![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Wednesday, November 20, 2002
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Read at his desk]](/images/2002/1120chrisread.gif)
The books
are vanishing, says bookstore manager Chris Read: "Students who still
need textbooks for fall term courses should buy them
ASAP. Books not needed for the winter term are being returned to
publishers beginning Wednesday." That's today.
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And while there wasn't immediate agreement about who should do what, everybody seemed to favour a recent recommendation saying that graduate enrolment should be almost doubled, to reach "a level commensurate with UW's status as a leading research university".
The recommendation came in a review done by Adel Sedra, University of Toronto professor and former provost, and soon to become UW's dean of engineering.
"For all the recommendations, we have to deal with the resource implications," warned UW's provost, Amit Chakma. About funds to pay grads, he added: "If we can't support them, we should not be bringing them." Sedra has recommended that UW guarantee a stated level of support to students in "doctoral stream" grad programs for five years.
That support now comes from a multitude of sources, Chakma pointed out, including federal and provincial scholarship programs, assistantships supported by research granting councils, and UW's own budget.
Tony Vannelli, chair of the electrical and computer engineering department, spoke up strongly for putting pressure on the Ontario government. Under the present system, "there are haves and have-nots" because some fields of study have far more research funds than others. "We need professors," Vannelli said, and graduate students are the professors of the future -- so the province should be providing grants specifically to support graduate study.
"Funding is a challenge," said Jim Frank, associate dean of graduate studies. "Space is a challenge. And supervision is a challenge. Are we going to bring graduate studies from the level of a hobby to a mainstream business?"
One undergraduate student senator, Jesse Helmer of arts, went so far as to say that right now expanding grad studies is a higher priority for UW than developing the undergraduate program, and if necessary, resources -- such as faculty members' time -- should be shifted from undergraduate to graduate activity.
Here are the opportunities included in today's list:
In the fine tradition of the union of food, drink and word, Mike Barnes, Sharon English, and Jane Barker Wright will be reading in the Symposium Room at the Plantation Café (corner of King and Erb in Waterloo), on Wednesday, November 20, at 8:00 p.m. Guests are invited to come early to enjoy a meal or snack before the reading, and to mix informally with New Quarterly editors and writers. The Plantation will be providing a 20% discount for the evening on everything but bar items. In exchange, guests are asked to bring a contribution of canned goods for the regional food bank.The occasion will double as a launch of The New Quarterly's snazzy new design. The made-over issue, hot off the press, contains a feature on "Sweat and Serendipity" (essays by Rita Donovan, Erin Noteboom Bow, and Marianne Brandis on the happy accidents that happen when doing research towards a novel), and a story by Sharon English, one of the evening's three readers. TNQ also has a connection to featured reader Mike Barnes. In the summer of 2001, the magazine devoted a special issue to his work.
What all three writers have in common -- aside from publishing history -- is an unusual and at times unsettling perspective on the lives of parents and children. "It has always seemed to me that parenting is one of the big subjects," says Wright, "as big as war or love. If someone writes a novel about war, it's automatically endowed with a kind of gravitas because of the resonance of the theme. If a woman writes a book about motherhood, it's gently condemned as 'domestic', as if the producing and nurturing of life is less monumental than the destruction of it. But the issues are the same: risk, power and lack of it, despair and hope." . . .
These are writers who will bring you family fiction like you've never heard it before -- edgy, clever, wry, and aching.
A debate on the proposed "UPass", or universal bus pass, giving all students rides on Grand River Transit, is scheduled for noontime today in the great hall of the Student Life Centre. Involved are representatives of the Objectivist Club and the Alternative Transportation Group.
There's a seminar at 3:00 today (Davis Centre room 1302) in the "Smarter Health" series sponsored by the InfraNet Project and Education Program for Health Informatics Professionals. The speakers are from Boston-based Medicalis Corp., which says it "has developed a patented web-based solution that delivers the most current and up-to-date medical information to physicians" as well as "a workflow manager and advice engine that use relevant knowledge to guide ordering". The seminar today will include a demonstration.
Therese Biedl of the school of computer science will give a talk on "Graph Drawing: An Overview" at 3:30 in Math and Computer room 5158. "I will illustrate both theoretical and applied work," she says. The session -- to be followed by a reception -- is presented by the Women in Mathematics Committee and "aimed at upper-year undergraduate and graduate students".
Several events today, all starting at 4:30, highlight UW's international links:
Career services has a workshop scheduled for 10:30 this morning on "The Career Research Package" -- check online for registration. . . . A "Christmas Magic Benefit", a children's show sponsored by the Lions Club, takes place in the Humanities Theatre today at 1:00, 5:30 and 8:30. . . . The Economics Society holds a wine-and-cheese party at 4:30 in PAS building room 3005. . . . Instead of the weekly discussion group, Gays and Lesbians of Waterloo will hold a bus trip tonight billed as "Learning About Our Community". The bus leaves from South Campus Hall at 6:45. . . . The volleyball Warriors play at Wilfrid Laurier University tonight: women's teams at 6:00, men's teams at 8:00. . . .
His lecture, "Environmental Echoes: Immunological Learning from the Environment", will draw on his life work concerning the role of the immune system in the control of infection, as well as the interactions between bacteria and human physiology.
He will also give a student colloquium on Friday at 3 p.m. in the Clarica Auditorium, Lyle S. Hallman Institute (west wing of Matthews Hall).
Stanford did his primary medical studies at Guy's Hospital Medical School, University of London, from 1957 to 1962. Eight years later, he earned his Doctor of Medicine degree with a thesis on classification of mycobacteria, the infectious agents responsible for diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy. His framework remains in common use.
Since then, he has held a series of appointments at Guy's Hospital Medical School and Middlesex Hospital Medical School, and joined University College London as a reader in microbiology in 1988. He has published more than 150 papers in refereed journals and has over 100 publications in other forums.
Applied mycobacteriology involves extensive fieldwork, on which Stanford was usually accompanied by his wife and collaborator, Cynthia, and their children. Through research programs spanning three decades and four continents, he has gained an understanding of not only the harmful effects of bacteria, but also of their potential benefits.
His work on the mechanisms behind the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis (whose efficacy appeared to vary with geography) led him to identify an innocuous mycobacterium, M. vaccae, in soil samples from the shores of Lake Kyoga in Uganda. The organism, because of its similarity to more virulent mycobacteria, can help the human immune system in its response to them. His work resulted in the development of an effective vaccine for leprosy and a treatment that healed the auto-immune systems of leprosy sufferers free of bacterial infection.
Together with a colleague, Graham Rook, he has formed Stanford Rook Ltd. to develop and investigate applications of vaccines derived from M. vaccae.
Stanford believes that the modern rise of allergic diseases such as asthma may be linked to the disappearance of mycobacteria from living environments because of modern hygiene, and that benign organisms such as M. vaccae may even offer hope in the treatment of cancer and HIV/AIDS.
CAR
TODAY IN UW HISTORYNovember 20, 1981: The Canadian Industrial Innovation Centre, which began as a part of UW, has its official opening as an independent agency at 156 Columbia Street. |