Daily Bulletin

The new residence to be built between Village I and Ron Eydt Village will look something like this, UW's board of governors was told last week. A total of 320 rooms are arranged on four storeys in the horseshoe-shaped residence; common areas (and a corridor that's likely to be a shortcut for students walking to REV on cold days) make up the crosspiece, one storey high and tucked underneath a central courtyard. The budget for the new building is $15.6 million; work is to start next spring, with students moving into their rooms in September 2001.

End of UW's Mideast program

"I’m very sorry to see the program close," said classical studies professor Leonard Curchin, who has served two three-year terms as director of Middle East studies.

Begun in 1986, the program had 27 students enrolled in the option – which required nine term courses – with 15 students completing the program. Another 300 students have taken some of the courses offered by the program.

A report presented to the senate undergraduate council last month recommended that the program be terminated and that all courses with the MES prefix, including an Arabic language course, be deleted from the calendar.

Reasons given were that "no one was prepared to take on the directorship of the program, and that given recent faculty retirements, there is no longer a range of experience to offer the ‘flagship’ course MES 200," a survey course taught by an interdisciplinary faculty team.

Curchin was not willing to accept another term as director, and, he noted, "everyone is busier since the retirements (from the Special Early Retirement Plan) in ’96. The administration and teaching load has gone up. We have lost about half of the faculty involved in Middle East studies from retirements in the past few years, and have a smaller pool of faculty on which to draw."

As well, he added, "Middle East studies has not been a high priority in the departments you might expect." No one from history has been involved in the program, and the one geography professor who taught a Middle East studies course has retired.

"There’s not enough expertise among the few people left to run the courses. MES 200, a core course, no longer had enough faculty to present in a well-rounded manner.

"Lack of funding from the university to build up a library, etc., to keep the program going," was another factor in the demise, said Curchin. "It was not considered of sufficient priority to the university in terms of funding," and unlike the Jewish studies program, did not attract the support of private benefactors.

Red on red is the autumn landscape. Lena Tran, first-year chemical engineering student, took her books outside yesterday to make the most of the November sunshine. Today has brought chill rain; there may not be too many more of those crimson glory days before winter. (Photo and colour balancing by Barbara Elve.)

First-year students get Mathcad -- by Michelle T. Lehmann

"The program allows students to do mathematics on the computer," explained Colin Campbell of IST's electronic workplace group. "Unlike other systems where you first have to learn the programming language and translate all of the math information into that language before you can perform any computations, Mathcad allows you to directly enter the math into the computer." Mathcad lets students enter, edit, and solve equations, to visualize the results with sophisticated graphs and to document and communicate their analysis.

"It's an interactive math tool that assists you with things that can be done by hand, but allows students to complete them on the computer," said Campbell. "As long as students set up the equations correctly the first time, Mathcad rewards them for their effort of knowing the math by letting them change variables."

Math 136 is the inaugural first-year course to formally adopt Mathcad on an experimental basis. According to Campbell, Mathcad, a modern computational tool, has been a big hit because the program has a nice graphical user interface. "Students appreciate what it can do for them. I don't think they have seen anything like it before. They may have subconsciously dreamed a computer could do this, but they are truly surprised to see it at work."

A grant from the teaching resource office funded the conversion of the labs into Mathcad format. A video accompanies each of the nine lessons to help students learn the skills needed to enter equations, work with subject matter, and solve equations for each assignment. "The benefit of having students learn with videos on an individual basis, is that the teaching assistant and myself are free to answer specific questions. Nobody has to fall behind and nobody has to get bored."

Students have the option to purchase a package that includes the professional version of Mathcad and Matlab from the Computer Help and Information Place for $15.

Campbell acknowledged that if students have the software and download the labs from the web, they do not have to attend the tutorials. Some prefer to work at home on the lessons and assignments, and Mathcad makes that possible. "It's nice to have the tool at home because they can use it for other subjects," Campbell said. "Mathcad is quite versatile. . . . It's the single best-selling piece of software used by engineers today. The program has a high acceptance rate among mechanical engineers because as they design things, they are faced with a number of adjustments and recalculations. That's exactly what Mathcad is supposed to do."

The talk of the campus

There's been a delay in introducing a new representative structure for UW's alumni. The progress report on "Building on Accomplishment", UW's 1997 planning document, had made this commitment: "The new UW Alumni Council, made up of alumni volunteers identified by the Faculties, Colleges and other areas, is scheduled to hold its inaugural meeting on November 8." But Gwen Graper, manager of the alumni affairs office, says the meeting "has been postponed until January to give us an opportunity to complete our recruitment of members".

The joint health and safety committee talked, at its October 15 meeting, about the September 22 accident at the main entrance to campus, in which two people were injured. "Committee members agreed," the minutes say, "that vehicles travel too fast on University Avenue. It was mentioned that the speed limit near Wilfrid Laurier is 50 kilometers per hour and a committee member wondered if the speed limit near the University of Waterloo could be lowered to 50 k/h from 60 k/h." Eventually a motion was passed asking Dennis Huber, associate provost (general services and finance), to write to the city of Waterloo and Waterloo Region asking to have the speed limit reduced both on University Avenue and on Columbia Street.

What's happening on a Tuesday

The philosophy department presents a colloquium by Tom Hurka of the University of Calgary, at 1:30 in Humanities room 334. Topic: "The Common Structure of Virtue and Desert".

Training in the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System is offered by UW's safety office in the form of a one-hour session (video and quiz) starting at 2 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1304.

An MBA Education Fair is planned at Wilfrid Laurier University, with people on hand representing MBA programs not just at WLU but at eight other universities in Ontario and New York. The event runs from 4:30 to 7 p.m. in WLU's Paul Martin Centre.

The East Asian Festival based at Renison College gets started today with the opening of an art exhibition in Renison's Chapel Gallery. The artist is Gloria Kagawa, who lives near Baden, west of Kitchener, and who, according to a flyer,

creates compelling "works on paper." Her pieces include natural forms, such as a weed from her garden, along with abstract and architectural shapes. The interplay of the forms and colours draws a viewer into shifting layers of possibility. Doors open into mysterious courtyards, buildings, and gardens. Landscape glows with luminous colour of the sun, or of the moon. There is a sense of triumph about the show, "Gardens of the Survivors."

Federation Hall tonight presents Casey St. Jones, described as "the world's funniest hypnosis show". Tickets are $5 (or $7 for those who aren't fee-paying Feds students).

Something called the Hindu Movie Club will present "Raja Hindustani" at 9:00 tonight in Davis Centre room 1304. Admission is $2.

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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