![[University of Waterloo]](/goldbar.gif)
| Friday |
Monday, August 30, 2004
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[LeDrew]](http://www.graphics.uwaterloo.ca/content/imagebank/images/19921145.jpg)
![[Walker]](http://www.graphics.uwaterloo.ca/content/imagebank/images/20020603.jpg)
LeDrew has been associate registrar (records and systems) since 1997, after serving in the job of assistant registrar for the math faculty. Walker, her successor, is currently assistant registrar for engineering and science.
Lavigne explains that the "records and systems" position is one of the four senior management jobs in the registrar's office. The others belong to the director of admissions, director of marketing and undergraduate recruitment, and director of student awards and financial aid.
Other managers in the department, which is one of UW's biggest non-academic units, include three assistant registrars and a director of scheduling, exams and convocation.
Both the outgoing associate registrar and the new one are well known on campus as former presidents of the UW staff association, Walker in 1996 and LeDrew in 1997.
LeDrew, who is married to environmental studies dean Ellsworth LeDrew, played a major role in the introduction of the electronic Student Administrative System, including Quest, which went live in 2001. She has been honoured by the Association of Registrars of the Universities and Colleges of Canada, who said in a citation that "Karen's work in the area of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is legendary."
Walker has been in the registrar's office for three years, and was previously in the faculty of science as a lab manager and instructor. He has a PhD from UW in plant physiology, and is currently one of the two staff representatives on the university's board of governors.
"He will be transitioning over the next several weeks," Lavigne said in his announcement, "continuing to attend to his current responsibilities and beginning the process of orientation to his new ones. The search for a new Assistant Registrar will commence immediately."
"Phosphate is very important because it is a limiting element in aquatic ecosystems," says Waterloo biology professor William Taylor. "Ultimately, it controls the productivity of an aquatic ecosystem and the quality of the water." Taylor holds the Canada Research Chair for Limnology at UW, and his specialty is lake and river systems.
"One of the first and still most important negative human impacts on water is over-enrichment with phosphorus," Taylor said. One problem in studying phosphorus pollution is that phosphate, the form available to bacteria and algae, is present only in very small quantities and is difficult to measure.
We know phosphate is in the ecosystem in plants and animals, but within minutes of it leaving those organisms it is reincorporated into another organism," he said. With the use of radiotracers, researchers can measure how quickly the phosphate is reabsorbed in aquatic systems, but they have no idea how much there is. Until now.
In Taylor's laboratory, PhD student Jeff Hudson (currently at the University of Saskatchewan) developed a radiobioassay that can determine how much phosphate is present in the ecosystem. Preliminary results, published in the scientific journal Nature, suggest that the actual amount of phosphate is much less than what was estimated by existing methods. The technique developed by Taylor's lab, while giving results believed to be accurate, still has some hurdles to overcome before it is widely used.
"The technique is still pretty unfriendly towards users, but we are working on improving it so that instead of taking days, it will only take hours to estimate the phosphate concentration," Taylor said.
He is also using his knowledge of lake and river systems for applied research involving human welfare. Eastern Africa is where he and some of his students do research to better understand lakes and rivers. "Canadian researchers know a lot about water since we have many lakes, including the Great Lakes, so it is natural that we share our knowledge with Eastern Africa that also has lakes, including Great Lakes," said Taylor. "When I go to Africa, most of the time is spent advising African graduate students enrolled at Waterloo doing applied research in aquatic ecology. We do research, but we also get a chance to apply our knowledge."
He and his students are also researching the role and fate of microbes in the carbon cycle of aquatic ecosystems. "We are trying to determine what effect external organic carbon sources like dead leaves have on lake productivity, and what we find is that in most cases lake organisms are composed of carbon that was fixed by terrestrial plants. We are still trying to determine how that happens and what that means for lakes."
I wrote on Friday that while Waterloo Collegiate Institute on Hazel Street is the closest high school to UW, Resurrection Catholic Secondary School on University Avenue is a close second. Well, no, it's not, as reader Paul Lehmann quickly pointed out by e-mail. St. David Catholic Secondary School on High Street is closer than RCSS. Turning to Mapquest, I found out that the road distance to St. David is 1.83 miles (2.95 kilometres). Mapquest doesn't seem to believe that there's such a place as 455 University Avenue West, the address of RCSS, but it gives the distance to a nearby plaza as 2.05 miles (3.30 km), and Resurrection would be a little farther. WCI, meanwhile, is 1.17 miles (1.88 km) away. And the new Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary School, which is what I was talking about in the first place, misses the bronze medal, coming fourth at somewhere over 3.4 miles (5.5 km) -- Mapquest doesn't know enough about Laurelwood Drive either.
Here's a reminder that fall term fees are due today for those who want to pay by cheque, or by "fee arrangement" involving the Ontario Student Assistance Program. Pay by bank transfer, and the deadline doesn't come until September 8, a week from Wednesday. If you miss the deadline, late fees start accruing, and the last date you can pay, and still end up a student this term, is September 30. "The University encourages bank payments over other payment methods," says the finance office web site -- a point that might be rather obvious from the later deadline -- and it notes that such payments can be made by telephone, by Internet banking, though a money machine, or even in person, "at a bank teller with cash or money order at any Canadian financial institution".
UW has a new supplier for car rentals, says a memo from the procurement (purchasing) department. "The University's new vehicle rental agency is Enterprise Car Rental," director Steve Cook writes. "Due to a change in ownership with the incumbent, Thrifty Car Rental, it quickly became necessary to ensure the University had an up to date local contract containing negotiated rates for vehicles and cargo vans. Utilizing the Request for Proposal process, Enterprise clearly emerged as the agency which will give the University the best opportunity to meet our unique requirements. Effective September 1, you can contact Enterprise at 884-6001 or steven.vandam@erac.com. Their Waterloo office is located at 379 Weber Street North (across from Canadian Tire). Soon after September you will be able to book online."
There's a web page maintained by my department that lists UW's administrators and key staff people, introduced after the undergraduate calendar was streamlined and no longer included such a list. It may be a bit out of date for the fall term, and I invite departments to take a look and notify me of any changes that need to be made. (Any suggestions for varying the scope of the list will be considered with the advice of the university secretariat, which compiled it in the first place.)
The athletics department proudly reports that Scott Gouthro, who was Most Valuable Player for the hockey Warriors last season, has signed a professional contract with the Port Huron Beacons of the United Hockey League. Goalie Gouthro was an OUA all-star last season as well, and led the Warriors to the playoff round for the first time in three seasons. He sported a 3.45 GAA in 20 games played with a 91.04 save percentage for the Warriors.
Joost Santos of the University of Virginia will give a systems design seminar today (2:00, Engineering II room 1307C) under the title "Applying the Partitioned Multiobjective Risk Method for Portfolio Assessment". . . . Two students in the Certificate in University Teaching program will give their research paper presentations tomorrow at 10 a.m. in Math and Computer room 5158. . . . Water will be shut off in the Student Life Centre Tuesday from 1:30 to 8 p.m. . . .
And as orientation week approaches -- events start Labour Day, a week from today -- the 16th annual production of "Single and Sexy" is ready to hit the stage. An advance performance aimed at such people as dons, advisors and faculty members will be given this Friday, September 3, at 11:30. Seats will also be available for student performances next week, says the producer of the show, Denise Angove of health services. They're scheduled for Tuesday at 10:00, Wednesday at 1:00, and Thursday at 10:00, 1:00 and 5:00. Location: the Humanities Theatre.
CAR