrow (Tuesday), not today.
Dutch Wife, pictured at left. At 12 noon today, he'll give a reading from the new volume in the UW bookstore in South Campus Hall, and he'll be available to sign copies afterwards. The Dutch Wife, says someone who's had a chance to read it, "follows a son's quest to uncover the secrets of the two men in his mother's life. It's a story of choices, diversity and the relationship between a parent and child. This bewitching and exotic tale of love, loss and identity has also been selected as a featured title in this year's Books for Everybody catalogue."

The first session of this term's Sandford Fleming Debates for engineering students will be held from 11:30 to 1:00 today in Engineering II room 3324. Similar debates will take place tomorrow and Wednesday, same time and location.

"Who is supervising the boss?" asks a note from WATPAS, the Waterloo Professional Association of Students. "Amidst the controversy surrounding the recent accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom, many are asking this important question. Tom Hunter, Partner at Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP, will be addressing the issue of corporate governance." His talk is scheduled for 4:30 today in Davis Centre room 1301.

Doug Crowne of UW's department of psychology is the noon-hour speaker today at the main branch of the Kitchener Public Library. His topic: "What to Say When You Take a Personality Test: Is It Honesty or Our Image of Ourselves That Determines How We Respond?"

Note to co-op students who are still in search of winter term jobs: "Hand in one copy of your resumé package along with completed Continuous Phase Registration form to the paging desk, main floor, Needles Hall, by 4 p.m."

Coming tomorrow: a workshop on time management for instructors, organized by the teaching resources and continuing education office, from noon to 1:30 p.m. Registrations go to the TRACE office at ext. 3132.

And tomorrow's the ticket deadline for a staff association outing on Friday, December 6 -- a trip to see "Cinderella, The Pantomime" at the Waterloo Stage Theatre. Tickets are $24 for staff association members, $20 for children, and $28 for others. They're for sale by Verna Keller (vkeller@watserv1) and Luanne McGinley (lemcginl@watarts).

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
November 11, 1996: In a brief statement, the university announces that a decision by the president to dismiss a faculty member for sexual harassment has been overruled by an outside adjudicator.