Trip to India aimed at recruitment

A staff member in UW’s marketing and undergraduate recruitment office, who specializes in making Waterloo known to students around the world, will be off to India later this month for a two-week recruitment trip.

“I will be travelling with 15 other Canadian universities,” says Virginia McLellan, “and will be visiting approximately 20 national and international high schools promoting UW programs. We will be visiting high schools in 4 major cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi (left).”

McLellan, who leaves August 19, notes that “In addition to high school visits, we will also be attending education fairs in the evenings, as well as networking functions with local guidance counsellors and Canadian embassy officials.”

She says the trip to India will build on previous contacts there, such as a visit by the dean of graduate students, Ranjana Bird, who attended the Canadian Education Centre fairs in India last year. Provost Amit Chakma visited India in 2004 to build closer links with the Indian Institutes of Technology, considered some of the world’s top technological universities.

“India is an important international market for UW,” says McLellan, as we work to increase our international connections and the number of international students coming here to study. India is one of the top five countries where our international undergraduate students come from.

“UW also has agreements at the graduate level with India Institutes of Technology in Delhi, Kharagpur, and Chennai.”

She added that she is “working closely with the Alumni Office to organize an alumni event in Delhi. The event will be at the end of my recruitment tour (on August 31), and we are hoping that there will be a good turnout of alumni living in India who are interested in staying connected to UW. Details are still being worked out.”

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Arts expertise is vital, says new dean

The world needs the ideas that come from research in the humanities and social sciences, says the new dean of UW’s faculty of arts.

Ken Coates (right), who took over as dean July 1, is quoted at length in the summer issue of the Arts Research Update newsletter. “Ideas matter,” says Coates, “and ideas emerging from the Arts matter especially. I can’t imagine a time that needs the insights of researchers in the humanities and social sciences more than now.”

He goes on: “All the major issues of our day — the multi-faceted forces of globalization, the social implications of the science and technology revolution, conflicts informed by religious differences, concerns about the environment, etc.— are human issues and need the input of voices from the Arts.”

The new dean says he’s committed to ensuring that the voice of Arts researchers at Waterloo in particular get heard.

He comes to UW with “an impressive background in university administration”, the newsletter says. “Since serving as founding Vice President (Academic) for the University of Northern British Columbia in 1992, Coates has held the position of Dean of Arts at the University of New Brunswick as well as Dean of the School of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan (where he also spent some time as Acting Provost and VP Academic).

“His years as an administrator have not, however, taken him away from one of his favourite activities: research. A history professor, Coates has managed to maintain a highly productive program of research throughout his terms as Dean and VP.”

Describing himself as an “extremely eclectic” researcher, he has published in areas as diverse as aboriginal issues, the Canadian north, and cultures of innovation in Japan. “I love writing!” he says. “Research-related writing is something I need to do and I can’t imagine not doing it — it is a passion.”

Currently, he’s engaged in a SSHRC-funded study that investigates the ethos of resource management in Canada. Taking as a case study Alcan’s controversial Kemano Hydroelectric Completion Project in northern British Columbia, Coates is exploring the complex impacts such projects have on local communities and the competing visions of the north that they evoke.

As well, and in collaboration with others, he is working on two books: a history of aboriginal land claims court cases in Canada, and an examination of the transformation of the territorial north. Another project is a Heritage Canada project developing materials on the history of the Yukon gold rush for the student-oriented website “Great Unsolved Canadian Mysteries.”

Coates says his positive first impressions of Waterloo and the Faculty of Arts have been confirmed since his arrival. “I am impressed with the degree to which UW Arts faculty and graduate students have been able to capitalize on the strengths of the University as a whole through projects addressing digital technologies and transformations. At the same time, I’m pleased to see that there hasn’t been a complete shift to technology-based issues and ideas: faculty members in Arts clearly continue to be devoted to the core values of Arts, embodying diverse and multi-disciplinary intellectual perspectives in both their research and teaching.”

Looking ahead, he would like to see the University do more to support a culture of research within Arts. “A review of teaching loads, for instance, will be one very pragmatic step towards creating a balance between research expectations and other faculty demands and responsibilities,” the newsletter notes. “A second area of focus will be the encouragement of collaborative research projects — both among UW researchers and between UW faculty and researchers elsewhere in Canada and the world. The University, Coates believes, could and should play a more active role in facilitating, fostering, and securing funding for such research initiatives.”

Finally, “convinced of the social and cultural importance of Arts research and the need for Arts researchers to be heard in the public forum, Coates aims to foster a culture of social engagement at Waterloo. Who is our audience?, Who needs to know about this research? and What kind of social impact or relevance might this research have? are questions he invites Arts researchers to ask as they plan their projects and disseminate their findings.

“As Arts researchers, we take ourselves seriously – but not seriously enough,” says the new dean. “Our research, our ideas, are more important and more needed than we sometimes realize.”

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Happening far and near

Yesterday the media question of the day to UW and many other universities was: “Are you in or out of the annual Maclean's survey?” The answer from UW was “We're in.” Bob Truman, director of institutional analysis and planning, was quoted in an article in today’s Record: "Waterloo is committed to participating but we're monitoring the situation as it unfolds." He adds: "We have a bit of a concern that Maclean's, if they go and get data from the non-participants from some other source, that the methodology might not be the same for all the institutions ... They might not be asking the same question or getting the same answer, so we're kind of worried there might be an apples-and-oranges kind of result." Laurier and Guelph are also still in; 11 other universities recently published a letter setting out their reasons for withdrawing from the annual survey.

Like other Canadian universities such as Concordia and the University of Montreal, the University of Waterloo is responding to the plight of university students in the Middle East whose academic year is likely to vanish into the rubble if they stay put. Ken Lavigne, UW’s registrar, says that by Tuesday afternoon the registrar’s office had a total of 10 inquiries from Lebanese students, of whom three are already in Canada. Three of these have been granted offers for the fall: two are Canadian citizens who have moved back to Ontario; one is a Lebanese visa student currently in Lebanon. Lavigne adds that two applicants were refused because they lacked sufficient academic background. One of those had already moved to Calgary and was advised to attend the University of Calgary; the other is in Lebanon. “The five remaining students are unknown cases and we may pursue January entry with them if they wish to continue with the admissions process,” Lavigne says.

More than 200 people from Canada, the United States, and beyond are on campus this week to attend the 14th Biennial Conference for the Canadian Society for Biomechanics, UW’s Kinesiology department is hosting the conference, with kinesiology professor Jack Callaghan as chair: it’s the first time it’s been held at the University of Waterloo. The conference includes two symposia: one on “Injury Biomechanics” and one on “The state and Future of Upper Extremity Biomechanics in the Workplace.” Events take place Wednesday through Saturday in the Davis Centre.

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