March 6, 2003

Thursday, March 6, 2003

Planning your future for credit
UW lifeguards take national title
Founder helps anatomy school celebrate
And as the winter drags on . . .

Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

Oh, to be in England for the dog show

Math student killed in London crash
Darrell Townsend, a UW computer science student, was killed Monday morning when his car went out of control on icy Highbury Avenue in London, Ontario.
Townsend was on his second work term in the web services unit at Research In Motion, just north of the campus. "His co-workers describe him as being passionate and excited about work and life," RIM executive Jim Balsillie recalls in a memo marking his death.
He was the son of Margie and Bruce Townsend of Stratford. He was 21.

Planning your future for credit

Hayden, above; Mahoney, below

Students who take Arts 111 next fall will, at the very least, have a better idea what they want to be when they grow up.

The course, "Career Development and Decision-Making", has just been approved by UW's decision-making bodies, including the senate, and is being supervised by the department of psychology. But the two people teaching it aren't from psych or from anywhere in arts. Rather, they are Kerry Mahoney and Jayne Hayden of the co-op and career services department.

"This really came under close scrutiny," Hayden says about the process that led to approval for Arts 111, "and they were satisfied that there is enough theoretical academic content." At the same time, the course is definitely intended to help students make decisions about their own futures -- or, even better, confirm the decisions they've already made.

"We're seeing a lot of upper-year students who don't know where they're going," says Hayden. That can lead to wasted time, and sometimes heartbreak, when it turns out that a student's courses and efforts for several years lead to something he or she doesn't really want. "We'd like to catch them early," she says, noting that the course is aimed at first-year and second-year students (from all faculties, not just arts).

"The focus is on career development theory," she said. A week-by-week course outline includes gender and cultural influences on occupational choice and satisfaction; developmental theories; personality typology; learning styles; occupational research; assessing labour market information; occupational classification systems; and decision-making techniques.

"Acknowledging that it has academic credibility, it does have a practical purpose as well," Mahoney about the new UW course. So the five assignments a student will do begin with a "career theory analysis" and end with an "action plan".

Under consideration as textbooks are titles like Career Choice and Development. Arts 111 will also require the award-winning Career Development Manual that's been created over the years by Mahoney, Hayden, and their colleagues in the CECS department (available both in print form and on line).

But only the first sections of the Manual will be used. "The course ends at making a career decision," Mahoney points out, and doesn't carry on -- as the Manual does -- into practical discussions of how to find a job.

UW lifeguards take national title -- by Chris Gilbert, athletics and recreational services

UW's lifeguard teams won the Ontario and Canadian University Lifeguard Championships this past weekend at Brock University in St. Catharines.

Competing against 17 other teams, including one from Guelph with a member of Canada's national team, the team "Always Bathe with a Buddy", with captain Pete Whittington, Jen Coombs, Stephanie Zamperin and BJ White, collected hardware in five of the six events, leading to the overall victory.

The team collected gold in the men's Line Throw (Peter Whittington and BJ White) and 4x50m Medley Relay, silver in the Emergency Situations event, and Bronze in the 4x50m Obstacle Relay and 4x25m Manikin Relay. Whittington and White's time of 00:17:03 sets the Ontario and Canadian University records. Jen Coombs and Stephanie Zamperin placed just out of the medals in the women's Line Throw event.

Waterloo's other two teams "George Michael Norris Society" (captain Warren Brown, Patrick King, Cynthia Pierce, Kate Smith) and "I'll Show You My Quiddity if You Show Me Yours" (captain Juan Aburto, Gillian Stresman, Jon King, Monica Cooper), while in a rebuilding year, had highlights of their own. The teams of Gillian Stresman and Monica Cooper, and Jon King and Juan Aburto placed sixth in women's and men's Line Throw respectively. "George Michael Norris Society" also made First Aid Finals, placing sixth in the event overall.

In recent years, lifesaving has become an official Commonwealth Games event, and you can watch for it at upcoming Olympics as a demonstration sport.

Founder helps anatomy school celebrate -- by Barbara Elve, from this week's Gazette

"Long, long ago -- when the world was young -- only members of the medical profession could use cadavers to study and teach anatomy."

That was, of course, before Don Ranney arrived on the scene. Twenty-five years later, the UW school of anatomy marked its milestone anniversary by inviting Ranney, the school's founder, to be guest of honour at celebrations last Friday at the Lyle Hallman Institute, Matthews Hall.

[At lectern] In "The Fight of My Life", Ranney (left) told students, staff, faculty members, clergy, funeral directors and friends connected with the school "the fascinating tale of the struggle to establish a school of anatomy, that is, the legal right to teach anatomy with dissected human remains."

Back in the mid 1970s, Ranney worked in the department of anatomy at Queen's University teaching physical education students and others in arts or science. "We allowed them to handle dissected human remains, but only after the medical students were through with them. I was well aware of the sensitivities and prejudices of the medical mind against members of all other professions. They considered most of them an inferior species -- and most of my students just ill-bred jocks, interested only in playing games."

When Ranney was hired to teach anatomy at UW in 1976, he was charged with the seemingly impossible task of establishing a school of anatomy here. To do that, he would have to battle the fiery dragons that guarded such privileges: the Heads of Schools of Anatomy.

The University of Windsor had recently tried and failed, but not before hiring a lawyer, consulting the law and fulfilling its demands. The Chief Inspector of Anatomy for the province of Ontario simply vetoed the proposal. "So I put on my kid gloves and went to see all but one of the anatomy teachers in the province. I told them what I knew they wanted to hear. It was also what I believed in: 'Anatomy can only be taught with dissected tissue the way you do. Your way is the best way. Human remains are sacred. Nothing must be done to upset the public. Please advise me how I can do what you do without making things difficult for you'."

He was successful, and on January 17, 1978, by Orders in Council, a school of anatomy was declared to exist at UW. "There you have it," Ranney concluded his tale. "Hypothesis, investigation and review of literature. Question authority, don't just memorize facts, prove it for yourself. This is the scientific method.

"I believe that the school of anatomy, which make possible this approach to learning, has helped to make our graduates better scientists. Many have gone into medicine and allied disciplines, like chiropractic. The famous Dr. Robert Salter, chief of orthopaedics at the University of Toronto, once told me that graduates from our program make the best orthopaedic surgeons. I took it as a personal compliment, but realized also the role others in this room have played in making them so."

Ranney headed the school of anatomy at UW until his retirement in 1998. A plaque in his honour was unveiled at the anniversary celebrations to be installed at the school.

And as the winter drags on . . .

"We are getting ready to hire the next team of Student Ambassadors," writes Heather MacKenzie, manager of the UW visitors centre. The Ambassadors are the students who greet the next generation -- leading tours, answering e-mail inquiries and chatting online. The pay is $9 an hour (plus a UW jacket and "great resumé experience". Wanted: "the most diverse team possible, with students from all faculties and as many different programs as possible, students who have lived in the different residences, and so on. Applications can be picked up in the visitors centre (in South Campus Hall) until March 20.

Lisa Szepaniak of UW's electrical and computer engineering department spent a week working in Haiti recently and is, as she puts it, "passionate about the country and their people". So she was delighted to find out that UW's student radio station, CKMS, is currently running an eight-part series about Haiti. It's something called "In the Scars of Slavery", produced by the Foundation for International Development, and it runs Thursdays at 5 p.m. Szepaniak heartily recommends it.

Rudy Wiebe speaks at Grebel
Tonight, author Rudy Wiebe gives the first of this year's two Bechtel Lectures in Anabaptist Mennonite Studies, on the theme of "Possessing Land". "There is probably nobody who is more readily associated by the Canadian public with Mennonites in Canada," says Hildi Froese Tiessen, faculty member at Conrad Grebel College. A Grebel student adds that Wiebe is "an inspiration to any Canadian aspiring to be a writer". He'll be heard at 7:00 tonight (in the Grebel great hall) on "The Fiction of Ownership", and at the same hour tomorrow night on "Mennonite Land Fictions".
"Law School Bound?" asks UW's career services department, which is putting on a special information session today for those who are. It starts at 11 a.m., and details about it and other seminars and workshops are available on the web site. (It's way late now for law school applications for September 2003, but there's always next year.)

Tours of the new Co-op and Career Services building are offered at 12:00 and 12:30 today. . . . It's the last day for the Hong Kong Expo that has been running in the Student Life Centre. . . . "The Laramie Project" continues tonight, Friday and Saturday in the Theatre of the Arts, and tickets are still half-price for UW students, faculty and staff. . . .

Today the earth sciences department presents the annual Adrian Smith Lecture, this year by Tullis Onstott of Princeton University, speaking on "Nuclear-Powered Deep Subsurface Microbial Communities" (2 p.m., Davis Centre room 1302). A reception will follow.

Then there's a reading at St. Jerome's University by "writer, culture commentator and editor" Hal Nedzviecki, whose work will, according to one reviewer, make the reader or listener "chortle with wicked laughter". The event starts at 4 p.m. in the St. Jerome's common room.

Tonight, the Jewish studies program presents Stephen Berk of Union College, speaking on "Germans and Jews: A Strange, Productive and Tragic Relationship". Berk notes: "Before the Holocaust, in the modern period, Jews and Germans lived together in relative harmony and had a great influence upon each other. It is no coincidence that some of the most important movements in Jewish history had their origins in Germany." He'll speak at 7:30 in Siegfried Hall, St. Jerome's University, and a reception will follow. Admission is free.

UW's religious studies department is a co-sponsor of a pair of lectures -- tonight and tomorrow night -- by one of the most prominent Christian thinkers in Canada, Roman Catholic theologian Gregory Baum. The main sponsor is Waterloo Lutheran Seminary. Baum will speak tonight at 7:30 on "Religion, War, and the Clash of Civilizations", and tomorrow morning at 10:30 on "Justification by Faith and the Liberation from Injustice". Location: Mount Zion Lutheran Church, on Westmount Road just south of Erb Street.

Tomorrow: The classics drama group from Trent University performs Aeschylus's "Suppliants", 3:30 p.m. in Environmental Studies II room 286. . . . Boris Stoicheff of the University of Toronto speaks on the life of Canada's first Nobel prize winner, physicist Gerhard Herzberg, at 3 p.m. in Physics room 145. . . .

Today is the deadline for nominations to executive positions of the Graduate Student Association for the coming year; GSA chief returning officer Jason Grove says he'll be at the Graduate House from 5 to 6 p.m., right up to deadline, to deal with inquiries. . . . Tomorrow is the deadline for nominations for a staff seat on UW's board of governors. . . .

The big used book sale sponsored by the local Canadian Federation of University Women will be held April 25-26 this year. The group is starting to collect books now; anyone with used books (or CDs and cassettes) to donate can call 740-5249 for pickup or dropoff information.

CAR