October 23, 2002

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

Tidal wave of 18-year-olds
Other notes from the senate meeting
Staff positions available this week
Magazine's young writers read today
Events today and shortly

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

[Smiles in group photo]
Ambassadors for Waterloo are visitors centre coordinator Heather MacKenzie, Grace Apea, assistant coordinator John Milne, and Alicja Krol. They were featured in the Gazette recently, with word that a number of international students are among the Ambassadors who will guide campus tours this year. Also new this year is an emphasis on local colour and the personal touch as potential students and their parents are shown Waterloo's attractions. Last year, Ambassadors led tours for 8.275 visitors. It's also possible to meet an Ambassador online.

Tidal wave of 18-year-olds

"The double cohort is graphically here," UW registrar Ken Lavigne told the university senate Monday night, reporting on his impression of the recent Ontario Universities Fair.

He said 41,000 potential students stopped by the Waterloo both at the fair, held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, to find out about admission to UW in September 2003. That's a landslide number -- this year a total of 26,646 people applied for entrance to UW's first-year programs.

The "double cohort" is the expected arrival next year of two groups of students: 19-year-olds completing the old five-year high school program and 18-year-olds finishing the new four-year program.

The double cohort topic came before senate again later on Monday night when Mary Thompson, UW's "academic colleague" to the Council of Ontario Universities, reported on COU's October meeting.

"Last week," said her written report, "a report on the progress of secondary school curriculum reform, commissioned by the Ministry of Education, was leaked to the press. Data made available to the report's author, Dr. Alan King of Queen's University, are now showing that the government's projections of demand for university entrance in 2003 are very likely to have fallen short.

The public is invited
UW's next "Double Cohort Night" will be held October 30 at 7 p.m. in the Humanities Theatre. A panel including the president, the provost, the registrar and others will talk to high school counsellors, students and parents. Advance registration is through the admissions web site.
"The projections had been based on the assumption that 60% of university bound students entering high school in Fall 1999 would be ready for university in 2003. It now appears, both from a survey conducted last spring and from expected application numbers, that the percentage is somewhere between 75% and 80%. Thus the new report's prediction is at least 7,000 more than the 61,000 assumed up to a few weeks ago. Note that since the higher number reflects the likelihood that students will be entering university earlier than expected, the projections for 2004 are not considered to be in error to the same extent.

"At the time of the COU meeting the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) had not yet signed off on the enrolment plans submitted most recently by the universities, accounting for just over 61,000 entrants. It is expected that the Ministry will open another round of negotiations, in an attempt once again to find university places 'for every qualified and motivated student'."

Media reports are starting to emphasize parents' and students' distress at the possibility that there won't be enough spaces on Ontario campuses next fall. "You have to admire the steadfast way Dianne Cunningham repeats her mantra, even in the most pressure-packed situations," Murray Campbell wrote in the Globe and Mail last weekend. "'There will be a space for every qualified and motivated student.' A lot of people out there -- professors, administrators, students and parents -- don't believe her."

Other notes from the senate meeting

At Monday night's senate meeting, provost Amit Chakma announced that he has launched a "review of information technology for learning, research and administration" at UW. The review "will examine the current applications and adoption of IT at UW and identify strategic opportunities to use IT to enhance the core missions of the University", and will be headed by David Barnard, president of the University of Regina. (I'll say more about the review, with its full terms of reference, in the Daily Bulletin in a day or two.)

President David Johnston reported that he and the vice-president (university relations), Laura Talbot-Allan, recently visited the United Nations and had a good meeting with Louise Fréchette, Canadian-born deputy secretary-general of the UN, about possibilities for developing co-op jobs at the UN and in international agencies.

Talbot-Allan reported briefly on the "quiet" phase of Campaign Waterloo, telling senate that $106 million had been raised by the end of September. "That's 41 per cent of the goal," she said. "We have over $22 million in requests out right now. A lot of the work will continue to be cultivation, the relationship-building stage."

Paul Guild, vice-president (university research), noted that approval has been given for five more Canada Research Chairs at UW, bringing the total to 18. Names of the new chairholders will be announced soon.

University librarian Murray Shepherd and chemistry professor Bill Power spoke briefly about the idea of an "institutional repository" of electronic information, including research data, teaching materials, and articles that haven't been submitted for publication, as a way of making more of the work of the university available to other researchers and the public. A proposal for something of the sort is under discussion at the Ohio State University.

Other summaries of things discussed by the senate on Monday will turn up in this Daily Bulletin over the next few days.

Staff positions available this week

Three positions are listed on the weekly circular from UW's human resources department showing staff jobs for which applications are being accepted.

Here are the opportunities included in today's list:

Capital finance specialist, Finance, USG 6.
Executive director, the Canadian Water Network, USG 16.
Biochemistry technician, Chemistry, USG 7.

Longer descriptions are available on the HR web site. As always: "The University welcomes and encourages applications from the designated employment equity groups: visible minorities, women, persons with disabilities, and aboriginal people. For more information call ext. 2524."

Magazine's young writers read today -- from the UW news bureau

The current issue of The New Quarterly, a magazine of new Canadian writing published out of St. Jerome's University, features two authors who grew up in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

Alison Pick and Amanda Jernigan, who attended Kitchener Collegiate Institute and Waterloo-Oxford Secondary School respectively, both have deep histories with TNQ. The literary journal continues these relationships by publishing a collection of poems by Pick and an essay by Jernigan.

Both writers will be reading as part of the St. Jerome's Reading series today at 4 p.m. in the St. Jerome's Common Room. The reading is free and open to the public. It will be followed by a question and answer session on getting started as a writer.

When TNQ accepted Alison Pick's first submission to the magazine, it started not only a relationship between the magazine and the poet, but also Pick's publishing career. Since then her poetry and fiction have appeared in magazines across the country and her accomplishments include winning the Short Grain Prose Poem contest, the Writers Federation of New Brunswick's Alfred E. Bailey Manuscript Prize and the Editor's Choice Award in the Arc Poem of the Year Contest.

More recently, she won the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for Poetry for a writer under 35 as yet unpublished in book form. TNQ celebrates this achievement by presenting the award-winning poems along with an in-depth interview with the author herself where she talks about her love affair with poetry, some of her early mentors and her nomadic life.

Of the Bronwen Wallace Award winners, editor Kim Jernigan says, "The series, called 'Question and Answer,' is a sequence of meditations in response to questions posed in the work of other poets. They are quiet, but deeply felt poems, the emotion conveyed through an understated but beautifully apt metaphoric language."

Amanda Jernigan's relationship with the magazine has always been a family affair. Introduced to the journal at an early age by her mother, editor Kim Jernigan, Amanda has long been part of the magazine's "editor's kids" tradition.

Kim Jernigan explains this tradition by way of classifying the people who produce, promote and maintain the magazine: "It's a labour of love -- those who love the magazine and those who love the ones who love the magazine. All of our children have been drafted over the years to sell tickets and serve cake at TNQ events, hand out TNQ literature at writing festivals, swell audiences and stuff envelopes. But Amanda has a keen interest in writing as well and has gradually moved into a variety of editorial and writing tasks, both for TNQ and for other magazines."

Amanda's stories, poems and essays have appeared in Prairie Fire, Pottersfield Portfolio, the Antigonish Review, and Fiddlehead, as well as The Malahat Review, where she was a finalist in the novella competition. Currently, Amanda is a contributing editor of TNQ and Canadian Notes and Queries and publisher's assistant at The Porcupine's Quill Press.

Her New Quarterly essay, "To the Pumps, Boys!" reflects on the thrill, and the emotional complications, of attempting a first novel. A second essay, part of a series on "the collector's real," will follow. It looks at what underlies the impulse to preserve the things of the past.

Exam schedules for December are now available on-line.
The Globe and Mail's "University Report Card", with rankings of institutions Canada-wide, is published today.

Events today and shortly

The blood donor clinic organized by Canadian Blood Services continues in the Student Life Centre today and tomorrow, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. "This clinic is by appointment," a memo notes. "The sign-up sheet is located at the turnkey desk (or at the donor clinic when it is running). Call 1-888-2DONATE for more information."

"Eating for Energy" is the theme of a "nutrition drop-in" today, sponsored by health services and scheduled for the Student Life Centre food area -- 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nutrition nurse Linda Barton will be on hand, and free apples are promised.

The bookstore holds its Ask the Expert event today, focusing on breast cancer. The event will start at noon and feature Betty McKenzie, a local cancer survivor and recipient of the Medal of Courage from the Canadian Cancer Society. Also taking part is Sue Richards, publisher of the "Breast of Canada 2003" calendar. All proceeds from the sale of the calendar go to the Canadian Breast Cancer Network to promote breast health and cancer prevention. Paul Ferner, medical coordinator of the Ontario Breast Screening Program for Southwestern Ontario, will also speak.

The next talk in the English department's "Second Year Lecture Series" will be given by faculty member Sarah Tolmie, starting at 12:30 in Arts Lecture Hall room 124. Her topic involves a lesser-known mediaeval writer: "The Invisible Man: Thomas Hoccleve".

The annual general meeting of the Federation of Students will be held at 4:30 p.m. in the great hall of the Student Life Centre. Agenda items, on which all undergraduate students can vote, include some reorganization to create a "government affairs commission" of the Federation.

For the "first time in Canada", according to the organizers, public recitations of the Quran are being offered: tonight starting at 7:00 in the Humanities Theatre. An ad explains: "Professional Quranic reciters -- religious professionals who specialize in vocalizing the sacred scripture of the Holy Qur'an -- are very popular in the Muslim world, with audio and video tapes and CDs selling in the millions." So the Muslim Student Association, with the local chapter of the Canadian Islamic Congress, is bringing the art form to Waterloo. The first 100 tickets for tonight's performance are free, and after that it's $10 general admission. Doors open at 6:30.

Members of the Waterloo Engineers in Toronto alumni chapter are taking a tour of the CBC broadcast centre tonight at 5:30.

There are apparently no home sports events today -- unusual for a Wednesday -- but the men's and women's soccer teams are in Toronto today to play in the OUA finals, and the women's hockey team plays tonight at Laurier, which is almost a home game.

Tomorrow, the next presentation in the Interdisciplinary Coffee Talk Society series will come from Mu Zhu of statistics and actuarial science: "Artificial Intelligence, Parallel Evolution and Majority Vote". The event starts at 5 p.m. Thursday at the Graduate House.

CAR

TODAY IN UW HISTORY
October 23, 1965: A special convocation ceremony marks the opening of the seven-storey Dana Porter Library. October 23, 1999: The first 25 graduates of the Bachelor of Social Work program receive their degrees.