Daily Bulletin

Thursday, December 11, 1997

University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

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Downey heads world body

UW's president, James Downey, has been named chair for 1997-98 of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, based in London. He was previously the vice-chair of ACU.

A web page explains that "The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), founded in 1913, is the oldest international association of universities in the world. . . . Membership comprises over 450 universities drawn from the Commonwealth countries of Africa and Asia, Australasia and the South Pacific, Canada and the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Malta. These institutions come together voluntarily under the umbrella of the ACU to build on their historical links, shared traditions and common purposes in order to further international understanding and collaboration.

"The aim of the Association is to promote, in various practical ways, contact and cooperation between its member institutions: by encouraging and supporting the movement of academic and administrative staff and students from one country of the Commonwealth to another; by providing information about universities; by organising meetings; and by hosting a higher education management service."

In search of multi-millions

"Innovation" funding from Ottawa, the Ontario government and the private sector could bring $100 million or more to UW over the next few years for faculty and staff positions, graduate students, equipment, computer networks and even a building, department heads were told yesterday afternoon at their meeting in Needles Hall.

But first comes a double quest for money, in which UW has to find corporate and individual supporters for its projects and make successful proposals to the federal Canada Foundation for Innovation and the provincial Ontario Challenge Fund. Both CFI and OCF will work on a matching-fund basis.

Grahame Farquhar of the civil engineering department, who is coordinating UW's applications for CFI and the OCF, said he's concerned that "some other universities are further ahead than we are," although he thinks UW will have good projects to propose by the deadline. The first proposals are due April 1, and on May 1 institutions will have to present CFI with "a development plan addressing their priorities for research and the training of researchers".

He estimated that UW will be able to win $30 to $40 million in CFI money and perhaps $40 to $50 million in OCF funds. But to do that, the university will need to find $50 to $70 million in matching funds, with industry the likely source of it. That's a problem, said vice-president (university relations) Ian Lithgow: "There isn't the money out there," certainly not if all the research groups at all the country's major universities are relying on the same few major corporations to bankroll them.

He told the meeting that the development office's priority in the next few years will be cultivating individual givers, and most of all those in "the major, mega and ultimate gift categories". Individuals, he said, have more money to give away than corporations have -- an estimated $1.7 billion a year in Canada, not counting gifts to churches, compared with $0.5 million from corporations. He said UW's development staff will be after individuals to support everything from CFI projects to humanities and the arts.

At the same time, Lithgow added, "we're going to get more than our fair share out of corporations, by accessing different budgets," such as research and development funds rather than charitable giving budgets. He also told the meeting about plans to give the University of Waterloo Foundation -- a board of volunteer supporters -- "an expanded mandate where they would have oversight of the entire development operation of the university". A proposal is being presented to the Foundation's board today in Toronto.

Farquhar told yesterday's meeting that UW applications to the government research funds would fall into four main categories:

Information technology -- a field in which Bell Emergis is already expected to spend some $20 million in new money at Waterloo. Projects supported by that firm and other companies will be spread over areas as diverse as software engineering and reliability, wireless communications, multimedia, and the machine-human interface.
Environment -- for work in fire research, cold regions, spatial analysis and modelling, and other fields. It may be possible, he said, to put up a long-desired Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, and some of the money for that is already on hand. "We have," he added, "about two million dollars' worth of unused architects' drawings!"
Health -- for work in optometry (including a laser surgery laboratory), cancer research, work on Alzheimer's disease, and a proposed Institute of Health and Life Quality.
Manufacturing and materials science -- for work in lasers, welding, heavy oil recovery, catalysis and other fields.

"We have some money on hand and we have some that looks fairly firm," Farquhar said, adding that departments are out looking for more from the corporations they think will be interested in what they can offer. There isn't a fixed date yet by which departments need to submit "fleshed out" project proposals, he said, but it'll likely be in February.

Advice about junk mail

In her continuing campaign to rid the campus of waste paper -- and waste of every other kind -- Patti Cook, UW's waste management coordinator, sent out some advice to her mailing list of departmental contacts this week:

When Departments send out notices, ads, restaurant menus, and more to every person on campus, it is being referred to as junk mail. This is not a good connotation for important information.
To send information to every person on campus, it requires 3000 copies, and costs about $90 for the copies and mailing (or $40.20 for just the mailing). To send information to each department on campus, it requires 180 copies, and costs about $9 for the copies and mailing (or no charge for just the mailing).
When you send a notice to every person on campus, many are not read, just recycled. When you send a notice to every Department, the notice is posted for all to read. (There is a logo "Please Circulate and Post" to put at the bottom of your notices -- available from Graphic Services or Waste Management.) So compare the costs and send out more effective ads and notices by ensuring they are posted instead of recycled.

To which I might just add: send a special copy, preferably ahead of time, to UWevents or to us here in the internal communications office, so we can publicize your activity or announcement in the Gazette and the Daily Bulletin! It doesn't even cost $9 -- unless we can talk you into a paid ad in the Gazette too, of course.

Two notes from IST

First, this announcement about a training service offered by information systems and technology:

IST and the UW Staff Training and Development Committee have purchased a collection of CDs that offer training in Windows 95, Excel 97, PowerPoint 97 and Word 97. Using the CD in your computer, you work through the courseware using the actual application software, aided by step-by-step instruction. . . . Each CD takes 6 to 8 hours to complete. The CDs are ideal for beginners and experienced users wanting to increase proficiency. There are 10 CDs available for each topic, . You can borrow the CDs for 7 days at a time, from either IST's CHIP (MC 1052, ext. 3456) or Human Resources (GSC 130, ext. 2078).

Second, this word on tomorrow's professional development seminar, to be held at 8:45 a.m. in Math and Computer room 2009, led by Doug Payne of IST:

The V1 residence network commenced operation on October 21. Each student in the North Quad and East Quad houses has a UTP connection to a dedicated 10Mbps port on an Ethernet switch that services the house. Each house has a full-duplex 100Mbps fibre connection to the central Ethernet switch that services the Village. The Village switch has a full-duplex 100Mbps fibre connection to the BMH backbone switch in the next-generation campus network that was presented in the IST Open House on November 28. In this seminar, Doug will review the planning, installation, operation, security, administration, and next stages of the Village network, and will provide opportunity to discuss technical details of the switching and routing technologies involved and plans to automate the administration of the network between now and September 1998.

And a few final notes

The WatGreen Advisory Committee today presents a talk by Colin Mayfield, of the biology department, on "Community Networks and Community Environmental Monitoring". He'll speak at 12:30 in Matthews Hall room 1621.

As Advent leads to Christmas, the University Catholic Community will hold a special "Advent Reconciliation Service" of the Eucharist tonight at 7:30 in the Notre Dame chapel at St. Jerome's College.

Gwen Sharp, UW's associate registrar (records), was involved in a serious car crash Tuesday evening in Guelph, and is in intensive care in a Hamilton hospital. I am told that she was scheduled for further surgery last night; we are all waiting for more news.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY December 11, 1958: The board of governors of St. Jerome's College approves the terms of federation with the new University of Waterloo.

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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