In December 1997, James Downey, then president of UW, made his predictions for a decade into the future. It can now be revealed that he anticipated an end to ten-year planning: “Having done a broad environmental scan of human capacity for volcano activation, hurricane manipulation, tidal wave initiation, quicksand generation, ice cap liquefaction, ozone depletion, and asteroid diversion, the UW institutional planning commission will conclude there isn’t much point in having any more decade reports.”

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How they expected UW to be in 2007

Some folks could see into the future more clearly than others, as they took their turns at the keyboard to contribute to an “electronic time capsule” ten years ago. The Daily Bulletin is honoured to be able to open those predictions this summer, as part of UW’s 50th anniversary celebrations, and can report that some of the forecasts came true and some, emphatically, didn’t.

The students, staff and faculty members who added their predictions to the database had a range of concerns: finances, environmental issues, academic achievement, their own futures. “I worry,” one student wrote simply in one of the 1997 predictions.

Some forecasts were fanciful (“UW will be under one big glass roof”) and others modest: “Some courses will be taught through the use of multimedia,” a staff member boldly predicted. More than one person anticipated a merger of UW and Wilfrid Laurier University within the decade, making for one big campus stretching up University Avenue.

“Will all the green areas be buildings by then?” another staff member of 1997 mused. “Maybe multimedia classrooms will stop the physical growth, and students will come to class via the internet, in which case foreign students can study from their home country without ever experiencing the reality of Canadian winters.”

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. . . with, of course, a Maclean's mention

The predictions were made December 2, 1997, during a “giant coffee break” held in the Davis Centre to wind up the 40th anniversary year. People were asked to complete two sentences: “In the year 2007, I think the University of Waterloo will be like . . . In the year 2007, I will be doing the following . . .”

The responses, about 100 of them, were turned over to Information Systems and Technology to be made public only when UW reached its 50th. With some uncertainty about how technology might change over the decade, the full text was to be stored in four different formats: floppy disk, CD-ROM, ‘attic’ (an online archive), and paper.

“Paper is only good if you can find it again,” says Roger Watt, who retired from IST this spring. “Computers don’t come with floppy drives any more. And ‘attic’ was decommissioned some time ago. CD-ROM hasn’t changed — yet.” However, apparently nobody knows where the CD-ROM of 1997 was stored, if in fact one was actually made. Eventually Glenn Anderson of IST came up with a copy — “one that I just happened to have left tucked away on my system and kind of forgotten about.”

“The format in which they could have been stored is interesting,” says Carol Vogt, another IST staff member of that era who is now retired. “HTML, Word, WordPerfect, PDF would all be quite readable today. Something written in 1987 would probably have been much harder to read in 1997 — it might have been in WordStar or Volkswriter format!”

It’s been provided to me as a Word file, from which the Daily Bulletin will present excerpts over the weeks ahead. (Names of the original writers will be used only with their permission.) Three samples, just to start things off:

• “The Math building will be attached to Math 2, an adjoining building for some computer design and engineering faculty. Biology 3 will be in the construction phase. A third large-sized library will be constructed.”

• “The university launches a 500-million-dollar funding drive to support the Thought Process Technology network campus-wide. This network has been devised by a group of UW spinoff companies to eliminate the repetitive stress problems of the old computer technology.”

• "UW will be celebrating its 15th consecutive year of being ranked in the top 4 in Maclean's university rankings, comprehensive category, along with being tops in the reputation ranking once again. The athletics department will kick off its 50th anniversary year by announcing an all-time all-Warrior basketball squad: Mike Moser, Paul Boyce, Sean Van Koughnett, Mano Watsa and Tom Schneider."

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A degree for 'outstanding generalists'

A news release from the UW media relations office. The BKI program was first described in the Daily Bulletin in March.

Outstanding students with broad interests stand to benefit from a new program where they will practise integrating knowledge from the humanities with the sciences. They will learn to identify, explore and solve new problems showing up at the boundaries and intersections of traditional subjects.

The Bachelor of Knowledge Integration program, to be offered beginning in September 2008, will graduate students comfortable with numeracy, hands-on experience of investigative science and a meaningful literacy in the humanities. The unusual degree designation is still awaiting provincial approval, but the program itself is already attracting attention.

"The goal of knowledge integration is to equip students of high potential and broad interests for thoughtful citizenship, ethical leadership and innovative scholarship," says Deep Saini, dean of the faculty of environmental studies, where the program will be based.

With a foundation spanning the humanities and sciences, KI is ideal for students who want to bridge disciplinary boundaries, join or lead interdisciplinary teams and integrate concerns for the economic, social and environmental context and consequences of their work.

KI will accommodate 80 to 90 students a year. They will all take courses in English, public speaking, critical thinking, ethics, computer science, mathematics and investigative sciences. In their upper years, each student will identify a specialty — a discipline or topic at the intersection of two or more disciplines — and pursue individual research projects.

KI builds on that foundation with design projects. "We know from UW's engineering programs, from fine arts, from architecture," says director Ed Jernigan, "that design demands strong fundamental knowledge, group skills, communication and imagination. Design is a powerful context in which to practise integrating disciplines."

For example, in the museum course, KI students will take a field trip to a major 'museum city' to study how and why exhibits are designed. Then they'll come back into the classroom, the workshop, the studio, and the lab to research, design and build museum exhibits of their own. "Imagine exploring how to facilitate 'hands-on learning' by going behind-the-scenes at the Smithsonian in Washington," says Jernigan. "Or scouting for ideas on reaching multi-lingual visitors at the Uffizi in Florence, or researching conservation at the British Museum in London."

KI developed from the Waterloo Unlimited enrichment program for promising high school students, also based in the faculty of environmental studies. Waterloo Unlimited offers students of high potential the learning skills to enhance their own educations, no matter which subjects interest them most.

It will be managed by a new administrative unit in the ES faculty, the Centre for Knowledge Integration.

CAR

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