September 17, 2002

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

UW museums get provincial grant
'Affiliation' with health school proposed
Study finds 'disparities in access'
Happening today or shortly
The talk of the campus

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

WLU staff on strike: employer's update

[Witmer stands before dinosaur]
Cabinet minister Elizabeth Witmer made the announcement Friday in the earth sciences museum, home of UW's well-known Albertosaurus. Photo by Mike Christie, UW Graphics.

UW museums get provincial grant -- from the UW news bureau

Ontario deputy premier Elizabeth Witmer, Kitchener-Waterloo MPP, announced on Friday that the Waterloo Heritage Collections Association will receive an $18,541 operating grant. The announcement was made on behalf of David Tsubouchi, minister of culture.

The ministry's Community Museum Operating Grant program provides assistance to community museums to help them protect and preserve Ontario's heritage, encourage community-based support for local museums and improve standards of museum operation.

The funding will be used by the Waterloo Heritage Collections Association -- an umbrella for UW's museums and galleries -- to help cover annual operations costs that include compensation, exhibitions, conservation and maintenance.

"We are very proud of our campus museums which represent natural outgrowths of diverse academic research about games as well as gems and minerals," UW president David Johnston said. "We are grateful that the government recognizes the importance of the two public museums with this operating grant."

"Museums are an important element of our culture," Witmer said. "The grant being awarded to the Waterloo Heritage Collections Association is very valuable to the province of Ontario, Waterloo Region and our community because it will help support the preservation and exhibition of our heritage and history."

'Affiliation' with health school proposed

A proposal for "some level of affiliation" between UW and the Toronto-based Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences was made public yesterday, first in a memo from Mike Sharratt, dean of applied health sciences, and then in a statement by provost Amit Chakma to UW's senate.

The official statement, provided by the university secretariat, said Michener and UW

have developed an excellent working relationship over the last few years. An agreement for collaboration was signed on October 6, 2000, which has resulted in staff currently working on two joint degree/diploma programs. These programs involve Waterloo's Faculty of Applied Health Sciences and the Chiropody and Respiratory Therapy programs at Michener. The University of Waterloo will also be partnering with Michener on its BHSc Medical Laboratory Science submission to PEQAB, which has a 15% "outside of discipline" or breadth requirement, and Waterloo will help fill this need, primarily with courses offered through distance education.
We are now exploring further opportunities for collaboration, including some level of affiliation. There are potentially great benefits that could be derived for both institutions by developing a closer relationship.

Chakma told the senate that discussions are "at a fairly early stage" and are looking at "some sort of affiliation, yet to be defined".

Michener, founded in 1958, offers specialized training in various health professions, including acupuncture, chiropody, nuclear medical technology, anesthesia technology, diagnostic cytology, echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging. It was in the news just last week with the announcement that the Ontario government is providing it with an extra $1 million to support the training of more medical laboratory technologists.

Michener's web site notes that "all full-time programs offered by The Michener Institute today include educational preparation as well as clinical education at one or more affiliated clinical sites located throughout Ontario and beyond. . . .

"In 1972 it moved to the present quarters located at 222 St. Patrick Street in downtown Toronto, close to major teaching hospitals. Today more than 400 health professionals instruct on a part-time basis at The Michener Institute, affording Michener students access to a unique resource of clinical teachers and teaching material.

"As a post-secondary, diploma and certificate granting institution, The Michener Institute is one among a few Ontario universities and colleges responding to the education needs in health care. The Michener Institute prides itself on its ability to provide current and innovative health care education and thus aims to address unmet educational requirements rather than duplicating existing programming offered by other post-secondary institutions in and outside of Ontario."

Study finds 'disparities in access' -- a news release from the Canadian Millennium Scholarships Foundation

Gaps in access to post-secondary education persist, especially at the university level, according to a major new reference work on PSE published today by the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation. However, contrary to popular belief, a decade of rapid rises in tuition fees and student loan borrowing has not reduced overall accessibility in the Canadian post-secondary education system.

"College is equally accessible to Canadians across family income brackets, but disparities in access to university persist," said Sean Junor, co-author of the study and Foundation Policy and Research Officer. "This disparity is likely due to higher academic entrance requirements and higher university-related costs."

The Price of Knowledge: Access and Student Finance in Canada combines new and existing research in unprecedented detail to provide the most complete picture ever produced of the nation's students, their finances, and the assistance they receive from government and other sources.

"To continue to improve equality of access, it is clear that the emphasis on student financial aid needs to be supplemented with new efforts," said Alex Usher, co-author and Director, Research & Program Development for the Foundation. "Reducing deficiencies in academic preparation, awareness of PSE options, and the targeting of student financial aid towards young people from lower-income families may help to tackle disparities in university access. The problem will not be solved simply by writing larger cheques."

Among the key findings in The Price of Knowledge:

Recent from Statistics Canada

Tuition fees up 4.1 per cent

Total university income up 3.5 per cent

Average undergraduate university tuition rose by 76% through the 1990s, or by 6% a year, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Government transfers to individuals for PSE increased by 68% over the past decade, to $4.3 billion nation-wide each year. The Government of Canada spends roughly as much annually on non-need based financial transfers to individuals, largely through the tax system, as it does on means-tested, needs-based student financial aid.
There is no readily observable relationship between tuition and overall participation rates, although tuition may affect the characteristics of PSE attendees.
Average student debt, among those students who borrow and graduate from four-year programs, is approximately $21,200. Forty-four per cent of students have no debt; 23% have debt in excess of $20,000.
Parents are overly optimistic that their children will receive help in covering PSE-related costs, with over 90% expecting them to qualify for government loans, when in reality closer to half will receive such aid.
In addition to increasingly high tuition fees, students in professional or second-entry programs can also often face thousands of dollars per year in supplies and equipment costs.
Financial barriers constitute the largest single reason cited by non-attendees for not going on to PSE, but non-financial reasons are collectively between two and three times as likely to be cited as a reason for discontinuing PSE studies.
Students are increasingly likely to be under 21 years of age and studying full-time; due to higher summer earnings and wage increases, students are working slightly less during the school year.
Despite a six-fold increase in First Nations PSE enrolment between 1980 and 1995, First Nations PSE attainment rates tend to lag behind those of the general population by about 25%.

Happening today or shortly

Today's the day to register for "instructional" programs in campus recreation, from aerobics to bouldering. How: pick up a ticket this morning at the Physical Activities Complex, then follow the instructions. The CR web site asks, rhetorically, "Why do we do Registration this way?!" and gives this answer: "If no tickets were given out with times of when to return, you would be standing in line with up to 2,000 other people who are also trying to register. Historically, this resulted in a wait of 2-3 HOURS to register! Now, you only spend a short length of time in the morning getting a ticket, then no more than 20 minutes at the office to register."

Now speaking of standing in line: co-op students, at least those who are going out on work terms in January, should head on over to Needles Hall this morning to pick up their documents. Officially called the master copy student record, it's the key piece of paper as students, employers and the co-op department prepare for job interview season.

More things happening today:

Auction of used and abandoned bicycles, starting at 12:30 at the Student Life Centre.
"Monte Cristo Penne with dancing shrimp and tomato sauce" for lunch at the Festival Room in South Campus Hall. Gotta see that one.
"Taking Care of Business: A Primer on the Nature and Practice of Consulting", a three-hour course sponsored by the InfraNet Project.
Matthew Good plays Federation Hall (tickets $15 for Federation members, $20 for others)

The Waterloo Aerial Robotics Group (WARG) will hold an information session starting at 5:30 in Davis Centre room 1301. "We will be introducing ourselves," says Gilbert Lai, one of the organizers, "to those of you that are interested in taking part in one of the most exciting and challenging student projects on campus. You will be able to see some video footage/slide show of the 2002 International Aerial Robotics Competition held in Calgary at the end of July this year, as well as footage from previous competitions that WARG has participated in. We will also have all of our aerial robots on display."

Tomorrow begins a series of events under the heading of "Forbidden Music", meaning music that was suppressed in Germany during the Nazi regime. German musicologist Albrecht Riethueller is the central figure, along with pianist Sherri Jones, who will give a concert of such music at 12:30 tomorrow in the Conrad Grebel College chapel. They'll then speak at Grebel's community supper tomorrow night, and more events will follow in the next few days.

Also tomorrow, this year's "Smarter Health" seminar series begins, with a talk on "Innovations in Medical Image Management" (Wednesday at 3 p.m., Davis Centre room 1302).

Thursday, the Alzheimer Society of Canada is encouraging people to hold "coffee break" events that are at once fund-raisers and awareness-raisers about this difficult disease. At least two such events are scheduled on campus. All day long, there will be "a selection of scrumptious goodies" at the main UW Graphics location in the General Services Complex; and from 8 a.m. to 12:30 the offer is "coffee and a homemade goodie" by the fireplace in the Lyle Hallman Institute, Matthews Hall, which is the home of UW's Alzheimer Research and Education Program. You have two days to work up a good appetite.

Thursday also brings an information meeting about NSERC and OGS scholarships for graduate study in mathematics: 3:30 p.m., Davis Centre room 1302.

The talk of the campus

"We are now hiring student fundraisers," writes Kathy Prpic, supervisor of the annual fund mail-call program in UW's development office. The pay is $8 an hour to start: "work on campus, flexible hours, raises every term! If you are a good communicator, enthusiastic and dependable, then we want to talk to you. Apply at the office of development, second floor, South Campus Hall."

As I mentioned yesterday, spring term marks are now available on Quest, and the registrar's office has this advice for students who are interested: "Want to check your grades? Select Your Portfolio -- Academic Summary -- Course/Grade History to view grades on a term by term basis. This is quicker than reviewing the Unofficial Transcript. Dropped courses are now annotated to reflect whether penalty grades have been applied. You are invited to check them out using this new feature."

Staff and faculty will not be surprised to hear that the United Way campaign is around the corner: it'll run for the month of October, as it does every year. Chandrika Anjaria of information systems and technology and Winston Cherry of statistics and actuarial science have agreed to co-chair the campaign again this year, and the word is that the official goal this year will be $150,000. That's the same as last year's goal for employee givings to local agencies through the single United Way campaign, and last year the target was exceeded by some $11,000. Watch for publicity about the campaign over the next couple of weeks.

"We will be holding the local ACM programming contests and team tryouts on Saturday, September 21 and September 28," writes Gordon Cormack of the department of computer science, who coaches UW's programming teams to top placings in the international competitions almost every year. "The contest runs for three hours and involves on-line problem solving in Java, C, C++ or Pascal. Results of the local contests are used to select six team members to represent UW at the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (first round in November). A variety of problems are posed, from easy to challenging." Information for potential competitors is available on-line.

The human resources department sends word that the "Bridging the Gap" pre-retirement series is being offered again this fall at the Rockway Centre in Kitchener. First session begins October 22. More information is available at 741-2507.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
September 17, 1992: Instruction sessions begin to show staff, faculty and students how to use the new UWinfo gopher.