Aaron Copland born 100 years ago today

Daily Bulletin

Notecards designed by UW graphic artists and printed in the graphics print shop are for sale from the graphics department at $10 for a package of twelve. Proceeds go to support the campus United Way campaign.

'Best overall' again; other numbers

In its annual universities issue, published yesterday, the magazine also announced that the reputational survey had placed UW first as "most innovative" and for producing "leaders of tomorrow". In the fourth reputational category, "highest quality", UW fell from last year's third-place ranking to fourth place, behind Queen's, Toronto and McGill.

The national reputational rankings always come out a day after the other Maclean's rankings. Yesterday's news included top rankings for UW in reputation among "comprehensive" universities, and the quantitative rankings for quality, which put UW in third place behind Simon Fraser and Guelph.

Other findings from the Maclean's survey:

• UW ranks highest among "comprehensive" universities in alumni support, with 22.1 per cent of alumni making gifts to the institution within the past five years. Two "medical-doctoral" institutions, Toronto and Western, and eight "primarily undergraduate" institutions reported higher percentages than that.
• Waterloo is the fifth most expensive university in the country, with annual fees of $4,708 for an undergraduate arts or science program. Acadia is listed as highest ($5,952) and Laval lowest ($1,830).
• UW scored highest among "comprehensive" universities in the percentage of faculty members who have PhDs (96.4 per cent).
• Waterloo was also highest among comprehensive universities in the number of students who "have won national awards", 6.6 per thousand.

Universities raise election issues

During this federal election campaign, we believe candidates from all political parties need to hear about university issues. In today's knowledge society, ensuring that we have affordable, quality higher education opportunities, top-notch research and innovation are key to the future of young Canadians -- and to the country as a whole.

I urge you to raise higher education issues at any opportunity you may have -- all-candidates' meetings, town halls, or while your local candidate is canvassing your area.

To help focus public attention on university issues, we've launched a special Election 2000 section of our Web site. Check our site to read more about the various political parties' views on universities, along with details on the following issues:

• Core funding: Years of cuts to the core funding of colleges and universities have threatened both quality and accessibility at Canadian universities.
• Accessibility: Canadian parents are worried their children will not be able to benefit from the quality higher education opportunities they need.
• Deferred maintenance: Our universities face at least $3.6 billion in accumulated deferred maintenance -- the consequence of years of cuts that have forced institutions to put off campus repairs and renewal.
• Research: We need to ensure that federal research granting council increases continue. The federal government still does not pay for the indirect costs of the research it funds through the granting councils, and not all regions of the country nor institutions can capitalize to the same extent on federal investments in research. We also need to significantly increase the support to graduate students.
• Study abroad: Helping students to undertake part of their studies in another country brings economic and social benefits. The European Union sends eight percent of students on short-term study abroad, and Australia sends four percent. In Canada, though, less than one percent of students study abroad, largely due to a lack of funding.

We ask you to make sure that candidates across the country hear about higher education issues! Consult our Web site for more information during this election campaign.

The faculty association sent out an e-mail memo yesterday, encouraging people on campus to attend an all-candidates' meeting that's scheduled for Monday, November 20, at 3:30 p.m. in Davis Centre room 1301. "See where your candidates stands and how he/she would handle the problems in education," suggests Frank Reynolds of the statistics and actuarial science department, chair of the association's political relations committee.

Reynolds also encouraged faculty members to pick up the lawn signs that are available from the Federation of Students, raising education as an election issue.

Steps toward improving UWinfo

In particular, we now have an action plan that sets out what's to be done towards "a facelift of basic graphics, content and architecture", followed by work on standards for UW web pages and progress towards "strategic directions and initiatives".

Three of us in I&PA -- expected to be four before long, as we'll soon be posting a technical web position -- have started meeting with some of the people on campus who know a good deal about using the web and have researched and overhauled their own departmental sites. We're also beginning to pull together a "technical advisory committee", a body that was called for when the provost assigned the management of UWinfo to I&PA.

We expect to have an "interim" UWinfo home page in place before long, while work begins on the longer-term design of that page and other central UW web pages.

The UWinfo project is under the direction of a steering committee that includes two associate provosts, a dean, a representative of information systems and technology, and the director of information and public affairs.

New chair for UW board of governors

The board is always chaired by one of its "community-at-large" members, who are business leaders and other people from outside the university selected by the board itself to take a share in governing the institution. The current chair is Paul Mitchell, retired chief executive of McNeil Consumer Products Co. in Guelph.

Harding (right) is a UW graduate -- he received his BMath in 1980 -- and a chartered accountant. He has been with Brascan since 1984, and was appointed president in 1992 and chairman in 1997.

"He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Way of Greater Toronto," his official biography says. "Mr. Harding was elected a Fellow Chartered Accountant (FCA) in March 2000. He is married to Linda Dianne Young, also a graduate of Waterloo. His interests include running, cycling, swimming, visual art, golf and travelling."

Recently he has been vice-chair of the UW board of governors, and he was just named to be the board's representative on the nominating committee for the next vice-president (academic).

As chair of the board, he will preside over meetings of the board and its executive committee, and represent the university in some of its dealings with government. He'll also find the president of the university reporting to him, and will give the president his performance appraisal on behalf of the board.

A busy (if cold and wet) campus

A presentation of RealPresenter, software for putting a presentation onto the Web, is scheduled for 11:00 this morning in the "Flex lab", Dana Porter Library room 329.

Wednesday is looking like a particularly eventful day:

• High school students and members of the public will be visiting for "GIS Day" -- GIS is Geographic Information Systems -- and Environmental Studies Day, with a series of presentations from the faculty of environmental studies. (Tomorrow's Bulletin will give more details.)
• The monthly intellectual property forum this time round will deal with "Using UW's TTLO to Commercialize your Intellectual Property" (12 noon, Needles Hall room 3001).
• Heather Cain, a former environment and resource studies student at UW who's described as a "Clayoquot Sound activist", will speak at noon in the Environmental Studies I courtyard about that British Columbia controversy.
• Malcolm Gladwell, writer with Waterloo roots whose book The Tipping Point has been on the best-seller lists of late, will speak at 3:30 at Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's College, on "Understanding Social Epidemics".
• The Graduate Student Association will hold a general meeting at 6 p.m. in Needles Hall room 3004.

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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