Engineering students, working in the longstanding tradition of putting cars in unusual places, are given the credit for this display outside the Student Life Centre on Saturday afternoon. W. Jim Jordan, graduate student in philosophy, took the photo on his mobile phone. "I was making my way back to my office in Hagey Hall after Saturday's football disaster," he writes, "when I saw this car between SLC and MC. It took me a minute to realise that it had been placed around the tree (the trunk of the tree was protected by cardboard tubing). It's a 'don't drink and drive' reminder made by WEEF."

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Math dean will hold named 'research chair'

A prominent UW graduate has given the university the funds to create a special professorial chair for researcher Tom Coleman after he finishes his term as dean of mathematics, the university announced Friday.

Waterloo is awarding Coleman the Ophelia Lazaridis University Research Chair, a news release said. “When he assumes the chair on July 1, 2010, after his decanal term ends, Coleman will join one of the world's leading research groups in optimization theory and methodologies, based in Waterloo's department of combinatorics and optimization.”

The donor is Ophelia Lazaridis, a 1985 math graduate and the wife of former UW chancellor Mike Lazaridis. "Tom Coleman has proven himself an outstanding academic, whether he's teaching, conducting research or leading the faculty of mathematics," she says. "It is my pleasure to recognize his many contributions by supporting his research efforts in this manner."

The release said Coleman (left) and his research team “will develop efficient and high-performance algorithms and approaches to large-scale and global optimization problems. The work will have numerous applications in such areas as engineering design, medical imaging, protein folding and conformation, resource allocation problems and computational finance.”

Lazaridis is providing $980,000, over seven years. With additional funding from the university, the chair is worth $3 million over the full term, Friday’s announcement said. The funds will support Coleman's research efforts involving students, postdoctoral fellows and visiting researchers in the faculty.

"As a Waterloo graduate of mathematics, Ophelia Lazaridis understands the value of research in our faculty," says Coleman. "Her generous and continued support of our activities is always welcome, but especially and personally so in this particular instance."

The news release notes that Waterloo “owes much of its success and reputation to the quality of its professors and their scholarly accomplishments. The university recognizes exceptional achievement and pre-eminence in a particular field of knowledge by designating a scholar a University Research Chair. No more than five such designations are made in any given year and each can last up to seven years. The Lazaridis chair is Waterloo's first named University Research Chair.”

Said provost Feridun Hamdullahpur: “Tom Coleman is precisely the sort of scholar who should be receiving this designation. Prior to coming to Waterloo as dean of mathematics, he developed a highly successful research program and a network of partnerships that could help move his program forward. His designation as university research chair recognizes his significant success in research."

Coleman joined Waterloo as dean of math in July 2004. He came from Cornell University, where he was a professor of computer science and applied math as well as director of the Cornell Theory Center and its spinoff, CTC-Manhattan, based in New York City. He received his doctorate from Waterloo in 1979. He is also serving as interim director of WatRISQ, a Waterloo centre established in 2004 (and renamed in 2009) to conduct research and advanced training in quantitative finance and risk management.

A nominating committee is at work to select UW's next dean of math.

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City delivers its message to students

a news release from the City of Waterloo

“It’s your Waterloo” — that’s the message the City of Waterloo wants to send out to students coming to the community this September.

Representatives of the Waterloo Regional Police Service, in partnership with the City of Waterloo and the two local universities, will be going door-to-door to welcome students, provide information and respond to questions.

For many years, these organizations have partnered to let students know they’re an important part of Waterloo. “Students make up a significant portion of our population and have a positive impact on our local economy and community life,” said Kaye Crawford, who manages the city’s community relations.

The main message the four partners would like to get across to student residents is that being part of the community comes with the same responsibilities that apply to everyone else. “We want them to enjoy being part of Waterloo, but we also need them to understand there’s a balance between having fun and being a responsible citizen,” said Const. Kim Schnittke, a community resources officer with the Waterloo regional police.

With this — and the fact some students are away from home for the first time — in mind, the partners will be canvassing the neighbourhoods directly surrounding the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University on September 16 and 17 from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Police officers, firefighters, by-law enforcement personnel, students and on-campus police will knock on 1,500 doors and distribute information on some of Waterloo’s by-laws, as well as tips on being a good neighbour and useful phone numbers.

In addition to this program, the City of Waterloo is embarking on a new communications campaign — which includes posters, advertisements, coasters and more — to reach out to students and inform them about Waterloo and its by-laws.

“Overall, our message is simple: this community belongs to everyone who lives here, and we all need to take responsibility for our own little corner of Waterloo. That's how you can be a good neighbour,” Crawford said.

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Other notes as the term gets rolling

Fall term classes begin today, and some students began their university careers with an 8:30 a.m. dose of something like Physics 115. (You can easily recognize first-year students as they to classes this morning: they're the ones tightly clutching yellow maps of the campus.) Services across UW are back to regular operating hours — the Dana Porter Library, for instance, is now open to 11 p.m. every night of the week, and the Davis Centre library until midnight. Detailed hours are on the appropriate web sites for the library, food services, athletic facilities, and retail stores (including the bookstore, which will be open until 7 p.m. for the next four days to help with the beginning-of-term textbook rush).

I'm told that more than 4,200 students, alumni and others completed the online feedback form about the latest UW logo proposals in the first 24 hours after it was announced on Thursday morning (and, obviously, responses have continued to come in on Friday and over the weekend). The site includes a brief explanatory Flash video and a series of questions about three possible logo designs, the big W that was the centre of controversy this summer and two newly revealed alternatives. In addition to making comments on that site, anybody interested can give feedback through Facebook and on the UW Opinion web site, which had its busiest day ever on Thursday as people weighed in about the proposals.

Lynn Judge, director of graduate studies academic services, says UW is taking part in a survey of PhD students that’s being done at 12 major universities across Canada: “Doctoral students, supervisors, and department graduate officers/program directors with doctoral programs will have an opportunity to participate in an SSHRC funded research project — a collaboration between researchers from McGill University and the University of Alberta, to understand the traditional, regularized, and habitual practices of doctoral writing that participants often inherit from previous generations, but that are increasingly under pressure as a result of growing demands on doctoral student writing and publishing. The goal is to understand participant needs for support and resources and to work with participants to influence policy and pedagogy for doctoral student writing at Canadian research-intensive universities. This project was reviewed/approved by the UW Office of Research Ethics. Invitations for participation in a survey will be distributed by e-mail to each participant group from the Graduate Studies Office, University of Waterloo.”

News from the Modern Languages building: faculty member Barbara Schmenk of the Germanic and Slavic Studies department is the 2008 recipient of the Hans Eberhard Piepho Prize for Ideas in Communicative Foreign Language Education. This 3,000-Euro prize (about $4,700 in Canadian funds) is awarded annually in honour of the late Hans Eberhard Piepho, a pioneer in the field of communicative language learning. Schmenk received the award for her latest book, Lernerautonomie: Karriere und Sloganisierung des Autonomiebegriffs (Narr Verlag, 2008).

And from the engineering side of campus, as reported in the engineering faculty's online newsletter: "Guang Gong and Siva Sivoththaman, both of electrical and computer engineering, and John Yeow of systems design engineering will receive funding from NSERC’s Discovery Accelerator Supplements program intended to help maximize the results of research projects. Gong is investigating a new paradigm for security and privacy in radio frequency identification systems, Sivoththaman is researching the development and implementation of special engineering and nanotechnology concepts for high efficiency photovoltaic devices, and Yeow is working on the design, model and fabrication of micro/nanodevices."

CAR

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