Retirement event honours McCrae

UW says farewell today to Judy McCrae, who’s been director of athletics and recreational services for the past 14 years and is retiring at the end of a 37-year career in Waterloo athletics.

"I cannot imagine University of Waterloo athletics without Judy at the helm," said her boss, associate provost Catharine Scott, when McCrae’s retirement was announced earlier this year. She has been just the third athletics director in the university’s history, following Carl Totzke and Wally Delahey. The fourth director, Bob Copeland, started work July 1.

A native of Sarnia, she was Judy Moore when she played volleyball, field hockey and basketball for the Western Michigan University Broncos, eventually earning a BA in physical education as well as membership in WMU’s athletics hall of fame. She went on to do a Master of Science (physical education) degree from the University of North Carolina.

By the time she came to Waterloo in 1971, she was married to Don McCrae, who was beginning a 21-year run as coach of the men’s basketball Warriors. Initially she coached field hockey and curling for the Athenas (the Warrior name didn’t yet apply to women’s teams) and taught skills courses in the department of kinesiology. Later she added indoor hockey as well as a full-time job as coordinator of all women's interuniversity activities at UW.

With an extensive background in field hockey, McCrae (right) has served as president of Field Hockey Canada, the organizational body responsible for the sport. She was a member of a federal advisory task force determining the future of sport in Canada, a director of the Canadian Olympic Association, and chef-de-mission for many of Canada's field hockey teams in world championships and the Olympics. She also worked as a television commentator during three Olympics.

In 1994 she became one of the first women to head athletics at a major Canadian university, and subsequently served a term as president of the Canadian Interuniversity Athletics Union, now known as Canadian Interuniversity Sport.

“Judy has blazed a trail and will be missed for the tremendous leadership provided not only to athletics and campus recreation at the University of Waterloo, but to our sporting community in Ontario, Canada and internationally,” says UW president David Johnston, who will speak at McCrae’s retirement reception this afternoon. It’s scheduled to run from 3:30 to 5:30 in the Festival Room, South Campus Hall, with a dinner following for invited guests.

In her honour, the athletics department is creating the McCrae Award of Excellence, to support female student athletes each year. Contributions can be directed to Ingrid Schugardt in the Physical Activities Complex main office.

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Co-op job statistics; other notes

The rate of co-op employment this summer isn't quite as high as administrators (and students) had hoped, says Peggy Jarvie, director of the co-op education and career services department: "The final Spring 2008 employment rate, all in, is 95%, with 197 participating students left unemployed. This was the first or second work term for over half of these students. 343 students found or confirmed employment since the beginning of May, as a result of their own and CECS staff efforts. The employment rate for this term is slightly lower (0.4%) than last year’s, with 129 fewer students employed, and 139 few students participating. The reason for the lower employment is not clear; there were more openings posted in the main round for this term than in either of the two prior years, and postings and interviews for the Spring term continued actively through May and June. Final employment rates in Spring terms over the past few years have been in the mid-90s, reflecting the higher level of competition for jobs from other co-op programs and regular students."

Jarvie also reports on prospects for September: "The current employment statistics for Fall 2008 show 4,108 students scheduled for co-op work terms, with 2,878 employed after the main match run on June 23. Continuous round interviews are well underway, with employment continuing steadily. The current employment rate is 72.5%, considerably lower than at this time last year, due in part to differences in the number of matches run this year compared to last. 333 more students than last year are scheduled out to work, with the most significant increase being among intermediate level students. Final employment rates in Fall terms over the past few years have been in the high 90s, reflecting the significantly higher number of senior students scheduled to work in the fall."

Two UW faculty members will offer a new graduate course this fall under the title “Sustainable Cities in the 21st Century: Intelligent Communities”. Listed as Planning 674 and Environment and Resource Studies 674, the course is the work of Mary Louise McAllister in the school of planning and Don Cowan, professor emeritus in computer science. They explain: “The widespread use of information technology is fundamentally reshaping human patterns of interaction in the built environment with the associated consequences for the social and bio-physical health of cities. Participants are encouraged to think critically about how innovation in IT might be used to address complex, interdisciplinary social and governance challenges. The goal is to investigate public, private and third sector ideas about how to tackle some commonly shared problems with respect to sustaining cities throughout the world.” Topics include computer literacy and social equity, community broadband networks and social entrepreneurism, and the use of information technology in energy and health. The course will include a comparative examination of “intelligent cities” around the world, featuring a case study on the City of Waterloo, which was named Intelligent Community of 2007 by the Intelligent Communities Forum; ICF chair John Jung will be a guest speaker, along with Waterloo mayor Brenda Halloran and other experts including several UW faculty.

Daniel Asmar, who earned a PhD at Waterloo (in systems design engineering) in 2006 and is now on faculty at the American University of Beirut, is getting media attention after launching the first solar-car project in the Arab world, based on UW's Midnight Sun tradition. • Imprint reports that Rick Theis, who has been serving as "executive researcher" for the Federation of Students, is leaving to join the staff of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations. • Alex Lee, lab project manager in the department of health studies and gerontology, got a hole in one on the par-4 7th hole of Brookfield Golf and Country Club last Thursday, playing a round with graduate student Jordan Young of biology.

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The street that was formerly straight

Late in June the Daily Bulletin reproduced an aerial photo of the west side of Waterloo in the days before there was such a thing as a campus here. That prompted Bahman Hadji, who graduated this spring from the computer engineering program, to send some comments:

“I was glad to read about the University Map Library making their archives of digital satellite images available online. It's fascinating to see how different regions of the Region of Waterloo have evolved over the past several decades.

“I think the most interesting part of the overlaid photo you put together at the top of the page is that University Avenue — formerly called Dearborn Street — runs in a straight path as your image transitions from the present day to the 1940 view going from right to left. This is of course not the case today, as that road would split through the centre of campus, right through what is now the Dana Porter Library. When UW (then the Waterloo College Associate Faculties) bought the farmland of the current (south) campus from Major Holdings Ltd, it wanted the City to reroute Dearborn so that the land could be developed as they saw fit. The compromise that was agreed to eventually was to reroute Dearborn in a southwest direction, with some of UW's land (now Parking Lot A and UW Place) still being south of the street but allowing for a great deal more of the land to be developed in one piece.

“The remnants of old Dearborn can still be seen today. As you drive west on University Avenue towards UW, the Dana Porter Library is directly in the horizon. But as you approach the plaza and the train tracks, the street gradually turns in a leftward direction, taking traffic with it. You can still follow old Dearborn, though, in a straight path through the entrance of the plaza just south of East Side Mario's, across the tracks, and to the edge of Ring Road facing Carl Pollock Hall. Naturally, this is a walking route many use to get to campus from the east side.

“Page 102 of Ken McLaughlin's 40th anniversary book (Unconventional Founding) has a great aerial view of the early campus that illustrates this, from late 1959 when the only two (permanent) buildings on campus — in addition to the Schweitzer farmhouse, of course — were the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Building (now Doug Wright Engineering) and the Physics and Mathematics Building (Physics). Here, Dearborn can be seen already rerouted as present-day University Avenue is, while the old Dearborn continuation still appears through the farmland, and the geography of where the split happens at the present-day plaza looks much as it does today.

“Another interesting note from that picture is that it shows what was the first parking lot on campus just north of the Physics building, which became known as parking lot B1. That lot remained in use until 2001, when it became the construction site for the Centre for Environmental and Information Technology (CEIT) building, which opened in 2003.”

CAR

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