![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Friday, August 22, 2003
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Pink houses on the horizon]](/images/2003/0821townhouses.gif)
New houses dawn
on the north campus horizon: the first phase of the new
graduate
student townhouse project is well under way, with 100 houses scheduled
to be ready January 1. Photo by Barbara Elve.
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"It was a contractor's nightmare," said Hans Knepper of plant operations, who was managing the project up to his retirement last spring and has been back over the past few months to see it finished. He pointed out that CEIT had to fit snugly among existing buildings (one of its interior walls is actually the former outside wall of Physics) and connect to service tunnels that ran underneath it.
The building, budgeted at $43 million, is listed as 170,000 square feet, making it bigger than the Dana Porter Library, or half the size of the Davis Centre. It'll be the headquarters of two big academic departments: earth sciences and electrical and computer engineering.
I think it'll also be the crossroads of the campus. In fact, it's not so much a building as a traffic hub, as it's linked on various levels to Physics, Davis, Chemistry II, Earth Sciences and Chemistry, and Engineering III. A ground-level "pass-through" makes it even more of an agora.
The upper levels (3, 4 and 5) are occupied by offices and labs -- one or two already in use, while others will go into operation over the next few weeks as equipment is brought over from other buildings. The two lower levels are more public space, including a 150-seat lecture theatre (with amazing acoustics), other classrooms, graphics and food services outlets, and space for displays from the earth sciences museum, including those dinosaurs.
Yesterday the building was bustling with workers balancing the air circulation system, squeezing caulking into joints in the floor, vacuuming up construction dust and measuring for modular furniture. It's not officially open to the public yet -- but a month from now, CEIT will be something to see.
And any Grebel alum will know exactly what that means. Along with photos, programs and other memorabilia for display at the event, former Grebelites are being invited to bring their yearbooks.
Festivities get underway tonight with registration starting at 6, activities for kids and a rehearsal of the Alumni Chapel Choir at 7, and a President's Reception at 8 offering a chance to reconnect with other alumni, faculty and staff.
Saturday will see more choir rehearsals, along with lots of free time for catching up with old friends or games of volleyball or squash. Following a barbecue at 5 p.m., alumni will celebrate "the ultimate evening of Grebel music" with GrebelFolk, a folk festival outside on the green with performances of "the kind of music you remember from retreats, chapels, commie suppers, coffee houses, stairwells." Featured performers include Brian Rudy ('89), Cate Falconer Lichty ('83) and Sharon (Dick) Johnston ('80), with headliner Charley Beck, a.k.a. Sarah Sedgman ('98).
All that choir practice, including another on Sunday at 1 p.m., is leading up to a grand performance of the Alumni Chapel Choir at 2:30 p.m. at the Celebration Service at Waterloo North Mennonite Church, with speaker Walter Klaassen. The event will commemorate 25 years of leadership Leonard Enns has given the Chapel Choir.
Grebel's director of development, Fred Martin, says he's expecting more than 400 people to attend this weekend. "Grebel is essentially about people," says the college's president, Henry Paetkau. "This weekend is a celebration of the enduring relationships built through the common experience of being a Grebel student."
Electrical and computer engineering. Ladan Tahvildari, "Quality-Driven Object-Oriented Re-engineering Framework." Supervisors, K. Kontogiannis and R. E. Seviora. Oral defence, Wednesday, August 27, 10 a.m., Davis Centre room 1304. Thesis on deposit in the engineering graduate office, Carl Pollock Hall room 4367.
Philosophy. Jason West, "Thomas Aquinas' Use of Metaphysics: Natura, Suppositum and Esse." Supervisor, E. Jennifer Ashworth. Oral defence, Tuesday, September 2, 10 a.m., Humanities room 138. Thesis on deposit in the arts graduate office, Humanities room 317.
Systems design engineering. Steven Roberts, "Configuration Optimization in Socio-Ecological Systems." Supervisors, P. Calamai and G. B. Hall. Oral defence, Friday, September 5, 10 a.m., Davis Centre room 2584. Thesis on deposit in the engineering graduate office, Carl Pollock Hall room 4367.
PhD listings usually appear in the Gazette; these five are shown in the Daily Bulletin instead because there won't be another Gazette issue until September 10.
"PearlQuiz Author" will be shown off in a session at 11:00 in Dana Porter Library room 329. PearlQuiz Author, produced by Web Pearls Inc. of Waterloo, is "an online educational program that allows for the creation of web-based quiz and course modules with several options. The niche for this product is its ability to call live math calculations from a couple of different sources and the administration abilities for gathering and comparing marks. However, it was designed for both academic and corporate training and educational initiatives."
Then this afternoon, also in Library 329 (otherwise known as the Flex Lab), there's a series of presentations from people in the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology (otherwise known as LT3). "LT3's students, co-op students, and similar team members will be presenting their finished work in areas as diverse as learning object creation, evaluation, and UWONE online course management systems, etc. Please join us to hear the details of this multi-faceted presentations." The event runs from 1 to 3 p.m.
Now on to other things that are, I trust, actually happening in the present tense. The annual conference of the Canadian Institute for Theatre Technology is continuing, in UW's two theatres as well as the Arts Lecture Hall. The highlight is expected to be a luncheon talk tomorrow by Christopher Newton, long-time artistic director of the Shaw Festival (12:30 in the Festival Room, South Campus Hall).
Other conferences are also under way, including "Augtoberfest" for people from secondary school liaison offices at universities across Canada, and a small summer school session sponsored by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. And some 100 dons and other residence life staff arrive today for a week of training before the fall term gets under way.
A plea to those teaching in the fall: "Courseware Solutions wants your books!" writes Tricia Mumby of graphics. "The copyright folks are working hard to clear all copyright for fall books before the Access Copyright (formerly Cancopy) license expires at the end of this month. If you need a coursepack produced for September that may contain copyrighted material, it is critical that you submit it as soon as possible. After this week, there are no guarantees on how long it will take to clear permissions outside of our license. Graphics will do its very best to get all the copyright cleared before the end of the month."
![[Busker logo]](/images/2003/0822busker.gif)
Lydia Bell of UW's audio-visual centre sends a note that I think
she's not too happy about, notifying the campus that the so-called
"Blaster Worm" computer virus got into UW's subnet 53 in a big way.
Subnet 53, as you may not know, is the part of the UW computer network
that links the computers in podiums in a number of high-tech
classrooms. The result is that the podiums will be out of commission
until staff from information systems and technology can get round and
disinfect the machines one by one.
"I don't know how long this will take to fix," Bell adds.
Waterloo's Busker Carnival continues all weekend. No word of whether the participants are practising their fire-eating and sword-swallowing in Ron Eydt Village, where they're staying.
Finally . . . I'm going to be away for a couple of days. Until I return, the contact person for the Daily Bulletin is Avvey Peters, alpeters@uwaterloo.ca.
CAR