Three more years for engineering dean

Adel Sedra (left), dean of UW's faculty of engineering, will serve for another term after his current appointment ends next summer, the president announced yesterday.

But there's a wrinkle: Sedra's new three-year term, the usual length when a dean is reappointed, won't start until July 2009. That means engineering will have an acting dean for the 2008-09 year.

"I am pleased to report that the Board of Governors yesterday approved Senate’s recommendation that Professor Adel Sedra be reappointed Dean, Faculty of Engineering for a second term, from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2012," president David Johnston wrote in a memo distributed to faculty, staff and students across engineering.

"Professor Sedra’s reappointment enjoys widespread support within the Faculty of Engineering and throughout the University. He is seen as a strong leader and an excellent representative of the Faculty. I am delighted he is willing to continue as Dean.

"As Professor Sedra’s current term expires June 30, 2008, the Provost will make an acting appointment between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. He plans on consulting openly and widely before doing so."

The reappointment comes after work by a nominating committee, set up under UW Policy 45, whose work starts with finding out whether an incumbent dean is "generally acceptable" to faculty members "and other persons affected". The work of a nominating committee is confidential until its report goes to senate and the board of governors and a decision is made.

Sedra came to UW in 2003 from the University of Toronto, where he was a professor of electrical engineering and had served as provost. He is co-author of an internationally used textbook on microelectronics that has sold more than 800,000 copies.

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Annual 'special recognition' for staff

Winners of the fourth annual Special Recognition Awards for UW staff members got the news a few days ago, and their names are being made public on the web today.

The Staff Recognition Program, which was introduced as part of the staff salary settlement for 2003-04 and overhauled in 2007, rewards staff members with a $1,500 one-time bonus. Nominations were invited from last winter through July, and could come from anyone on campus. They were then reviewed by the university's senior executives, who selected the winners.

The award winners will be guests at a reception November 15 in South Campus Hall, hosted by Executive Council and the Provost's Advisory Committee on Staff Compensation, the committee that devised the program.

New this year are seven criteria categories — building relationships, outstanding service, fostering innovation, going beyond expectations, positive influence on the workplace, leadership, other ("makes UW a better place") — that were established to provide more structure to the nomination and to be able to give the UW community a sense of why someone received an award. Actual nominations are confidential, but if you roll the mouse over the name of the individual recipient, you will see the category under which he or she was nominated.

When selecting recipients, an announcement of today's winners says, "Executive Council reviews all nominations with a view to determining whether the nature and type of contribution is over and above what is usually expected, including activities outside one’s specific job responsibilities. Nominators are asked to indicate their reasons for nominating the staff member and to substantiate those reasons through the use of examples, relating back to the criteria category(ies) selected. The most common reason for an unsuccessful nomination is the lack of detail provided on the nomination form."

Also new this year are awards for teams — up to four a year. Three teams were selected to receive a 2007 Special Recognition Team Award. Categories for the teams: fostering innovation, a major efficiency or cost savings, completion of a major project or milestone. The non-cash award may be used in a combination of ways, such as team development, enhancement of work environment, celebratory event, commemorative gifts.

The university secretariat, which manages the paperwork for the program, provides an online example of a successful nomination, with the name and other details changed to maintain confidentiality. "The selection committee is not looking for eloquence but for examples to substantiate the claims," says Trenny Canning of the secretariat. "One or two lines of text, not support by examples, is not adequate."

Instead, here's the sort of thing the example provides: "When we hired Jane, one of the principal attributes we were looking for was the ability to take initiative because we knew there would be many times that we would be overloaded. We have not been disappointed. The Department of Society is a very dynamic work environment and we particularly appreciate how Jane takes on the responsibility for so many initiatives. An excellent example of this initiative is the role she played during our relocation. She was involved from the beginning in meetings with the architects, designers and contractors and played a key role in developing, pricing and approving the final space layout plan. She was the key contact in dealing with numerous student, faculty and staff issues relating to the coordination (and delays) of the move. It has been Jane and her team that have had to find ways to work around these obstacles and through it all, maintain a positive work environment for the many stakeholders who come in and out of our space every day. . . ."

Nominations for next year's awards are being accepted from now until next summer.

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New York's Central Park had a branch of the distinctively Canadian Terry Fox Run this year, thanks to a group of UW alumni who made contact at a "networking event" sponsored by alumni affairs in September. They planned the Terry Fox event, welcoming a few co-op students and friends as well as UW graduates for the 5-kilometre early morning outing on October 13. Key organizers were Andrea McKenzie and Jason Koon.

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Big events as the weekend nears

There's likely to be a good crowd for a reception tonight at Render, the UW art gallery in East Campus Hall. It marks both the start of this year's national conference for the Universities Art Association of Canada — fine arts faculty from institutions across the country — but also the opening of two exhibits in the gallery itself. One of the shows is "Cold Storage", in which, curator Andrew Hunter explains, "Patrick Mahon explores ideas of the Canadian north through a combination of complex drawings and a collection-based installation that extends his ongoing engagement with graphic forms and museum culture. Reflecting an informed and personal connection to the north that dates back to the 1980s, Cold Storage destabilizes popular ideas of a pristine Arctic by focusing on the detritus of contemporary existence in northern settlements." The other show opens the Render Pavilion, the result of a collaboration between the gallery and UW’s School of Architecture. Developed through a two part design/build graduate seminar led by Hunter in the winter and spring terms this year, the Pavilion Project "challenged senior level graduate students to design and construct a unique programming structure to be used within Render’s main space by visiting artists, curators, researchers and students. Working as a team, students planned and executed the construction of this moveable, articulated pavilion that has been designed to incorporate new media technology, storage, archives and production space." I'll be saying more about both these gallery shows one of these days.

The second annual human rights conference organized by the Waterloo Public Interest Research Group takes place this weekend under the title “Narratives of Home: Displacement and Human Rights”. The conference “seeks to explore, draw connections between and inspire action on issues of displacement as experienced by Canadian Aboriginals, migrant workers, refugees and internally displaced peoples.” Things have already begun with a multimedia exhibit that concludes today in the lower atrium of the Student Life Centre. Award-winning documentary film maker Peter Raymont is the keynote speaker. He will be heard at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the Humanities Theatre: “Raymont has traveled the world for more than 30 years on a mission to expose injustice and incite change. As a documentary filmmaker, he has revealed the hidden truths in politics, social and environmental disasters, media and big business. The process of making a documentary is an arduous one, but Raymont's efforts result in some of the most in-depth and thorough examinations of the important people and stories of our time.” The conference itself will take place Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Rod Coutts Hall. “We will have many great speakers and workshop facilitators joining us,” says WPIRG, mentioning Jenna Hennebry, professor and researcher on migrant workers issues, Gloria Nafziger, refugee coordinator for Amnesty International, Francisco Rico Martinez, past president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, and Jean Becker, elder-in-residence at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Faculty of Social Work. Things wind up with a coffee house Saturday starting at 7:30 in the Great Hall of Conrad Grebel University College: “Enjoy a night of dance, storytelling, music and theatre with fairly-traded coffee.” There’s free admission for all events; information, 519-888-4882.

CKMS, otherwise known as Radio Waterloo, UW’s student station, will hold its Sonic Boom Awards Show at Federation Hall on Friday night. Tickets are $10. This year “is proving to be a busy year for Radio Waterloo!” writes coordinator Heather Majaury. “Between the 90 programs, and many volunteers, both on air and behind the scenes, CKMS is gearing up for yet another undertaking ready to rock the 'Loo.” She notes that Sonic Boom is “the only awards show of its kind, bringing independent bands and award-nominated CKMS broadcasters together on the same stage,” and promises “laughs, socializing, excitement, and great entertainment. This year, Sonic Boom will see the likes of Rufus, Billy and the Lost Boys, Lynn Jackson, Organic Groove, and last year's Matt Osborne Award Winner: Amber Long and the Languid Lotus Project. The Matt Osborne Award is hand-picked by a jury amongst dozens of applications. It includes a $500 reward as well as studio recording time at CKMS’s Palindrome Recording Studio for a local independent band, artist, or musician pushing their own goals to the mainstream or developing their art within an independent or alternative context. The support is transformative to an artist at the beginning of their career.” (Left: Rob Daniels accepts last year’s Best Program Award for ‘Visions in Sound’ on CKMS.)

CAR

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