900-plus faculty, 1,800 staff members

More faculty members and more staff members — that’s the story told by pages of data accompanying UW’s 2008-09 budget, which got final approval this week.

Rising enrolment is a familiar story, with the number of “full-time equivalent” undergraduates hitting 22,207 in the current year (up from 20,837 three years ago). The figure for graduate students has risen even more, from 2,319 in 2004-05 to 3,007 this year.

The budget statistics confirm that there are also more people to teach those students, with a “total faculty complement” of 914.9 in the fall of 2007, compared with 820.5 three years earlier.

There are multiple ways of counting faculty members, depending on whether you include unfilled positions, professors who hold senior administrative jobs, and those on definite term appointments. Another chart in the budget documents makes the total 943, up from 850 three years before.

The biggest academic unit is still electrical and computer engineering, with 78.0 faculty positions, up from 72.0 a year ago. It’s followed by computer science with 70.0. Psychology, once the university’s biggest department, is now in fourth place behind those two as well as mechanical and mechatronics engineering.

As for staff members across the university, the people who maintain computer networks, edit publications, update files, operate laboratories, advise students and paint ceilings, the long-time rule of thumb is still valid: two staff for every faculty member.

In 2004-05 there were 1,666.6 support staff positions, and this year there are 1,811.3, the budget documents show. That’s just the staff paid from the UW operating budget, and excludes people who are paid from research funds or from the cash flow of the “ancillary” (business) enterprises such as the bookstore.

Slightly less than one-third of the staff positions (578.7) are in the academic departments. The rest are in plant operations (346.0), information systems and technology (140.5), the library (131.6), co-op education and career services (94.4), the registrar’s office (83.6), development and alumni affairs (65.0), and a number of smaller departments.

The number of staff positions grew by 59.7 from last year to this year. Five of the new positions are in IST and 6.5 in the registrar’s office, with no other department growing by more than three people.

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Volleyball all-star Gaby Lesniak with her trophy, and swimmer Oleg Chernukhin with his, along with athletics director Judy McCrae, at the last annual Awards Banquet McCrae will attend before retiring this summer.

Top Warriors honoured at banquet

UW's athletics department held its 48th annual Awards Banquet on March 28, winding up a season of interuniversity competition for men's and women's Warrior teams. The big winners were Gaby Lesniak of women's volleyball, who won the 2008 Marsden Trophy as Female Athlete of the Year, and Oleg Chernukhin of Warrior swimming, who was awarded the 2008 Totzke Trophy for Male Athlete of the Year.

An athletics department news release gives these citations: “Gaby Lesniak, a fourth-year kinesiology student from Hamilton, Ontario, has been an integral part of Warrior Volleyball since she arrived on campus in 2004. Over her four-year career at Waterloo, Gaby has been named to the OUA First Team All Star roster twice, Second Team All Star roster twice, and was an academic All Canadian twice. Gaby was awarded the Rookie of the Year in 2005 for Waterloo and the OUA West conference, and was named to the 2005 CIS All Rookie Team. Warrior Coach Gaby Jobst has high praise for the fourth-year captain. Gaby is a player whose skill sets have allowed her to be dominating offensively and defensively for the Warriors over her career. As a captain this year, she is a true leader by example and is inspiring to her teammates.

“Oleg Chernukhin, a third-year mechatronics engineering student from Fredericton, New Brunswick, has had an impressive career to this point at Waterloo. Over the course of his three seasons at Waterloo, Oleg has found himself atop the OUA many times. At the 2007 OUA swimming championships, Oleg finished second in the 50m back, third in the 50m fly, and first in the 200m IM. At the 2007 CIS Championships, he went on to finish fourth in the 200 IM, and sixth in the 50m back. In 2008, Oleg topped the previous year by losing only four races in dual meet competition all season (that is more than 30 races). At the 2008 OUA Swimming Championships, Oleg finished first in the 50m back, 100m back, 100m fly, and 200m IM. At the CIS Championships, he finished with the Bronze Medal in the 50m back, fourth in the 100m back, and ninth in the 200IM. Oleg has been named an academic All Canadian for the past two seasons, and is poised to be named again after this school year.”

Other athletes honoured on Friday night:

• Dorothy Lui, first-year mechatronics engineering, women's badminton, won the 2008 Federation of Students Female Rookie of the Year Award.

• Athar Zia, first-year kinesiology, men's rugby, won the 2008 Federation of Students Male Rookie of the Year Award.

• Carla Munch-Miranda, women's golf, was named the 2008 Imprint Coach of the year.

• Adrian Lui, fifth-year kinesiology, men's rugby, and Dave Steiner, fourth-year engineering, men's volleyball, won the 2008 J.O. Hemphill Award.

• Diane Kelly, fifth-year science and business, women's rugby, and Laura Sardone, fifth-year biology, track and field/cross country, won the 2008 Director's Award.

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And a final flurry of Friday flakes

The School of Accounting and Finance will be welcoming 3,000 students and parents this weekend with the writing of the Accounting and Financial Management Admissions Assignment, the next step in the admission process for students hoping to enter the accounting and financial management program this fall. The AFMAA was developed — and offered for the first time a year ago — “to assist the School in identifying and admitting students who have the potential for developing the competencies and skills that are sought by employers in co-op students and graduates”. It consists of a two-hour essay assignment, written under supervision, that helps to assess an applicant’s teamwork, leadership, communication and analytical skills. Nearly 1,700 students have been invited to write the AFMAA tomorrow, either on campus or on their own with an individual supervisor. In conjunction with the on-campus session, the school will hold a mini-recruitment event for prospective students and their parents.

Voting will run from Monday through Wednesday (April 7-9) as undergraduate students fill one of the seats on the UW senate reserved for an at-large student representative. Brief campaign statements are available online for the two candidates who are contesting the position: Aswin Alexander (engineering) and Gagandeep Pabla (mathematics). All regular and co-op full-time undergrad students are eligible to vote online.

Students Sowmya Ranganathan, Asma Mian, and Sandaleen Taqdees are the winners of this year's Case Competition organized by the Accounting and Finance Living-Learning Community — the cluster of first-year AFM students who live together in Village I and take part in professional activities organized through the residence life program. The winners placed first out of twelve teams. The competition, held March 29, was open to all first-year students in AFM programs at UW. For many students, it was the first opportunity to apply the skills and knowledge learned in class to a business case. Faculty members Tom Vance and Nancy Vanden Bosch, along with senior accountancy students Vicky Au, Hans Woo, David Lin, and Sarah Tyrer were judges for the competition.

Today's the last official day for staff members to register to attend the "2 Days for You" staff conference, to be held Tuesday and Wednesday. • McMaster University held an open house event last night at the temporary quarters of its Kitchener medical campus, which is housed in a downtown office building until UW's health sciences campus on King Street is ready in a few months. • Chemical engineering professor Flora Ng is the recipient of the 2008 Catalysis Award, presented biennially by the Chemical Institute of Canada, and will give a special lecture when the award is presented at the Canadian Catalysis Symposium in Kingston in June.

And . . . there are not one but two things of interest to see this week at the Davis Centre library. First, "As part of the campus master plan update," says Tom Galloway of the plant operations department, "a set of display boards was designed to solicit public input. The display has been set up in the lobby of the Davis Centre and will be there for two weeks." Second, a group of fine arts students has their work displayed on the glass wall of a study room inside the library itself — work that I'm told is well worth a detour to admire.

CAR

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