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Friday, February 13, 2004

  • New 'rich experience' for high schoolers
  • Speaker tackles love, faith, growth
  • Let's all have a sweet weekend
Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

Party down: it's Lupercalia


[Twelve of them along the Icefield boards]

Synchronized skaters practise their routine at the Columbia Icefield in preparation for this weekend's OUA figure skating championships, being held at Waterloo's RIM Park. Competition runs all day Saturday and Sunday. The Warrior team placed sixth in its most recent competition, the University of Toronto invitational meet in late January, bringing home medals in ladies', men's and dance events and placing fourth in synchro. Photo courtesy of Chantal Massicotte of the skating team.

Other sports this weekend: Women's hockey against Laurier, Saturday 7:30 p.m. at the Icefield. Women's volleyball at Laurier, 1 p.m. today. Men's hockey at Guelph on Saturday night. Basketball, both men's and women's, at Windsor on Sunday. Swimming championships in Ottawa all weekend.

New 'rich experience' for high schoolers

UW is launching "a fundamentally new style of high school enrichment program", its organizers said yesterday, announcing that they've received the go-ahead from UW's top administration.

"Starting as early as 2005," their announcement said, "it will engage students in a rich trans-disciplinary university experience, connecting them to a network of peers and on-campus mentors and ensuring that when they return home they will be able to continue as part of a virtual community of scholars."

The new project is being called Waterloo Unlimited. Yesterday's news release said it "will complement the variety of enrichment experiences UW is already well known for, such as the Canadian Mathematics Competition, Arts Computer Camp, Kinesiology Lab Days, Engineering Science Quest, and Shad Valley.

"In addition to these existing opportunities, Waterloo Unlimited will offer a series of residential events designed to create strong community experiences. These may include weekend retreats, week long and longer programs, each built around a theme.

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  • "The themes will be carefully chosen to be trans-disciplinary, drawing upon all Faculties across campus and upon the University Colleges, bringing together students and faculty from different disciplines and exploring their common ground.

    "As an example, Waterloo Unlimited could build an experience around the theme of vision, from optics to painting to historical visionaries, from computer vision and image processing to medical imaging and remote sensing. Students might gather around a theme of puzzles, tipping points, bread, or the year 1929. A theme could complement the Hagey Lecture, or some other high profile event on campus, bringing these exceptional students into the university community when it is at its richest. The principal criteria for a theme will be its trans-disciplinarity and Waterloo's strengths."

    The key organizer of Waterloo Unlimited is Ed Jernigan, systems design engineering professor and the director of UW's campus for the annual Shad Valley experience. He heads a "development team" that's putting the program together. It is, said yesterday's announcement, "a uniquely qualified group including six other members of the experienced Shad Waterloo staff and an experienced UCEP high school teacher. The Shad team has over a hundred years of collective experience living and working with exceptional high school students in a residence-based, community-centered program. To achieve a level of excellence consistent with its goals, the team will work throughout the next year and a half in anticipation of launching an initial theme experience in the fall of 2005. Meanwhile Waterloo Unlimited will run pilot programs to develop its ideas face-to-face with talented students from the Waterloo region."

    And more from yesterday's announcement: "While on campus, students will be paired with mentors with the expectation that their relationships will be sustained after the event ends. A web-based commons will provide a virtual community for these promising Waterloo scholars, and students will be able to return for subsequent theme experiences throughout their high school years.

    "By engaging faculty and students together in building a strong community around these themes, Waterloo Unlimited will not only offer a unique enrichment experience to the exceptional students we want at Waterloo, but it will also forge a richer community of scholars on campus.

    "Waterloo Unlimited aspires to create a virtual community of scholars, including high school students and teachers, and university students, staff and faculty who share a common vision of the University as a place where people of extraordinary ability and accomplishment can share in their pursuit of knowledge and experience."

    Speaker tackles love, faith, growth -- a news release from St. Jerome's University

    [Schner] When Rev. Joseph Schner (right) asks his students at Regis College, Toronto, to draw pictures depicting their relationship to God over the years, the first drawings often show God as a distant figure in the sky. "As the years progress from childhood to late adulthood," he says, "their drawings change so that God comes close, at times even encompassing the person."

    Schner, who is a Jesuit priest, president of Regis and a registered psychologist, will deliver the 2003-2004 Ignatian Lecture at St. Jerome's University tonight. Entitled "Growing up in a School of Love," the lecture looks at religious faith development as a process of growth explored in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola. The event starts at 7:30 p.m. in Siegfried Hall, free of charge. All are welcome.

    "When psychologists study religious faith development, they often describe it as a growth in thought processes from very concrete ideas about God to very abstract ones," says Schner. "But that is only one part of the story of growth." He notes that 400 years ago, Ignatius described the development of an individual's understanding of God as a movement from a very concrete, yet distant awareness to a rich and intimate relationship. Schner shows how the Exercises can serve as a school of love that initiates, strengthens, and reforms faith development.

    He was appointed president of Regis College, the Jesuit graduate faculty of theology at the University of Toronto, in 2003. He also serves as rector of the Jesuit community at Regis. He spent the 1980s and 1990s as professor of psychology at Campion College, University of Regina, also serving as dean and, for fifteen years, as president. From 1984 to 1995 he was superior of the Jesuit Fathers of Saskatchewan.

    The author of The Failure of the Flight from Intimacy, Schner has published articles in the areas of family, priestly sexuality, and faith development. He holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Toronto and worked as a psychologist in the Toronto Catholic District School Board for five years.

    The Ignatian Lecture, sponsored by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), is part of the 2003-2004 season of the St. Jerome's Centre for Catholic Experience. Other guests in this season's lineup include Christopher Burris on hate and Miriam Martin on women and worship.

    Let's all have a sweet weekend

    First we survive Friday the thirteenth, and then it'll be Valentine's day -- a red-letter day for lovers with its chocolate, lace and champagne, but not a big deal on campus this year because it comes just as "reading week" is starting for most students. I'm told, however, that the Valentine wall in REVelations cafeteria in Ron Eydt Village has been active again this year, so here are best wishes to all those who are finding their true loves beside the scrambled eggs.

    And pre-Valentine chocolate chip cookies were a big hit among faculty and staff, as the development office reports almost 1,200 of the cookies were ordered and delivered in the recent Keystone Campaign fund-raiser. Food services donated the cookies; after other expenses are paid, the organizers should have several thousand dollars to turn over to a "campaign priority project", not yet identified.

    Today's a red-letter day of a different kind, for co-op students intending to go out on spring term jobs. With the main interview period at an end, ranking forms are available this morning (from 10 a.m. in the Tatham Centre) and must be returned by 4 p.m. Results of the job match process will be posted on Monday, February 23.

    The Touring Players present "The Nose from Jupiter" for schoolchildren at 10:00, 11:45 and 1:30 today in the Humanities Theatre. . . . Today's the deadline for high school students applying to enter architecture at UW (probably at the new Cambridge campus) next fall. . . . The disabilities office hosts a session on low vision, with Ann Plotkin of the school of optometry, at 12 noon in Needles Hall room 1132. . . . Results of the Federation of Students election are scheduled to be announced at noon. . . .

    The UpStart theatre festival is down to its last two days, with performances at 12:30 and 8:00 today, 2:00 and 7:00 tomorrow, in Studio 180 in the Humanities building. . . . The Graduate House (reopened following a plumbing crisis over the past couple of days) will host open stage with Matt Osborne tonight starting at 9:00. . . .

    Marita Williams, UW's manager of space information and resource planning, says there official abbreviations have been set for two new UW facilities. The "north community" at Columbia Lake Village -- the new graduate student townhouses -- will be CLN (and it's building number 46). The architecture building in Cambridge, a former factory now being renovated for occupation by the school later this year, will be ARC (and it's building number 47).

    The search for evidence of a crime somewhere in UW's e-mail servers is over, and turned up nothing. "They did not find that e-mail address anywhere on the servers," says Martin Van Nierop, UW director of communications and public affairs, referring to an address on a non-UW mail system that was thought to be linked to forgery of government-issued identity documents. A search was carried out by computing officials after UW police got a warrant to look for links to the outside address, but none was found. "The police told me there's not anything else that they're going to do at this time," Van Nierop says, as the conclusion apparently is that there is no UW connection to whatever's going on.

    And now, it's off on "reading week" for many people at UW, both students and professors. No classes will be held next week in the faculties of arts, applied health sciences, environmental studies and science. IN mathematics and engineering, there are classes Monday through Wednesday, apart from any interruptions as graduating engineers celebrate Iron Ring day on Tuesday. Those two faculties get "reading days" on Thursday and Friday, not a full week. Lots of things won't be in full operation at UW next week, but offices and libraries (good places for "reading") are open as usual, and food services says that, in a break with past practice, the Ron Eydt Village cafeteria will stay open.

    CAR


    Communications and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
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