A Waterloo delegation has brought home an award — third place in "Entrepreneurship" — from the annual Students In Free Enterprise (SIFE) competition, hosted by Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship. More than 20 teams from colleges and universities throughout Ontario and Québec competed in the Central Canada challenge in mid-March. The presentation focused on the prominence of student-driven entrepreneurial activities at Waterloo, in a strict 10-minutes-max competition format. Left to right: Melanie Koso (speech communication), Albert Lam (psychology), Geoff Malleck (faculty in economics and the Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology), Andrew Dilts (management sciences grad student), Jay Jin (mathematics).

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Campaign raises $100 million in one year

from UW Media relations

The University of Waterloo has passed a major milestone in its efforts to meet the needs of the next generation of students and researchers, joining a small list of Canadian universities that have raised $100 million in one year.

The university will finish its fiscal year on April 30 with $100 million in private-sector donations, an amount previously reached only by the universities of British Columbia, Calgary and Toronto. The funds will support a range of strategic initiatives outlined in UW’s strategic plan for the coming decade.

“This is a testament to the leadership shown by donors like Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis, Jim Balsillie and Bill Gates,” said Linda Kieswetter, associate vice-president, principal gifts and campaigns. “When we launched Campaign Waterloo, our dream was to one day reach $50 million in a single year. But we’ve surpassed that well ahead of schedule and can now move forward earlier with initiatives that can benefit our students, community, province and country.”

Campaign Waterloo launched six years ago with a goal of $260 million over five years. The target was raised to $350 million and the current campaign total now stands at $453 million.

Those funds are supporting a number of strategic projects that will help UW achieve the goals outlined in its sixth decade plan, Pursuing Global Excellence:Seizing Opportunities for Canada. The plan’s broad goals include expanding research, growing graduate studies, strengthening the undergraduate experience and expanding Waterloo’s presence around the world – all while drawing the best and brightest students, faculty and researchers.

Funds raised by Campaign Waterloo are allowing UW to:

• Create new centres of research excellence, such as the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
• Expand and internationalize existing programs, such as the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing, which brings math and computing outreach programs to 500,000 children from Kitchener to Kenya.
• Expand facilities of the schools of architecture, accounting and finance, and optometry, as well as the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology.
• Build a health sciences campus in downtown Kitchener and provide seed funding for a Stratford Institute and a campus in Stratford, Ontario.
• Increase funds available for student awards by 167 percent.
• Contribute $90 million for faculty research chairs, like the John F. Diefenbaker Chair in German Literary Studies and the JW McConnell Chair in Social Innovation.

“All the credit is due to our visionary partners and campaign leaders, our board of governors, the campaign team and staff, both on and off campus,” Kieswetter said. “This especially includes our board of governors chair Bob Harding, who also chairs our campaign, chancellor Mike Lazaridis, president David Johnston, our alumni and our on-campus campaign leaders.”

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Sabbatical plans for another 7 profs

Here’s another list of UW faculty members who are currently on sabbatical — working in places from Switzerland to Indonesia. All these sabbatical leaves began January 1, 2008, and the plans quoted are from information submitted to UW’s board of governors.

Khaled Soudki, civil and environmental engineering (twelve months’ leave): “I plan to do research on the use of high performance aerospace materials (FRPs) in new constsruction and rehabilitation of infrastructure. The work on prestressed FRP will be carried out at EPMA, Switzerland. Interactions with local repair and rehabilitation construction industry are planned.”

David Taylor, computer science (twelve months): “I will use this sabbatical to restore my research activity to its previous level after seven years as Associate Dean. I will work more intensively with the Center for Advanced Studies at the IBM Toronto Lab with whom I have collaborated for the last 16 years and will work in Watelroo on research in distributed systems with my graduate students.”

Troy Glover, recreation and leisure studies (six months): “During my sabbatical leave I plan to concentrate the bulk of my efforts on working toward the completion of four funded research projects, for which I am a principal or co-principal investigator. These plans include reviewing literature, collecting data, and drafting manuscripts.”

Geoffrey Hayes, history (six months): “This sabbatical will complete my ongoing research on the development of the wartime Canadian army’s officer corps, 1939-1945. What began as an administrative study of officer selection and training has emerged as an exploration of the officer experience and the idea of Canadian wartime leadership. My immediate research plans will detail officer training as well as the way in which ‘bad officers’ were defined and reclassified.”

Chris Hudson, optometry (twelve months): “I will use my sabbatical leave to visit and establish future collaborations with internationally recognized retinal blood flow and imaging research centers in North America and Europe; apply for a career development award; facilitate the successful completion of a drug treatment trial that is about to start in my lab; write up research papers.”

Fathy Ismail, mechanical and mechatronics engineering (twelve months in 2008 plus six months May-October 2009): “Most of my sabbatical will be spent in Waterloo to continue my research, and mostly to concentrate on writing papers on work done in the last two years. After six years and four months in administrative duties, I need to ‘rejuvenate’ my research in the areas of machinery diagnosis and surface machining. I am also planning to rewrite my course notes.”

Carolyn MacGregor, systems design engineering (twelve months): “I plan to further develop research projects and write up results in two core areas of contribution: design and development of input devices and interaction techniques for working in 3D/virtual environments, and research initiatives relating to the professional development of engineering students.”

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A few pixels in the big picture

Orchestra@UWaterloo’s spring concert tonight features Taylor Wang (left), a first-year mathematics/chartered accountancy student and winner of the orchestra’s 2008 Concerto Competition, who will play Chopin's Second Piano Concerto. Taylor began playing piano at the age of 6, while living in China, and resumed studying music after coming to Canada with his family in 1999. The concert, conducted by Erna Van Daele, also includes Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, as well as pieces by Paul Dukas, Richard Strauss, and Giuseppe Verdi. Performance starts at 8 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre; tickets free from Humanities box office.

Mmm, chocolate . . . the results are in on this year's Treatagram campaign: "On February 14, 1,480 lucky people received yummy Keystone Campaign treat-a-grams. This popular annual fundraiser provides faculty, staff, and retirees with the opportunity to send scrumptious treats to colleagues and friends, while supporting scholarships for UW students at the same time. The sale of the brownies raised more than $2,600 for campus-wide graduate and undergraduate senate scholarships. These funds qualify for the university's matching gift opportunities, attracting a 1:1 match by UW — bringing the grand total raised to an amazing $5,200! Senders were invited to include a $20 donation to the Keystone Campaign with their purchase, to help make an even bigger difference in the lives of UW's students. An outstanding $1,116 was raised through these extra gifts from 52 generous donors. The chocolate brownie cupcakes with chocolate icing and gold sprinkles were made by UW Food Services and delivered by about 30 volunteers to people working at the main campus, the university colleges, Distance Education, and the School of Architecture."

Voting is to begin Monday, April 7, as UW undergraduate students elect a representative on the University’s Senate. Says a notice from the university secretariat: “Brief campaign statements are available online for the two candidates who are now contesting the position: Aswin Alexander (Engineering), Gagandeep Pabla (Mathematics). All regular and co-op full-time undergraduate students are eligible to vote online. The by-election runs through April 9.”

A note in the engineering faculty's e-newsletter says that Jatin Nathwani, Ontario Research Chair in Public Policy and Sustainable Energy Management, recently testified before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources. "Nathwani’s expert testimony was on managing risk in the public interest — specifically on nuclear safety matters and the licensing of the reactor at Chalk River. The committee was examining the recent medical isotope crisis resulting from the shutdown of the Chalk River reactor operated by Atomic Energy Canada Limited. Nathwani, cross appointed to Waterloo's engineering and environmental studies facilities, also provided the committee with suggestions on improving nuclear safety governance in Canada."

Lili Pasternak, who served as a lab instructor in UW's department of biology from 1968 to 1996, died March 18. An excerpt from the published obituary tells just highlights of her story: "Lili was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. She survived the Holocaust initially as a hidden child with her sister and later in hiding with her immediate family. Her family came to Canada in 1948 and settled in Toronto. Lili graduated from Harbord Collegiate Institute and received undergraduate and Masters degrees in science from the University of Toronto. At Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Lili became the first Managing Editor of the scientific journal American Zoologist. Next, after having her daughters, she worked as an Instructor in the Department of Biology, University of Waterloo for almost thirty years. She also taught courses on the Biology of Aging. After retirement, compliments of Mike Harris, she lectured at the University of Waterloo and McMaster University for a couple of years. Once she retired completely, Lili devoted most of her efforts to the KW Holocaust Education Committee and especially to speaking to students at all levels and adult groups, even well after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer." She is survived by her husband, Jack Pasternak, retired faculty member in biology.

CAR

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