![[University of Waterloo]](/images/logobars/goldbar.gif)
| Friday |
Monday, February 21, 2005
|
Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Chef presents plate with a flourish]](/images/2005/0221lobster.jpg)
Surf and turf
was on the menu at Brubakers in the Student Life Centre on Wednesday,
with a $24.95 price tag. Chef Roland Lynn serves it up: New York
strip loin, butterflied lobster tail, Caesar salad and the usual
accompaniments. "Over 200 meals were devoured," writes Sharron Pruss,
area manager for food services. "Some students had never tried lobster
before." Surf-and-turf night was a special promotion, but Pruss promises
other attractions, including a 10th anniversary "soiree" for Brubakers.
Photo by Chris Hughes, UW Graphics.
|
The memo came from provost Amit Chakma and associate provost (information systems and technology) Alan George. Says their announcement:
"The UW 'Gold Standard' for web pages has had very good adoption across campus over the past three and a half years, and has helped facilitate a common "look and feel" to most Faculty and department/school web sites. While the current design has served us well, several developments have prompted a review and update to a new UW Web Standard.
"First, the number of UW web pages has grown dramatically, with a commensurate increase in the burden of maintaining those pages. An objective of the update to the Standard is to simplify the creation and maintenance of the various web sites on campus. Second, new government mandated accessibility policies require that we adopt international standards in the design of our web pages, so that users with disabilities are able to access our web pages. Third, experience and best practices suggest that navigation in our current standard should be simplified. Finally, there is a need to design web pages which are effective communication and marketing mechanisms, and which improve access to services which are increasingly offered through the web.
"We are aware that our campus colleagues are busy, and this transition to a new UW Web Standard represents one more task in already full schedules. To make the transition as easy as possible, and to make ongoing maintenance of web sites less onerous than in the past, users will be provided with a template and cascading style sheets that prescribe the layout of the new look and feel, and a set of software tools to apply the template and to use in maintaining the new web pages.
![[Vogt]](/images/2005/0221vogt.jpg)
"A Web Operations Team has been created, led by Carol Vogt (left) of
IST, to provide technical assistance to units on campus as they move
to the new standard. A set of courses has been developed by IST to
![[Dominant feature is red horizontal bar]](/images/2005/0221findoutmore.gif)
The future look of UW's main web pages. Remember the previous design, in 2001? Remember the 1999 look? |
Their memo noted an example of the new standard: the undergraduate recruitment web site, For Prospective Students (left).
"The new standard will be implemented gradually over the next six to eight months," said the memo. "It will be mandatory that the main splash pages for Faculties, departments/schools, centres, institutes, and other major organizational units follow the new design. Smaller campus units are also encouraged to adopt the new design for purposes of clearer communication and outreach (including accessibility for those with disabilities) as well as easy maintenance of their web sites."
A Web developers' information session is scheduled for tomorrow at 8:30, with repeats tomorrow at 1:30 and Wednesday at 9:00, in Davis Centre room 1304. More technical sessions will be held later in the week. Details are on the UW web development site.
![[Andersen]](/images/2005/0221andersen.jpg)
Undergraduate students voted last week in favour of a dental insurance
plan and a first-year orientation fee, and elected John Andersen
(right) to be president of the Federation of Students for the
coming year.
Andersen, a science student who has been the Feds' vice-president (internal) for the past year, polled 1,375 votes, compared to 999 for the nearest of his three rivals for the presidency. (Full election results are on the Federation's web site.)
During the campaign that led up to last week's three days of voting, Andersen summarized his platform in three points: "To ensure the Federation of Students acts to facilitate student interests and meet student's needs. Help our student councillors to make greater contributions both in and outside of Students' Council meetings, making the Federation of Students more effective. To ensure that Feds businesses are meeting students needs: providing employment, services and a financial contribution back to the Federation of Students."
Elected along with Andersen was one member of his "Team Blue" ticket: Howie Bender, a political science student who will become the Feds' vice-president (education).
The other two vice-presidencies went to members of the "StudentsFirst" ticket: Carmen Lam (accounting), becoming vice-president (administration and finance), and Lawrence Lam (computer engineering), becoming VP (internal). The new executive will take office on May 1.
Students voted yes on both referendum questions that were put to them:
Nominating committee members | ||
| Graham Brown | 519/885-1460/200 | ggbrown@uwaterloo.ca |
| Nadir Budhwani | nabudhwa@uwaterloo.ca | |
| Anne Jenson | 3916 | jajenson@uwaterloo.ca |
| Paul Koenderman | 519/571-4050 | pkoenderman@yahoo.com |
| Bob Le Roy | 4051 | leroy@uwaterloo.ca |
| Harriet Lyons | 2991 | hlyons@uwaterloo.ca |
| Bill Pudifin | 2408 | bpudifin@uwaterloo.ca |
| Manoj Sachdev | 3370 | msachdev@uwaterloo.ca |
| Paul Schellenberg | 4698 | pjschell@uwaterloo.ca |
| Gerry Schneider | 4580 | gerrys@uwaterloo.ca |
| Thomas Seebohm | 7618 | tseebohm@uwaterloo.ca |
| Jacob Sivak | 3174 | jsivak@uwaterloo.ca |
| Ian Williams | 2825 | idwillia@uwaterloo.ca |
| Becky Wroe | 2478 | pres@feds.uwaterloo.ca |
Any information will be held in confidence by the Committee. Submissions will be destroyed when the Committee's work has been completed.
| WHEN AND WHERE |
|
Reading week: no classes Monday-Friday in AHS, ES, science, arts.
Computational mathematics seminar: Matthias Takouda, management sciences, "Semidefinite Programming Relaxations for the Facility Layout Design", 3:30, Math and Computer room 5158. Sociology professor Augie Fleras: "Reading Between the Lines: Rethinking Newsmedia Relations with Aboriginal Peoples, People of Colour, and Immigrant and Refugee Women and Men." 7:00, Kitchener Public Library main branch. Co-op match results for spring term jobs available tomorrow morning on JobMine. Theatre Beyond Words:"The Potato People Survive the Great Outdoors", 10:00 and 1:15 Tuesday and Wednesday, Humanities Theatre. 'Oil on Ice', documentary about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, free showing sponsored by Waterloo Public Interest Research Group, Tuesday 4:00, Student Life Centre room 3103. Interdisciplinary Coffee Talk Society: Eric Poisson, University of Guelph, "Our Strange Universe", Tuesday 5 p.m., Graduate House. Engineering alumni pub evening, Tuesday from 7 p.m., McGinnis Frontrow, University Avenue. |
Details on how to enter the contest are on the main weather station webpage. The deadline to enter is Thursday, February 24, at 4 p.m. Last year's contest saw more than 600 people enter.
There are prizes for the two people who are the closest to guessing the correct time. The prizes are a couple of books, appropriately enough, about weather: How the Weather Works and Weather Forecasting.
In the six years of operation of the weather station, the earliest day that the temperature hit 20 degrees was March 8 in 2000 while the latest was last year's date of April 18. However, in the past, some pessimistic contest entries have chosen dates in late May.
The research weather station, located on the north campus, has all the equipment of a Class A station with equipment provided by Environment Canada and Alberta-based Campbell Scientific. The weather station is used for both educational and research purposes. As part of an upper year project course, a group of UW civil engineering students found a suitable location for the station, designed the instrument structure, and erected the structure. Another group of students designed a Web site that shows the current readings from the weather station as well as an archive of weather data going back to 1998. This website is very popular, averaging about 750 hits a day, although at times when the weather is severe the number of hits can reach upwards of 1,500 a day. Since April 2000, the Web site has had almost three million hits.
Data available from the station include current temperature, wind chill, precipitation, relative humidity/dew point, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and incoming radiation. Gardeners, landscapers, engineering consultants and schoolchildren are among the people who have used the current readings and the archives from the weather station.
CAR
