November 14, 2002

Thursday, November 14, 2002

CEIT atrium to be named for donor
Forum explains changes to co-op
Recruiting women faculty, part 2
Other notes and events today

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

[View from science webcam]

CEIT atrium to be named for donor

Terry Matthews, the charismatic CEO of high-tech firm March Networks, came to campus yesterday, gave a speech, handed over a cheque, gave another speech, and ate pizza with students while UW officials smiled, knowing the university's big new building is closer to being paid for.

The amount of March's contribution to the cost of the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology was not revealed, but it'll make a dent, at least, in the $10 million that UW has been needing to raise towards the $43 million tower at the centre of campus.

Construction is well under way (webcam, left) and the building is supposed to be ready for occupancy next summer.

Linked to science and engineering buildings and the Davis Centre on various sides, the CEIT is to provide a place where disciplines meet, allowing joint assaults on the complicated problems of the information and environmental age. (Summing up the various aspects of the CEIT, a student writer in MathNews recently dubbed it "Buzzword Building".) It's also to be the home of the earth sciences department, which currently spills over into off-campus space.

Matthews met with UW leaders "to discuss research opportunities" early yesterday afternoon, then headed to the Davis Centre for a celebration of the gift, which UW president David Johnston calls "magnificent".

"We are thrilled that Terry Matthews, a leading Canadian and visionary in the field of information technology, is participating with the university as we continue to expand and improve our facilities for our students," Johnston said. "Leaders of Terry's stature are rare, his enthusiasm is unique and his interest in history embodies his commitment to life-long learning."

In recognition of the gift, the 2,500-square-foot lobby of the new building is to be called the March Networks Exhibit Atrium, Johnston announced yesterday. The atrium will be the home of what's now the earth sciences museum, tucked away on an upper floor of Biology I building. Exhibits will include a Great Lakes water feature, minerals and gems, and the Parasaurolophus dinosaur. One of UW's Midnight Sun solar cars may be suspended from the ceiling, and a 8.5-metre monolithic rock is already in place in the centre of the area.

[Niagara Falls]
Government plans 'electricity centre'
A "centre of excellence for electricity" is to be established at UW and McMaster University, the provincial government has indicated, but no details are available yet.
It's part of the government's program to deal with the current crisis in electricity costs and supply.
The new centre is one of a dozen steps announced by the energy minister on Tuesday, "with Niagara Falls thundering in the background", according to a government news release.
Mamdouh Shoukri, vice-president (research) at McMaster, told media he assumes the new agency will be along the same lines as the existing Ontario centres of excellence in four other research fields. A centre in "energy or electricity production" had been proposed by the province's advisory committee, Shoukri said.
There was no further word about the centre yesterday, although energy minister John Baird did announce a Centre for Alternative Energy, to be based at Queen's and the University of Toronto.

Forum explains changes to co-op

A shorter interview period -- because there will finally be enough rooms -- is just one of the changes to the mechanics of co-op at UW that will be presented at an open forum for students this afternoon.

The forum, starting at 4:30 in Rod Coutts Engineering Lecture Hall room 103, is co-hosted by the co-op and career services department and the co-op council of the Federation of Students.

A presentation will be followed by questions, says Olaf Naese of the CECS department, who provided this summary of what's shaking:

"The new CECS building, among other things, contains 50 per cent more interview rooms. This means that we can reduce the number of days students need to spend in the main interview period from three weeks to two weeks.

"The new CECS online system will be launched in May 2003. This system will feature a student skills inventory maintained from the beginning to the end of a student's registration in co-op; resumés maintained online; online job application (by students) and applicant screening (by employers); self selection of available interview times online; ranking of jobs by students and students by employers online.

"All of these features will give CECS the ability to run multiple interview cycles with a quicker turn-around time in order to reduce the number of days where no interview activity takes place. Here is an example of the interview sequence with the new online process applied: two-week interview cycle with a resulting match; no interview activity during Study Week; one week interview cycle with a resulting match; Tuesday interviews with a resulting match; Thursday interviews with a resulting match.

"Because we will have the new building in place for the winter 2003 term, some of these interview sequence events will be applied for that term.

"Field Services (co-ordinators) will concentrate more fully on job development; Student Services (co-op advisors) will become the ongoing point of contact for students; Employer Services (general office staff) will improve job management.

"Electronic resumés will finally be used. There will be improved and more accurate job information for students. Time-saving online job applications will be in place. Students will be able to schedule the time of their interviews.

"The ranking system will be changed to provide students with more options such as ranking multiple first choices, ranking non-sequentially (can skip numbers); shorter, more frequent match cycles.

"CECS is confident that the changes mentioned here will result in an improved quality of experience for students in co-op."

Recruiting women faculty, part 2

UW has more women professors than other big universities in some surprising fields: civil engineering, electrical and computer engineering, earth sciences. On the other hand, it's behind other Canadian research universities in the percentage of women faculty members in economics, French and sociology.

And in still other fields, it's about typical, says the report of the provost's task force on female faculty recruitment, released on campus this week.

The report quotes various sets of statistics, but does note that at UW overall, not counting the church colleges, 20.3 per cent of faculty are women, the lowest figure for a major university in Canada. And while most institutions reported more women in junior posts, leading to tenure, than in positions that are already tenured, it was the opposite at UW -- probably because most recent faculty hiring has been in male-dominated technical fields, the task force suggests.

"Statistics Canada data by discipline indicate," says its report, "that UW is not doing as badly at hiring women faculty as might appear from the overall proportions. . . . At the same time, there are certainly areas across all Faculties where there is potential and need for increased numbers of women at UW."

Now here's some of what the task force says it learned from interviews with people at UW:

"Graduate students frequently voiced the opinion that, in comparison with other career choices, academic careers are not all that attractive. . . . There is a widely held opinion among graduate students that UW is under-funded and under-resources. A number of women students felt that positions in industry were less stressful since companies can often provide better resources. When they look at current female faculty members at UW, female graduate students were not encouraged to follow in their footsteps. . . .

"Young couples often conclude that only one partner should pursue a career in academe. . . . The very real difficulties for young women in combining their duties as faculty members with child rearing is dampening enthusiasm among young women for pursuing academic careers. . . .

"Supervisors, it was felt, should be more understanding if women have to take time off to attend to family matters. . . . Other areas where it was felt UW could give more support included the provision of more infant daycare, and of facilities to make it easier to look after infants on campus. . . .

"There are subtle but real biases associated with the dominant male culture on campus. . . . There seems to be a built-in bias in favour of highly-funded research and against lower-funded community research. . . . The women faculty we met with pointed to the absence of women in senior academic administrative positions. . . .

"UW's salaries, we were told, are too low and we are therefore not competitive when it comes to hiring and retaining top prospects. . . . Teaching loads should be examined. The view was expressed that they are generally too high. . . .

"There is fierce competition for women with PhDs not only from other universities in North America, but also from industry and government."

I'll return to this topic again tomorrow.

Other notes and events today

Today brings 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 in the Environmental Studies I foyer.

It's the last day of free flu shots in the Student Life Centre (10:30 to 5:30). . . . A display titled "Crisis Iraq: Education for Peace" continues in the SLC, sponsored by WPIRG, Amnesty International and Muslim Students for Universal Justice. . . . The annual fall luncheon for alumni in Toronto is taking place today, with speakers from the new Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology. . . .

Doug Manuel of the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto gives a talk at 1:30 today, sponsored by the survey research centre and the Centre for Behavioural Research and Program Evaluation. Title: "Measuring the Population Impact of Health Care Intervention: Should We Do It? How?" Location: Matthews Hall room 3119.

The local branch of Engineers Without Borders presents a talk tonight by Haresh Shah of Stanford University, under the title "The Renaissance Engineer". Says the speaker:

It is often said that God creates natural events, whereas the disasters that take place as a result of those natural events are caused by human beings. The diverse and complex interactions between science, technology, political forces and socio-economic factors have been responsible for turning an event such as an earthquake or a hurricane into a catastrophe.
For the past four decades, engineers considered the core problem of earthquake risk management as being a technical problem; sociologists considered the problem as a social and economic problem, and so on. Unfortunately, catastrophe risk management is a complex multi-disciplinary problem encompassing various disciplines from pure science to technology to social science to financial and economic aspects.
In this lecture, we will explore the challenges and opportunities that are available to engineers to utilize their expertise together with other disciplines to address the problem of catastrophe risk management. In particular, we will see how the insurance and reinsurance industries have benefited in recent years by working with earthquake engineers in developing financial strategies to reduce their financial risk. This in turn has impacted societies in understanding and managing catastrophe risk at a personal level.
Examples of these interactions from recent events will be discussed. The incredible gap between what is known and what is implemented will be further articulated so that recent catastrophes such as the Bhuj earthquake of Gujarat or even the Kobe event in Japan can be put in the context of this gap.

Shah speaks at 5:00 in Physics room 150; the talk will be followed by a brief presentation about FOCUS Humanitarian Assistance International.

And it just keeps going. Today brings the second day of the "Short Attention Span Math Seminar", brief talks by students, from 4 to 9 p.m. in Math and Computer room 5136. . . . A group from the Graduate Student Association is going bowling tonight and then to see "Bowling for Columbine" at the Princess Cinema. . . . The Math Society Thursday night movies are "XXX" and "Star Wars Episode II, Attack of the Clones", 7:00 and 9:00 in Davis Centre room 1302. . . . The drama department's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" continues tonight through Saturday at 8:00 in the Theatre of the Arts. . . .

A discussion evening under the title "Healthy Who(?), Healthy Community" is set for 7 to 9 p.m., sponsored by the Civics Research Group of the faculty of environmental studies. "Come join informal discussion about who is and/or should be the focus of healthy community efforts and initiatives," suggests Beth Dempster of that downtown-based group. The event takes place at its home, 70 King Street East in Kitchener.

Looking ahead:

Tomorrow morning at 9:30 (Environmental Studies I room 132), the next talk in the tourism lecture series: Alister Mathieson of Humber College, on "Structural Changes in the Tourism Industry".
Tomorrow night at 7:30 (Siegfried Hall), the annual St. Jerome's University Graduates' Association Lecture, by Terry Downey -- former political scientist at UW -- on "Liberal Arts in the 21st Century".
Saturday night at 8, a concert by the Da Capo Chamber Choir, based at Conrad Grebel University College (at St. John's Church in downtown Kitchener).
Tuesday, November 26, an "adaptive technology fair", showing off devices that can make life and learning easier. It'll run all day in the Davis Centre, and I'll be saying more about it between now and then.
Sunday, December 1, the staff association's annual Winterfest at the Columbia Icefield.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
November 14, 1984: Federation Hall opens for the first time -- with an invitation-only party. November 14, 1987: The Varsity Briefcase Drill Team makes its debut, giving the half-time show at a Warrior basketball game.