The first Senate meeting of the year occurred on Jan 17th. There weren’t too many decisions but there was lots of information, so I’m going to try and convey the most important points:
1) Senate elections are coming up! There are four candidates in the running: Trevor Jenkins, Jordan Lui, Ben Selby & Adhiran Thirmal, check out their profiles in The Iron Warrior or at vote.feds.ca! The election itself opens on February 8th, please please please vote! One of these fine gentlemen will be representing you at the highest academic policy body on campus for the next two years!
2) The Registrar’s office is looking into a revamp of the UWaterloo Diploma. The last time it was changed was in the 80’s, and there are many that feel it could use a spruce up. Taking a lesson from the recent re-branding campaign, the admin is very intent of garnering LOTS of student feedback and taking the entire process quite slowly. Roll out of the potentially new diploma will be for May 2012, there may be an option for recent grads to swap their diploma for a new one.
3) The Provincial government sets targets for how many undergrad and grad students it wants to see at each university. These targets are backed by financial incentives associated with the targets, this is a way to align government education policy with individual universities growth. UWaterloo is currently at risk of not getting all of the allocated financial support from the government if it does not boost the number of grad students in the coming year. As such, the Provost has kicked in another incentive for faculties, by pledging to provide each faculty $5000 for every grad student above the base targets from previous years. To be clear, this $5000 goes to the Dean, thereby encouraging faculty members to take on grad students; it does not go to the grad student.
Feel free to email me at senate@engmail. Good luck on midterms!
Leave a Reply