'Environment' name being phased in

The new name for UW’s 39-year-old Faculty of Environmental Studies is coming into use bit by bit this summer, with the official launch celebration scheduled for mid-September.

“We have started officially using the name internally,” says Sue McKenzie, director of advancement for what’s now to be called the Faculty of Environment. The new name was given approval last winter.

And yesterday (left), Dag Balzer of plant operations was on the job installing new signs that designate the faculty's bricks-and-mortar home as the “Faculty of Environment” building. Until now it's been considered two separate buildings: the Isaiah Bowman Building for the Environmental Studies (originally Arts II, built in 1966) and Environmental Studies II (1981). The likely building name for everyday use: ENV.

Watch for a new FoE web site early in August, replacing the current site that still calls the faculty “environmental studies”. The new site will also have a new location on the web: www.environment.uwaterloo.ca. (As a side issue, the material that’s at the www.environment URL now, dealing with environmental research and conservation, will be moved to a new university-wide “sustainability” web site that’s being developed by Communications and Public Affairs.)

Publications and stationery are starting to use the new name now that admission of new students for September 2008 is complete and there’s no danger of confusing applicants in mid-process. In general, “we would encourage people to start using the new name,” McKenzie says.

She said the big event is scheduled for noon hour on Wednesday, September 17, when the whole campus is invited to a barbecue lunch. It’ll celebrate not just the new name, but “the kickoff of our 40th year”, which will bring a number of special occasions through 2008-09. The ES faculty officially came into existence July 1, 1969, becoming the first environmental faculty in a Canadian university.

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UW prof leads global business study

from the UW media relations office

A Waterloo expert on global business will lead an international research project on 'born global' startups — new ventures that enter markets around the world soon after their founding. Rod McNaughton, a professor of management sciences in the faculty of engineering, heads a $1.9-million project, entitled International Entrepreneurship Strategic Knowledge Cluster. The cluster, one of 11 established recently by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, draws together researchers and partners in Canada, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Finland.

"The knowledge cluster for international entrepreneurship will enable collaborations among researchers from several disciplines who seek to maximize benefits of a world pool of knowledge and expertise," says George Dixon, UW's vice-president (university research).

McNaughton, who also holds UW's Eyton Chair in Entrepreneurship, says the project will eventually involve up to 200 researchers from around the world. The UW-led knowledge cluster, which will receive its funding over eight years, brings together a co-investigator from McGill University and collaborators from the University of Ottawa, York University and University of Toronto.

"Understanding the formation of new enterprises that address international opportunities is important for economic development and development of scholarship at the interface of entrepreneurship and international business," says McNaughton. "We want to focus on gathering and analyzing comparative data about how knowledge-intensive new ventures use networks to grow and quickly enter international markets."

Partners in the cluster include IGLOO Software and Communitech Technology Association in Waterloo Region; Centre for Internalization and Enterprise Research at the University of Glasgow in Scotland; University of Ulster in Northern Ireland; Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland; University of California at Los Angeles; and the University of Otago in New Zealand.

McNaughton's research interests include the pace of internationalization in small- and medium-sized enterprises and how best to guide software companies concerned about protecting intellectual property in foreign markets. He is also associate director of research at Waterloo's Centre for Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology.

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Shad Valley students display prototypes of the products that they created in their design team challenge: “Design with Conscience”. The high schoolers, spending this month on campus, have created innovative products for the North American consumer market that can be produced entirely with the resources of a community-in-need that each team has researched, to help it create or rebuild an economic infrastructure and progress toward recovery or self-sufficiency. Visitors can learn more about their design projects, and the rest of the Shad experience, at an Open Day tomorrow from 1:30 to 4:30 in the great hall, Conrad Grebel University College.

Drops of data in the daily deluge

The rain came down and the floods came up, but not so much on UW's main campus. At least, first thing this morning there were no reports of significant problems as the result of last night's heavy storm. "A few minor roof leaks" that first appeared during the early morning rainstorm on July 11 may have acted up again in this even heavier downpour, says vice-president (administration and finance) Dennis Huber. Roads and buildings were flooded in various parts of Kitchener-Waterloo, the Record newspaper reports this morning. Frank Seglenieks, manager of the UW weather station, posted a note on his web site to say that 23 millimetres of rain (just shy of an inch) fell between 7:30 and 7:45 last night: "That is the highest 15-minute rainfall we have recorded in the 10-year history of the UW weather station. The previous record was 16.2 mm on June 27, 1999. We also set an hourly record with 34.4 mm coming down between 7:15-8:15 p.m. That just surpassed the 33.9 mm on May 2, 2000."

There's a bit of confusion about the results of the North American Solar Challenge, which wound up yesterday at the University of Calgary as 15 student-built cars finished their journey from Texas. Challenge organizers listed the University of Michigan's Continuum as the winner, and put UW's Midnight Sun in fourth place, pretty much where it had been throughout the race. But the Canadian Press reports that Waterloo was second (on the other hand, it also gave credit for Michigan's victory to Michigan State, a university that wasn't in the race). The Midnight Sun team's own web site was also saying last night that UW was in second place: "We are also the first Canadian team to finish the challenge! Final results coming soon!"

“A new email system for students has been under development,” says Martin Timmerman of information systems and technology, announcing that volunteers are now invited to try out what’s been created so far. Some background: “A project team set out to determine if a single system could be used by all students instead of maintaining servers in each faculty. We are not yet ready to declare success or provide this service to all students, but we are ready to invite testers so that we can evaluate the system and our collective ability to support the service. The project website provides some information on background, intent, participants, etc.” He adds that “there is some new technology in use,” specifically a piece of mail software called Cyrus, developed at Carnegie Mellon University. Says Timmerman: “Students from all faculties are invited to use a new email service. Some benefits of the new service include 1 GB of email quotas per student; access using Web tools (myWaterloo and SquirrelMail) and email clients (such as Outlook and Thunderbird); faculty and IST helpdesk support; an on-campus email address for communications with profs and administrative contacts (they prefer this); and new servers with few users (get started early).” For more information and signup, IST has a web site ready.

About that noon-hour session today on "Your Carbon Footprint" ("join Mike Greulich, an employee in the Plant Operations Department, as he provides an array of facts and ideas that are easy to incorporate into our day-to-day lives") — well, don't bother making the trek over to the Davis Centre. Word from the Employee Assistance Program is that there are electrical problems in the seminar room where it was to be held, and the event has been cancelled. "It will be rescheduled," promises Linda Brogden of health services, on behalf of the EAP committee.

The human resources department says its temporary move to East Campus Hall, originally expected at the beginning of July, is now scheduled to begin this Friday, with all HR staff settled in their ECH space by shortly after Civic Holiday. • "Clothing, books, CDs, cell phones, games, school materials, sports equipment, etc." are welcome — and available — at swap tables in the Student Life Centre today, in a one-day Reuse Fair organized by the UW Sustainability Project. • Erika Nelson-Wong, a graduate student in UW's department of kinesiology, is one of 25 physical therapists in North America who have received scholarships for doctoral study, worth up to $15,000 apiece, from the Foundation for Physical Therapy.

CAR

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