Associate VP finishing his term

Gerry Thompson (left), who retired two years ago from a long career as a senior official in local government, is about to retire again as a senior official of UW — working with, among other agencies, local government.

Thompson has served since late 2004 as associate vice-president (strategic initiatives), and was originally appointed for a two-year term. However, he now says he will leave UW in late summer. He’s looking forward to a new retirement, this time on Vancouver Island, an area he says he has always loved and one where he expects to rejoice in the mild climate and clear air.

“There really was no job definition,” Thompson says, when he took on the associate VP’s job to handle some major projects on behalf of provost Amit Chakma. “On balance, it has been quite enjoyable,” he adds, and he won’t rule out doing something for UW in the future.

“I’ve invested most of my life in this community,” he said in his Needles Hall office last week, noting that his Kitchener-Waterloo involvement had given him plenty of experience with UW, including a term chairing the board of governors of Renison College.

He was chief administrative officer for the Regional Municipality of Waterloo — the top salaried job for the regional government — from 1991 to 2004, and found himself dealing with Regional officials again this year on UW’s behalf as he negotiated a $15 million grant from the Region towards construction of a medical school on UW’s planned health sciences campus.

That campus, to be located in downtown Kitchener, has been his biggest project at UW, Thompson noted this week. He arrived when plans for a school of pharmacy were already definite, and began with the question, “How do you build the campus out from pharmacy?” The answer was quickly clear: a health sciences establishment needs “a medical teaching dimension” at its heart. “The presence of a medical school legitimizes a lot of other things.”

He and other UW officials judged that McMaster University had the existing medical school that most closely shared UW’s philosophy of teaching and operation, Thompson says. They approached Mac, an agreement was reached, the city of Kitchener and eventually Waterloo Region bought in, and the project is now moving ahead.

“It was either refreshing, or it was confounding, to the university community,” says Thompson, cheerfully agreeing that universities don’t usually make decisions in that way or at that speed. But he sees the effort as a success, and is happy to see experts in legal agreements, design and construction take over in the phases that lie ahead.

On a different front, Thompson put some of his effort over the past 18 months into getting the Accelerator Centre — a signature building in the north campus Research and Technology Park — planned and built. He served as the founding chairman of the Accelerator Centre board of directors and helped establish a structure for the centre’s work in moving tiny businesses (often, but not always, UW spinoffs) into commercial success.

There have been other projects as well, he noted last week, mentioning two of them. One is a major partnership, still being put together, involving UW engineering researchers and a large local automotive manufacturing company. The other is a project on poverty in the developing world — specifically western Kenya — that’s expected to link Waterloo’s school of planning with the Earth Institute at New York’s Columbia University. “It is looking extremely promising,” Thompson said.

No plans to name a new associate VP (strategic initiatives) have been announced, although UW does have another executive with a similar title: David Fransen, who is associate VP (strategic relations) as well as executive director of the Institute for Quantum Computing. He too is on a short-term appointment and will return to his regular job with the federal government.

But Thompson said his two staff members, Wanda Richardson and Tami Everding, will be carrying forward some of the things he’s been working on, under an administrative structure that’s “under active investigation” right now.

Back to top

Upgrade to ACE software next month

New software that’s coming to UW-ACE, the university’s online course environment, will provide “an uncluttered interface” and other improvements, says Andrea Chappell, who heads the unit in information systems and technology that supports it.

She said UW-ACE will be upgraded to version 7.1 of the Angel software on August 23, in preparation for the fall term. “As a result, UW-ACE will be unavailable on that day. Existing courses, along with any courses currently being developed for the Fall 2006 term, will be migrated to 7.1 at that time.”

Chappell said that because the new software “offers significant enhancements in functionality and navigation (changes in how the interface looks and the location of features)”, instructors are being encouraged to attend one of the short "What's New in 7.1" courses offered by IST, in co-ordination with liaison staff from LT3, the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology. “Arrangements have been made with many departments to provide, later in this term, in-house overview sessions of UW-ACE changes. Instructors may wish to check with their LT3 liaison or department to confirm whether such a session has been scheduled.

“If you wish to register for an IST session, please visit the SAW site or, if you would like to request a group session, please send e-mail to uwacehelp@ist.uwaterloo.ca.”

She listed some of the improvements that the new software will provide: “usability features such as the replacement of text hyperlinks with international icons,an uncluttered interface and the ability to more easily modify your personal UW-ACE Home page (formerly My Page); the addition of a Resource tab to consolidate the syllabus and other general course tools from the course content found under the Lessons tab; a Report tab that provides a broader and more granular range of reports and course statistics; more sophisticated Gradebook features, such as assigning marks for members of a team; and accessibility considerations like the Section 508 display mode that is designed to work with screen readers and the PDA mode to better accommodate the interface on hand-held devices.

“In addition, many of the existing features have been improved with the addition of new options.”

Instructors who have used UW-ACE will receive a follow-up e-mail message about the upgrade, along with a pointer to a document entitled “Where to find v6.2 features in v7.1”. Instructors using UW-ACE this spring term will be sent a separate e-mail later in the term with instructions and assistance for using the Course Gradebook after the August 23 changeover date.

Meanwhile, a team that organized and built a “community” of contributors and peer reviewers in UW-ACE, called the Instructional Resources repository, have been recognized for their accomplishment with an award from the company that makes Angel.

This group is a multi-department team, including representatives from IST (Jan Willwerth), Distance Education (Megan Jack, who has now moved to the housing office), and LT3 (Dawn Buzza, Alan Kirker, Pia Marks, and David Bean, the latter now in Distance Education).

Angel Learning presented the UW team with the “Exemplary Angel Program Award” at a recent conference. “We were extremely impressed with the quality and diversity of nominations,” said Christopher Clapp, president of Angel. “Competition for the awards was tough.”

The IR repository is accessible to all instructors using UW-ACE for online and hybrid courses. This content can save duplication of effort and improve courses significantly, says Peter Goldsworthy of LT3.

Back to top

What the thunder said on a Monday (Eliot)

Says a memo from Peggy Jarvie, who heads the department of co-op education and career services: “The final employment statistics for the Spring term show 156 students who remain unemployed out of 3,886 students scheduled for a co-op work term, resulting in an employment rate of 96%, compared to 94.3% last year. Over 200 fewer students participated in co-op this Spring than last, mostly attributable to lower enrolment in math programs. The spring term remains our most challenging, primarily due to summer employment practices and competition.”

And looking ahead to September: “The current employment statistics for the Fall work term show 3,821 students scheduled for a co-op work term, with 2,961 employed for an 80.1% employment rate (up from 67.3% this time last year). The number of students scheduled for a co-op work term is up this year over last by 209, with 620 more students employed as of July 5. Final employment rates for Fall terms are generally above 95%, and we anticipate the same to be the case this year. The higher employment rate at this point in the term can be attributed to more jobs being posted, and to employers posting earlier in the cycle as a result of the changes that were implemented in the prior two terms. Students are benefiting from earlier employment confirmations through reduced time in the employment process, enabling them to focus on their studies and enjoy the summer months. This term we returned to the base employment process with a 3-week first round of interviews before a single main match, followed by the continuous round. As reported last term, we ran pilot projects involving early matches prior to the main match in each of the previous two terms. While there were some benefits of the early match approach, results didn’t demonstrate substantial improvement over past terms, and generated problems for some students and employers. No further substantive changes will be implemented until the completion of the employment process study currently underway under the leadership of Professors McKay and Anjos in Management Sciences.”

Now on to other matters . . . Waterloo city council meets tonight and will be asked to approve "in principle" the proposed project on the northwest section of UW's north campus, along Fischer-Hallman Road south of Bearinger. The idea is a joint building — a Waterloo Public Library branch and a YMCA gym and community centre — with the land provided by UW in exchange for the city providing services (roads and pipes) to nearby UW property. The city would also get the use of a chunk of UW land near Westmount Road and Bearinger for playing fields. There's been much public discussion of the plan and its costs, at an open meeting held by the city and in local media. Tonight council will be asked to approve a Memorandum of Understanding to which UW has already agreed, as the next step along the way. The meeting starts at 6:30 at City Hall on Regina Street.

The engineering faculty newsletter reports that John Chatzis (right) of the chemical engineering department has received the 2006 Technical Achievement Award from the Society of Core Analysts. "The award, SCA's highest honour and the only award for technical achievement, was presented to Chatzis for outstanding contributions to the advancement of core analysis technology."

A crew from Jiangsu TV and Zhejiang TV, two of China's regional television networks, visited campus on Thursday to do interviews about UW's growing links with those parts of China. . . . Some thirty people from the National University of Singapore are on campus for a one-week graduate training course organized by the Institute for Quantitative Finance and Insurance. . . . The plant operations department says the east (stairway) entrance of Needles Hall is now expected to be closed for repairs until close to the end of this month. . . .

Back to top