TechTown construction is well under way beside Hagey Boulevard, with the steel frame erected and the concrete core slab in place. The building will be closed in during September and is expected to open for business in January, with a health club, a day care centre and (not previously announced) a dental office, says Toby Jenkins, who heads the company that's managing the project.

Credit union will move to north campus

More banking services — including automatic teller machines — will be available to members of UW’s on-campus credit union when it moves just off campus early next year.

The UW branch of the Education Credit Union Limited, currently based in an obscure office in East Campus Hall, will be moving to TechTown, the community centre that’s currently under construction in the north campus Research and Technology Park. The new branch will have “ample parking”, the credit union is promising, and room to offer services such as safety deposit boxes and “ECU Wealth Management Services”.

“Over the past few years we have been actively seeking a new location for the University Branch,” says the ECU web site. “Up to this point, we have been very fortunate to share space on campus; however, member needs have grown and we require larger facilities to accommodate the same full financial services offered at our main branch in Kitchener.

“For over forty years the administration of the University of Waterloo has supported our presence on campus, and they were instrumental in us obtaining the new facility.”

A credit union is a sort of non-profit bank, backed up (in this province) by Credit Union Central of Ontario. Many credit unions were organized by employees of one organization, and that’s the case with the UW outlet, which for many years was the tiny University Faculty and Staff Credit Union Ltd., founded in 1965.

In 2000, when it had 715 members and total assets of $2.1 million, it merged with ECU, the credit union for employees of the Waterloo Region District School Board. UW members of the credit union now have more than $5 million in deposits in the credit union.

In total, ECU has more than 8,000 members and assets of approximately $100 million. Its main office is at the school board headquarters on Ardelt Avenue in Kitchener. The TechTown branch, at 340 Hagey Boulevard, will be able to offer money machines and other service to all members of the ECU, not just those who work at UW, the credit union says.

Services include not just chequing accounts, savings accounts and loans, but RRSPs, insurance, lines of credit, brokerage service, and online and telephone banking. “The Education Credit Union,” says an overview from ECU, “has remained a ‘cashless’ institution, relying instead upon electronic services for members to provide convenience, significantly reduce operating costs, and allow us to stay on the leading edge of technology. We were one of the first institutions to offer a Global MasterCard Debit Card, we adopted the Member Card debit card upon release, we quickly implemented no-charge, on-line bill payments and we will be part of the Ontario launch for the new chip card scheduled for release early 2007.

“Representatives of the credit union attended the groundbreaking ceremony (for TechTown) on June 8.

“Jeanne Vaughan and Vaughn Sauve, our University Branch staff, are excited about the new facilities and are looking forward to having a full team of experts to support this growing branch.”

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New brand, new services from Graphics

a memo from Sean Van Koughnett, director of UW Graphics

As part of an overall plan to strengthen our department and the services we provide to UW, there are a number of new developments to let you know about, including:

…changes in pricing, products and service

• We’ve analyzed our colour printing costs and have recently reduced the pricing for a 8.5 x 11 copy from $0.95 to $0.75.
• We’ve instituted a bike courier service for pick ups and deliveries on rush jobs to the copy centres.
• We’ve introduced a CD/DVD burning service, which is quickly gaining in popularity.
• We’ve made changes in the way we’re organized, streamlining reporting structures and shifting staff from production oriented jobs to more direct customer service roles in order to improve our responsiveness.

…a new name for the copy centres

For the past number of years, the copy centres on campus (in DC, MC, Dana Porter and CEIT) had different names and in the case of “Pixel Planet” in MC it was difficult for someone new to campus to determine exactly what services might be offered there. So we’ve united all copy centres under one banner: “Campus Copy”. The name was chosen because of its simplicity, it’s connection to UW and most important, the name clearly tells you that it’s a copy centre.

The Campus Copy name will be connected to the new Graphics logo (left), which has been re-designed to give us the flexibility to attach the names of all our different areas of business, including “Campus Copy”, “Courseware” and “Creative Services”. We also wanted to reflect our connection to UW with the new logo, so we’ve chosen to use the familiar school colours of black and gold.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll be phasing in the new logo and the new copy centre name on our letterhead, signage, website, delivery vans, etc.

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And now, the rest of the story

A memo from Jeff Henry, vice-president (education) of the Federation of Students, says students "are concerned by today’s release from the Educational Policy Institute, Student Aid Time-Bomb: The Coming Crisis in Canada's Financial Aid System, which highlights growing pressure on the country's student financial aid system that, unchecked, will leave an $800-million hole in student assistance in just four years. The expiration of the federal Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation in early 2009 will leave a $350-million gap in grants for high-need and low-income students, $108-million of which is spent in Ontario. As the province of Ontario uses much of this money to fund its debt-reducing Ontario Student Opportunity Grant program, which caps a students' public debt at $7,000 per year, the Ontario government will either have to allow a substantial increase in student debt or find that money itself. The other element of the $800-million gap comes mainly from rising loan interest costs and expanded loan eligibility criteria. Ontario has recently expanded eligibility to student loan programs and brought some measure of tuition relief through a two-year freeze and now through regulated tuition. . . . Any meaningful guarantee of access made by an institution like the University of Waterloo to its students is threatened by an almost billion dollar hole that could cause governments to substantially reduce their student assistance. . . . In as little as four years time needy students could be squeezed out by a guarantee the university cannot possibly meet. McGuinty, the other premiers, and Harper must not forget this gap in their fiscal balance discussions over the next few months.”

The Third International Conference on Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks (QShine 2006) is under way, sponsored by UW’s electrical and computer engineering department as well as various industrial partners. It’s being held at the Ron Eydt Village conference centre and, organizers explain, “focuses on all aspects of research challenges in the areas of QoS: provisioning, performance optimization, cross-layer design, resilience, scalability and survivability of distributed applications in heterogeneous networks. It will serve as a forum for researchers from academia and industry to present the latest research results on QoS issues for both wired and wireless networks, with the hope to develop viable cross-layer design methodologies. The conference will feature prominent invited keynote speakers in the field.” General chair is Jon Mark, distinguished professor emeritus in E&CE, and vice-chair is Xuemin Shen of E&CE.

As the Daily Bulletin reported last winter, arts undergraduate Heather Muir (right) is one of 18 Ontario young people who recently received the Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers at the hands of Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman. But that’s not all — it turns out she’s also one of Canada’s “Top 20 Under 20”, as recently selected by the Youth in Motion organization. A citation from the program notes that since she was 4 years old, Muir, from Walkerton, Ontario, has been a dedicated volunteer for Canadian Blood Services. “Determined to create greater public awareness of the needs of Canada’s blood supply system, Heather began telling her own story of needing blood. She soon became the Poster Child for CBS. Heather has logged over 8,000 hours and has created a student only blood clinic which has been recognized as having over 40% editable donors compared to the Canadian average of 4%. In 2001 Heather was awarded the CBS national award, ‘Honouring Our Lifeblood’, for exceptional contribution to the blood program.” (UW engineering student Keith Peiris was also among the Top 20 Under 20.)

A travel-study program sponsored by UW's continuing education program was supposed to be leaving this week for "The Lands of the Incas", 18 days in Peru and Bolivia, but the trip has been cancelled. . . . Today's the opening day of the annual international Merlot conference, held in Ottawa but with involvement from many UW teaching-and-learning researchers. . . . Here's a reminder that student fees for the fall term will be due on September 6 (or August 28 if they're not paid by bank transfer). . . .

Former Warriors Kristy Heemskerk and Heather Moyse are members of the Canadian national women's rugby team that will be competing in the World Cup of Rugby in Edmonton in September. "There is not a lot of financial support given for the players," says a letter from Heemskerk, pointing out that team members are expected to raise more than $3,000 apiece to cover the costs, not to mention taking unpaid leave from their jobs and lives. The result is an appeal for sponsorships, as well as various fund-raising projects. Among the latter, a web site explains: "The National Senior Women's Team has once again produced a sexy calendar." Copies are available for $20 at rugby events, from team members — and, at UW, from Kristy's father, Rick Heemskerk, at his office in the earth sciences department, CEIT building.

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