![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
|
Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Handshake in the lobby]](/images/2003/0930rock.gif)
Rock in the CEIT:
David Johnston, president of UW, welcomes Allan Rock, federal minister of
industry, to UW's new Centre for Environmental and Information Technology.
Rock visited campus Friday for
the launch of the
SCUBA-2 astronomical telescope project.
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A session on "Basic Garden Design", sponsored by the Employee Assistance Program, starts at 12 noon in Physics room 313, and is expected to end before 1:00 so people who want to get to the staff lunch can do so. . . . The "Carbon Copy" graphics centre in the new CEIT building will be closed until 1 p.m. today. . . . Sales and technical staff from Sun Microsystems are visiting the Math Faculty Computing Facility and will give presentations morning and afternoon in Davis Centre room 1302. . . . Career services workshops today deal with "Career Decision-Making" (10:30) and "Nest Steps" (4:30). . . .
Tomorrow brings the grand opening of the new CampusTechShop, which was created when the Computer Store moved out of the Math and Computer building over the summer and merged with TechWorx to become one store in the lower level of the Student Life Centre. Susy Kustra, who's now doing marketing for the retail services department, says tomorrow's event "includes a grand prize draw for an Apple iPod, and hourly prize draws for a Lexmark all-in-one printer, a DVD player, etc. Faculty and staff have been sent invitations to the event with a ballot for them to enter the draw. Ballots are also available at the CampusTechShop between now and October 1."
Tomorrow also brings an International Opportunities Fair, to be held in the Student Life Centre from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Says a flyer: "Come and learn first hand about opportunities to study abroad, unique programs, volunteer/work abroad possibilities, the cost of living in Australia, and more." Besides many programs sponsored outside UW, this university currently has 93 international student exchange programs throughout the world, we're reminded by Maria Lango of the international programs office in Needles Hall. For more information, she can be reached at ext. 3999.
Also tomorrow: a lunchtime concert (12:30, Conrad Grebel University College chapel) by Peter Mathers, playing flamenco guitar.
Besides the three major party candidates, plus Pauline Richards of the Green Party, the speakers at yesterday's event included an independent candidate, Owen Ferguson. (Not present were Lou Reitzel of the Family Coalition Party and independent candidate Julian Ichim.)
| Voting day is Thursday, October 2. The human resources department sends a reminder that, by Ontario law, employees are entitled to "three consecutive hours" off work so they can vote. Since polls are open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., that could mean that someone whose working hours start in the morning and extend past 5 p.m. might need extra time off. "The employee may request that his or her employer allow such additional time for voting as may be necessary," says the law, "and the employer shall grant the request." |
The first and key question to the candidates' panel was about tuition fee levels, which, they were reminded, have more than doubled in the past ten years. A sort of bidding war resulted. The Progressive Conservatives, in power in Ontario since 1995, would retain the current limit of 2 per cent on annual increases in "regulated" fees. The Liberal Party would "freeze" fees for two years. The New Democratic Party would cut fees by 10 per cent. The Green Party would keep reducing fees to 50 per cent of their current level, or perhaps less.
Other points made by the candidates' panel:
Elizabeth Witmer, the Conservative incumbent: "I have been a very strong advocate of education. . . . We will continue to do everything possible to ensure that no one is denied access to university. . . . Economic growth in Ontario will ensure that when you graduate, you have good, well-paying jobs to go to."
Sean Strickland, Liberal: "We're going to increase capacity by 10 per cent over five years. . . . It is critical for a government to provide an appropriate level of funding so the universities don't have to rely on the private sector for their daily operations . . . so they can maintain their independence."
Dan Lajoie, New Democrat: "It really comes down to the money issue, doesn't it? . . . We want to give operating grants a boost. . . . Universities are a priority, and people will want to teach at a university whose priority is students."
Pauline Richards, Green: "We need to increase revenue, not take away from health or education. We would tax pollution. . . . Corporations have a lot to gain from having an educated populace."
The plan for Biology 140L is one of eight projects that received grants from the UW Learning Initiatives Fund in late summer. Tom Carey, associate vice-president (learning resources and innovation), says a second round of grants is to be announced shortly.
Trevor Charles, Cheryl Duxbury and Christine Dupont, all of the department of biology, are involved in teaching Bio 140L, which is expected to be in high demand even after a change this year that lets some students take the lecture part of the course, Biology 140, without taking the labs as well.
"Due to space limitations in the laboratory," says a project summary, "enrolment in the course has been limited to 512 students (16 lab sections of 32 each). . . .
"Two different teaching assistants are in charge of each section of 32 students. Inevitably, there are inconsistencies in transfer of information from the teaching assistants to the students during the pre-lab instructional sessions. There are also inconsistencies in the demonstration of basic Microbiology laboratory techniques. This has a direct impact on the performance of the students in the laboratory, and many students have difficulty with essential microbiological tools that they will be using in later Microbiology courses.
"Techniques include aseptic technique, the streak plate method to obtain isolated single colonies, staining methods, serial dilutions, and subculturing. If students could attain a better understanding of the procedures, techniques and underlying theory before each laboratory session, then they should be much better prepared for participation in the laboratory activities. The major objective of this proposal is thus to develop a new computer based approach for the delivery of pre-lab instruction. This approach would go a long way towards ensuring consistency in instruction throughout the different laboratory sections. An effort would be made to present the material in a way that would better accommodate students with a variety of learning styles."
The project is starting this fall with a survey to evaluate how well students now understand the material. Then, starting in the winter term, a co-op student will be hired to create Flash animations of step-by step instructions and background material for several basic laboratory techniques.
Students will also face a series of online quizzes based on the material in the animations, and will be expected to pass those before coming to the actual labs.
The proposal goes on: "The latter part of the project is twofold -- to create simple online tutorials to guide the students through the analysis of data collected in the laboratory and to create links from the animations of the techniques that they are using to case studies of experiments that are being carried out in current research.
"Real experimental data would be presented and the students would have a chance to work with these results in a variety of activities such as graphing, calculations and perhaps judgements on quality. They would receive some feedback on this analysis before they perform similar analyses of their own data after the laboratory session. If these activities were completed prior to the laboratory sessions then the objectives of the experiments would be clearer to the students and their own results would be more easily interpreted."
These are the other seven projects that received grants from the Learning Initiatives Fund in this summer's round:
A couple of correctionsIn yesterday's Daily Bulletin, I showed a picture of physics professor Stefan Idziak making a lot of points in a lab demonstration, and managed to truncate his surname. It's I-d-z-i-a-k.Last week, I noted that under a procedural change in the registrar's office, end-of-term marks will be posted on Quest as soon as they're received following the end of exams. I said that for this term that would mean December 20. Well, December 20 is a Saturday, so don't look for any marks on Quest until Monday, December 22, says Joanne Voisin of the registrar's office. |
The donations will also give a boost to research into finance and insurance as well as enhance study space for students at a UW-affiliated college. Further, the generous individual donation by CIBC executive Wayne Fox and his wife, Isabel, will increase graduate student scholarships in the faculty of arts.
The $2 million corporate gift from CIBC has three parts:
Neil Gordon, a senior vice-president of CIBC, said: "We want to do our part in assisting young people to pursue their education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. This investment in human resources is vital to the future of our country."
To encourage the pursuit of graduate studies, Wayne Fox, CIBC's vice-chair and chief risk officer, and his wife Isabel have made a $1 million individual gift to establish 10 endowed graduate scholarships in the faculty of arts.
"We felt that an excellent way to contribute to the betterment of society would be to provide financial assistance for top young scholars," Fox said. The awards will be known as the Wayne C. Fox Graduate Scholarships in Arts. The scholarships are worth $15,000 a year, with $5,000 coming from the Wayne C. Fox Endowment and $10,000 through the Ontario Graduate Scholarship double matching program.
Tonight brings the next lecture in this year's series, "From Hate to Love", and Seljak says it shouldn't be missed. Rabbi Dow Marmur will address the topic: "Holiness and Spirituality: Are they Mutually Exclusive?"
Says Seljak: "I have long admired the work of Rabbi Marmur, a close personal friend of my thesis supervisor, Gregory Baum. If you have heard Rabbi Marmur speak then I know you will be here tonight at St. Jerome's Siegfried Hall (7:30 p.m.). If you haven't, do yourself a favour and come. He is one of Canada's most distinguished rabbis and an eminent scholar in his own right."
Rabbi emeritus of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, Marmur is a senior lecturer in the faculty of theology at St. Michael's College as well as being a senior fellow at the University of Toronto's Massey College. He is also author of several books, including Beyond Survival: Reflections on the Future of Judaism, The Star of Return: Judaism after the Holocaust, and Choose Life: Thoughts on Grief and Growing.
He will deliver the 2003-2004 Catholic School Boards' Lecture, which this year is jointly sponsored by the Jewish studies program at UW and the Devlin Lecture Fund at St. Jerome's.
More from Seljak: "We are called to holiness, Rabbi Marmur argues, as a people: 'You [plural!] shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy? (Leviticus 19).' The people are called to imitate God's holiness in their collective action. On the other hand, spirituality today is understood as the individual's internal search for the divine. How do we reconcile these two biblically grounded quests? Reflecting on the differences between holiness and spirituality, Rabbi Marmur describes the challenges of faith in our time by pointing to the common ground between Christianity and Judaism, between the past and present, and between individual needs and collective demands."
CAR