A new environment for Environment

Officials will pull out the ceremonial shovels this morning and officially break ground for an expansion and renovation project that’s described as “transformational” for UW’s Faculty of Environment.

The project, says a background information sheet, “will enable environment researchers and students to enhance their vital work in key areas of environmental informatics and geographic information systems; climate change modelling, mitigation and adaptation; arctic research; green entrepreneurship and green business management; applied ecosystem and ecophysiology; and remote sensing, simulation and aviation.”

What they’re building is essentially an expansion of Environment II, the low structure that faces the ring road between PAS and Modern Languages (and that’s attached to Environment I at its other end).

It’s being financed with the help of capital grants — altogether $50 million for three UW building projects — that are coming from the federal and provincial governments under the “knowledge infrastructure” program. It’s designed to stimulate the economy by creating jobs in construction and related fields. The grants, announced in May, will cover about 80 per cent of the buildings’ total cost, with UW obliged to find the rest of the money.

Vice-president (finance and administration) Dennis Huber is spending most of his time these days getting the projects rolling and keeping them on schedule. He said the plan for Environment is to give the existing building (which dates from 1981) a new look and add space by putting a third storey on top of the existing two levels, plus fill in some space to the north of the existing site with a three-storey addition.

The background sheet tells why the expansion is wanted: “In the last several years, the Faculty of Environment has experienced record high rates of growth in student enrolment, faculty members and research productivity. Insufficient facilities, however, have constrained the ability of the Faculty of Environment to meet Canada's needs for basic and applied research, education and training.

“The latest investment of $14 million allows the Faculty of Environment to contribute even more effectively to national environmental solutions and capacity-building efforts, particularly through the new business-oriented School of Environment, Enterprise and Development.”

It quotes environment dean Deep Saini: “This new building, and the subsequent retrofits to the existing buildings, will reflect and demonstrate the environmental aspects of our expertise, research and teaching. Many of our stakeholders have been involved in this project and we plan to use the building's many features to demonstrate and teach environmental concepts in green building.

"With this initiative, and through the resources provided by the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario encouragement, the Faculty of Environment has the opportunity to create a green building. We have proposed green features that will allow EV3 to achieve a LEED rating — we are aiming for gold.”

The 52,000-square-foot (5,050-square-metre) Environment 3 will provide classroom and office space for students and faculty members in SEED and the School of Planning. EV3 will increase teaching space, including a 140-seat classroom, seminar rooms and student study areas. There will be also additional office space for graduate students.

The building, complete with an atrium, will be integrated with the two existing buildings to upgrade and expand climate change and ecology laboratories, teaching facilities and project development space. An innovative structure, developed under the leadership of UW's director of design and construction, Dan Parent, will wrap the new structure over the existing Environment 2 building. The actual architect, and the construction company that will do the work on a "design-build" schedule, haven't been chosen yet.

“Green” features of the new building include innovative water management with the use of rain and grey water; a tight energy envelope, solar energy generation, heat recovery systems, smart metering-monitoring controls; ecological resilience in plants used in and around the building; and site planning and aspects to optimize pedestrian access, and day-lighting. As well, it will have innovative features that allow faculty members and instructors to use the building itself as a demonstration site for teaching and research — for example, water, energy, metering and plantings.

This morning’s groundbreaking ceremony starts at 10:00 outside the present building, along the ring road near Modern Languages.

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Faculty on sabbatical as of September 1

Here’s a first list (there will be more) of UW faculty members who will be on sabbatical leave starting September 1. The project descriptions are as submitted to the university’s board of governors, which has to give approval for all sabbaticals.

Andrew Heunis, electrical and computer engineering (12-month leave): “I intend to use the sabbatical for research in the general area of stochastic optimal control.”

David DeVidi, philosophy (12 months): “I have two goals for this leave. First, I will complete several projects, on realism and on logical pluralism, that are in a state of almost-completion because of heavy administrative duties in recent years. I will then pursue a project extending the work on logical pluralism to mathematical pluralism.”

James Martin, physics and astronomy (6 months): “During the proposed sabbatical I plan to work in my laboratory on the precise measurement of electric fields near gold surfaces using laser cooled atoms held by micro-fabricated atom chips. Initial studies will focus on the spatial homogeneity of these fields due to the polycrystalline nature of thermally evaporated gold surfaces. There has been little done to quantify these.”

Bernard Duncker, biology (12 months): “The requested sabbatical leave will allow me to visit and work in the labs of my collaborators in Melbourne, Australia and Montpellier, France. I also intend to spend time in my own lab carrying out experiments, completing several manuscripts for publication, and preparing grant applications.”

Ehab F. El-Saadany, electrical and computer engineering (12 months): “During my proposed sabbatical I’ll be mainly focusing on boosting my research activities within Waterloo. I’ll also start writing a textbook on Distributed Generation to meet an urgent demand for this important subject.”

Jack Callaghan, kinesiology (6 months): “Pursuit of independent and collaborative research activities including short research trips to laboratories of collaborators in Canada, Australia and New Zealand for the purposes of acquisition of new skills, and collaborative writing projects. Preparation of research grants for new initiatives in vibration research. Preparation of manuscripts and reports from ongoing research projects for publications.”

Maria Liston, anthropology (6 months): “I will spend my leave at the Malcolm Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece. I will analyze the human skeletons of all non-adults and non-normative graves (in wells, cisterns, etc.) excavated from Athenian Agora.”

Paul Fieguth, systems design engineering (12 months): “I have been the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies for the past four years, which has greatly limited research time. I wish to do reading in hidden and hierarchical random fields, complete a textbook on spatial statistics which has been reviewed by Springer Verlag, and visit research groups in Europe and work on similar problems in random fields.”

Duane Kennedy, accounting and finance (12 months): “My sabbatical will have two major directions: regaining familiarity with research in my areas of interest after a heavy administrative and teaching load since my last sabbatical, and starting a number of new research projects in the areas of initial public offerings, seasoned equity offerings and the resulting impact on the capital structure of companies.”

CAR

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