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Daily Bulletin

Tuesday, December 9, 1997

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
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Career planner program begins

Through a special partnership arrangement being launched today, students from UW, the University of Guelph and Wilfrid Laurier University will be able to earn their degrees at their home universities, take related courses at the other universities, and earn a certificate in the Career Development Practitioner program at Conestoga College.

A reception will take place at Conestoga at 3:30 today to announce the collaborative venture. UW's provost, Jim Kalbfleisch, will join the presidents of Conestoga, Guelph and WLU for the occasion. There as special guests will be Donald Lawson and Lorraine Lawson of the Counselling Foundation of Canada, which is providing a $280,000 grant to help expand access to the program.

The money will go toward the conversion of course materials from a traditional classroom format to an on-line format, available through the Internet. The first course is to be ready early in the new year, and all 10 courses should be done by next fall.

To help part-time students already employed in the field who wish to take the program, a financial assistance fund is being established by the foundation. The Ontario Association of Youth Employment Centres will administer the fund.

The college-university partnership and the foundation grant recognize that "skilled, effective career-development practitioners will be essential in all types of careers and employment settings in the future," a news release says. "They will have a definite impact on helping Canada maintain a competitive edge by helping people anticipate, plan and adjust to ongoing employment changes."

Under the new agreement, students will earn the BA at their home university and a Career Development Practitioner certificate at Conestoga. The time required to finish them both will be "approximately one semester less than if students sequentially pursued a baccalaureate degree and a certificate outside the agreement", or one term longer than it would take to do just the BA.

Campus ghosts, and more

The December issue of Acme magazine is out on campus, with a rather odd photograph on the cover (any suggestions for captions?) and several seasonal articles that are well worth the reading.

Most importantly, the magazine offers a report on "Ghosts of Christmas Past", by John Hurt Cooke, which includes an almost plausible description of an encounter with the spirits of two of UW's founders, Gerry Hagey and Father "Corky" Siegfried, in the campus's oldest building, the Graduate House (formerly the Schweitzer farmhouse). It's a fine contribution to the continuing effort to give this campus a few incorporeal inhabitants.

It will be remembered, maybe, that on April Fool's a good many years ago, we at the Gazette invented a few campus myths and published them straight-facedly -- including an Indian maiden who drowned herself for love in Laurel Lake (the one below Conrad Grebel), and a ghost in the Dana Porter Library elevators, which do seem to have a non-human intelligence. Some readers apparently were so unnerved by the latter story that I had to write a memo to be posted on an appropriate bulletin board, explaining that it was a joke.

Also in the new issue of Acme, from a quick scan:

The Federation of Students gets space in the magazine as a sponsor, and this month's Fed column includes a note from Jeff Gardner, VP (education): "Forty-two Ontario universities and colleges are united in their efforts to make the Harris Tories listen. The Roundtable of Ontario Schools will table a petition in the House of Commons in early 1998 asking for increased funding for post-secondary institutions, and an end to massive tuition hikes." Wonder if he really means the House of Commons.

A note on this, a note on that

The annual hour of Christmas carols in the lobby of the Modern Languages building is scheduled for tomorrow at noon hour. Jake Willms, who started the tradition some dozen years ago when he was assistant to the dean of arts, is returning from retirement to lead the singing, and I'd guess that everything will be as it always has been, up to and including "Calypso Noel", as well as "Silent Night" in three or four languages. Everybody is welcome, and there will be light refreshments; tomorrow's music starts at 12:15.

A nominating committee for the position of dean of arts will be getting to work shortly, as Brian Hendley's term as dean is up June 30, 1999. The staff association is inviting applications for the position of staff representative on the nominating committee; interested staff members can get in touch with Mark Walker in the biology department (mwalker@sciborg).

The Toronto Star is following up last weekend's "1,000 Voices: Lives on Hold" section about youth unemployment with a series of related stories. This morning: "Next year, the average debt load for graduating students is expected to be about $25,000. . . . Paying off loans is a problem for people who can barely afford rent, food and clothing. Almost half of those in The Star study who are no longer in school get by on less than $1,000 a month. . . . Student loans are becoming a barrier to education, says federal Finance Minister Paul Martin. . . . It is a generation drowning in debt and thinking twice about whether it was all worth it."

A question about this Bulletin

In the middle of a discussion on the ethos of this university, being conducted on the newsgroup uw.general, someone made this observation the other day:
Many days, possibly even most days, I can read the Daily Bulletin without knowing that the product of this factory is students, and not, say, cardboard boxes. Much the same can be said about the Gazette. For that matter, I can read analogous publications at IBM without knowing what its product is either.
Comments, please. I'd be interested in knowing whether Bulletin readers think the observation is true; if it's true, whether it's a problem; and if it's a problem, what might be done about it. And while we're at it: is the identification of students as the "product" of the university helpful?

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
December 9, 1968: Ted Fisher, director of the school of optometry, is installed as president of the American Academy of Optometry, the first person from outside the United States to hold that office.

Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca -- (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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