They're here, and so is their stuff

There they are, unloading their worldly goods at Village I (with a bit of help from their parents) as a new term — and a new phase in their life — begins. (Photo by Michael Strickland.)

And this morning, UW's 5,000-plus new first-year students are getting to know each other, the campus, and the programs they're entering. The first full day of orientation activity brings the applied health sciences "Feast with the Chief" at one end of campus and the engineering hard-hat ceremony at the other, with the "Welcome to Math Rock" and the arts "Most Extreme Challenge" in between.

Tonight's schedule includes the Village Variety Night for students in the main UW residences and also the off-campus program, while students living at the colleges indulge in a St. Jerome's carnival, "Chicago Jazz" at St. Paul's, "Night on the Boardwalk" at Renison, and something called "Spellbound" at Conrad Grebel. Tomorrow — Wednesday already — will be a full day of faculty-based programming, leading up to something called "When Extreme Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth".

In various groups, the new students will be shown the way to the Humanities Theatre to see one of nine performances of "Single and Sexy" — at 10:00, 1:00 and 4:00 today, Wednesday and Thursday. Most of them will also write the English Language Proficiency Exam either Wednesday or Thursday; a schedule for multiple sessions at the Physical Activities Complex is online.

Most students (and this applies to upper-year students as well as the newcomers) will have paid their fees already. For those who haven't, the deadline is tomorrow. Fee statements are available to students through Quest. Some undergraduate students are apparently wondering what's the meaning of the "Federation of Students Administered Fee" that appears on their bills in addition to the Federation membership fee of $34.67. The new item, Rick Theis of the Federation office explains, "grew out of a requirement from the UW Admin that all fees other than the Feds fee be amalgamated into a single line. It thus incorporates the pre-existing Health and Dental Plan fee with the new U-Pass fee." (The latter pays for Grand River Transit bus service for students.)

The mention of fees naturally leads to the issue of financial aid — hence this repeated note from the registrar's office: “OSAP loans, Canada and Ontario Student Loans, as well as some other provincial loans, will be available from the Student Awards and Financial Aid Office beginning Tuesday, September 4. The Student Awards and Financial Aid Office is located on the second floor, Needles Hall. Office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday.”

The bookstore, UW Shop and TechWorx in South Campus Hall will be open from 8:00 to 5:00 today through Friday, noon to 4 p.m. this Saturday, and then for a longer day — 8:00 to 7:00 — September 10 to 13, the first four days of fall classes. The Campus TechShop in the Student Life Centre is open 9 to 5 this week (but closed on Saturday) and 9 to 6 for the first four days of next week.

While new students are getting oriented to the campus, new faculty members are not forgotten. They've been invited to a barbecue tonight at the farm home of UW president David Johnston, sponsored jointly by the university and the faculty association. Tomorrow brings a day of events: workshops on "Managing the Successful Classroom" and "Promoting Academic Integrity", a lunch with department chairs and deans, and the now traditional panel discussion on "How to Succeed at UW" in the multiple roles a professor is expected to play.

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The first management eng students

from an article by Jaclyn Sharpe for the Iron Warrior, used by permission

This September, 98 students will make history as the first class to study Management Engineering at the University of Waterloo, graduating in 2012. Management Engineering will be a regular 8-stream co-op program. It will be the 13th program within the Faculty of Engineering, and the 11th to offer a Bachelor of Applied Science degree, with Architecture and Software Engineering being the exceptions.

Planning for the program began in 2004, with approval coming from Senate in June 2006. It will be unique in Canada and is expected to fill a need for engineers who can manage multi-disciplinary teams effectively. It will fall under the Department of Management Sciences, which previously did not offer any undergraduate programs.

Management Engineering is designed to offer students a strong knowledge of how businesses operate and are managed, while having a solid grounding in engineering analytical and problem-solving skills. Graduates are expected to be in demand wherever institutions want to improve effectiveness and efficiency based on engineering analysis and scientific management.

Like Mechatronics Engineering, the Management Engineering program will be taking an option and expanding it into a full program. The Management Sciences (MSCI) option has been around for over 25 years, and about 20% of all Engineering students graduate with the option, which is limited to six courses. Expanding the option to a full undergraduate program will allow for much more depth and breadth of subject matter.

Having a full program will allow the number of courses offered by the Management Sciences Department to grow significantly. This will benefit students in all departments, as a number of these courses will be made available as electives.

The program is designed to be primarily an Engineering degree, even if it may not be immediately recognizable as such. “You won’t learn how to design a car aerodynamically, but you will be able to design cost effective and efficient car distribution systems,” said Beth Jewkes, Chair of the Management Sciences Department. The technical side of the program will allow graduates to conduct a performance analysis of various configurations, manage the human dynamics of the product development, and develop quantitative business plans.

Management Engineering is billed as a “contemporary Industrial Engineering” program. Industrial Engineering, which is not offered at Waterloo, was developed to deal with the new challenges of high volume production and industrialization. ManEng moves beyond that and addresses current issues, such as data mining and information technology. While there are several Industrial Engineering programs offered across the country, this will be the first Management Engineering program in Canada. According to a comparison done by Professor David Fuller of the Management Sciences Department, Waterloo’s ManEng program shares 23 out of 33 core courses with the University of Toronto’s Industrial Engineering program, taken with the Operations Research specialization.

The curriculum was designed to meet Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board requirements. The Department is confident that the program will be accredited, and to ensure that everything goes smoothly, will be seeking feedback during the first year of the program.

The first year of ManEng will be the same as it is for current programs, with the concepts course (MSCI 100) and Engineering Economics (MSCI 261) being the only management-centric courses taken. Second year will begin to introduce some MSCI topics, as well as introducing mechanics of deformable solids and thermodynamics, both from the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering. All of the third-year courses will be specific to the Management Engineering program. In fourth year, of the five technical electives required, two must be from other Engineering programs.

The ManEng degree will focus on three main areas of study: Operations Research and Supply Chain Management, Information Technologies, and Management of Technology. “Operations Research deals with quantitative models of complex operations and uses these models to support decision-making in any sector of industry or public services. Supply chain management is the process of planning, implementing, and managing the flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption,” according to the undergraduate calendar. Information Technologies focuses on software design and development, data mining, and telecommunications. The final area, Management of Technology, will cover accounting, finance, economics, organizational behaviour, and organizational design.

The anticipated class size was 60 students; however, because extra offers of admittance are always sent out, 98 students ended up accepting their offers. According to Jewkes, about 25 percent of the incoming class will be female, which is above average in the Faculty of Engineering.

To accommodate the addition of an undergraduate degree, the Management Sciences Department will be hiring 14 faculty members over the next five years. New office space is being added above the Multimedia Lab in Carl Pollock Hall for faculty members and graduate students.

ManEng will be the fourth new undergraduate program to be added to the Faculty of Engineering since the beginning of the decade, following Nanotechnology (2005), Mechatronics (2003), and Software (2001).

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Added bus service as U-Pass begins

Grand River Transit provides this summary of changes to local bus service, effective today, with an emphasis on services of interest to students with the new U-Pass.

• iXpress will now be running seven days a week (it used to only run Monday through Friday). iXpress will also operate later in the evening on weeknights, to 11 p.m. The last trips through the campus will be about 15 minutes after late evening classes end.

• Route 8 University will be running every 15 minutes in the morning and afternoon peak periods (it used to be every half-hour).

• Route 13 Laurelwood will run every 15 minutes in morning and afternoon peak periods. Route 13 will also be running on Sundays.

• Route 9 Lakeshore and Route 13 Laurelwood will be connected at UW. Route 9 serves the Lakeshore neighbourhood, the busy Albert Street residential area and WLU, and will now come to UW as well. Routes 9 and 13 will be "interlined", meaning that buses arriving at UW as Route 13 will depart as Route 9 and vice versa.

• Increased service on the Late Night Loop, which runs along King Street from downtown to WLU, then across to UW, round the Ring Road past the residences, and over to Albert Street and back to WLU. It operates every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night during terms. Last year the Loop left downtown at 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. This year it will leave at 12:30, 1:00, 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. The additional trips are a direct response to requests by student representatives.

• A new route (Route 29 Keats Way) connecting Keats Way west of Fischer-Hallman Rd to UW, running every half hour all day on weekdays. This route will enter campus at Seagram Drive, stop by South Campus Hall and exit to University Avenue via the slip road by PAS.

• Midday, early evening and Saturday service on Route 35 Eastbridge (formerly Route 5 Eastbridge).

• Route 73 Northlake BusPlus has been modified to serve the iXpress station at Albert McCormick Arena instead of Conestoga Mall. Route 73 will be timed to meet the iXpress, reducing travel times from North Waterloo to UW by 10 minutes.

• The northbound iXpress station (heading to Conestoga Mall) has been moved to the east Ring Road by the Davis Centre. Routes 9/13 will stop at this location as well.

• New transit technologies are being implemented though this fall. The services, branded "easyGo", will communicate schedule information through new phone service replacing the old "Telerider" system, an online trip planner, new flat screen schedule displays at terminals and malls, and real time departure information for iXpress at all iXpress stations.

Schedules for all GRT service can be downloaded from the GRT website. Information about the new transit technologies will be on the website as well, once we get closer to a full roll-out.

CAR

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