February 20, 2006

Monday, February 20, 2006

Students choose new Fed president
UW offers health privacy course
Cold facts (and hopes of spring)

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

[Zakrison]

Students choose new Fed president

Michelle Zakrison (left) will be president of the Federation of Students in 2006-07, after undergraduate students gave her slightly more votes than the runner-up in last week's four-candidate election.

Zakrison, an environment and resource studies student, received 1,095 votes, to 1,051 for Kevin Royal. Also on the ballot were Stuart Hastings, polling 884 votes, and Christopher Ferguson, who took 672. There were 276 declined ballots, according to Friday's announcement from the Federation office.

There were 22,009 eligible voters, the Feds say, which means turnout for the presidential part of the election was 18.07 per cent.

Zakrison has been a residence don, a member of the Feds' board of directors, students' council and orientation committee, manager of the Environmental Studies Coffee Shop, and a commissioner for the UW Sustainability Project. Her campaign biography notes that she likes dancing, Brie and llamas, and describes her vision of the Federation as "an overarching organization that will help to empower and encourage student opportunities".

Neither of Zakrison's running mates on the "Shape the Future" ticket -- candidates for vice-president (internal) and VP (administration and finance) -- was elected. Instead, voters chose Royal's Team Yellow running mate, Renjie Butalid, an economics student, for the VP (A&F) position, and an independent candidate, Sai Kit Lo of actuarial science, for VP (internal).

The final executive position, VP (education), went to another Team Yellow candidate, Jeff Henry of political science, who held the same position for the Feds in 2004-05. The 2006-07 executive will take office May 1.

In last week's voting, students were asked whether they would approve a $10-a-term non-refundable "Academic Services Fee". The result: 1,398 said yes but 2,378 said no.

And arts students (except those in accountancy) were asked about creation of an Arts Endowment Fund, with a refundable fee of $12 a term. They voted 458 in favour, 351 against. Both referendum results are binding, says Brandon Sweet, the Feds' chief returning officer.

UW offers health privacy course -- from the UW media relations office

UW will offer a two-day "Health Privacy Professional" course next month, designed for senior and middle management personnel in health organizations, as well as staff wishing to advance their careers. The workshop, the first of its kind in Canada, will provide participants with the knowledge, skills and tools needed to conceptualize, develop, implement and manage a comprehensive privacy program.

Course content was developed by the Smart Systems for Health Agency, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care responsible for developing, managing and deploying information technology infrastructure to link all health care professionals in Ontario. The workshop will be delivered by Brendan Seaton, SSHA's chief privacy and security officer, and Jane Dargie, its privacy director.

"This is the only place health care professionals in Canada can learn the essential tools for putting together a comprehensive privacy program for their organizations," says Seaton. "The workshop also shows participants what is needed to fulfill legal and corporate privacy obligations and will help them comply with new provincial health privacy legislation."

The course will be held March 16-17 on the UW campus. It's aimed at supporting health care organizations address their privacy obligations and will make use of real-life case studies to show how theory can be put into practice.

"This is a unique education and training opportunity that addresses the key competencies needed to function in this challenging area," says Dominic Covvey, founding director of the Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research. "It is especially relevant to those interested in pursuing professional careers related to health privacy or information services management. Brendan's contributions in this area are long-standing and well-known, and we are fortunate to be able to make him and this program available."

This workshop is a specialty offering in association with the Waterloo Applied Health Informatics Bootcamp -- an intensive program that introduces those with little or no knowledge of Health Informatics to the nature, key concepts and applications of this innovative discipline. There's more information online.

Cold facts (and hopes of spring)

"It isn't getting any warmer, is it?" a co-worker commented as we arrived in Needles Hall this morning. No, but it will -- and a harbinger of spring is the UW weather station's annual contest, inviting everyone to predict when the thermometer will hit 20 Celsius for the first time. "In the seven years of operation of the weather station," writes coordinator Frank Seglenieks, "the earliest day that the temperature hit 20 degrees was March 8 in 2000, while for the last two years the date was April 18, the latest it has occurred." More than 2,000 people check the weather station web site each day, says Seglenieks, and when they do, they'll find the contest details there. Prizes this year include a digital indoor-outdoor thermometer and "a classic copper outdoor thermometer". Deadline for entries is February 27.

WHEN AND WHERE
Heritage Day workshop: "Heritage: The Competitive Edge", all day, Architecture building.
Engineers Without Borders discussion group: open discussion, 7 p.m., Graduate House.
Iron Ring ceremony for graduating engineers, Tuesday late afternoon, Theatre of the Arts, preceded by on-campus celebrations, followed by Iron Ring Stag.
Alumni Networking Workshop Tuesday 6:00, Tatham Centre room 2118, fee $10, details online.
Web tutorial generator presentation by Joseph Sanderson, department of physics, sponsored by Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology, Thursday 3 p.m., Flex Lab, Dana Porter Library, details and registration online.
26th annual Hagey Bonspiel Saturday, Ayr Curling Club, details online.
UW ACM programming contest Saturday 1 to 4 p.m., details online.
Members of UW's volunteer Alumni Council are meeting this morning in Toronto with officials from the university's office of alumni affairs. "The UW Alumni Council," explains alumni affairs director Jason Coolman, "is a 16-member, alumni volunteer advisory committee whose goal is to advance the mission of the university and help serve the needs of the alumni community." It's currently chaired by Dave Revell, a 1985 electrical engineering graduate who is a vice-president of the BMO Financial Group (Bank of Montreal). There's more about the alumni council online.

A UW partnership was among the finalists for this year's Ontario Centres of Excellence Mind to Market Award, which was presented last week. Each year the award recognizes "an exceptional collaboration between an Ontario company and an Ontario researcher, or team of researchers, which has led to the successful commercialization of a new technology". The UW entry this year was a relationship with Slipstream Data Inc., a spinoff company founded by En-hui Yang and Ajit Singh of electrical and computer engineering. The award citation says UW and Slipstream "developed a transformative technology for data compression. Slipstream is the most widely deployed dial-up Internet acceleration and optimization technology in the world and the de facto standard." The Mind to Market award for this year, however, went to Queen's University and Millenium Biologix for their work on bone graft substitutes.

A front page headline in Friday's Imprint offered a phrase I don't think I've ever seen before: "faith-based vandalism". In this case it means ugly words about Islam written on a UW wall. Imprint reports that in the wake of that and similar incidents, leaders from UW's Federation of Students and student life office "brought together student leaders from a variety of faith- and cultural-based clubs for the inaugural meeting of an anti-hate coalition" last week.

The main office of UW's biology department will be closed Thursday and Friday for the move to its new location on the third floor of the Earth Sciences and Chemistry building. . . . Tickets for the Math Grad Ball (on March 4) are for sale today through Wednesday on the third floor of the Math and Computer building. . . . A UW continuing education course on is scheduled for February 27 and March 3. . . .

CAR

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