![[University of Waterloo]](/images/logobars/blackbar.gif)
![[Bat]](/images/2005/1031bat.gif){kind=small}
| Friday |
Monday, October 31, 2005
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Editor: Chris Redmond credmond@uwaterloo.ca |
![[Pumpkin face and human face]](/images/2005/1031pumpkin.jpg)
It's Hallowe'en,
which explains why the faculty of arts had a pumpkin-carving event
along with its pizza lunch last week. (The whole thing was a
fund-raiser for the
United Way campaign.)
This particular jack-o'-lantern represents singer Cher, I'm told; posing
with it is Allison Wells of the school of accounting. Other Hallowe'en
observations include "Dance with the Dead" at Federation Hall tonight.
A sizeable group of student volunteers, organized by the Federation's
"UW Crew" spinoff, will be going door-to-door tonight collecting for the
Food Bank of Waterloo Region under the "Trick or Eat" label.
And it's the closing day for the Hallowe'en photo contest organized by
the UW Shop -- details
online.
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John Milloy, Liberal MPP for Kitchener Centre, visited campus to help make the announcement at a brief noontime celebration. The money -- being distributed to cover research infrastructure costs at 20 universities and other institutions -- includes slightly more than $6 million for UW.
"We need to ensure that Ontario can compete in the marketplace of ideas," said Dalton McGuinty, who serves as minister of R and I as well as premier of the province. "By building a world-class research infrastructure in Ontario, we can attract and retain the best and brightest people and provide jobs and prosperity for Ontarians well into the future."
The funding, for a total of 312 projects, officially comes from the newly created Ontario Research Fund. In this first allocation, ORF is carrying on the tradition of the former Ontario Innovation Trust and Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund, which regularly matched the "infrastructure" grants provided by the federal Canada Foundation for Innovation. Project funding is shared among the CFI (40 per cent), the provincial fund (40 per cent), and the research institutions or their private-sector partners (20 per cent).
At Waterloo, 33 projects are involved. For example, Qing-Bin Lu of the physics department is receiving $172,489 to match CFI "New Opportunities" funding, announced in September 2004, for "a Femtosecond Laser Spectroscopy Laboratory for Biological and Environmental Studies".
And Perry Chou of chemical engineering is receiving $130,895 to match CFI funding, announced this July, for "molecular biology infrastructure" costs associated with his Canada Research Chair. He'll be working on "high-level recombinant protein production and protein folding".
Says the provincial announcement: "The Ministry of Research and Innovation was created in June 2005 to ensure that Ontario is competing and winning in the marketplace of ideas. The creation of this new ministry signals the importance the government places on strengthening Ontario as a leading, innovation-based economy and society. The government has committed $1.8 billion over four years to support research and commercialization." It quotes McGuinty: "We know that countries and jurisdictions that invest in innovation will be home to the most rewarding jobs, the strongest economies and the best quality of life."
'Town hall' event tomorrowA reminder: faculty and staff members are invited to a "town hall meeting" with UW president David Johnston and provost Amit Chakma, tomorrow from 4 to 5 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre. |
![[Gertler]](/images/2005/1014gertler.jpg)
The book is Radical Rumblings: Confessions of a Peripatetic
Planner, by Len Gertler (left). It takes him from his early career
as a professional planner -- in Edmonton, then Toronto and
Niagara Falls -- to his arrival at UW in 1966 and finally a two-year
leave in the 1970s to work for the federal government. Still to
come is a second volume carrying the story forward to Gertler's
retirement in 2001.
Gertler recalls that he was hired chiefly by Ralph Krueger, then chair of the geography department, in which the new program in urban and regional planning was to be based. Geography was at that time part of the faculty of arts, as the faculty of environmental studies wasn't created until three years later.
"I was given a fine office, wood panelled, in the new Social Sciences building," Gertler writes in his Rumblings. (That would be the building now known as Environmental Studies I.) But he admits to feeling some anxiety: "In spite of my high status in the academic pecking order, I did not possess that obligatory passport to academic heaven -- a PhD. On the other hand, I had never before experienced such a strong sense of being part of a community."
He gives credit to various colleagues, including Krueger as well as John Horton, who is still active in the planning school. But "some degree of tension between geography and planning" was developing. Creation of the ES faculty, and a division of geography and planning into separate units, happened in a rush in 1968-69, Gertler recalls.
He gives much of the credit to Howard Petch, then vice-president (academic) of UW -- "a distinguished physicist with a broad world view, including sensitivity to environmental issues," not as universally shared then as it might be now. Gertler also gives Petch much of the credit for negotiating the move of the school of architecture from engineering to ES -- a move that was reversed just this year, three decades later.
The book includes Gertler's take on the politics of ES in those early years, including disputes over budgets and academic structure. And the narrative moves into some of the early international activities in which the school of planning was involved, including a project in Jamaica and a trip to Japan.
The book is No. 59 in the geography department's series, and sells for $25.
| WHEN AND WHERE |
|
Open enrolment for winter term courses begins today on
Quest for undergraduate
students.
Sandford Fleming Foundation Debates for engineering students, faculty-wide competition today and Tuesday 11:30, Engineering II room 3324, Wednesday 11:30, Doug Wright Engineering room 2534; finals November 4, Carl Pollock Hall. Computational mathematics colloquium: Veronica Piccialli, Universitá di Roma "La Sapienza", "Generalized Nash Equilibrium Problems and Newton Methods", 2:30, Math and Computer room 5158. Engineering Shadow Days welcome high school students, Tuesday and Wednesday. Retirees' association luncheon, Tuesday, November 1, Luther Village, some tickets still available, 749-2307. Interdisciplinary Coffee Talk Society: Lorenzo Fatibene, University of Torino, Italy, and Jeffrey Shallit, UW computer science, "Is Intelligent Design a Science?" Tuesday 5 p.m., Graduate House. Arts Research Seminar Month begins: Panel of four faculty on "Art in the Academy", Tuesday 11 a.m., Humanities room 373. 'Make Poverty History' aerial photograph: Students and others join an "MPH" formation for an aerial photograph, field north of Math and Computer building, Wednesday 12 noon. Barbecue (burgers $1) starts 11:30. Sponsored by Engineers Without Borders. St. Jerome's University president Michael Higgins, "Stalking the Holy: In Pursuit of Saint-Making", Friday 7:30 p.m., Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's. UW Day open house for future students and their parents, Saturday, November 5, 9:00 to 3:00, details online. |
Tomorrow's the deadline for nominations (and that includes self-nominations) for the President's Circle Awards for Volunteerism, offered to UW students each year. "Once again," said a memo to department heads and others last week, from associate provost Catharine Scott, "I ask that you make these awards known to deserving students and consider nominating some of our extraordinary volunteers yourself." Nomination forms are available at the student awards office, the Federation of Students office and other locations, and details are online.
A bright green flyer is out with the details of the staff training and development program for the coming weeks, still under the familiar title "Get Up and Grow". Centrepiece of the program is the "Leadership for Results" training series -- successor to "Leadership 2000", "Frontline Leadership", "Working" and others -- with sessions such as "The Leader in Each of Us" and "Handling Emotions Under Pressure". Also on the program this term: "Personality Dimensions" (a successor to "True Colors"), "Achieving Stellar Service Experience", "Reaching for Stellar Service", and "Work-Life Balance with Personality Dimensions". The brochure notes that "Staff are urged to participate in these programs as part of their normal work day," and details are, of course, online. Get Up and Grow
![[Lacouture]](/images/2005/1031lacouture.jpg)
Again this year the department of French studies has a teaching assistant who's
actually from France,
its web site
reports: "Nous
sommes très heureux d'accueillir Élodie Lacouture
(à droit).
Élodie vient de l'Université de
Pau et des Pays de l'Adour dans le cadre des échanges d'assistants
entre la France et le Canada. Son objectif est de devenir professeure
de français langue
étangère. Son stage à Waterloo est donc très
important dans sa formation universitaire. Elle s'intéresse beaucoup
à l'animation culturelle et a travaillé
pendant plusieurs années en France dans des centres et des colonies
de vacances. Elle apporte avec elle sa connaissance des pays qu'elle a
visités . . .
sachant bien que son séjour au Canada lui apportera
énormément
sur ce plan. Élodie s'occupera de l'enseignement
des séminaires de conversations
dans nos cours intermédiaires de français. Elle sera aussi
animatrice culturelle à La Bastille (St. Paul's College)."
Sports notes for this morning start with a correction, a bit too late to be helpful: I wrote on Friday that the badminton Warriors were playing at Ryerson on Saturday, but in fact Ryerson's Rams were coming here for the match. The weekend also saw the Naismith basketball tournament (the men's Warriors were 2-1, the women 1-2, in tournament competition), a 5-3 victory over Western in men's hockey, and many other events. Not played, however, was the Waterloo-at-Brock women's rugby game for the OUA bronze medal; the field in St. Catharines was a mess at the end of the week, and they're going to try again tomorrow. In still other sports news, Vicky Lounder of the Warriors has been named to the OUA field hockey all-star team at season's end.
Flu shots, offered by UW's health services department, will be available to the general campus population starting November 9. . . . René Crespo, electrical repairperson in the plant operations department since 1976, officially retires November 1. . . . Today's the nominal deadline for applications to enter UW in the winter term ("applications received after the deadline will be processed only if space are available"). . . .
CAR