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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

  • Distance ed director retires
  • Faculty members on sabbatical
  • The talk of the campus
Editor:
Chris Redmond
credmond@uwaterloo.ca

Birthday of Confucius


[Kasta]

Distance ed director retires

Don Kasta (right), a long-time member of UW's administrative staff and currently Director of Distance and Continuing Education, will take early retirement as of the end of this month, an announcement last week said.

"Don began his career at UW in 1974," said the memo from the associate vice-president (academic), "and has been in his current position since 1994. As Director, he has played a pivotal role in the establishment of UW as a leader in distance and continuing education, particularly through the application of technology to learning. Don has also been active in provincial and national continuing and distance education organizations.

[Kelly] "For a short period following his retirement, Don will continue to assist in the leadership transition in DCE and in the coordination of some Learning Resources and Innovation projects."

Colleagues announced that there will be a retirement reception for Kasta on Wednesday of next week, October 5, from 3:30 to 5:30 in the Laurel Room, south Campus Hall. RSVPs go to Janet Moser, jmoser@uwaterloo.ca

The associate VP announced that Cathy Newell Kelly (left), currently the associate director of DCE, "has agreed to assume the position of Interim Director, Distance and Continuing Education, beginning October 1.

"I hope that you will join with me in thanking Don for his many years of dedicated service to UW, and in welcoming Cathy in her new role by offering your support and assistance."

[Group hug]

Camaraderie on and off the field is the strength of the Warrior field hockey squad, says coach Ozias D'Souza, whose team who won a silver medal in Ontario University Athletics play last year and fourth place nationally. This season the team is without captain Jessa Jennings, who graduated last spring as well as winning the Marsden Award for UW's top female athlete of the year. But with new leadership, they defeated Carleton 1-0 in their first league game and followed up with two wins and a tie last weekend. The team takes the field tonight against Guelph (7:30 p.m., University Stadium).

Faculty members on sabbatical

Here's another list of UW faculty members who are currently on sabbatical leaves that began September 1 -- and their plans as summarized in reports to the university's board of governors.

POSITIONS AVAILABLE
On this week's list from the human resources department:

  • Clerical assistant, school of optometry, USG 3
  • Assistant to the chair, electrical and computer engineering, USG 7
  • Research project analyst, Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology, USG 8

    Longer descriptions are available on the HR web site.

  • WHEN AND WHERE
    University-College Career Fair 10:00 to 3:30, RIM Park, Waterloo, buses from campus, buses leave Humanities traffic circle every half hour starting 9:30, information online.

    Employee safety orientation sessions today 10 a.m. or October 4, also 10 a.m., Davis Centre room 1304.

    Funeral service for Chandrasegar and Soumiyan Naulasigamany, 11:00, Highland Memory Gardens, near Don Mills Road and Steeles Avenue, Toronto.

    Festival of Sustainable Transportation organized by WPIRG to mark Carfree Day, 11:30 to 1:30, Student Life Centre; includes regional biking information and bicycle auction sponsored by UW Bike Centre, preview noon, auction 12:30.

    St. Jerome's reading series begins with poet Erin Noteboom, 2:30, St. Jerome's room 2011.

    Smarter Health Seminar: Sarah Kramer, Cancer Care Ontario, "Standing on a Burning Platform: Implementing a Province-wide Wait-time Information System," 3:00, Davis Centre room 1302.

    UW Retirees Association annual wine and cheese party, 3 to 5 p.m., University Club.

    Pat Aplevich, French studies, retirement reception 3:30 to 5:30, Laurel Room, South Campus Hall, cash bar.

    African Awareness lecture sponsored by WPIRG: Gabriel Shumba, human rights lawyer from Zimbabwe, 5:30, Math and Computer room 2017.

    Engineers Without Borders fund-raising gala from 6 p.m., South Campus Hall. Returning overseas interns speak about their experiences; UW president David Johnston and EWB co-CEO Parker Mitchell to speak. Cash bar.

    Warrior men's volleyball vs. Sheridan College, 8:00, Physical Activities Complex.

    Renison College presents Stephen M. Doust, Canadian embassy in Japan, "The Japanese Election and an Emerging Political Dynamic", Thursday 12:00, Renison chapel lounge.

    Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System training and safety orientation for new employees and others, Thursday 2:00, Davis Centre room 1304, information ext. 5613.

    'Learning and Teaching at the Centre' -- overview by Liwana Bringelson, director of the Centre for Learning and Teaching Through Technology, Thursday 3:00, Flex lab, Dana Porter Library, registration online.

    Computer science Distinguished Lecture: Umesh Vazirani, University of California at Berkeley, "Making Google Richer: Optimal Algorithms for the AdWords Auction," Thursday 4:30, Davis Centre room 1302.

    Student think-tank: UW Forum for Independent Thought first fall meeting, Thursday 5:00, multi-purpose room, Student Life Centre.

    Architecture Week featured speaker Tye Farrow, "Brittle Cities at the Tipping Point," 7 p.m., Architecture building lecture hall.

    Environmental Studies Lecture: Trudi Bunting, department of geography, "Learning from the Local: Dispersion, Size and New Urban Forms in Waterloo Region and Beyond," Thursday 7:30, Theatre of the Arts.

    One Waterloo diversity campaign event: Thursday, guest lecturer K-OS (spoken word/questions and answers), 8 to 9:30 p.m., Humanities Theatre. Tickets $12 for UW people and $15 for guests, Humanities box office or Federation of Students office.

    Ontario Universities Fair 9 to 7 Friday, 9 to 6 Saturday, 10 to 5 Sunday, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, details online.

    Research In Motion founder Mike Lazaridis speaks on "the future of communications"; potential recruits can "meet and greet" RIM staff 3:30, lecture 4:30, Federation Hall, register online.

    David Wagner of the combinatorics and optimization department is on a twelve-month leave: "I intend to collaborate in research with several colleagues regarding correlation inequalities in combinatorics, probability theory, and statistical mechanics, with specific emphasis on enumerative conjectures about graphs, matroids, and partial orders."

    Susan Wismer of environment and resource studies is also on sabbatical for twelve months, to work on "Necessary Livelihoods: Community, Culture and Sustainability. Five case studies will examine relationships between people, culture and community sustainability. Sustainable livelihood theory will provide a conceptual basis for the study. A central hypothesis of this research is that culture and activities involving cultural expression are neither discretionary nor recreational, but are a necessity for human well-being, for sustainable livelihood and, more broadly, for community sustainability."

    Hartwig Peemoeller of physics is on leave for six months: "This sabbatical leave will be devoted to research of porous media using NMR and MRI. It will be used to advance our knowledge about water molecule behaviour on surfaces and in confined geometries, and to develop, in collaboration with a Canadian company, a new technique, based on hyperpolarized Xenon NMR and MRI, for material (including in vivo tissue) diagnostics."

    Tom Carey of management sciences (who is UW's associate vice-president, learning resources and innovation) is on leave for a year: "I will be visiting Senior Scholar in the Chancellor's Office of California State University in Long Beach. I will be working with academic leaders from state and national higher education systems to develop innovative approaches for sharing faculty development and online learning resources across institutions. I will also be completing research publications on e-learning innovations at UW and developing a new project in institutional benchmarking for innovations in learning and teaching."

    Carla Carnaghan of the school of accountancy is on sabbatical for six months to "continue e-commerce related research, including determinants of e-commerce adoption in Canada and implications of e-commerce for income tax planning; continue research related to factors influencing the usefulness of organizational information, in particular issues related to the effects of information representation and organization on its utility for judgment and decision making."

    Jiahua Chen of statistics and actuarial science is on a one-year sabbatical: "I plan to visit the National University of Singapore and Nankai University in China for most of my sabbatical leave. I will focus my research on problems related to finite mixture models."

    Peter Bernath of chemistry is also on leave for twelve months: "I propose to be based in Waterloo, but take a number of trips of 1 week to 1 month duration to establish some new projects and to continue some old ones. For example, I plan to return to Brussels to work on the ACE satellite data on the global distribution of the pollutant carbon monoxide."

    D. Ramona Bobocel of the psychology department has a one-year leave: "I will primarily be writing, with the possibility of new data collection as well. My plan is to write a number of research articles that will complete studies already conducted, and a large-scale theoretical paper building on one line of my recent research. I will also begin new collaborations and prepare new lines of research for my eturn. In particular, I will spend some time learning the cognitive psychology literature with the goal of beginning new research on the cognitive underpinnings of justice perceptions. At the end of my leave, I will also be preparing my SSHRC grant renewal, due in Fall 2006."

    The talk of the campus

    UW's safety office sent a memo to department heads this week reminding them "that the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) has certain basic requirements with regard to handling, using and storing hazardous materials in the workplace." The memo summarized the rules about whether MSDS (information sheets about chemicals) have to be on paper or can be online, where they need to be kept and who has to have access to them. "Hard copies," it notes, "must at all times be visible and accessible."

    [Two diplomas, three smiles] Roger Downer, former vice-president (university development) at UW and long-time professor of biology, is now president of the University of Limerick, Ireland. Limerick's fall convocation earlier this month was not just a university occasion but a family celebration, as his wife, Jean, and daughter Tara both received honours degrees in law (left).

    Plans were announced a couple of years ago to bring two senior Fulbright scholars -- prominent American academics -- to come to Waterloo yearly for the next five years to teach at UW and be involved in projects with the Centre for International Governance Innovation. One of them has now been announced by the office of the associate vice-president (academic). William Stewart, of the department of leisure studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will arrive January 1 for a six-month appointment.

    A goodly number of UW people will be taking part in the CIBC Run for the Cure this Sunday -- a national event to raise money and awareness for breast cancer research. Locally the run starts at 10 a.m. at Waterloo's RIM Park, and organizers want it known that there will be chartered buses available from campus to get to the park. Pickups are at 6:55 a.m. (for volunteers) and 8:15 a.m. (for articipants) at the Student Life Centre, and buses will return there at 12:30 after the race.

    [Bater] James H. (Jim) Bater (right), a geography professor at UW since 1969 and dean of environmental studies 1984-92, officially retired September 1. He is a specialist in economic development, urban geography, and the economy and geography of Russia. Bater has also served as associate dean (graduate studies) in ES, director of the economic development program, and acting chair of the department of geography.

    So, how was your summer, anyway? Hot, yes, says Frank Seglenieks of the UW weather station, and also dry. He writes: "The total precipitation was 221.0 mm compared to an average precipitation of 274.0 mm, although less than the average, it was close enough to be considered within the average bounds. Almost half of the summer's precipitation came during storms on July 16 (59.2 mm) and August 19 (47.1 mm)." Maximum temperature during the three months of summer was 34.1 Celsius. Graphs of such data are available on the weather station web site.

    Today, students living at the UW village residences will hold a Mardi Gras-style fund-raiser in support of the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Events: Village 1 and Ron Eydt Village, 4:30 - 7 p.m., Mardi Gras-style dinner in each cafeteria; Mackenzie King and Minota Hagey, 5:30  - 6:30 p.m., barbecue on the lower patio at Mackenzie King Village; UW Place, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m., barbecue in the Beck Hall playground. All proceeds to the Save the Children Hurricane Katrina Fund. Ext 5134 or 3276 for more information.

    Electrical and computer engineering professor Mohamed Kamel chairs an International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition, ICIAR 2005 , from today to Friday in Toronto. The conference brings together more than 150 researchers from 26 countries, including 15 UW faculty members and students.

    CAR


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