Daily Bulletin

'A great place to call home'

The 16-page brochure is the latest item in the suite of publications that are being used to bring in Waterloo's next class of undergraduates. Copies of it were mailed by the thousands last week to potential students who checked "yes" for residence information on the admission applications they submitted to UW through the Ontario Universities Application Centre.

"We no longer use the 'green card'," says UW registrar Ken Lavigne, explaining that the residence application system has been made simpler. Anyone who said yes, they wanted information about residence, "is automatically considered for admission to the Villages." The brochure includes a card that people can send back if they'd prefer to be considered for one of the Townhouses or one of the church college residences. (Deadline: April 15.)

The "great place to call home" brochure has the same kind of sassy pictures -- lots of faces, lots of colours -- that made the admissions publications stand out when they were produced last fall. "One of our residences will be right for you," it promises.

Each residence is presented through the eyes of somebody who lives there -- Aletha Arnaquq (home town, Iqaluit) for the Villages, James Harris (London) for Renison College, and so on. "I was fourteen when I decided that I wanted to live at St. Jerome's," Diane Giroux swears.

Among the residence features touched on in the fine print: in-room phones, the safety van, games rooms, pool tables, a healthy eating seminar, the laundromat, ball hockey, pasta night at Renison, charity fund-raising, and Toast Time at St. Paul's. And right at the back of the brochure: the prices.

Open house on computing directions

A few lines from the statement:

Each member of the University should have the opportunity to be innovative and creative in the application of this infrastructure to individual and institutional goals. The University must encourage the adoption of new technology, through standards and guidelines, and must have enough organizational flexibility to enable this adoption, through distributed responsibility and accountability for the acquisition, development, and use of information technology (IT). This responsibility and accountability implies that individuals and units will act to reinforce centrally supported systems and standards. . . .

Professors and instructional support staff need access to appropriate resources to make effective and efficient use of IT. These include support for developing new teaching and learning facilities, personnel resources to support pedagogically useful software and instructional techniques, and help in the creation of new teaching materials. Technology support by itself, however, forms only part of the picture. Another important part is the recognition that cost-effective use of IT likely requires different models for delivery of pedagogical materials. Otherwise, the development or acquisition costs of these materials will be prohibitive. We need to seek a balance between development of our own materials and use of those prepared by others. We need to make use of the same material in different contexts (e.g., on campus, distance, for-credit, continuing). We need to reconsider the roles and responsibilities of learners, professors and teaching staff, in light of what the technology enables. . . .

The promotion of student-owned computers and the realignment of expenditures on re-equipping student labs offers an opportunity to leverage limited resources to invest in fostering development of IT in teaching and learning. To be successful, this development requires an effectively integrated campus network, both from on-campus and off-campus locations. Key issues that need to be addressed here are software licensing, access control, security, and the provision of easy-to-install connectivity kits that require minimal support. . . .

A number of large information systems support the administrative activities of the University, and this sector is in the midst of the most radical changes it has seen in decades. Many changes have been initiated recently, and it is important that the entire University community work together to ensure that they come to fruition, recognizing that successful implementation of such new systems in fact relies on corresponding fundamental changes in the way we administer the University. We must balance visions of how we might wish to "do business" with the twin realities of our current practices and the concrete capabilities of the new systems. Achieving this balance will consume significant resources and much emotional energy from many of us for the next several years.

The talk of the campus

Christine Schmidt of the student awards office writes that her office "is still holding many winter 1998 term OSAP loan documents. Students are reminded that these loan documents should be picked up as soon as possible and must be negotiated at the bank by April 30, 1998."

Elections are under way for several student positions in environmental studies -- the leadership of the Environmental Studies Society, the Waterloo Association of Geography Students, and the Planning Students' Association. Nominations are due by March 17, and voting is on March 24; more detail should be conspicuously available in the ES I building.

The joint health and safety committee has elected a new "worker co-chair": Patti Cook, who's also UW's waste management coordinator. By Ontario law, such committees in major workplaces are co-chaired by a "worker" and someone from "management". The management co-chair of UW's committee is Tom Galloway, director of custodial and grounds services in plant operations. (Among his recent activities in that role: meeting with a city of Waterloo task force that's studying the use of bicycles on University Avenue and the possibility of creating bike lanes.)

Happening at Waterloo this day

• Kinesiology -- "Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Studies of Metabolic Control in Exercising Humans", Thomas Barstow, Kansas State University; 10:30, Matthews Hall room 1621.
• Physics -- "Extreme Optics: Pushing the Envelope for the Interaction of Light and Matter", Robin Marjoribanks, University of Toronto; 3:30, Physics room 145.
• Chemical engineering -- "The Periodic Reset Controller: A Modification of PIC Control with Particular Application to Integrating Processes", Leonard Segall, Imperial Oil, 3:30, Engineering I room 2517.
• Statistics and actuarial science -- "Nonparametric Estimation of Distribution of Times Between Repeated Events Under Different Sampling Frames", Niels Keiding, University of Copenhagen; 3:30, Math and Computer room 2034.

At 11:30 this morning, the Business Club presents Katrina Storr-Stronach, a marketing manager for IBM, talking on "IBM Involvement with Small Business". Topics covered, an announcement says, "will include a statistical analysis of the small business market, the technology needs of small business, and how IBM has moved to meet these needs. Les Chapman, a recruiting representative, will also be present to answer questions. Everyone is encouraged to come out to enjoy this interesting talk and some free lunch." Location: Davis Centre room 1302.

The media literacy film series sponsored by WPIRG continues today, with "Staking a Claim in Cyberspace" and "Video, Vinyl & Culture", to be shown from 5 to 7 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1302.

The second of a pair of Chinese films being presented by the fine arts film society will hit the screen at 7:00 tonight in East Campus Hall room 1219. It's "The Bewitching Braid", a 1995 production from Macao -- "the first feature film ever produced and directed by a Macaunese", says Jan Uhde of the fine arts department. "'Bewitching Braid' reflects the racial and cultural conflict in Macao. It expresses the infiltration, fusion and harmonization of the extraordinary historical background and traditional values of Macao." It's also "a bittersweet romantic comedy", set in the 1930s.

The drama department production of "The Taming of the Shrew" continues tonight (and through Saturday) in the Theatre of the Arts. "Not to be missed," says publicist Bettina Gaspar, who notes that tickets are $10, students $8, at the Humanities box office. The performance starts at 8.

CAR

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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