Hong Kong alumni in the spotlight

Three prominent Hong Kong residents, including a former UW faculty member, will be in the spotlight tonight (actually, more like this morning, Waterloo time) as the university holds a 50th anniversary gala dinner at the Sheraton Towers hotel in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

They’re are among the 50 recipients of 50th Anniversary Alumni Awards that were announced earlier this fall. "The university is very fortunate to have such committed alumni who share their time, expertise and connections to continue to make UW a dynamic institution," says Jason Coolman, director of alumni affairs. "A great many of them were able to attend a recognition event close to home. The Hong Kong event is a great way of ensuring that distance does not prevent us from demonstrating just how much we value their significant contributions."

UW president David Johnston will be at the Hong Kong party today along with Gail Cuthbert Brandt, associate vice-president (international), and other staff and faculty members taking part in a trip to south Asia. It follows a luncheon for the influential Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, at which Johnston was the guest speaker. A reception for parents of students is scheduled for tomorrow.

The three alumni award winners are among approximately 1,000 Waterloo alumni who live in Hong Kong. Details of the winners:

• Rex Auyeung, senior vice-president and chief executive-Asia at Principal International, Inc. When he arrived on campus as an undergraduate student in the 1970s, he expected to earn a degree in environmental studies. Today he reports that he received much more. He is the senior vice-president and chief executive-Asia at Principal International, Inc. in Hong Kong. Over the years, he has made donations to the Hong Kong Alumni Trust for promising scholars at UW, and also established his own scholarship fund.

• George Woo, associate dean of the faculty of health and social sciences, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. After graduating from UW in 1964, Woo completed graduate work in the United States before returning to Waterloo in 1970 to take a faculty position at the school of optometry. While at UW, Woo developed the low vision program at the school of optometry. He was the founding director of the centre for sight enhancement, which became a national centre under his leadership. He taught at UW for 26 years before moving to Hong Kong, where he is associate dean of the faculty of health and social sciences and an optometry professor at the HKPU.

• David Yau, president and chief executive officer of the Hong Kong Institute of Continuing Education. UW, consistently ranked as the most innovative university in Canada, served as the model for Yau to establish an educational institution in his home city. Yau, who received a Bachelor of Mathematics degree in 1992, is the founder as well as current leader of the HKICE. The private institution offers degree and short programs to students in Hong Kong and mainland China. Before entering the educational sector, Yau was an associate vice-president with Prudential Securities.

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Teaching assistants feel 'respected'

More than 90 per cent of all graduate students working as teaching assistants say that they’re “respected” by the faculty members who supervise them, but fewer than half say they get feedback from the faculty about the work they’re doing.

Those are among the findings of a survey done this summer in which 1,115 grads answered dozen of questions: how many hours did you work? Did you ever report a student for academic dishonesty? Were you expected to teach material you didn’t understand? Was the workload fair?

“The questionnaire was designed to measure perceptions of fairness and equity in T.A. distributions, training and preparedness for responsibilities, work load, settlement of disputes, and reporting of academic offences,” says a detailed report of the survey, posted on the GSA’s web site. A summary was presented to the November 19 meeting of the UW senate by GSA president Ian MacKinnon.

A total of 2,928 students received e-mail inviting them to take part in the survey, the GSA says. Almost 200 of those who replied had never had a TA job; at the other extreme, 70 had had 11 or more TA assignments over their years as grads. The average across campus was 3.5 TA experiences, with a high of 4.2 in science and a low of 2.1 in environmental studies.

The survey summary note that “92% of respondents felt they were respected by instructors,” and 82 per cent said they were respected by the students they taught. Just 47 per cent “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that they received feedback on their performance from the instructor, and 35 per cent said they received such feedback from their students.

While there were variations across campus, the average TA reported spending 22.9 hours in a term teaching labs, 38.4 hours marking, 13.7 hours holding “office hours” for students, 6.6 hours attending lectures, and 12.2 hours in preparation.

Some other findings: 27 per cent of TAs said they disagreed (or “strongly disagreed”) that their department had a fair process for distributing TA appointments; 76 per cent agreed that their duties were clearly specified; 13 per cent (and 22 per cent in the science faculty) said they had been appointed to a TA job for a course in which they didn’t understand the material. Also, 47 per cent said they received high quality training.

The TAs were also asked about their own skills in English, both spoken and written. Most (71 per cent) rated their written English as “excellent”, and nearly all the rest chose “adequate”. But the numbers were somewhat lower for spoken English, as 61 per cent said “excellent”, 33 per cent “adequate” and 6 per cent “needs improvement”. A chart in the survey report showing the responses from the six faculties does not separate the figures for the lower two responses, but does show that 52 per cent of TAs in engineering and 46 per cent in math thought their spoken English was less than excellent.

“Based on these results,” says the web site, “the GSA’s Standing Committee on Graduate Student Funding will be preparing a report highlighting areas where the university needs to improve the TA experience.”

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The cold facts and the hot news

A group of students, some from UW and some from Wilfrid Laurier University, will spend tonight outdoors near the Student Life Centre, making a demonstration called “Out in the Cold” to raise awareness and funds for poverty and homelessness in Waterloo Region. Things run from 7:00 tonight to 7 a.m. Saturday, with the group staying outside overnight to attract attention and raise funds for a Lutherwood program called “Families in Transition”. This new program attempts to catch families before they enter the shelter system and guide them through the process of finding affordable, safe and sustainable housing. “As the University of Waterloo gathers more international presence and national exposure,” says one of the group, Nick Petten, “the students believe that it is still very important to focus on community-related issues. The act of exposing ourselves to the harsh Canadian climate will show that students are willing to act to bring issues of poverty in our community to the limelight. Community members are encouraged to come to the event to witness, participate and donate towards this worthy cause. For more information, please contact the organizers at outinthecold.event@gmail.com.”

Here's a reminder that, as recently announced by the university secretariat, "The University of Waterloo is looking for a Chancellor (term from May 1, 2009, to April 30, 2012) to succeed Dr. Mike Lazaridis, whose second term ends April 30, 2009. Candidates must be Canadian citizens. Duties include membership on the Senate and Board of Governors and presiding at Convocation ceremonies. Any member of the University community or UW alumni is invited to send nominations, accompanied by a resumé, if possible, by January 31, 2008, to Lois Claxton, Secretary of the Chancellor Nominating Committee, Secretariat, University of Waterloo. All nominations will be treated in confidence."

Every year the World Religions Conference in Canada brings a capacity audience to the Humanities Theatre, and tomorrow the 27th annual conference is expected to be every bit as popular, seeking as it does “to promote mutual understanding, respect, cohesion, and fraternity among all members of the human family”. The event is organized by the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam of Canada with the cooperation of more than 20 other groups, and boasts that it’s “the largest inter-faith event of its kind in Canada”. The theme of this year's conference is "How Religion Can Protect the Environment". Speakers will present Christian, Jewish, Aboriginal Spiritual, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist Humanists (Atheist and Agnostic) and Islamic perspectives on this subject. In addition, religious organizations will present spiritual poems and songs and set up a World Religions Exhibition. David Imrie of CTV Southwestern Ontario will act as moderator, and several municipal and other government leaders are scheduled to attend and deliver greetings. Admission is free, and that includes lunch and dinner during the event, which runs tomorrow from 10:00 to 6:00. Details are, of course, online.

Yesterday's New York Times reported on research by UW graduate student Ryan Kennedy, who made his way into a New York ballroom to measure the level of secondhand tobacco smoke resulting from a high-profile cigar smoking event in an otherwise smoke-free hotel. Says his advisor, psychology professor Geoff Fong: “One branch of our research in the ITC Project on tobacco control has involved documenting the level of tobacco smoke pollution in various venues (casinos, cars, outdoor patios) in order to provide evidence that TSP in those venues poses a significant threat to public health. In collaboration with our ITC colleagues at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, Ryan went to the Marriott Marquis hotel for two days to measure the levels of fine respirable smoke particles (2.5 microns and smaller — a very good, and specific measure of TSP) at a huge event attended by over 3,000 cigar devotees who were able to smoke up to 31 cigars during the event. Apparently there is a clause in the smoke-free law of New York City that allows smoking at such events. Using a $5,000 device, the TSI Sidepak Am510 Personal Aerosol Monitor, we found that the levels of TSP were extremely high: the reporter actually understated the preliminary results: she said that the level of TSP was 1193 inside the ballroom when in fact it was 1943 (micrograms per cubic meter). Anything above 250 is considered extremely hazardous. In a worldwide study of TSP in Irish Pubs we found that the average level of TSP in Irish Pubs where smoking was allowed was about 350.”

The offices of the PDEng program will be moving next week (from Engineering II to a location on the second floor of Carl Pollock Hall) and staff warn that "there may be some interruption in our service, but we hope that it will be minimal." • The UW safety office is still taking registrations for day-long first aid and CPR training to be offered this coming Monday and Tuesday as well as December 3, 4 and 5. • The staff association has set Tuesday as the deadline for applications (e-mail fraser@uwaterloo.ca) for a vacant position on UW's staff relations committee, the key body that links senior administration with representatives of staff.

CAR

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