1981 newcomers are guests of honour

Douglas T. Wright became UW's third president in 1981. The same year, the school of optometry ruled that its students could now wear beards. Coincidence?

One of the deans, the registrar and one of his senior staff, groundskeepers, professors in fields from psychology to mech eng, secretaries, technicians and coordinators -- they'll all be looking back tonight, remembering UW as it was in 1981 when they began work here. It's the annual reception to honour new members of the 25-Year Club and give other old-timers an opportunity to reminisce and catch up with each other.

Also to be honoured tonight will be a notable group of faculty and staff veterans who entered the 25-Year Club ten years ago and now join the even more exclusive 35-Year Club.

If tonight's reception is anything like the events of previous years, the Physical Activities Complex will be crowded within milliseconds of the 6 p.m. opening time, the talk will be loud and happy, and the food will be lavish. It's the biggest splash of the year for UW's food services, who bring out everything from roast beef to ice sculptures to help the celebration along. The highlight of the evening comes when UW's president hands a long-service gift -- a gold watch or stickpin -- to each of the new 25-year veterans.

Tonight's guests of honour started work at UW before the Davis Centre, before e-mail, before WatCards, before most of the university's present students were born. In 1981 it was reported that, for the first time, computer terminals outnumbered electric typewriters on campus; and a $21 million wish list was announced for the Watfund campaign, forerunner of today's Campaign Waterloo. The second Pierre Trudeau government was in power in Ottawa, Ronald Reagan became president of the United States, and "Chariots of Fire" was the Academy Award-winning movie.

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Into the hazy days of summer

I'm back from a few days of vacation travel, during which time my nearest brush with the world of higher education involved an ice cream cone from the famous Creamery at the Pennsylvania State University. My thanks to colleagues Pat Bow (editorial) and Jesse Rodgers (technical) for making sure the Daily Bulletin kept people up to date in my absence -- especially in such a busy time as Convocation week.

And I know it wasn't easy, as some knots are still being worked out of the Daily Bulletin's new design and the software that lies behind it. I'm hoping everything will be visibly more smooth within a very short time. As for the new design, apparently some people have been asking why "old" Daily Bulletins -- such as those from way back in May -- haven't taken on the new look. The answer: we've made a policy decision that not only is every Daily Bulletin permanently available online, back to the beginning on May 11, 1993, but it will continue to look the way it did on the day it appeared. So the earliest editions are plain type, then a logo appears in the top right-hand corner, then there's a Mondriaan design (left), and finally what came to be called the "common look and feel" on September 21, 2001.

There's definitely a summer feel to the campus that I saw yesterday after a week away, and I don't think it was merely the smog alert that was squatting over us from Saturday to Monday. Maybe it has something to do with midterms for "spring" term courses, now under way, with final exams clearly visible on the horizon. (The registrar's office says the schedule of finals is now available online.) I note also that the bookstore, the UW Shop, TechWorx and the Campus TechShop have begun their summer schedule: open Monday to Friday 8:30 to 4:30, closed on Saturdays. Those summer hours continue until August 21.

I've also returned to find that, as announced by the telephone companies, 10-digit dialing is now in effect for local calls in Kitchener-Waterloo (and all of the 519 area code). Hmm, think I'll schedule another vacation week for August, when on-campus extension numbers are scheduled to be converted from four digits to five.

Department heads and various other people across the university have been invited to a noontime event today that will be more than a "briefing", not quite a "launch party", for UW's 50th Anniversary. "This is a time," writes UW president David Johnston, "to congratulate ourselves and let our community, province and nation know how proud we are to have achieved so much in such a short period of time." So I'll be in a position to say something tomorrow about plans for the anniversary celebrations, stretching throughout the year 2007. Today's event starts at noon in the Theatre of the Arts, and I understand that it'll involve both speeches (with PowerPoint, of course) and a balloon or two.

On a much more sombre note: a funeral service will be held tomorrow for Ashley Meyer (right), a second-year recreation and leisure studies student and a member of the Warrior figure skating team, who died on Saturday. Visitation is today from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. at the Edward R. Good Funeral Home, with the service taking place Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Community Fellowship Baptist Church on Conservation Drive. Memorial donations to the Children's Wish Foundation are suggested by the family.

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Carnegie recognizes teaching ‘leadership’

from the associate vice-president (academic)

UW and St. Jerome’s University have both been selected to participate in the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Institutional Leadership Program. The program recognizes “institutions with demonstrated commitment to and capacity for action, inquiry and leadership in the scholarship of teaching and learning.”

UW’s selection in the CASTL Institutional Leadership Program is based on its commitment to supporting the improvement of student learning, promoting significant institutional change, and demonstrating collaborative leadership, all recognized by the Carnegie Academy as vital contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Says President David Johnston: “The University of Waterloo is strongly committed to the advancement of the scholarship of teaching and learning, to the integration of best practices in teaching, and the establishment of benchmarks to gauge the impact of new approaches to teaching and learning across the disciplines”.

Waterloo has in place a campus-wide core of faculty leaders and researchers in the scholarship of teaching and learning, with members committed to the continuing development of evidence-based teaching excellence. They welcome the opportunity to mutually exchange knowledge and practices with our Carnegie Academy partners.

UW was selected to be a CASTL Partner Affiliate in 2003. The recent selection as an Institutional Leader significantly deepens and broadens opportunity for collaborative research in undergraduate learning with other North American and International Research Universities

Selection of St. Jerome’s for the program is based on its longstanding commitment to liberal arts education and its current plans for innovation and enhancement in the delivery of its education. Vice-President and Academic Dean Myroslaw Tataryn points to some specific elements in SJU’s educational plan as being key to its recognition by CASTL. “This coming fall, St. Jerome’s will launch a new mentoring program for first-year students, designed to help them with the transition to university,” says Tataryn. “The concept of this program builds on the learning community which has long been at the heart of the St. Jerome’s student experience.”

Tataryn notes that SJU plans to expand the program to include all aspects of the student experience and to establish educational benchmarks that chart a student’s progression throughout their degree. St. Jerome’s joins nine other North American institutions of higher learning for a three-year program of collaboration and inquiry focused on the improvement of student learning and the promotion of institutional change in the support of teaching and learning.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 with the aim of upholding and advancing the cause of higher education. Today, it is a North American leader in educational research, program development and policy initiatives.

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Profs' plans for their sabbaticals

Another cohort of UW faculty members will go on sabbatical leave starting July 1, to pursue writing books, attending international conferences, collecting field samples, visiting colleagues and exploring new specialties. Here are a few of those who are leaving on six-month sabbaticals, from July through the end of the fall term, and their plans as reported to UW’s board of governors.

Michael Boehringer of Germanic and Slavic studies told the board, in the customary summary: "I will complete a monograph entitled Gender/d Identities in the Works of Ferdinand von Saar,” a 19th century Austrian author.

Peter V. Hall of the geography department reports: “I will be engaged in a range of scholarly activities: in July, I will attend a major international conference in South Africa, early in the fall I will be engaged in ongoing fieldwork in northern Ontario, and in October I will submit a grant application. The remainder of the sabbatical will be devoted to submitting academic journal articles.”

John C. Semple of biology promises “field trips to Maritime Canada, southeastern US and various parts of Ontario to collect asters and goldenrod to expand databases and complete papers.”

Michael Rubinstein of pure mathematics writes: “I plan to work on several research, writing, and coding projects, and to collaborate on research with colleagues in California, England, and Montréal.”

Raouf Boutaba of computer science “will spend the sabbatical at ENST (École National Supérieure des Télécommunications) in France collaborating with Professor A. Seronelini on Network Security, N. Simoni on Network Management and E. Najon on Service Creation and Composition.”

Kate Lawson of the English department writes: “The new research project is an analysis of the formation of national identity and nationalist ideology in the fiction of the early- and mid-Victorian periods. Research results on how nationalist indoctrination and political ideology affect a nation’s self-perception will be published in a book tentatively entitled Pedagogies of Nationalism: Forming the English Subject, 1840-1870."

Andrew Houston of drama and speech communication reports that “I will pursue three artistic research projects: the direction and development of The Legion of Memory, a site-specific performance that will explore the stories of war refugees in the Waterloo region; Crossfiring, a community-based, multi-disciplinary site-specific performance at the Claybank Brick Plant in Dirt Hills, Saskatchewan. I will contribute two soundscapes to CommonPlants, an interdisciplinary, international performance project on-line.”

And John Straube of civil engineering and architecture writes: “The sabbatical will be used to complete several research projects, to write technical papers, and to visit Building Science research institutes in Alaska, Germany, and New Zealand.”

CAR

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