![[University of Waterloo]](/images/logobars/goldbar.gif)
| Yesterday |
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Cheyne at mirror]](http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/arts/images/cheyne_a.jpg)
Retired
as of July 1 is J. Allan Cheyne of UW's department of
psychology.
Al Cheyne has
been a faculty member at UW since 1970. His research is in such
areas as perception, sleep and dream states -- and he drew
national
publicity two years ago for his contribution to a book on "the
science of Harry Potter".
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Premiums for the extended health plan, for example, went up by 7 per cent, David Dietrich of the human resources department said after a meeting of the pension and benefits committee saw a report on 2005-06 costs. "The additional cost to UW is $440,000, on a current premium of $6,300,000," he said.
He added that the insurance company involved, Great-West Life, "initially wanted 14 per cent, due primarily to our out-of-Canada experience" and the uncertainty about chiropractic benefits in the wake of the Ontario government's decision to stop paying for chiropractors' services. UW may have to put more money into the health plan depending on the long-term decision about how much to pay for employees' chiro bills, Dietrich said.
The extended health plan is the biggest chunk of the UW employee benefit program, pensions aside. The officials who manage it continue to stress that -- as with other kinds of "insurance" -- it's essentially a cost-sharing program, and if the total cost of prescriptions, massages and other services for employees and retirees goes up, the premiums are going to follow.
Next biggest chunk of the benefit program is the dental plan, with premiums approaching $2.8 million this year after a 2 per cent increase from the company that handles it, Manulife.
Sun Life, which handles the life insurance program, would ordinarily have charged a 30 per cent increase in premiums this year, Dietrich said, "but risk-sharing in the cooperative arrangement we have with other universities restricts annual increases or decreases to no more than 10 per cent." Total bill this year: $1.2 million. Life insurance is partially paid for by individual employees, whose premiums will total another $600,000 for the year.
Costs of long-term disability insurance are still up in the air, as an agreement last year with the insurance company, Manulife, provides for calculating rates retroactively. Dietrich said a 12.4 per cent increase for the 2004-05 year seems likely -- bringing the total to almost $1.6 million. Individual employees pay the cost of the LTD program, and Dietrich said the actual premiums they pay will probably go up by 11 per cent this year, to about 0.64 per cent of base pay. The premiums are subsidized by a reserve fund, which was $3.8 million at last report, Dietrich said. "We are in the third year of a ten-year plan to use up this reserve."
It notes that Diana Denton of the drama and speech communication department, with co-researcher Prof. Andrew McMurray, received a $217,000 grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Innovation Trust to assist with their research and creating the centre. As a result, Denton can use videotaping technology and videoconferencing to investigate spoken and gestural communication.
"The challenges of technology," writer Bob Whitton explains, "can distance people from face-to-face interpersonal interaction and create barriers and misunderstandings. As a professor of interpersonal communication, she studies how to humanize the technologies in order to enhance human communication and performance.
"The CCAT lab facility consists in part of two sizable rooms in which students can gather to conduct videotaped meetings, in what looks very much like a comfortable TV studio. The activity that takes place there can, simultaneously, be watched from TV screens linking the studio (often called 'the lab') to a nearby classroom."
Says Denton: "My background is something of a mixture of arts with business." She completed her PhD in 1996, in "holistic and aesthetic education", is a poet and has worked as a management consultant. She joined the UW department in 2000 and has studied meditation and practised it for some 30 years. The studies "made me more aware of a link between contemplative and reflective practices and communications." She also taught for a dozen years at Ryerson University in Toronto.
Her students work in small groups, moving back and forth between lab and classroom. While in the latter room, they assess each other's meetings and provide subsequent feedback on students' oral communication strategies. In her research study of performance management, students work with a grade distribution process. Student teams set performance criteria at the beginning of the term for a team project and assess member performance in a videotaped grade distribution meeting at the end of the term. Projects are often complex and include assessment of oral and written communication as well as promotion and management of events.
The students in the lab soon become keenly involved in what it is they are working on, to the point that they completely forget everything they do or say is being recorded. "There is nothing intrusive about the process," Denton reports. "Those who are in the classroom analyzing the work of those in the lab room, can analyze what is happening in a non-intrusive way. By analyzing how the students' critiques are given, and how they are received by those who are in the meeting, we can tell that a good deal of effective self-management is taking place. The students are learning in an effective way."
She says that her research and use of the new equipment focuses on three areas: the study of "conflict" management, study of "performance" management and trans-traditional spirituality -- communicating across differences. "We have to understand what it means to really listen to each other -- to find out where the other person is coming from," she adds.
| WHEN AND WHERE |
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Extended library hours now through the end of spring term
exams (August 13): Davis Centre 24 hours a day, except Sundays 2 to
8 a.m.; Dana Porter daily 8 a.m. to 2 a.m.
Class enrolment for students enrolling for the first time, continues through July 31 on Quest. Davis Copy Centre closed today. Graphics locations open: Carbon Copy, CEIT; Express Copy, Dana Porter Library; Pixel Planet, Math and Computer. Sandwiches for shelters: Muslim Students Association and Waterloo Christian Fellowship making peanut butter and jam sandwiches for local shelters, 11:00 to 2:00, Student Life Centre. 'Interdisciplinary Education' workshop sponsored by teaching resource office, 12 noon, details online. Lunch at Mudie's cafeteria, Village I: "Warm artichoke and spinach nachos." Dinner: pecan and raisin chicken Royal. Christmas in July turkey dinner Wednesday 4 to 7 p.m., Brubakers, Student Life Centre, $11.95. Midnight Sun reaches Calgary on Thursday; alumni barbecue at Heritage Park, details online. |
Tony S. Wirjanto of the economics department has a year-long sabbatical: "I will conduct collaborative research with researchers at Zhejiang University at Hangzhou, China. The research will construct a dynamic panel of firms in China and systematically investigate the mechanism by which firms make their discrete financing choices and contrast them with those of US and Canadian firms. In addition, I will provide assistance on teaching and program development for their newly created Jian Wanling Finance Research Center."
Philip J. Howarth of earth sciences has a six-month "special leave": "I shall focus on completing two research projects. One is concerned with information extraction from remote-sensing imagery for landscape pattern analysis. The second involves the study of hyperspectral imagery and lidar imagery for mineral exploration and mine-tailing rehabilitation."
Anthony Lee Endres of earth sciences has a six-month sabbatical: "I will prepare manuscripts on completed research, conduct fieldwork in Southern Ontario, continue collaborative research with groups at Leeds, Stanford and Rome, and continue graduate student supervision."
Alan V. S. Douglas of the school of accountancy is on sabbatical for six months: "I plan to revise my papers for re-submission, advance my SSHRC project with Ping Zhang (U of T), and Pat O'Brien (UW), continue my projects with Dan Bernhardt (UIUC) and Raffi Indjejekian (U Michigan), participate in academic conferences and begin developing a new course (AFM 472)."
Jill Tomasson Goodwin has a year-long sabbatical: "During my leave I have three projects: Working with a Toronto-based digital archives to create scholarly digital materials about Canadian public address (this project will involve grant applications to support development and dissemination); continuing work on a co-authored book on the social perspectives of design; and continuing work on a project involving the design and delivery of business presentation materials in digital environments."
In addition, two more faculty members began year-long sabbatical leaves on May 1:
Khaled Soudki of the civil engineering department: "The use of fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) materials in new construction and intelligent health monitoring sensors to increase service life will be researched. Field applications of FRP rehabilitation systems will be examined. Interactions are planned with local consultants, contractors and government agencies."
Paul Wesson of physics: "I wish to interact with several leading researchers in theoretical astrophysics (Profs. Everitt, Lim and Mashhoon). The current main new experiment is Gravity-Probe B, administered by Prof. Everitt and his group at Stanford. I expect to be able to combine theory and data to refine our best-fit model of cosmology."
CAR