November 13, 2002

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

Seeking to attract women faculty
UW's top ranking from Maclean's
Five more federal chairs are named
Life in the middle of the week

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

Prolegomenon to a concise model of the university

[Reconciling]
'Methought I was enamoured of an ass," says Titania, queen of the fairies, played by Lesley Tumber. Oberon (Andy Trithardt), king of the fairies, doesn't want to go there. How does it all work out? See "A Midsummer Night's Dream", tonight through Saturday at 8:00 in the Theatre of the Arts.

Seeking to attract women faculty

UW will be getting a "coordinator of faculty recruitment and retention" as a step towards making it more attractive for women -- and faculty members in general -- to come to Waterloo and stay here.

Provost Amit Chakma announces the creation of that job in a memo sent to department chairs and members of UW's senate along with the report of a task force on female faculty recruitment that he set up earlier this year.

The memo gives Chakma's initial reaction to the 38-page report. In particular he draws attention to a list of "best practices" prepared by the task force, which he calls "very positive and proactive, and likely to benefit all faculty and staff recruitment and retention activity".

The "best practices" range from "Keep in touch with our own students who go elsewhere for graduate work" to "Be sensitive to family responsibilities when assigning classes."

The task force was chaired by Gail Cuthbert Brandt, principal of Renison College until June 30, and included three faculty members and two senior administrators. "The timing was opportune," says its final report, "as present and future circumstances will result in significant opportunities for new faculty recruitment, but in an extremely competitive environment."

Recommendations from the task force deal with increasing the "pool" of applicants for faculty jobs; attracting women to UW; attracting faculty generally; the recruitment process; orientation for department heads and committee chairs; salary equity; and retention of faculty.

It suggests creating "a female faculty bridging fund", to let departments hire women sooner than they otherwise would, and "an institutional fund to facilitate spousal opportunities". Chakma says in his memo that he does intend to propose a bridging fund, and will consider the other fund, to help provide jobs for spouses as a way of attracting people UW wants, "at a future date".

I'll return to this report in tomorrow's Daily Bulletin.

UW's top ranking from Maclean's

It's official: UW is -- still -- the "best overall" university in Canada, not to mention the "most innovative". That's according to thousands of people in education and business who rated universities' reputations for Maclean's magazine this year.

But in the "leaders of tomorrow" category, UW came second to the University of Toronto, just as it did last year. And in "highest quality", UW is fourth again this year; McGill comes first, followed by Toronto and Queen's. The "national reputational ranking" is reported in the "Universities" issue of Maclean's, published this week.

The "best overall" label is eagerly awaited at Waterloo, where will be grounds for boasting as it has been annually since 1992. But other institutions see things a bit differently:

"Queen's has regained its number two spot in the prestigious Maclean's university rankings just weeks after taking first place in the Globe and Mail's new student satisfaction survey."
"For the ninth consecutive year, the University of Toronto has taken the top spot among medical/doctoral universities."
"The University of Western Ontario has received its highest ranking in the history of the Maclean's Magazine university rankings."
"The University of Guelph is the No. 1 comprehensive university in Canada."

UW came second to Guelph this year in the numerical rankings of "comprehensive" universities. (Toronto was top in the "medical-doctoral" category, again, and St. Francis Xavier dethroned the perennial winner, Mount Allison, among "primarily undergraduate" universities.)

In addition to the rankings, both reputational and numerical, the magazine contains summary reports on all the institutions it surveys, plus portraits of the highest-ranking universities in the three categories, and a general survey of "The University Crunch" by the magazine's "editor-at-large", Ann Dowsett Johnston.

Her cover story focuses on the worries students and their parents feel as they hope for university admission over the next year or two:

What will the cut-off marks be for this record-sized crowd, heading to university in 2003? Where are the seats? The scholarships? The residence beds? . . . The double cohort is an exceptionally urgent and compelling problem

But it's not just an Ontario problem and not just a one-year problem, she writes. Enrolment is going up, and likely to continue going up, all across Canada, and demand is going up even faster. And what about quality?

After the deep funding cuts of the 1990s, there isn't a university in this country that hasn't felt the crunch. Reductions in the number of labs, library resources, course offerings: these are commonplace. Perhaps the most serious cut is in faculty numbers: in 1990, there were 532,000 students enrolled in Canadian universities and 36,000 faculty to teach them. Last fall, there were a further 113,000 students in the system, but close to 2,000 faculty had disappeared. Student-faculty ratio? In 1971, it was 23-to-one. Today? Thirty-six-to-one, and rising.

At the end of her article, she goes back to talking about students and their expectations: "The promise of a good education is something these students have grown up with. Now is the time to deliver."

Five more federal chairs are named

Five more Canada Research Chairs for UW were confirmed yesterday, as a federal cabinet minister announced "an investment of $130.1 million" for 123 new chairs at 37 universities across the country.

"The brain gain is gaining momentum," said minister of state Gerry Byrne during a news conference at Memorial University of Newfoundland. "Researchers from the United States to Japan are attracted by the prestige of the Canada Research Chairs Program and the international reputations of our universities."

Canada Research Chairs are positions, paid for by the federal government, that allow a faculty member to spend nearly all of his or her time doing research for a five-year or seven-year period. Two of UW's new chairholders are already at Waterloo; one is coming here from California and two from Australia.

James Danckert, Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience (psychology). His work involves multi-disciplinary research in cognitive neuroscience to increase understanding of the role of the parietal cortex in controlling reaching and eye movements; developing improved rehabilitation strategies for patients with specific brain injuries.
Farid Golnaraghi, Canada Research Chair for Intelligent Mechatronics Systems (mechanical engineering). His work involves multi-disciplinary and collaborative research and training in the design and development of highly efficient micro-sensors and actuators for several high tech applications. The research develops "smart" technologies capable of sensing and adapting to motion changes in real time.
Philip Graham, Canada Research Chair in Communication and Technology (English). He is coming to Canada by next May from the University of Queensland, Australia. His work involves interdisciplinary research to effectively digitize Canadian cultural material and protect intellectual property. The research will offer Canadian cultural and broadband industries easy, affordable access to a digitized treasure trove of Canadian cultural material and build a base of highly skilled workers for multimedia production.
Ming Li, Canada Research Chair in Bioinformatics (computer science). He has returned to Canada from the University of California at Santa Barbara. His work involves theoretical and applied research related to Kolmogorov complexity (the modern theory of randomness), and bioinformatics (computer analysis of biological sequences). The research will provide the biotechnology industry with valuable insight and tools to advance genomics and proteomics research.
Nicholas Wormald, Canada Research Chair in Combinatorics and Optimization. He is coming by January from the University of Melbourne in Australia. His work involves the development of innovative techniques to investigate random structures, and he has even applied graph theory to the optimal design of underground mines.

In addition to salary funds, the government is giving UW more than $400,000 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to support the chairholders' research work.

The appointments -- budgeted at a total of $5.2 million over the next few years -- bring the total number of Canada Research Chairs at UW to 18. Across Canada, the program has awarded 746 chairs to date, with a goal of 2,000 chairs by 2005.

[Matthews in flight]
Terry Matthews, chairman and chief executive officer of March Networks, will present a "major gift" for the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology, on behalf of his company, at celebrations today (3:30 in the Davis Centre lounge). Matthews -- pictured here during a talk on campus in 1999 -- will speak earlier in the day at a luncheon event for Communitech. Then after the CEIT event he'll speak to a meeting of the Entrepreneurs' Association (5:00, Davis Centre room 1350) on "Entrepreneurial Success in the Broadband Age". The CEIT, currently under construction, is intended to bring together environmental scientists, engineers and information technology specialists from across the university.

Life in the middle of the week

A one-hour training session and quiz about the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System, or WHMIS, is offered at 10:00 this morning in Davis Centre room 1304.

Free flu shots continue today through Thursday -- health services has a clinic set up in the Student Life Centre, open 10:30 to 5:30 each day.

The Sandford Fleming Debates continue in the faculty of engineering, with competition at 11:30 today in Engineering II room 3324. The finals will be held Friday at noontime in a more public spot: the Carl Pollock Hall lobby.

Howard Armitage of UW's school of accountancy (and director of the new Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology) is one of the speakers today as the Communitech business association holds "VentureFest" at Bingemans Conference Centre on Victoria Street. "Early stage financing" is at the heart of the discussions today, with capital investors explaining the facts of life to people with big ideas. The conference will also hear from a down-the-street rival: Steve Farlow, executive director of the Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship at Wilfrid Laurier University. And the lunchtime speaker will be Terry Matthews of March Networks, on his way to UW for the afternoon events.

"Mostly Middle-Eastern World Music" is promised as the Mernie Band performs a free noon-hour concert at Conrad Grebel University College today (12:30, Grebel chapel).

Mark MacDonald of the Pure Math, Applied Math and Combinatorics and Optimization Club sends word of an event today and tomorrow:

It's called the Short Attention Span Math Seminar (SASMS), and it's a series of math talks given by students. On Wednesday, they run from 4:30 to 9:30 in MC 5158; and on Thursday, from 4:00 to 9:00 in MC 5136. There are 15 students (mostly undergraduates) presenting, with titles including "Surreal Numbers", "Ramsey Theory", "Elliptic Curve Cryptography", "30 proofs in 30 minutes", or more exotic titles like "Splinear Algebra", "How to get to grandma's house in Berlin if the wall has slope k", and "Riemann, Euler, and a Barrel of Monkeys". Each talk is half an hour in length. There will be snacks, drinks, and food provided.

He adds: "I'm really looking forward to hearing these talks. It looks like they're going be a lot of fun. An actual schedule of who's talking when is posted on the door of the PMC office (MC 3033)."

The Waterloo Public Interest Research Group has several things going today:

"Crisis: Iraq -- Education for Peace", a display (co-sponsored by Muslim Students for International Justice) in the great hall of the Student Life Centre, continuing tomorrow.
"Islam, South Asia and Anti-Racism", a workshop (co-sponsored by the Pakistani Students Association) at 7 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1304.
"Temagami Alert", a presentation by Alex Mathias and Gloria Katt of the Anishnabai First Nation in northern Ontario -- 7 p.m., Davis Centre room 1302.

The weekly gay and lesbian discussion group, scheduled for 7:00 tonight in Humanities room 373, focuses on the topic "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do". More information: Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo.

Tomorrow, look for the annual Tex-Mex Bake Sale, which doesn't necessarily mean there will be jalapeños in those brownies. The event is a fund-raiser for the Environment and Resource Studies 475 trip to Texas and Mexico in February. "In addition to homemade treats," writes organizer Amber Stajkowski, "raffle tickets, 50-50 tickets and chocolate bars will be sold, and you can even sponsor a bird-a-thon!" The event will run from 9:00 to 3:00 tomorrow in the Environmental Studies I foyer.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
November 13, 1968: Protesters against the Vietnam war announce they will burn a dog in the arts quadrangle. When a crowd gathers, out comes a hot dog for roasting.