Carl Dare, the last living member of UW's original board of governors, chats with president David Johnston after the launch of Ken McLaughlin's book marking the university's 50th anniversary in late April.

Noted UW names on the honours list

A leading Kitchener businessman will be honoured at next month's convocation ceremonies, fifty years after his earliest involvement in helping create the University of Waterloo. He is Carl Dare, former president of Dare Foods and the only remaining member of the original board of governors that built Waterloo College Associate Faculties and turned it into UW.

Officials have announced that Dare will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at the afternoon session of convocation on Wednesday, June 13. Honorary degrees and other convocation honours were approved by UW's senate in confidential sessions over the past months, and the full list was announced after April's senate meeting.

The announcement said the title of Distinguished Professor Emeritus will be presented to nine retired UW professors: Jennifer Ashworth, philosophy; Darrol Bryant, religious studies (Renison College); John Cherry, earth sciences; Sydney Davison, applied mathematics; Dragomir Djokovic, pure mathematics; Rolf George, philosophy; Art Green, fine arts; Fred McCourt, chemistry; and Jan Narveson, philosophy.

In addition, three people will receive the title Honorary Member of the University, given to a few retired staff and others to recognize their contributions to the life of the university. Being honoured in that way next month will be Angelo Graham, long-time consultant for UW's safety office; Bruce Lumsden, former associate registrar and director of co-op education and career services from 1994 to 2005; and Shirley Thomson, former administrator in the faculty of mathematics and the co-chair of the 50th Anniversary committee.

Specific dates when the Honorary Member and Distinguished Professor Emeritus awards will be presented weren't announced, but they are usually timed to go with degrees and other honours for the faculty with which an individual is associated. The announcement did include details of when 17 people, including Dare and two former UW faculty members, will receive their honorary degrees:

Wednesday, June 13, 10 a.m.: Convocation for applied health sciences and environmental studies; honorary degrees for Norman Ashton, pioneer of the UW kinesiology department, and Terry Prowse, University of Victoria geographer.

June 13, 2 p.m.: Convocation for science; honorary degrees for Nobel Prize nominee Rudolf Thauer, microbiologist at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Germany, and Richard Peltier, noted University of Toronto geophysicist.

Thursday, June 14, 10 a.m.: First convocation for arts; honorary degrees for Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research In Motion and benefactor of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and for Carl Dare.

June 14, 2 p.m.: Second convocation for arts; honorary degrees for author Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink), music programmer Denise Donlon, and lawyer Reg Haney, UW's primary solicitor for the past several decades.

Friday, June 15, 10 a.m.: First convocation for mathematics; honorary degrees for Paul Embrechts of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and for Richard Stanley, mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

June 15, 2 p.m.: Second convocation for mathematics; honorary degrees for Andries van Dam, Brown University, pioneer in hypertext systems, and Duncan Luce, pioneer in mathematical behavioural sciences.

Saturday, June 16, 10 a.m.: First convocation for engineering; honorary degrees for Mona Zaghloul, first woman PhD graduate from the UW faculty of engineering, now an electrical engineering professor at George Washington University, and George Raithby, distinguished professor emeritus in mechanical engineering.

June 16, 2 p.m.: Second convocation for engineering; honorary degrees for Rod Coutts, UW graduate and benefactor, founder of Teklogix, and Savvas Chamberlain, distinguished professor emeritus in electrical engineering, founder of Dalsa.

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'Records manager' tackles paper glut

“People don’t know what to keep and what to throw away,” says Carolyn Dirks (left) — and that, in a nutshell, is why UW has created the job of University Records Manager, in which she started work May 1.

Dirks was formerly the librarian at St. Jerome’s University, and has a background in archives work and the little-known field of records management, which touches on everything from privacy legislation to electronic data formats, efficient paper handling and the burden of overstuffed filing cabinets.

She’ll report to the secretary of the university, Lois Claxton, who issued a memo announcing the appointment and explaining that “Records Management is the systematic control of all records, regardless of media format, from initial creation to final disposition.

“The recommendation to create this position came from the Records Management Committee, a small group convened last year and chaired by Bruce Mitchell, and was informed in part by the need to revise and revive records management at UW, the demands of provincial Freedom of Information and Privacy legislation which Ontario universities came under in June 2006, and increasing requirement for effective space utilization.”

One example of far-from-effective space utilization, says Dirks, is file drawers full of minutes from long-forgotten committee meetings. One set of those minutes, kept by the office that was responsible for the committee’s work, is surely enough, as long as people can figure out where to look if they should ever want it.

She says records management involves some broad questions, starting with the very basic: “Who creates records, and why?” Is there duplication, in filing information and keeping it perhaps long after it’s needed? Is data kept reliably and securely, and in the right place? What documents will eventually have enough permanent importance that they should find a home in the university archives?

Obviously, she says, plenty of consultation will be involved. She expects to work closely with the archives staff (part of the UW library), the university secretariat (where legal documents are generated, and where UW’s compliance with freedom of information and privacy law is managed), and other offices. She also predicts that a Records Management Board or some similar advisory group will need to be set up — but after just a couple of days on the job, she’s just starting to explore the challenges.

One thing she’ll be doing, Dirks says, is “physically looking around” at the way UW offices file things. And she expects to be responding to departmental requests to come and give some immediate advice. One administrative department was on the phone to her temporary office in Needles Hall on day one, urgently asking for help in getting its mountain of paper files under control.

“If people have questions about what to do with stuff, they should get in touch with me,” she says. “I might not know the answers right away, but I want to know what the questions are!”

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Summer sentences, summer longer

The first report I've heard about Friday night's Fed Hall dance featuring The Lost Faculties says it was "an awesome night with a packed dance floor from the start of the night to the end". •  For most students who were at co-op jobs during the winter term, work reports are due by 4:00 tomorrow afternoon. • Sessions on "office safety and ergonomics", "gas cylinder safety" and "inspecting the workplace" are among the offerings in a UW Safety Awareness Day to be held on Thursday, May 24.

Family members and UW officials both attended a memorial service Friday morning for Harry Thomas Prior, whose last gift to the world came after his death through the UW school of anatomy. Prior died some time ago, and "he really, really wanted his body to go to science," explains Robin Jones of UW's school of optometry, whose wife is Prior's daughter. That was arranged; "typically we use a body for two years," says anatomy demonstrator Hugh Scoggan, but in this case three years of anatomy labs for kinesiology and optometry students have been based on that single body. The memorial service was conducted by Rev. Megan Collings-Moore, Anglican chaplain based at Renison College, in the chapel at Waterloo's Parkview Cemetery. The body was then interred in Parkview near a memorial stone that bears UW's coat of arms and acknowledges the contributions of those who have left their bodies for such uses. Tom Prior, originally of Gosport, England, was a Royal Navy shipwright and later worked in Kitchener as a carpenter.

There's food now in TechTown in the north campus Research and Technology Park. The eagerly awaited TechTown Café was "quietly opened" last Monday, Michele Baumgarten of the TechTown management reports, "but now they are in full swing. We are welcoming the community to come in and enjoy what we have to offer," which advertisements say includes "exceptional coffee and light healthy fare for the active lifestyle", along the lines of sushi and salads. The café is to be open 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the weekends. Online ordering is expected to be in place shortly. Baumgarten adds that Waterloo mayor Brenda Halloran will be on hand tomorrow, noon to 1:00, for a lunch event that will officially open the café.

The engineering e-newsletter reports that "Catherine Rosenberg, chair of electrical and computer engineering, recently announced the two-year appointment of Andrei Sazonov as the Director of the Giga-to-Nano (G2N) laboratory." •  Douglas Harley officially retired May 1, ending a 20-year career as a mechanic in UW's plant operations department. •  The Federation of Students will hold its beginning-of-term "Clubs, Services and Societies Days" Thursday and Friday in the great hall of the Student Life Centre.

And this comes from Chris Gilbert in UW's athletics department: "The football Warriors wrapped up a week-long training camp with the annual Black-Gold inter-squad game on Friday, April 27. The spring camp (pictured) was the first under new head coach Dennis McPhee and assistant head coach Joe Paopao. The Warriors brought in guest coaches Don Sutherin (CFL Hall of Famer), Ron Carnaghan (Ohio Football Hall of Game) and former Warrior coach Tuffy Knight, to assist throughout the week." He quotes McPhee: "Our camp was very successful. We have begun to change the culture and belief system of our players and the direction we need to go as a team. We require commitment, loyalty, and dedication (academically and athletically) from all our players to move forward. If we believe in these components, we will evolve into the Warriors we expect to be.” The Warriors kick off the 2007 season at Toronto on September 3 before returning to Waterloo for their home opener September 8 vs. York.

CAR

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