CTE offers case writing, teaching workshops

Instructors, take note: two intensive workshops on case writing and case teaching will be offered at the university by facilitators from the Richard Ivey School of Business at Western University, the Centre for Teaching Excellence is reporting.

The initiative is part of a Case-Based Learning project organized by the Centre for Teaching Excellence, the result of a collaboration between 10 Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) grant recipients from four faculties.

The Writing Cases course runs from April 15 to 17 for a maximum of 25 participants, and is focused on how to write good cases quickly. The Teaching Cases course runs from April 18 to 19 for a maximum of 40 participants, and is focused on effectively using cases in teaching.

Western University's Richard Ivey School of Business is a recognized authority on case-based learning, and facilitators usually charge $2,450 for seminars. However, the courses on offer at Waterloo are available for $200 apiece, or $300 for both together. According to CTE, this is a one-time deal.

The deadline for registration is Wednesday, April 3 at 12:00 p.m.

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Disclosure: $100,000 salaries for 2012

The University of Waterloo has released a list of the 1,041 employees who were paid more than $100,000 in 2012.

It's something public-sector employers in Ontario have had to do every March since the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act was passed in 1996. Other universities, school boards, hospitals, colleges, municipalities, and the government itself are making similar information for last year public this week.

The $100,000 list includes most of Waterloo's professors, and a number of staff members and senior administrators. It includes people employed by St. Jerome's University, Renison University College, Conrad Grebel University College and St. Paul's University College as well as by the University of Waterloo itself.

In addition to the salary, a figure is given for taxable benefits received by each individual, for such extras as employer-paid life insurance.

Last year's salary disclosure is also available online.

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ECE design symposium winners named

"This year, a total of 71 electrical and computer engineering design project teams competed for the Infusion Cup at the ECE Design Symposium held on Wednesday, March 20 in the Davis Centre," writes Bill Bishop of the electrical and computer engineering department. "While all of the projects demonstrated a high degree of innovation and craftsmanship, the following projects were selected to receive awards:"

The Infusion Cup, sponsored by Infusion and worth $2,000 in cash to the winning team, was awarded to P3: Power Monitoring System, whose team members included Jesse Haber-Kucharsky, Elliott Vanhartingsveldt, Marc Morgan, and Kevin Park. The Infusion Cup runners-up included Custom Social Integrations for Restaurants by Peter Chan, Praveen Arichandran, Thanushanthan Chandrarajah, Jeffrey Chen, and Gesture Controlled Quadrocopter by Kevin Bevis, Suneet Saldanha, Daniel De Carvalho, Mohamed Dabbagh, and Zohaib Alam. The runners-up won a $500 team prize, also sponsored by Infusion.

Other awards included:

The Most Innovative Design award (sponsored by AMD) was given to Controlled Entry Using Near Field Communication Technologies in Smartphones by Satbir Bains, Andi Kararaj, Hycem Bahgat, Tyler Nonnekes. The team members each received Lenovo laptops with AMD processors.

The Best Seminar, sponsored by Telus, was given to Reduced-Footprint Mobility System by Joseph Koechl, Denise Neutel, Philip Garcia, Oleg Petelin, and Yujing Huang. Team members received a $150 Visa gift card.

The Best Poster, sponsored by Apple, was awarded to Low Cost Optical Positioning System for Small Scale Robots by Ilia Baranov, Justin Godson, Saad Kazi, Naim Hilal. Each team member received an Apple iPad Mini.

Alumni and visitors travelled from as far away as California to attend the symposium.

"Congratulations to all of our students on such a successful event!" concludes Bishop.

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Monday's notes

The university's Board of Governors meets tomorrow in room 0101 of the Mike & Ophelia Quantum-Nano Centre at 1:30 p.m. Board members will be hearing reports from Co-operative Education and Career Action (CECA), Dean of Science Terry McMahon, and a research presentation by Professor David Cory of the chemistry department.

Human Resources has noted the passing of two retired staff members. Gayle Shellard, who started working at the university in October 1971 and was the department clinic secretary for Applied Health Sciences prior to her retirement in January 2001, died March 16. Aurelia Neci, who started at the university in March 1988 and worked as a custodian in Plant Operations until her retirement in June 1994, died March 20.

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