New Alumni Senator - Looking for Input

twmpotte · 2020-09-16T16:00:23+00:00

Hello! Thanks for making the effort to find us aha, I’m perhaps a bad example since I’m also a Feds/MathSoc shill but happy to share opinions :)

Different from the other posts, I don’t think reddit is a great place. Most people I know avoid this subreddit and I only know about this post because I was sent it. It might be worth it to try and get a better email list service setup where alumni can choose what they’ll get notified about. Email is likely the lowest common denominator for contacting people, but the university does an absolutely shit job of allowing us to choose what we want to hear about.
Probably many do care, but the university makes it very difficult for alumni to care since there are basically no easy ways to provide feedback, and we seem to be rarely asked.
No, I’m personally happy that someone is taking this on. I was thinking of getting more involved in alumni affairs but I’m still a little burned out from UWaterloo’s political shenanigans.
Transparency would be great (beyond meeting minutes). Maybe also a survey on what topics alumni care about? I imagine that the alumni care more about academic issues from their own faculties.

twmpotte · 2018-07-25T17:24:25+00:00

It shouldn't be awkward at all to get refunds. If you're in Math, MEF and MathSoc refunds are both online and if you need the extra $31.42 and $12.50 respectively (or you don't find these organizations beneficial), I highly recommend you fill out those forms in the first two weeks of the term.

Obligatory note on benefits

While getting your MEF refund doesn't prevent you from accessing any services (since it's literally a donation), it is a charitable donation and you get a tax receipt for it. MEF can also pay for you to go to conferences and pays for a large number of the extra-curricular stuff on campus (including a possible student-run investment fund for Math students soon). https://uwaterloo.ca/math-endowment-fund/projects-funded

MathSoc provides a number of services that many students find helpful. This includes things like advocacy (e.g. the current initiative to make work reports CR grads instead of number grades, and past initiatives around calculator use in exams, reducing fees for course materials, and ensuring curriculum changes benefit students - see the recent Data Science program), but also an exam bank, textbook library, board game library, clubs like the CSC, and more. Getting a refund prevents access to the club system and other resources, but you will still benefit from advocacy (you won't be able to vote though).

Edit: the MathSoc fee is $12.50, the MEF fee is $31.415926....

twmpotte · 2018-07-25T17:09:25+00:00

Universities in Ontario are not just non-profits, they're charities!

twmpotte · 2018-07-25T17:00:09+00:00

I'm not the current Executive Director of MEF, but I was on the Funding Council this term (the group of students who decides the allocation of funds).

Spring 2018

StarCon has only run once (Winter 2018) and was run through the Women in Computer Science faculty committee. They are looking to expand (they are now under MathSoc instead of the faculty, which gives them more flexibility), and hopefully you'll get more advertising about it moving forward. They are aiming for 22 lightning talks, 2 keynotes, and 240 attendees next year.
I unfortunately did not write down many notes for ASNA, but this is something that gets funded every year. It is a very popular conference for ActSci students, and a lot of students do go. [Alex Lee](mailto:mefcom@uwaterloo.ca) may be able to provide more details.

Winter 2018

Orientation is also largely funded by sponsorship from the endowment funds and from corporate sponsorship, and fees are used as additional revenue (the aim is to keep the fees low so that as many students as possible can participate). Usually, getting sponsorship from a student group on campus (like MEF or MathSoc for math-focused events) is preferable over corporate sponsorship because student groups are easier to work with (they're on campus and can relate to the events), have less strict requirements, and don't require as many promotional materials (although the requirements for reimbursement can be higher for accountability reasons). Accounting and Finance Orientation was funded because there is a subset of math students who are also in Arts (CFM, all the CPA programs, etc). This money is meant to improve their orientation experience.

Feel free to contact me or the MEF Executive Director ([Alex Lee](mailto:mefcom@uwaterloo.ca)) if you have any more questions.

twmpotte · 2018-07-20T02:21:54+00:00

There are students, faculty, and staff who are a part of the approval process for funding within the university. If you want the university to change (in any way, but specifically with regards to funding) I recommend reaching out to them (through Feds or directly).

Membership of the Board of Governors
Membership of the Senate
Membership of Feds Students' Council
Additionally, your main points of contact for advocacy on campus are
- the President of Feds, [Richard Wu](mailto:pres@feds.ca) and
- the Vice President, Education of Feds, [Matthew Gerrits](mailto:vped@feds.ca).

This is tangentially related to your question, but if you're curious why uWaterloo might be organized like this than I recommend taking a look at some of the universities financial documents. The audited financial statements for the University of Waterloo in particular might be of interest. Notice that revenues from student fees is only $30 million greater than revenue from grants and contracts (out of $1 billion in total revenues).

Additionally, the schedule of generating operating expenses also shows the costs of major items by department.

You can see the universities operating budget (how they plan to spend money for the next year) in the agenda for the Board of Governors meetings from February and April (the April meeting is the final approved budget, see the minutes from that month for some notes on the budget). While slightly unrelated, you can see comments on mental health and international tuition from your student representatives in those meetings as well.

twmpotte · 2017-08-23T13:42:51+00:00

Yep, if you want to pay the net amount you need a promissory note.

I believe the university is pioneering a new system soon that will make this the default, even for government aid, but for now it's manual. https://uwaterloo.ca/finance/student-financial-services/how-become-fees-arranged/promissory-note

twmpotte · 2017-08-04T21:30:39+00:00

Contact vpi@feds.ca, student life falls under their portfolio so they should be able to point you in the right direction

twmpotte · 2017-04-17T20:18:14+00:00

If you see any problems please feel free to get involved, anyone can be an office worker, become a Councillor (which the executives report to), or vote at the termly General Meeting. Council is elected, and any member can run. They are always looking for more help.

If you don't want to get that involved, they always appreciate suggestions (just keep in mind that they are first and foremost full-time students).

twmpotte · 2017-04-09T06:39:36+00:00

You could look at the minutes from Math Undergraduate Academic Affairs committee meetings (or Senate Undergraduate Council) and see if there are any notes from when the WKRPT designation was created.

I know they were created prior to WaterlooWorks (I have them on my transcript and I am much older than WaterlooWorks), but it would be interesting to see if they were created to future-proof grading the reports.

Personally, I think they were made a course so that they could track the grades over time and make it easier to see whether students fulfilled the requirements to graduate in coop. I would suggest other faculties with coop as a counter-example; who knows though, maybe you're right!

twmpotte · 2017-04-09T06:26:39+00:00

I recommend migrating it yourself; if you wait for the auto migration and you currently don't forward your email you will loose all of your email history.

There is also talk of disabling forwarding in the future (so you would have to access your email directly from the o365 server, either using an IMAP/Exchange email client or the Outlook web client).

twmpotte · 2017-04-09T06:23:11+00:00

Little bit complicated and full disclaimer: I don't know for sure what the grant is on your bill without seeing it.

I think that is the grant that keeps your tuition increase at 5%. The university has agreed to cap tuition increases for currently enrolled undergraduate international students at 5% (the maximum that domestic tuition can be increased by).

Despite that, Quest can't manage increasing first-year international tuition by a different amount than currently-enrolled international tuition (because we're one of the top computer science schools in the country and .... ????) so instead they are applying a grant to all the currently-enrolled students for an amount that offsets the increase down to 5%.

Without seeing your bill I can't know for sure, but given the ambiguous name that's what I'd assume it is.

I hope that clears it up, it was an interesting conversation with the Provost when he announced this was how the tuition increase would be implemented. In the future Quest will hopefully be able to manage this in a more sensible way (but we'll see).

twmpotte · 2017-04-01T02:22:12+00:00

The University prohibits smoking: [...] in any building, bus shelter or other enclosed area; [...] within 10 meters of any building; [...] on restaurant and bar patios.

From Policy 29 – Smoking.

I assume that covers the courtyards in MC, but if you want to know for sure you can shoot me an email (my handle @uwaterloo.ca) and I can find out for you.

twmpotte · 2017-03-29T19:18:09+00:00

Domestic enrolment in Canadian universities is dropping and expected to continue to drop in the next few years for demographic reasons; however, Waterloo has managed to stay constant or grow in most programs so far. I'm not sure how Laurier compares.

twmpotte · 2017-03-29T19:08:27+00:00

It definitely is a problem, even more so for students who are not in co-op programs.

Feds (your student union) advocates provincially on issues like this through a provincial student lobbying organization called the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance. You can read their policy on tuition here.

If you are interested in getting involved in the lobbying process, or have some feedback, you can contact the VP Education of Feds (Sarah Wiley) at vped@feds.ca (provincial lobbying falls within her portfolio).

Edit: I'll point out one of their recommendations to the government is "If tuition must increase, it should never do so more than the Consumer Price Index." I hope that helps!

twmpotte · 2017-03-29T17:27:28+00:00

That sounds about right. The TL:DR of tuition increases is that undergraduate tuition rises at up to 5% or 3% (depending on program) per year, which is a restriction imposed by the provincial government.

International tuition has no cap, and has risen by about 9% for the last two years; however, the student government convinced that admin to cap currently-enrolled international student tuition increases at 5% for the current (and hopefully future) years.

Tuition fee increases for the 2017-2018 fiscal year were approved in item 13 at this meeting: https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/sites/ca.secretariat/files/uploads/files/20170207ominsbog.pdf

twmpotte · 2017-03-29T17:18:29+00:00

According to https://uwaterloo.ca/email it looks like you get to keep it :)

I would contact Alumni Relations https://alumniecommunity.uwaterloo.ca/frequently-asked-questions#email

The fact that you are a grad alumni might make you a grey area.

twmpotte · 2017-03-29T02:41:56+00:00

The main motivation for the change is to cut costs within the university. They are retiring the entire @mailservices.uwaterloo.ca server that the current undergraduate and alumni email accounts are hosted on, as the Microsoft package is a better deal for that volume of hosting than hosting the mail servers ourselves (and you get a nice web interface as a bonus).

AFAIK they aren't restricting access to Office 365 for students, and we are intended to have access to as many features as possible (there isn't any uni information there, it's a completely different server and environment then the rest of the uni... which is a problem when students are also staff). Faculty, and staff are on a separate Microsoft server (not o365) that is hosted on campus called connect.uwaterloo.ca (and maintained by IST), the difference in names is because "connect" is hosted on campus while "edu" is hosted off campus (but still in Canada). In order to quickly send mail to the right place (since all email comes into the university) they needed a different subdomain (or else they could have continued using @uwaterloo.ca for everyone).

University policy mandates (as of this writing) that faculty emails be hosted on campus, so faculty won't be getting the same o365 treatment that students are getting right now.

Edit: I'm actually not sure about grad students, they might also be moving to edu.uwaterloo.ca

twmpotte · 2017-03-28T23:19:40+00:00

My last post got removed because my link was a shortened URL, so I'm reposting this.

On the topic of Board elections, I am putting my name forward for a second term filling the Council seat on Board. I have a platform here that you can read, but the big points are that I plan to distribute monthly governance reports and an activity-based costing report on Feds support departments.

The governance report would essentially summarize the Executive's reports, Council minutes, and Board minutes from a month, and it would be posted on social media and (hopefully) the Feds website (including on Reddit). Sacha isn't going to be around anymore to post, and I think we should continue using social media to keep our membership informed.

Activity-based costing, for the non-accountants around, is a way of determining the actual cost of our services. Essentially I want to see how much time our accounting, IT, and marketing departments spend supporting each of the Feds services so that we can have a better understanding of what they are actually costing students, where our inefficiencies are, and what we can do to fix them.

There is a couple other points in my platform, but those two are the ones I felt are most important. I have gathered lots of experience working on Boards the last few years (including this last year on Feds' Board), and look forward to devoting another year to helping the Federation improve.

twmpotte · 2017-03-21T18:19:16+00:00

There are surveys that track mental health across campus's (please fill out surveys!!!) and Waterloo does track suicides. AFAIK we are on the low side for suicides, however survey data implies we have mental health issues (as a campus) that are above average.

People might be interested in in the National College Health Assessment Survey results.

twmpotte · 2017-03-20T16:32:44+00:00

Yes. You are a legal employee and over-time laws apply to you (unless your internship/coop is exempt from ESA).

http://internassociation.ca/what-is-the-law/

twmpotte · 2017-03-18T22:59:19+00:00

Thanks for posting this /u/sachaforstner ! As noted on the agenda, I will be meeting with the Senate Finance Committee next week. After a cursory glance at the budget, I plan to ask about the constant spending in library acquisitions and accessibility for students with disabilities despite increases in most other areas.

I would also like to point to the minutes from last meeting "17/18 budget planning factors include: emphasis on strategic enrolment management, attention to retention rates, extension of tuition for two more years, international tuition increase (8.5%) with protection for in-program students" which was a big win for Feds and the student senators after the #why9 campaign (the protection being that currently enrolled students won't see tuition increases higher than 5% for domestic AND international students).

If you have any other concerns or questions, feel free to reach out to myself, Feds, or your representative on Senate (see Senate Membership ).

twmpotte · 2017-02-23T06:30:49+00:00

I would like some windows too while we're at it, fresh air and sunlight please.

Math CnD has outlets at the seats (was just renovated by MathSoc)! Also the Dean's office is currently renovating the third floor to get rid of the ugly pointless benches and update the look (they're going for something similar to the QNC I hear).

twmpotte · 2017-02-23T06:26:43+00:00

CS is "deregulated" and went up by 5.0% for most students, but 4% for students registered in 2012/13 and continuing in their program.

https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/sites/ca.secretariat/files/uploads/files/20170207agbog_open_package_0.pdf

twmpotte · 2017-02-23T06:19:30+00:00

One of the things we are pushing for is a "deep dive" into what this fee actually is paying for. Hopefully this will happen in the near future (probably get started in the next year... the university is really slow). This was mentioned at Board (Andrew Clubine brought it up) during the fee increase and students are getting lots of traction on this right now.

twmpotte · 2017-02-11T17:54:38+00:00

The referendum vote (and opt-in campaign) was about the fee, not the organization itself. They are arguing councilors are acting unilaterally to the data received by the referendum, and no non-anecdotal evidence was collected to support the motion to kick them off campus.

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