St. Jerome’s backs WLU teachers’ college

St. Jerome’s University will play a part as a faculty of education is launched next year at Wilfrid Laurier University, the UW-federated college said yesterday after WLU got the public okay for its dream to come true.

John Milloy, the Liberal MPP for Kitchener Centre, made the announcement of provincial support for the new program “on behalf of Chris Bentley, minister of training, colleges and universities”.

Laurier said that “in partnership with St. Jerome’s University of the University of Waterloo” it would start a one-year consecutive bachelor of education program in the fall of 2007, subject to accreditation by the Ontario College of Teachers. There was no word about funding for a building to house the new faculty, or where it might be located.

Said Milloy: “This is truly a historic day for our region. For too long, a community of our size, which is also home to some 50,000 undergraduate students, has gone without direct access to a faculty of education. This important step towards a new teachers’ college recognizes the quality of Waterloo Region’s postsecondary institutions and the strength of our community.”

The proposed program, said WLU, “is innovative in curriculum design and will place additional focus on classroom teaching. Starting in September 2007, the new program will provide more spaces for students to pursue post-professional opportunities. This is also good news for the double cohort of students who will begin to graduate in 2007.”

WLU president Bob Rosehart observed that the education faculty will be Laurier’s first new professional program in more than 30 years. “Through WLU and UW’s collaborative efforts, and thanks to John Milloy and Minister Bentley, we have been able to achieve this important milestone as we progress on Laurier’s Century Plan initiative to become a more comprehensive university.”

The interim president and dean of St. Jerome’s, Myroslaw Tataryn, commented last night that his institution “welcomes this announcement as it has been a partner in the proposal process, and we will be working with WLU and area Catholic school boards to provide pre-service courses for prospective Catholic school teachers.

“St. Jerome's University houses a Master in Catholic Thought program, and this program will help provide the critical resources for supporting the new Faculty of Education venture.

“Further to this, for several years now St. Jerome's has made available a concentration of courses to provide undergraduate preparation in Religious Studies for students who are thinking of teaching in the separate school system. Given the number of St. Jerome's alumni who have gone on to pursue teaching careers, and our ongoing support of our undergraduate students who are destined for teaching careers, we're delighted to be part of this exciting new venture in preparing the educators of tomorrow.”

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Faculty group plans workload survey

“Workload” seems to be the keyword in the summer issue of the FAUW Forum newsletter, published by UW’s faculty association, which includes an announcement of a planned survey, as well as remarks from association president Roydon Fraser.

“While FAUW has done an admirable job negotiating salaries and handling other monetary issues, it has been less successful dealing with some other concerns about working conditions,” writes philosophy professor David DeVidi, who is a member of the association’s board of directors.

“Two of the issues most frequently mentioned at our general meetings and in private communications to Board members are workload and the merit assessment process.”

One difficulty in dealing with such issues, he writes, “is a simple lack of good information. We simply don’t know how workloads vary between academic units on campus, nor do we have a clear idea of how merit evaluations are handled in different units.

“We are therefore going to be conducting a simple survey to find out this information. We will be contacting two people in each academic unit in order to gather basic information about workloads and about the process through which the unit arrives at its recommendations for annual merit evaluations for teaching, scholarship and service.”

And Fraser – whose home is the department of mechanical engineering — writes: “The fall will see the FAUW pursuing improvements to the merit review system and to the treatment of faculty members who are experiencing the onset of a disability or who have an ongoing or progressively worsening disability.

“THe FAUW will also be pursuing workload issues. We will be reviewing suggestions for FAUW priorities made by those who responded to the 5-minute survey circulated with the November 2005 Forum.”

Earlier in his front-page article, Fraser reports: “One of the main opportunities for the Faculty Association to effect change is provided at the biweekly meetings of the Faculty Relations Committee which consists of five members of the FAUW Board of Directors and five senior administrators.

“Recently, the FAUW brought to the Administration’s attention the fact that the compensation rate for sessionals was lower than that for teaching assistants. That meant that in many departments sessionals teaching a class were being paid less than the teaching assistants for that class. The situation was seen as inappropriate and was remedied by raising the sessional rate.”

Fraser also notes the end of mandatory retirement and the advent of freedom-of-information legislation at universities.

Elsewhere in the summer issue of Forum are an article by Troy Glover of recreation and leisure studies about a “vision” for child care on campus; a briefing by Frank Reynolds of statistics and actuarial science about the work of the academic freedom and tenure committee, which he chairs; and an announcement of “a new look and address” for the faculty association’s web site.

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Emeritus prof speaks on laser business

The IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology student group presents a former UW faculty member in its third Distinguished Lecture this afternoon. The speaker is A. E. (Ted) Dixon (left), professor emeritus of physics and now CEO of Biomedical Photometrics Inc.

He’ll speak at 5 p.m. (Rod Coutts Hall room 302) on “Wide Field-of-View Scanning Laser Imaging System for Tissue: Discovery, Patenting, Prototyping and Commercialization”. “Pizza and beverages will be provided,” the group notes with an eye to a student audience. “Students of all levels (grad and undergrad) and faculties are welcome.”

The presentation, an abstract says, “will describe the early work in the Dept. of Physics that led to the development of a scanning laser imaging system for testing solar cells, the commercialization of that instrument in Waterloo Scientific Inc., and the development of a new wide field-of-view scanning beam imaging system for other applications, which is the basis of the new TISSUEscope product developed at Biomedical Photometrics Inc. for imaging tissue specimens at high resolution in both brightfield and fluorescence. The TISSUEscope is now in active use in cancer research and drug development.

“The importance of patenting will be discussed, as well as ways to patent inexpensively. The instruments commercialized by Waterloo Scientific Inc. and by Biomedical Photometrics Inc. were both originally developed for different applications than those for which the technology was commercialized, and this has to be kept in mind during patenting and company formation. Also, the importance of discoveries at the interface between disciplines is discussed.”

Dixon was recently announced as winner of this year’s Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Applied Photonics, sponsored by the Canadian Association of Physicists and the research firm INO. "I am honoured to have been awarded the CAP/INO medal,” he says. “When I left the University of Waterloo ten years ago, nothing could have been farthest from my mind, and it just shows that with training in physics, you can succeed anywhere."

CAP cited Dixon for “his contributions in the semiconductor and biomedical fields . . . his innovative application of photonics to solving practical problems in the semiconductor and biomedical fields”. The medal, the association said, “recognizes his invention and commercialization of innovative confocal scanning laser microscopes. These instruments are novel and allow much faster acquisition of high resolution images, important to quality control and medical diagnosis and therapy. His founding of two photonics companies has led to economic benefits to Canada. Biomedical Photometrics Inc. exports these instruments world wide. . . .

“His research career has focused on the development, and commercial application of scanning laser imaging technology. Dr. Dixon is the author of nine US patents in this area. In 1983 Dr. Dixon formed Waterloo Scientific to commercialize a laser-based scanning-stage semiconductor wafer mapping system. In 1994, Ted was honoured as one of Ontario’s top entrepreneurs by the Ontario Business Journal, for his success in Waterloo Scientific. Philips purchased Waterloo Scientific in 1996, and marketed the technology through Philips Materials Characterisation Systems. Biomedical Photometrics Inc. was founded in 1994 with Melanie Campbell (UW Optometry) and Brian Wilson (Princess Margaret Hospital) to commercialize the MACROscope technology developed in Dr. Dixon’s laboratory at UW. The Company’s new TISSUEscope, a wide field-of-view confocal fluorescence microscope for imaging tissue and tissue microarrays, received a 2005 Technology of the Year Award from Frost and Sullivan.”

The medal was presented at a CAP banquet in St. Catharines on June 13.

CAR

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