Donald Grierson put on his academic robes (and brought along his two-dimensional friend Albert Einstein) when he gave his last lecture before retirement, December 5, 2005. He later came out of retirement to do more teaching of first-year civil engineering students, giving a landmark lecture January 5, 2009, “exactly 50 years to the day when I attended my first UW lecture”. He had earned his BASc in civil in 1964, a master’s in 1966 and a PhD in 1968, then held a faculty post in the department for 37 years, and was named Distinguished Professor Emeritus in 2009. Don Grierson died on Thursday. A funeral service will be held today at 10 a.m. at the Church of Our Lady in downtown Guelph.

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New season of professional courses from CEL

“Make it happen!” says the fall calendar from Waterloo’s Centre for Extended Learning, and the tools for making “it” happen include training in “enterprise and strategic analysis”, digital photography, “guerrilla grammar”, mediation, conversational Japanese, and team-building.

Michael Hunt, associate director of  CEL, writes that his department “leverages the many strengths of the University of Waterloo in order to provide working professionals with the relevant knowledge, skills, and training opportunities that will improve your workplace performance and increase your advancement potential.”

CEL does that through a program of face-to-face and online courses, quite separate from its other role in supporting the technical side of Waterloo’s online credit courses for full-time and part-time students on their way to a degree.

The “professional development” program includes face-to-face courses, one to four days long, at the CEL offices on Gage Avenue in Kitchener, plus online courses offered through Waterloo and some 1,800 other institutions by an American company, Education To Go.

Some of the courses can add up to a certificate in “business analysis”, business communications, leadership, project management or project leadership — and, new this year, “social media for business performance” (an online offering) and “advanced project management” (face-to-face courses). Each course is also tagged with a stated number of Professional Development Units, or PDUs, a common currency in business training where each PDU represents one hour of in-class experience.

The fee for  six-week online course is $190 plus tax. Fees for the face-to-face courses vary, starting at $390 for some one-day courses and going up to $1,590 for some of the four-day courses. Waterloo alumni receive a 20 per cent discount, and regular staff and faculty members get a 50 per cent discount on the fees for face-to-face courses. (Hunt says the courses are pitched to people who have a few years of workplace experience, and aren’t normally suited to current undergraduate students.)

Some of the instructors are people already on campus, including Matt  Erickson, director of the conflict management and human rights office (he’ll be teaching “Effective Communication”). Ron Champion of Renison University College will teach several courses, including “Proofreading and Editing”. Other instructors come from the business world, and Guelph-based Patsy Marshall continues to teach her classic course in “Influencing Difficult People”.

“Our much-lauded instructors,” Hunt writes, “provide valuable insights into innovations that shape our ever-changing workplace environments.” Among their other offerings: a time management course, a one-day crash course in “Understanding Human Behaviour”, and a course by Andrew McMurry of Waterloo’s English department on “Persuasive Writing”.

The dozens of online courses from Ed2Go include PhotoShop, Linux, supply chain management, assertiveness, sales skills, and travel photography.

The CEL professional development calendar also includes pointers to the certificate program in conflict management and mediation, offered by Conrad Grebel University College, and the career development eManual that’s available online from the Centre for Career Action.

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Huntsville centre will welcome visitors

Monthly open house events this fall will give residents of Huntsville — and visitors from elsewhere — a chance to see the Waterloo Summit Centre for the Environment, including its "living wall".

Robin Brushey, who was recently hired as events manager for the Waterloo outpost in the small Muskoka community, says Community Visits Days are scheduled for September 7, October 5, November 2 and December 7. "The doors will be open for tours, and the coffee pot on, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. RSVPs are not required."

She gives some background: "The Waterloo Summit Centre for the Environment (left) is the University of Waterloo’s environment research centre. This research, teaching and community centre is on Forbes Hill Drive in Huntsville — just up the road from the Canada Summit Centre. The Centre accommodates and supports people attending short courses, meetings, conferences, workshops and field exercises through the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment. Doors are open to the community to attend events, such as speaker series, fundraisers and celebrations. The on-site residence can accommodate 46 people.

"Since its opening, the Centre has been host to several small conferences, training sessions, and educational seminars as well as credit courses for Faculty of Environment students. Students have been staying on site in the residence, immersed in intensive field credit courses, and learning about the Huntsville community.

"Other students have been making use of the on-site field equipment and local environment to undertake research project in and around Muskoka. More equipment has been arriving regularly for the soon-to-be fully-outfitted ecology wet lab, which will enable increased numbers of grad and undergrad students to do more extensive research in and around Muskoka.

"The natural and human environment comes together at the Waterloo Summit Centre for the Environment in the advancement of this work and service through the training and education of undergraduate and graduate students, government agencies, universities, consultants and non-governmental organizations — and the involvement of the citizens of Huntsville and area."

CAR

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