Warrior Field gets latest turf technology

from a Waterloo Athletics news release

The University of Waterloo Warriors have announced that they are upgrading their playing surface to FieldTurf Duraspine PRO, described as “the safest, highest performing and most durable artificial turf product in the world.” The FieldTurf installation is expected to be completed by September.

The new FieldTurf Duraspine PRO field will provide a safe and durable multi-purpose field that will be suitable for a variety of uses, including campus recreation programming, varsity soccer, football, rugby and field hockey.

“We will have the premier artificial playing surface in Canada,” said Bob Copeland, Waterloo’s director of athletics. “FieldTurf has a proven track record of success, and is known for product innovation, safety, and environmental responsibility. This will be a field for all Waterloo students, and we will be able to significantly expand our programming for campus recreation soccer and other activities.”

The FieldTurf installation is part of the second phase of campus renovations that include sports lighting, fencing, and landscape improvements.

A project team including lead design consultant Stantec and representatives from Waterloo’s departments of athletics and plant operations developed a master plan for the site that strengthens pedestrian connections to the main campus and adjacent athletic centre (Columbia Icefield).

The plan involves creating bermed seating in both end zones to create a unique and intimate “bowl” atmosphere for spectators and student athletes. It also includes stadium lighting that avoids ambient light pollution and a recycling program that reuses soil material extracted from the former natural turf field to supplement the stadium’s new berm seating.

Funding of $1,231,882 for this phase of the project was made possible by federal and provincial grants through the Recreational Infrastructure Canada Program in Ontario (RinC).

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Accessible web; volunteer awards; WatCACE projects; policies 33 and 34

Several Waterloo staff members attended the Aiming for Accessibility: Meeting Standards, Making Change conference at University of Guelph in June. On Friday they will be sharing their experiences with the uWaterloo community in a presentation of "Highlights from the Accessibility Conference."

The presentation will focus on web accessibility, important to those who create web pages and/or websites, but even more so to those who use our websites. Time for questions and answers is promised.

The speakers are Annie Bélanger (Library), Sarah Forgrave (CPA, Waterloo Redesign Project Lead), Eva Grabinski (IST, Waterloo CMS Project Lead), Alan Kirker (IST–ITMS), and Liam Morland (CEL). The event takes place Friday, 10:30 a.m. to noon, in Davis Centre 1304. All are welcome, no RSVP required.

President’s Circle Awards for Volunteerism
"The President’s Circle Awards for Volunteerism were established in 1997 to recognize the significant contributions of students in volunteer work within the university and the community at large,” says a memo from interim associate provost Bud Walker.

“The awards honour the extracurricular efforts of students in a variety of service areas, some of which may not be highly visible but are nonetheless important to the community. Up to five recipients are selected for awards of $500 each.”

A second set of awards, the President’s Circle Awards for Leadership, was added in 2007 to recognize “students who have left a lasting impression on the university through encouraging student engagement, acting as a role model, or enabling others to become leaders.”

Walker notes that members of the President’s Circle are “a committed group of donors who annually contribute $1,000 or more to the University of Waterloo. They play an important role in the development of the university, not only through their contributions to Waterloo, but also through the example they set for corporations, foundations, alumni and other individuals. It is through their generous support that the President’s Circle Awards have been established.”

He asks department heads and others across campus to spread the word, “and consider nominating some of our extraordinary volunteers and leaders” for the student honours. Deadline: September 21.

WatCACE funding opens
WatCACE, the Centre for the Advancement of Co-operative Education, announces another round of support for research on co-operative education and invites proposals. The priority areas for support in this round are

• the outcomes of co-operative education, particularly those outcomes that are academic and psychological in nature,
• pedagogical activities that support reflection on and integration of learning at work and learning at school,
• pedagogical activities that support reflection on the long-term career and personal value of co-op, and
• the outcomes of co-operative education as compared to other forms of experiential education.

The deadline for applications is September 1. Guidelines are here.

Revised policies approved, posted
From the Secretariat comes notice of revised versions of University of Waterloo Policy 33 (Ethical Behaviour) and Policy 34 (Health, Safety and Environment), which were approved by the president on June 30.

Why the revisions? “Recently, the Occupational Health and Safety Act was amended to require employers to prepare policies with respect to workplace harassment and workplace violence. In anticipation of the statutory amendment, the Safety Office, in co-operation with UW Police, initiated development of the university's Workplace Violence Prevention Program and recommended changes to Policies 33 and 34.

“Additional text was added to policy 33 re: workplace harassment and to policy 34 re: workplace violence. At the same time, Policy 33 was revised to include information about the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and the university’s Office for Persons with Disabilities.” The revised versions of Policy 33 and Policy 34 are on the Secretariat website.

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Faculty retirements

Mary Thompson of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science retired September 1, 2009. With degrees from Toronto and Illinois, she came to Waterloo in 1969, and worked largely in the areas of survey sampling and probability. She was co-director of the Survey Research Centre for many years, and served as president of the Statistical Society of Canada, chair of the stats department, and, for several months in 2001, acting dean of mathematics. In 2006 she was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Scott Vanstone of St. Jerome’s University retired October 1, 2009, officially ending a 35-year career in which he was also connected with the mathematics faculty’s Department of Combinatorics and Optimization. A major figure in the development of cryptographic techniques used in everything from military intelligence to online banking, he was a founder of the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research and also of the spinoff company Certicom. Vanstone was named to an Industrial Research Chair co-sponsored by NSERC and Pitney-Bowes, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

William Wilson of electrical and computer engineering, where he was part of the control systems group, retired  September 1, 2009. A faculty member since 1973 — when he came to Waterloo with undergraduate degrees from Saskatchewan and a PhD from Cambridge — he worked in such areas as automated assembly systems and robot programming. Wilson was a key figure when the mechatronics engineering program was developed a decade ago.

Peter Woolstencroft of the political science department — one of Waterloo’s highest-profile faculty members — retired May 1, 2010. He came to Waterloo in 1970 with degrees from the University of Alberta, and listed his specialties as Canadian politics, western Canada and “political behaviour,” but came to be known particularly as a commentator on the Progressive Conservative and, later, Conservative parties, of which he was an active member. He told one interviewer that he preferred newspaper interviews, which allowed time to explore issues in depth and with nuance, rather than television clips, but he appeared in plenty of those as well. Woolstencroft has also worked in the area of global governance, and writes on his web  page that “My major research project is the preparation of a book that addresses the question of Canada’s future relations with the United States.”

Anne Zeller of the anthropology department retired January 1, 2010. A graduate of Trent University and the University of Toronto, she had been a faculty member at Waterloo since 1982, well known for her studies of primates including the apes of Borneo. “However,” her web site notes, “her approach to physical anthropology is very wide-ranging and she has presented papers on witchcraft, dietary influences on behaviour, the role of children in evolution, and child abuse in primates, as well as on her major focus of primate communication. She is also interested in the use of film in research.”

CPA staff

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