Some 48 Grade 12 students were on campus in late November for a Waterloo Unlimited program unfolding the “Roadmap to Research”. Says Betty Bax of Unlimited: “Students learned how research is tackled and carried out in the various disciplines across the university campus. They learn how to read a research paper, think critically, attend a lecture, types of research projects student are doing and participated in several small group workshops lead by professors.” At a graduate student poster session, Antonin Du Tertre explains work being done by pavement researchers in the civil and environmental engineering department.

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Behold the Centre for Extended Learning

Courses that were once called “correspondence” no longer use the mail, and the label “distance education” also doesn’t apply when the students are often right on UW’s campus, so a new name is called for. “Any references to ‘DE courses’ should be changed to ‘online courses’, says Cathy Newell Kelly, director of distance and continuing education — another name that’s about to change, according to an announcement this week.

“The Distance and Continuing Education Office will be changing its name to the Centre for Extended Learning, effective January 1, 2010,” says a memo from Kelly and associate vice-president (academic) Geoff McBoyle.

“There will be a launch event in the spring,” it says, “accompanied by a new and improved website, but the changes are happening in several places in the interim. References in Quest will be updated for first of the year; references in the Undergrad Calendar will be updated soon. References to ‘Distance Education’ and ‘DE’ courses will still exist in many places and it will take some time to uncover and update them all.

“This heads-up to the UW community is to ensure that people are aware that this is happening, and to solicit help in finding and changing references that may exist on websites or print materials.”

The changes, says Kelly, “reflect the new reality within which we work. The majority of our enrolments are coming from students who are physically here on campus (not at a distance), and all of our courses are now delivered online which affords an opportunity for interaction and a sense of proximity.

“We will continue to advocate for and support UW’s adult learners both in our credit online courses as well as in our non-credit/continuing education courses. We are currently working with faculty and departments to design, develop, and deliver several new undergrad online courses as well as new online professional master’s degrees. We are also designing, developing, and delivering online professional development (non-credit) certificates, in addition to offering many face-to-face continuing education courses in our training room and at corporate locations each term.”

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Johnston heads community advisors

by Brandon Sweet

The Waterloo Region Record reports that UW president David Johnston has appointed 12 community leaders to a high-level advisory body known as the Barnraisers Council that will work to strengthen arts and culture, “social equity” and environmental health as a way of attracting wealth and talent to this community.

This council is an initiative of the Prosperity Council of Waterloo Region, a federation made up of the Greater Kitchener Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce, Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc., and Communitech Technology Association that when combined represent the interests of 3,400 local businesses. The Prosperity Council was formed in 2003 and “is committed to positioning Waterloo Region Canada's Technology Triangle as the region of choice for new investment and talent.”

The Prosperity Council has championed what it calls the Creative Enterprise Agenda, which “links arts and the creative process to a far wider range of economic activities. It encourages innovative thinking, fosters entrepreneurial business development and builds a community that enhances quality of life while attracting and retaining a young, well-educated, diverse work force that can live anywhere — but choose to live here.”

Since its formation, the Prosperity Council has lobbied local governments to support Waterloo Region’s arts and culture sector as a strategy to attract creative, talented people to the area. “Our ultimate goal,” reads the agenda, “is to generate private-sector employment in Creative Age industries – those that exist and those still to be imagined.”

The establishment of the advisory body was one of the key recommendations of the three Creative Enterprise Task Forces struck last September 24 at the Creative Enterprise Forum, which had examined the vision, structure, and resources necessary to strengthen and support arts and culture resources in Waterloo Region. It was announced at the 2009 Creative Enterprise Forum, held on September 24, and Johnston was asked to choose its initial members.

According to a background document circulated by the Prosperity Council of Waterloo Region, the purpose of the Barnraisers Council is to “provide high-level, strategic consensus-building by representation of various interests (business, arts/creative sector education, foundations and not-for-profits, health care, municipalities, etc.); identify strategic issues and recommend possible responses that will continue the implementation of the Prosperity vision, including those related to continued enhancements to health care, education, and other sectors.”

The Council is “to be guided by the need to achieve balance in our overall objectives — a balance that recognizes that sustainability is dependent upon the four pillars of community sustainability: economic health, social equity, environmental responsibility, and cultural vitality.”

“These four pillars are the strongest of foundations for our community,” said Johnston in a video address at the Creative Enterprise Forum on September 24. “But these pillars cannot be built and supported in isolation, to different scales and to varying standards. Our community needs to have balance if it is to prosper. A unifying vision.”

The council has a UW connection beyond its chair. One of its members is Reemah Khalid, an undergraduate arts and business student who is a student representative on the university senate.

“Waterloo Region is a community built on barn-raising,” said Johnston, “the idea that the way to prosperity and wellbeing is to help your neighbours raise their barns.”

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Some 49 courses have been using Turnitin this fall term, the first time the online “plagiarism tool” has been made available across campus. A total of 4,100 students are involved — having their work reviewed, as this screenshot shows, for unacknowledged similarities to previous papers or texts found on the web. Sean Warren of information systems and technology gave a Turnitin demonstration during the WatITis conference for computing support staff last week.

Drops of hot water and dollops of news

The Herschel space observatory recently received its first set of scientific data since the May launch, which yielded some surprising results. Mike Fich, professor of physics and astronomy, is one of the leaders for the Canadian portion of the Herschel project. “We received some superb data from the PACS (Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer) instrument on Herschel,” he says. “Strong emission from water was found in the Valentine’s Day nebula.” The water was uncovered in a cloud of gas that surrounds the stars, but the data shows that there is a lot of water and it is very hot. “There was enough to fill the equivalent of one million Pacific oceans,” Fich says. “Usually water in space is at about minus 200 degrees Celsius. The water we’ve found is at temperatures of around 1000 degrees Celsius, which is quite a big surprise.” The discovery of this hot water raises questions in Fich’s mind. “Usually water acts as a coolant and also breaks up in space at a high temperature, so what‘s keeping the water we’ve discovered so hot?” Fich is hoping to receive additional data in the near future to help him and his team learn more about this fascinating discovery.

St. Jerome's University has announced the creation of a Department of Sexuality, Marriage and Family Studies. “The SMF program has been an important part of the academic life of St. Jerome's since the 1970s,” says the announcement, “and as of September 2009 added an Honours Program to its offerings. Its current faculty membership is comprised of two full-time tenure-track appointees (Tracy Penny-Light and Toni Serafini), as well as its long-time director and now chair, BJ Rye. In addition numerous other faculty continue to contribute their academic expertise to this valuable program. We know that with the new Honours program and its new status as a Department this area will continue as an attractive area of study for SJU and UW students.”

UW’s president, David Johnston, was among the high-profile signers of a letter that was published as a full-page ad in major newspapers a few days ago. “Given the federal government’s investment in the Economic Action Plan and the fiscal pressures facing all governments,” it says, “any increase in direct government funding for health, education, social services and the arts will be difficult. The Government has the opportunity to unlock significant additional amounts of private wealth for public good by introducing two amendments to the Income Tax Act in the coming budget — elimination of the capital gains tax on gifts of private company shares and taxable real estate.” Signers calling for that tax change included executives of the Ontario Hospital Association, the National Ballet, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Salvation Army, as well as half a dozen universities.

The downtown Kitchener optometry clinic, which has been housed in the former Victoria School building, is moving into the just-completed medical building on the new health sciences campus this week. • François Paré of UW's French studies department was a panelist on TFO television's Panorama a few days ago, discussing this year's crop of French-language books in Ontario. • Soukreya Halil, a custodian in UW's plant operations department since 1991, officially retires as of January 1.

And . . . more gets said about UW on Twitter than there would ever be room to quote here, but I thought I’d include a few tweets that floated past me in about a 24-hour period recently. I’ll leave them anonymous, except to say that none originated from me (@uwdailybulletin): “It is super cold in my office. So cold that I'm considering starting to type with mitts on. Why so cold #uwaterloo?” • “Trying to learn an entire course through Wikipedia — ahhhh gotta love PHIL 100.” • “I am most productive late at night. 10pm-2am. That + Tiesto podcasts have been helping me power through end of term marking.” • “Rumor has it that #uwvcity is opening up to students nationwide, #uwaterloo could be your summer home!” • “Waterloo has Hope event in this week's #uwaterloo newspaper, Imprint! http://twitpic.com/sz3fx.” • “CTV clip on automotive research at #uwaterloo Engineering features @UWAFT and other WatCAR sustainability initiatives http://bit.ly/7sm4p4.” • “Browser use by #uwaterloo students: FF 59%, IE 24%, Safari 11%, Chrome 4%.” • “Just completed #uwaterloo faculty of math Additional Information Form, yikes.”

CAR

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