Test for future accounting students

from the UW school of accountancy

The School of Accountancy has introduced a new admissions tool — the Accounting and Financial Management Admissions Assignment (AFMAA) — to identify students who not only are academically strong but also have the potential for developing skills and attributes that employers are looking for in new graduates.

In conjunction with the administration of this exercise, the school will be hosting a mini-recruitment event next month for prospective students and their parents. It is anticipated that the AFMAA and the mini-recruitment event will draw approximately 1,600 students and parents to the campus.

Selected students will be invited to come to campus to write the AFMAA on Saturday, February 17. It consists of a two-hour essay assignment written under supervision. This new tool will assist the School in selecting and admitting strong, well-rounded students who will excel academically and can hone their abilities for successful careers in accounting or financial management.

The mini-recruitment event provides an excellent opportunity to provide these highly desired applicants and their parents with information about the distinctions and benefits of studying Accounting and Financial Management (AFM) at Waterloo. Presentations throughout the day will include information about co-op, scholarships, Fellowships and our unique Living-Learning Communities. Parents will be able to attend these sessions while their sons and daughters are writing the AFMAA. Representatives of UW and the AFM program, including current students, will be on hand to answer questions.

“I’m very excited about the potential outcome of the AFMAA," says Grant Russell, Director of the Accounting and Financial Management program. "This new admissions tool provides the opportunity to attract a broader range of high calibre students and admit those who have shown that they possess the necessary skills — technical and transferable — to be successful within the AFM program and eventually to become leaders in their chosen careers. The mini-recruitment event will be a fantastic experience for their parents to gain some insights to UW and the AFM program."

Back to top

Engineers dine in style March 1

Fifty years and more than 27,000 graduates later, Waterloo engineering is celebrating its half-century birthday on March 1. Engineering was the first program when UW began its operations in July 1957, and as part of the university's 50th anniversary celebrations this year, engineering will be holding its gala event March 1 at Toronto's Royal York Hotel.

Helping launch the celebration will be keynote speaker Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, says an announcement in the engineering e-newsletter this month. "I am looking forward to the 50th anniversary celebration to meet with students and staff both past and present and to learn about the continuing groundbreaking invention being done within Waterloo’s walls,” says Hadfield, who spent time as a graduate engineering student at Waterloo in the 1980s. "Engineering research has been key in Canada’s exploration of the unknown, both on the ground and in space," Hadfield adds. "Waterloo has been a dominant influence in technology innovation, application and achievement. That unparalleled combination drew me to Waterloo as a grad student, and the quality of the experience has helped me ever since."

Emceeing the anniversary celebration will be Michael Higgins, who was St. Jerome's University's president and vice-chancellor for seven years. Higgins left his St. Jerome's position last year to become president of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

A committee of engineering staff and alumni has been working for more than a year on the event, which will feature Waterloo's student teams and their vehicles, the newsletter says. All profits raised by the March 1 event will be used to support future team activities.

Special guests, including former engineering deans, engineering alumni achievement medal winners and the university's president David Johnston, will be recognized at the event. Sponsorships and tickets are still available for the anniversary celebration, which will include a reception and dinner in the Royal York Hotel's Canadian Room.

Back to top

Hot news on a cold, cold morning

It's not, repeat not, just co-op students and their employers who were affected by the troubles of the past few days on the JobMine computer system. Olaf Naese of the co-op and career services department, who issues much of the information that CECS provides to the outside world, sends this follow-up: "In my haste to get out the message I should have included the fact that there are, of course, other users of JobMine too. JobMine serves not only co-ops, but also graduating students (both co-op and regular), students who are looking for a summer job (mainly regular), students who are looking for a part-time job (both co-op and regular) and alumni. Employers who were expecting to look over applicants to jobs they had posted could not log on, so they were affected as well. JobMine is also used by CECS staff to organize job descriptions and interview dates for employers, look up and update co-op student records, run reports, and do room bookings. Although the timing of the crash was perhaps not as critical to the others as to co-op students, it certainly made life difficult for others too."

Today is payday for faculty members and most of UW's staff — the first payday of a calendar year, which means many individuals will see their net pay drop from December's level as deductions resume for some government programs. (On the other hand, the "basic personal amount" exemption has gone up, which should reduce the income tax payable.) While monthly pay is a decades-long UW tradition, the staff association has expressed an interest in having the pay cycle changed to biweekly, particularly since a poll last fall in which 61 per cent of 909 respondents favoured a change. "There is no guarantee that such a change will be implemented," says the new issue of the association's newsletter, "but the Staff Association Executive will be discussing next steps at an upcoming meeting."

UW's Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology is running a competition "designed for innovative University of Waterloo undergraduate students aspiring to lead an entrepreneurial lifestyle. Students entering this competition will have the idea, the tenacity, and the willingness to engage in the development of a business plan." Teams of two to seven students take part, writing a plan and submitting it by the February 10 deadline to be judged by current graduate students. "The design of the competition requires entrants to strike a balance between the level of innovativeness and the quality/viability," an announcement explains. "Written submissions are to be inclusive and may draw from numerous business plan models. . . . The judging criteria will be based on potential economic impact, quality of the plan itself, innovative/disruptive technology deployed, intellectual property value, scalability of the core idea, time to break even (if applicable), and the fundamental question: Would you invest in this company with your own resources given the trade-off between risk and potential reward?" The eventual first prize is $5,000. There's more information online.

The name of one of UW's principal founders, businessman Ira Needles (left), is immortalized not only on a campus building but on a major road on the west side of Waterloo. Now it'll reach into Kitchener too, as new and existing roads are being stitched together and given the same Ira G. Needles Boulevard name. The present Boulevard extends north from the Erb Street traffic circle; now the Needles name is to grace the road southward, variously called West Hill Drive, Regional Road 70, Trussler Road, or nothing at all. (The traditional Trussler Road name will still apply to everything south of the Conestoga Parkway, leading out of Kitchener to the south.) Before Waterloo Regional council gives final approval to the change, it's to come up for discussion by the Region's planning and works committee on Tuesday morning, a legal notice announces.

A distinguished former faculty member of UW's optometry school died on January 6, aged 85. Walwyn S. Long "was born in Saskatchewan," a colleague writes, "and received his primary and secondary education in that province. He completed a Diploma in Optometry from the College of Optometry of Ontario in 1943 and served as an optometrist in the RCAF during World War II. He completed a BA from the University of Toronto in 1948 and joined the teaching faculty of the College of Optometry that same year. Wally spent a year as a visiting Professor in Optometry at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1964-65. He received an OD degree from the College of Optometry of Ontario in 1966 and he was among the first five faculty members to establish the new School of Optometry at the University of Waterloo in 1967. He retired from the School in 1984 after serving a term as Director and after having occupied a variety of administrative positions over the years. Wally wrote articles on clinical topics related to dynamic retinoscopy, strabismus and amblyopia. He was a remarkable teacher, and the two teaching manuals he produced on the optometric examination and binocular vision are such superb examples of succinctness and logic that they were in use in the school's curriculum for decades. Wally was a very modest individual who refused any special recognition or acknowledgement from the School or the University. I think of him as one of the unsung heroes of optometry. His death represents a the end of an era in the development of our profession and School."

The "Loving to Learn" celebration held on Valentine's Day last year will not be repeated this year, but may make a return appearance in 2008, the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology tells me. • Donald McKay of UW's school of architecture was a member of the jury that chose winners of the Library Building Awards given by the Ontario Library Association this year. • The winter meeting of UW's board of governors, scheduled for February 6 at 2:30, will be held in an unusual place: the Fireplace Lounge in Sweeney Hall, St. Jerome's University.

CAR

Back to top