'Themes emerging' as president listens

Waterloo’s president is just delighted at how his “mid-cycle review” of the university’s ten-year plan is coming along — and says he’s not tired yet, a third of the way through a gruelling program of 50 open meetings with faculty, staff and student groups, large and small.

A milestone in the process will be reached this week when he holds meetings Tuesday and Wednesday nights that are open to all undergraduate and graduate students, respectively, asking what they think about Waterloo’s future and how to get there.

The cycle of 90-minute meetings began in mid-September and will run until the end of the fall term, to be followed by a series of winter term focus groups on specific issues.

“Certain themes are emerging,” president Feridun Hamdullahpur (above) said in a conversation Friday morning about the consultation process. “There are some common observations and thoughts that I am detecting.”

He wouldn’t say what they were — waiting to see whether they surface in similar ways in the dozens of meetings that still lie ahead — but he did say that judging from what he’s hearing, “not a single person is interested in the status quo.” The groups he has met with, virtually unanimously, want to fix what’s wrong and build on what’s right, he explained. “The tone doesn’t change.”

The label “mid-cycle review” is being used because the current process is taking place halfway through the 2007-17 term of the Sixth Decade Plan, which called for big leaps in the university’s prestige and quality, though it was short on many of the implementation details. The intention now is to “consider the ambitious goals set out in 2006, reflect on our accomplishments, realign our plan, and introduce an accountability framework with action plans and progress outcomes,” Hamdullahpur has said.

The 15 meetings that have taken place so far “have absolutely met and exceeded my expectations,” he said on Friday, noting that the participants show up voluntarily “and they don’t just sit there and listen — they talk!”

What he’s hearing demonstrates “how articulate and how broad-minded” people from all parts of the university are, concerned not just about their own jobs or fields of study but about Waterloo as a whole, “right across the spectrum. I’m finding out how connected they are, and how committed they are. It’s so refreshing, and surprisingly beautiful.”

While the sequence of open consultations goes on, he’s also been meeting in smaller groups with some key alumni and members of the board of governors for what he calls “fireside chats”. Yet another way for people to be involved in the mid-cycle review is by submitting written comments, on paper or online.

And all of that is being done “while I maintain all my other commitments, external and internal” as president of the university, Hamdullahpur stressed. He gave huge credit to “my team, working hard the entire summer” to organize and launch the review.

Key staff members on that project include Mary Jane Jennings, the director of institutional analysis and planning; Ellen Réthoré, associate vice-president (communications and public affairs); and Janet Passmore, associate provost (human resources), as well as people within their various departments. The president added that the board of governors and senior administrators “are fully behind this exercise”.

Details of how people can be involved, including a schedule of open meetings this week and through the fall, are on a special website.

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U of T philosopher here to give Hagey Lecture

University of Toronto philosopher Ian Hacking will discuss the human use of mathematics as he gives this year’s Hagey Lecture tonight in the Humanities Theatre.

The Hagey Lectures — considered Waterloo’s biggest guest lecture series, and created more than 40 years ago to honour founding president Gerry Hagey — are co-sponsored by the university and the Faculty Association. They bring to campus academics and prominent figures who “have distinguished themselves in some scholarly or creative field and their work cuts across traditional disciplines and national boundaries. Previous lecturers have included Nobel laureates in various disciplines, internationally renowned scholars, architects, peace activists and well-known artists.”

"The goal of the Hagey Lecture Series is to introduce thought-provoking work to the Waterloo community," says public health professor John Mielke, the current chair of the Hagey Lecture committee. "We are very excited to welcome professor Ian Hacking to deliver the 2011 Hagey Lecture. Dr. Hacking’s visit will allow our community to be engaged by an individual who has made significant contributions to several fields of philosophical inquiry."

Hacking (left), a leading Canadian scholar in the history and philosophy of science and mathematics, will speak tonight on “How Did Mathematics Become Possible?” The lecture starts at 8 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre, J. G. Hagey Hall of the Humanities. Admission is free (no tickets required).

Hacking, 75, is an academic and public philosopher who addresses university and general audiences. His work has sought to break down the traditional boundaries between the sciences and the humanities. His research, influencing fields as diverse as statistical inference and the emergence of multiple personality disorder, has earned many awards, including the inaugural Killam Prize for Humanities, Canada's most distinguished award for outstanding career achievements.

In 2004, Hacking was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. Hacking has taught at University of British Columbia, Stanford University, University of Toronto and the Collège de France. Hacking is now a University Professor Emeritus at U of T.

His books include The Logic of Statistical Inference (1965) and The Emergence of Probability (1975). In 2001, he published An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic, which has become a widely used logic textbook. For a lay audience, The Taming of Chance, published in 1990, discusses the history of probability and its growing importance in people's daily lives. In Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory, published in 1995, Hacking looks at how people are constituted by the descriptions of acts available to them.

In tonight’s talk, Hacking will explore the journey that humanity has taken during its development into a species that observes the natural world through a mathematical lens. In short, he will examine how human beings became able to do mathematics.

Tomorrow, he will give two talks intended for student audiences. One is an arts-oriented student colloquium with a talk entitled “Numbers and Race: Don't Ask For the Reference, Ask For the Use”. It begins at 1 p.m. in Hagey Hall room 334. At 3:30 p.m., he will give a mathematics-oriented talk, “The 20th century Pythagoras: Why Did P.A.M. Dirac Conjecture That the Universe is a Single Very Large Integer?” in Math and Computer room 5158.

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Ads on the GO trains, and other notes

The university has plenty of regulations about final exams, and now has a set of “guidelines” for “other tests and examinations” — that is, midterms. They were presented to the university senate by provost Geoff McBoyle, based on work by the registrar’s office and associate deans, and given approval at the senate meeting on September 19. “An instructor who chooses to schedule a test or examination outside of, or to extend beyond the regularly scheduled class time, will be required to provide suitable alternative time arrangements for any students with legitimate conflicts,” the 11-paragraph document says. “Material tested on a test or examination should be introduced sufficiently in advance of the examination date to allow students reasonable time to seek clarification or greater understanding of concepts. Normally, instructors may not hold major term tests in the last five teaching days of the lecture schedule in any term." Also: no midterms on weekends.

“Hire Waterloo” is the message of posters (right) that have been posted in “pretty much every car on all the GO train lines” in the greater Toronto area over the past two weeks, according to Peggy Jarvie, who heads the co-op education and career services department. “This media buy estimates 2 million viewings by GO train riders,” she says. “An added bonus: the TD Business Banking recruiter that we quote on the ad tells us that the president of her division was pleased to see TD quoted on our ad, and values the partnership with Waterloo. Suman Armitage and Karina Graf are the CECS marketers responsible for this, with support from Carol Ann Olheiser.” The advertising is timely: employer interviews for winter term jobs begin today in the Tatham Centre and run through October 27. Pharmacy students, a small group being matched with a discrete group of jobs, had their interviews last week, and ranking opens online at 8:00 tonight.

The September issue of Chem 13 News, published for high school teachers by Waterloo’s department of chemistry, includes a listing of top-scoring students in last spring’s sponsored exams, which help to promote Waterloo, and chemistry in general, among high school students. Coming top in the Chem 13 News exam was Sean Ridout of Northern Secondary School in Toronto; top in the Avogadro Exam was Conrad Ng of St. George’s School in Vancouver. A total of 2,247 students wrote the Chem 13 News test, for students in senior chemistry; 4,118 students wrote the more junior Avogadro. Also in the newsletter’s new issue is the announcement that Waterloo will be hosting the big Chem Ed summer conference two years hence: Chem Ed 2013 is scheduled for July 28 through August 1, 2013.

Here's the latest news from St. Paul's University College (see, I got its new official name correct for a change). “There is a Scotiabank ATM now located in Watson’s Eatery at St. Paul’s,” says the college’s communications officer, Kelly Deeks-Johnson. She thinks it’s the first Scotiabank money machine on the Waterloo campus. (I asked about the “Watson’s Eatery” name, and was reminded that the Watson Student Centre was opened in 2008 and named to honour supporters Jeanne Elgie-Watson and Bill Watson, a Toronto lawyer who sits on the university’s board of governors.)

And . . . the “One click away” had a link last Tuesday to a spectacular photo on Flickr which I captioned “Sunset, Renison, ‘Ideas start here’”. I was, like Casablanca’s Rick, misled; the photo (by “niikos”) shows not Renison University College, but Resurrection College, a Roman Catholic institution — not directly affiliated with the university — just west of Westmount Road opposite Renison. The spire at centre marks St. Eugene’s Chapel.

CAR

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