Daily Bulletin

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Vice-president winds up her term

"My graduate students have seen far less of me than they would have liked, and now they'll see a lot more of me than they would like!" Hansson laughs. She's a professor in the department of mechanical engineering, who came from Queen's five years ago to take the VP's job and brought her lab with her.

What will she be working on as she takes a year's leave and then gets back to a faculty member's regular life? "Keeping the infrastructure from falling apart." Hansson is a specialist in concrete, working on issues such as how to prevent corrosion in the iron reinforcements inside bridges and other structures. She may also get involved in pavement research, she said.

Hansson -- pictured at left at a reception in her honour last week -- said the vice-presidency is "a 36-hour-a-day, ten-day-a-week job", but she's loved doing it. "This is the only job," she said, "where you have a window on all the research, right across the university. When people have breakthroughs, you get to know about it -- it's wonderful."

She settled into the vice-presidency in January 1996, just in time to watch dozens of UW's most senior researchers leave under the special early retirement program of that year. Then she presided over a rebuilding of UW's research activity, a 50 per cent increase in total research funding between 1996 and 2000.

The growth was helped by the introduction of several new federal and provincial programs, all of them depending on "matching" funds from the private sector. "We've tried to make the most of the new programs," says Hansson. But she noted her frustration with rules and habits that make it hard to get matching money for work in basic research, the social sciences, even such public-sector fields as water treatment.

Another special challenge: "getting our faculty, who have been used to cutting corners for decades, to think big!"

She paid high tributes to the staff in the research office ("the people here are incredible") but said UW could do much more in promoting research if there were staff in the six faculties whose job included "helping faculty members market themselves". And she said she has recommended that there be associate deans specifically for research, splitting up the present "graduate studies and research" portfolio in each faculty.

As of January 1, Paul Guild of the department of management sciences takes over the position of vice-president (university research).

The annual toy drive in the department of co-op education and career services has been, ah, wrapped up for another year. Yesterday, social workers came by Needles Hall to pick up the gifts and toys and deliver them to some 155 children from 60 lower-income families. CECS staff and people from the office of research, human resources, finance, secretariat, registrar's office and counselling services donated either cash or gift items for the drive, which was organized by Janet Metz and Edith Hohendorn of CECS.

How the Grinch stole corridor funding

An excerpt:

Every U down in Loo-ville 
Liked thinking a lot
But the Grinch, 
Who lived north east of Loo-ville,
Did NOT!

The Grinch hated thinking!
Defamed and decried it!
And when asked if he'd done it
Routinely denied it. . . .

From his damp Grinchy cave 
He observed with deep dread
The light bulbs that blinked 
Above every U's head.

"There they are, having brainwaves,"
He Grinchily sneered, 
"Researching minutiae
Both useless and weird.

They're checking hypotheses
And sums mathematical! 
They're pond'ring imponderables
While away on sabbatical!

But of all U-traits that I hate
This one's premier:
I can't even touch them!
They've all achieved tenure!"

Still, the Grinch knew that sciences
Are of some use.
And you need engineers
To steer the caboose

No, the problem most vexing
That Grinchiest of hearts
Was how to expunge
The liberal from arts.

Filtering junk or 'spam' e-mail -- by Carol Vogt, information systems and technology

Whatever it is called, many people find it to be an annoyance, and would like it to go away. Many such e-mails instruct you to reply with a specific subject line if you wish to stop receiving e-mail from that source. Most experts recommend that you not do this; all you are doing is informing the sender that this is a valid e-mail address, and someone is reading the mail. Attempting to notify authorities at the originating site will probably prove fruitless, because most of these e-mails do not originate at the address on the "From" line.

Third in an irregular series of how-to articles about commonly used software, from the Electronic Workplace Group in the information systems and technology department

So what can you do? You can either delete them as they arrive, one by one, or attempt to filter them out of your Inbox. Most mail reading programs such as Eudora, Netscape Messenger or Outlook Express will let you create filters, automatically transferring identifiable messages into a specific folder, or even straight into the Trash.

But how do you identify junk e-mail? There is no consistency to the subject lines or apparent senders of these messages. There is one pattern to many of these messages though. A lot (although not all) have no reference to the domain uwaterloo.ca anywhere in the message headers. You can probably avoid seeing a large percentage of junk e-mail by creating a filter that says if the 'To' or "Cc" or "From" does not contain the string "uwaterloo.ca", then get rid of the message. You can filter the unwanted messages directly into the Trash, but it might be safer to filter them into a junk mail folder. Monitor that folder for a while, to ensure that you are not discarding any legitimate messages.

Note that if you are forwarding mail from another organization then this method will not work. Also note that mail received from mail lists to which you might subscribe that originate outside UW will not have "uwaterloo.ca" on any of the header lines, but you will want to keep them. Perhaps messages from and external mail lists should first be filtered into an appropriate folder, and then apply the "junk e-mail" filter.

A more detailed article on filtering e-mail with the mail client programs used at UW can be found in "Filtering your E-Mail", part of a collection of e-mail hints found in "Information for Those Using Email at the University of Waterloo".

The above technique uses your e-mail client's capabilities to filter e-mail. However you can create a filter on Unix to prevent such messages from ever reaching your Inbox. Reg Quinton of IST has created a document called "Filtering Unsolicited E-mail" that describes how to do this.

Positions available Yes, there actually was a staff Positions Available list this week -- copies were circulated to departments, since the Gazette wasn't publishing, and the full list is available on the web. Job titles listed as of December 20: Student services co-ordinator, school of architecture Serviceperson II (carpenter), plant operations Secretary/ clerical assistant, kinesiology Materials characterization specialist, mechanical engineering Call centre supervisor, development and alumni affairs Casual office helper, science shops

Tomorrow's the last day

Anyway, today is payday, and tomorrow is the last day most UW services and offices will be open in 2000. For special arrangements and events, please see tomorrow's Bulletin, which will be available on UWinfo all through the Christmas and New Year's break.

Exams were scheduled to end today, but some students will still be writing tomorrow as the result of exams postponed from the snowstorm day, December 12. Thus the libraries will stay open until 7 p.m. on Friday, and residences will be open through Saturday, with Saturday lunch being the last meal served.

On the main campus, some food services outlets have closed for the season already. Briefly: Tim Horton's in Modern Languages is open today until 3:30, but closed tomorrow. Pastry Plus in Needles Hall and Browsers in the Dana Porter Library will be open tomorrow until 11:00. And Brubakers in the Student Life Centre, Tim Horton's in the Davis Centre and Bookends in South Campus Hall will stay open tomorrow until 2 p.m.

Another open house in honour of Jim Kalbfleisch, retiring as UW's provost, will be held this afternoon -- 3 to 5 p.m., Needles Hall room 3004.

Hot water will be shut off in the north and east quads of Ron Eydt Village from noon to 3:30 this afternoon for repair work, the plant operations department warns.

A pre-Christmas outing for international students, scheduled for this afternoon, has been cancelled, the international student office advises. The idea was to see a couple of local attractions (such as Woodside in its Victorian Christmas mode) and do a little shopping in the boutiques of St. Jacobs. Apparently not enough people signed up.

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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