Disabilities office acquires 'kneeling' van

It’s hard to see who’s driving, in the photo above, but that's co-op student Naiblla Kanji (currently on a work term in the office for persons with disabilities) in the passenger seat and ready to head out as soon as the VIPs get the ribbons cut.

They were hamming it up at a recent informal event as the new Chevrolet Uplander was put into service. The van “is fully converted with all accessibility features,” says Rose Padacz, director of OPD, “to accommodate students who use wheelchairs or scooters and is equipped with several seats to support students who may have difficulty navigating the campus due medical or physical conditions or loss of vision.”

Cutting the ribbon to launch the new wheels are Brian Reid of the plant operations vehicle shop; Tara Cosier, the Student Access Van supervisor for OPD; Ruth Huard, administrative assistant at OPD; Catharine Scott, associative provost (student services); Padacz; and Allan Babor, president of the Federation of Students.

“Each term,” Padacz reports, “up to 100 students of the 1,500 students registered with the OPD access the van to travel between classes, to WLU and to the surrounding student residences. The service is available to help students with mobility concerns to preserve their energy to be used for important activities such as participation in lectures, academic projects and student life activities.”

She said the new van was purchased from KINO Mobility and is fully accessible, equipped with a "kneeling suspension system", power ramp, and provisions to transport up to two students who are wheelchairs users and four ambulatory students at a time. “Our previous green van, which had quite a visible presence on campus, has been in operation since 1999 due in part to the tender care and maintenance provided by Brian Reid and his staff at the vehicle shop.”

The new van was bought with funding provided by UW’s administration, the Student Services Advisory Committee, and UW alumni who have made donations. “I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all of these partners and donors,” says Padacz, “as their contribution has helped to increase campus accessibility and promote the potential of students with disabilities.”

The van operates from 8 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Monday to Friday, by student drivers who have had special training with it. When not in use, it’s often parked at the Student Life Centre and has a permanent parking spot on the north campus. More information is available from OPD in Needles Hall, e-mail rlhuard@ uwaterloo.ca.

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The proposed fee for 'student space'

"The Federation of Students wants your opinion before moving forward," says an e-mail message sent late last week to 23,000 undergraduate students, reminding them about the proposed expansion of Health Services and construction of a new student services building. "For details and to comment," said the message, signed by the Federation of Students, undergrads should turn to a web site that's been created about the project.

In answer to questions that have been raised, here’s some of the fine print about the new fee that would pay for the two projects if students approve in a referendum later this fall.

Both undergraduates and grad students would find themselves paying the additional fee, $49.50 per term for the major new building (planned for a site on what’s now parking lot H) and $10.00 for an expansion of the Health Services building overlooking Laurel Creek.

The two sums would be added to the existing Student Coordinated Plan fee paid by undergraduate students. For graduate students, they’re something new, as grads haven’t been involved in the SCP until now.

The SCP fee was introduced in 1992 as a way of paying for the Columbia Icefield and an expansion of what was then called the Campus Centre, now the Student Life Centre, as well as funding smaller projects to improve the quality of student life. It had two parts, and as of last spring term students were paying $32.51 for capital (construction) costs and $13.80 for year-to-year projects.

“The original $8.4 million capital obligation funded by part 1 of the fee was fully satisfied with the spring 2009 term,” says Loron Pellowe, supervisor of student accounts in the UW finance office. As a result, only the $13.80 portion is being charged this term. And that leaves room for an increase to pay for the proposed new buildings.

Says the web site: “Four major parties are proposed to contribute to the costs of construction. Undergraduate and graduate students are proposed to contribute approximately 80% of the construction costs through an increase to the Student Coordinated Plan fee over 20 years. The central University and the University's Food and Retail Services departments will contribute the remaining 20% of the construction costs.”

The fee wouldn’t be collected until the new buildings were “substantially completed” — likely in 2011-12 for Health Services and 2012-13 for the student services building. “The fee will be removed from the Student Coordinated Plan once the capital costs of the complex have been paid for. Based upon current enrolment, the costs are projected to take 20 years to pay; however, this term may shorten with changing enrolment numbers.

“The fee will be indexed for inflation by up to 2.0% annually. This is meant to provide fairness to the students contributing, such that those students who pay in the first year do not contribute substantially more than those that pay in the final year.”

The FAQ also asks why UW itself won’t be paying the entire cost: “Government funding for buildings that are not primarily academic is not available and although there are continued attempts to find donors interested in providing funds for these kinds of projects, it is unlikely that this will be successful. Generally, donors prefer to give funds for scholarships and research projects. While there are several building projects on campus at the moment, they have all been funded by government and private sources.”

It reminds readers that undergraduate students “were the primary contributors” to four existing buildings: the Icefield, the SLC, Federation Hall, and (through the co-op fee) the Tatham Centre. “Additionally, significant contributions have been made in the past from student endowment funds toward renovations and capital projects on campus i.e. Engineering 5.”

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Mars rover shown at Perimeter's festival

A full-scale model of the next Mars rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, is on loan outside the United States for the first time and will make its Canadian debut at the Quantum to Cosmos Festival, starting tomorrow in central Waterloo.

“With several local rover connections, the visit will be a homecoming of sorts,” says a news release from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, which is holding the festival, October 15 through 25, to mark its 10th anniversary.

Spirit and Opportunity are the two current Mars Exploration Rovers and are still hard at work nearly six years after landing on Mars.Both local high-tech firm Dalsa and Ralf Gellert, a professor at the University of Guelph, have ties to the current and future rovers. These local links to space exploration will be featured at the festival’s display featuring the next rover, Curiosity, set to blast off in 2011.

Dalsa, an international company with headquarters in Waterloo, built multiple image sensor chips for the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, as well as Curiosity, at its semiconductor manufacturing facility in Bromont, Québec.The image sensors are integral parts of sophisticated camera systems designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, for navigation and scientific investigation aboard the rovers. A representative from Dalsa will be on hand on Saturday for several presentations on the Q2C Festival stage, within the Physica Phantastica exhibit area.

“We are extremely proud to have built technology that allows the Mars rovers to take such highly detailed images of the surface of the red planet,” says Brian Doody, CEO of Dalsa.“We invite the community to learn more about the potential of this and future technology at the Mars Rover Exhibit.”

Guelph’s Ralf Gellert was part of the team at the Max-Planck Institute in Germany that developed and built the Alpha-Particle X-ray Spectrometer on both MER rovers. He is now leading a group at U of G operating the instruments, analyzing the data and also developing an improved version of the APXS for MSL. The APXS is one of the scientific instruments mounted on the rover arm, where it measures the chemical composition of rocks and soils. The Physica Phantastica exhibit will feature a backup instrument, an exact copy of one that is currently making measurements on Mars.

"Developing, building and operating science instruments that are used to explore distant planets is a wonderfully challenging and rewarding task,” says Gellert. “They must be small and robust to survive the hostile temperatures and vibrations. Once the mission lands safely the day to day operation is about squeezing out the last details of the data and trying to put together the geologic story that is written in the rocks and soils.”

He will also be taking part in the “Worlds Beyond Earth” panel discussion at the Q2C Festival on October 24 at 6:00 p.m. Audience members can join on-site, online and on TVOntario.

Scheduled to launch in the fall of 2011, the Mars Science Laboratory is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. MSL will be assessing whether Mars ever was, or is still today, an environment able to support microbial life.

“We are very pleased to partner with Perimeter Institute’s Quantum to Cosmos Festival on to bring a little more of the rover excitement to Canada,” says Amy Dickinson of JPL. Free timed entry tickets for the Physica Phantastica Exhibit, featuring the Mars Rover Exhibit sponsored by Dalsa, are still available on weekday evenings, with limited availability on weekends. Tickets are available online.

The free tickets for the lectures, panel discussions and “The Agenda with Steve Paikin” live broadcasts that are also part of the Q2C Festival are sold out, but you can still join in online from anywhere at any time, with full access to all panels and talks as they happen.

CAR

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