President arrives at St. Jerome's

A new president takes office at St. Jerome's University today, and will be on campus for (surprise) "several meetings" during his first day on the job, says the college's director of communications.

David Perrin (pictured) comes to Waterloo from Ottawa, where he has a been a faculty member in theology, and former dean, at Saint Paul University, a Roman Catholic institution affiliated with the University of Ottawa. A priest in the religious order of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, he has served as Provincial (regional head) of the St. Peter’s Province of that order. St. Jerome's announced his appointment this spring.

Perrin's arrival means Myroslaw Tataryn, who has been acting president for 13 months, can return to his post as vice-president and acting dean of St. Jerome's.

Perrin will be the 17th man to lead St. Jerome's since its beginning, and the seventh since it became federated with UW in 1959.

Dana Woito of St. Jerome's said the new president's installation has been scheduled for 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 15, at St. Agatha Roman Catholic Church in St. Agatha, just west of Waterloo, the village where St. Jerome's College was founded in 1865. The ceremony will be followed by a reception at the college. At the same ceremony, former psychology professor Peter Naus is to be installed as chancellor of St. Jerome's.

Back to top

Chem eng prof named Fellow of RSC

Flora Ng (right) of UW’s department of chemical engineering has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada — one of 78 Canadians who have received the country’s top academic honour this year.

In keeping with the motto of the Society, “Different paths, one vision”, the newly elected Fellows, “while coming from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, are dedicated to achieving excellence in their endeavours, thus enhancing Canada’s competitiveness on a global basis,” the RSC said in its announcement of the awards. In addition to the 78 who are joining “the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada” in the usual way, there are one new Foreign Fellow and one Specially Elected Fellow, the RSC said.

Says the society’s citation for the one Waterloo researcher elected this year: “Professor Ng has made exceptional seminal contributions in catalysis, green chemistry and engineering for the chemical, petrochemical and oil industry. She pioneered a new method to determine the Co-C bond dissociation energy which helps to elucidate the role of Co in vitamin B12 catalysis.

“She is a world leader in catalytic distillation, a novel green reactor technology which is highly energy efficient. She invented catalysts and new green processes, one of which, the Avada process for the production of ethyl acetate, won the Best Green Chemistry and Engineering Process award from the UK Institute of Chemical Engineers in 2002.”

A graduate of the University of Hong Kong and the University of British Columbia, Ng was awarded the title of University Research Professor at UW last year.

The Royal Society of Canada, founded in 1882, describes itself as “Canada’s oldest and most prestigious scholarly organization. Election to RSC is the highest honour that can be attained by scholars, artists and scientists in Canada.”

“The Society is proud to celebrate the intellectual achievements of the new Fellows”, said its president, Patricia Demers. “We wish to recognize the extraordinary accomplishments of persons of talent, expertise and creativity in all fields, from experimental and applied sciences to health and medical sciences, and from social sciences and humanities to the various artistic domains.”

This year’s new Fellows will be inducted at a ceremony to be held November 17 in Edmonton.

Back to top

Other notes to begin a new month

WatCards will have a new look this fall (left). There's no need for anybody with an existing card to get a new one, says WatCard manager John Cunningham, but he doesn't want anybody surprised to see the new design, which features a bright swash of green for undergraduate students, aquamarine for grads, blue for faculty, purple for staff, red for alumni and orange for guests. He adds that his office issued "a couple of thousand" cards to new first-year students who got a preview of the campus during the Student Life 101 event in mid-July.

This fall’s 5,800 first-year students are coming to university to study engineering, math, history, and stuff like that — but what would they really like to study? Somebody raised the question on the online Forum for Admitted Students, and the answers have come fast and various: “Harry Potter theories ... history of high fashion ... the arts of napping ... Finnish language ... pretty much anything involving the Simpsons ... Girls 101 ... building artificial societies ... studies in the subculture of popular Japanese animation ... Penguins 101.” There was also a request for “Planting Flowers”, whereupon somebody pointed out that UW does it the other way round: Biology 325, “Flowering Plants.”

The engineering faculty's e-newsletter reports that "Three Waterloo engineers, along with a team of authors from the Ford Motor Company, were presented with SAE International’s Arch T. Colwell Merit Award for a paper on automotive steel research during the SAE World Congress in Detroit. The award-winning Waterloo engineers are Jose Imbert, a mechanical engineering lecturer and PhD candidate, Sooky Winkler, a mechanical engineering research associate, and Mike Worswick, a mechanical and mechatronics professor and associate dean of research and external partnerships. The paper was entitled 'Analysis of the Increased Formability of Aluminium Alloy Sheet Formed Using Electromagnetic Forming'."

The staff association has invited its members to apply for vacant seats on several committees. One open post is for an alternate on the Employee Assistance Program committee. There are also two spots on the UWSA's own nominating committee. And there's one position on the university's Committee of Inquiry for Staff Grievances. This committee, the association's memo notes, "consists of six staff members chosen by the Staff Association Nominating Committee along with six staff members chosen by UW Administration. This position is to fulfill the term of a staff member who is no longer employed by UW."

A Stratford radio station says Ontario finance minister Greg Sorbara met with UW's president and the mayor of Stratford yesterday to hear about the proposal for a Waterloo campus in that city. • The "old elevator" in the northeast corner of the Student Life Centre will be out of operation for repairs on Friday, the plant operations department says. • Here's a reminder that parking permits for main campus lots, which may be less than accessible during the current repairs to the Columbia Street entrance, are also valid in parking lot X (behind the Optometry building) for the next few days.

And . . . I might have known I'd get some of the names wrong when I identified the students in the photo that headed yesterday's Daily Bulletin. From left to right, the team members are Chris Kinvig, Stephen Litt, Rishi Lukka, and Devin Koopmans, plus advisor John McPhee.

CAR

Back to top