Now here’s a big win for students at Durham College, and hopefully a step for the same change at UOIT. Starting next year, the mobile learning program at Durham College will be dead, and any required computer hardware or software will be the student’s responsibility to acquire. That means no more $1500 per year fee to basically borrow a laptop and its software from the school. It means you will have ownership over what you pay for, andchoice over the laptop and software you use.

Often, the only paid software an academic program needs is Microsoft Office, and paying a one-time fee for a laptop (which you own) and Microsoft Office (which the school bookstore sells for a mere $7 to students) is far cheaper than the recurring $1500/year mobile learning fee paid now. Even in my program, Information Technology, we have made no use of any software installed by the school aside from Microsoft Office. Almost all of our students have formatted their laptops and installed Windows 7 from scratch, and in no case would any of our software require special hardware that was only offered by the university.

Although once intended to be a high-tech advantage distinguishing UOIT/Durham College from other schools, laptops have been easy to come by for years now, and the mobile learning program has just been doing the school more harm than good. Having course material online via WebCT and offering wireless internet access across campus are standard features at all universities these days, and even prospective students know it and aren’t buying the hype. I have some contacts who have worked as tour guides for the schools that found themselves constantly trying to justify this obsolete fee to skeptical prospective students.

Unfortunately, this change only applies to the few Durham College programs that were part of the mobile learning program. Every academic program at UOIT is subject to the mobile learning fee, so we can only hope a similar review of the program is made there.

The related article in The Chronicle, the Durham College newspaper, states that part of the change was thanks to work from the Student Association, so kudos to Amy England and the rest of the SA team for working on this. Now if we can get UOIT’s mobile learning fee axed, students will save $6000 over the course of four years, and we can finally say goodbye to this outdated, costly program.

The theatre has been doing pretty much nothing since it showed up, having had only a few shows over the span of a few years, and there were some legal struggles between the city and theatre owner as well. It’s a fairly new and nice looking building too, so it’s nice to see UOIT take it over.

The back lot is going to be used for a five-storey building, also used by the school for classrooms, offices, and meeting space. The school is also asking for a 99 year lease on a total of 250 parking spaces, which is good news to the many students concerned about the lack of parking in downtown Oshawa.

Making an acquisition like this is a great way to quickly expand the school, and it is not uncommon. I remember when going to Ryerson University that a deal had just been made for the school to even use parts of the newly built AMC Theatre as class space, but I think we’re lucky to have a bit of extra class with the Regent Theatre.

Source: Council OKs transfer of Regent to UOIT (newsdurhamregion.com)

The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act, 1996 (PSSDA) and the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Amendment Act, 2004 were passed to make Ontario’s public sector more open and accountable to taxpayers. The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act requires organizations that receive public funding from the Province of Ontario to disclose annually the names, positions, salaries and total taxable benefits of employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year.

Interestingly enough, this allows you to view the exact salaries of individual professors at colleges and universities across Ontario. You can even see how much your dean or even school president makes! Every professor doesn’t seem to be on the list, but there were more than a few that I knew by name. Turns out the president of UOIT, Ron Bordessa, made $289,499.96 in 2008. Not bad at all!

Click here to view the salaries for the profs at your school, but be warned, the document is huge and might slow down your computer a bit.

This makes sense as the Faculty of Education is currently downtown, and the school plans to move the Faculty of Business downtown in the future (to which there is a Facebook group “protest” against). The relocation was briefly mentioned in the UOIT Master Plan, but with very few details.

But who needs details when you love to complain, right? Regardless, we are all entitled to our opinions, and I choose to take the initial stance of optimism. A lot of people are concerned about parking issues, one-way streets, and a generally unattractive downtown. But if UOIT has spent all this time and money on creating such a great plan for the main campus, does the idea of them leaving the downtown campus as an afterthought make any sense? Considering it will be home to the Business Faculty, one of the largest, if not the largest, faculties on campus, I expect the downtown campus to get the same thorough treatment that the main campus has.

Not only will the downtown campus receive attention from the school, but also businesses. Downtown Oshawa can become a happening place when the right parties become involved (as proven by the success of Isabella’s Chocolate Cafe) and with high student traffic, downtown Oshawa will continue to grow in great ways. One of the things I miss most from attending Ryerson University was the sense that I was in a miniature city of students, but in reality, the school only owns a handful of buildings which are scattered amongst existing businesses in downtown Toronto. Many of these businesses thrived off the student population, like the Thai cuisine I would visit frequently with friends. There were plenty of places to hang out when at school, and I envision the same thing happening in downtown Oshawa with growth driven by an increasing student population. Currently my entire university experience takes place in about 2 or 3 buildings standing next to each other on a campus completely cut off from the rest of society — hardly the campus atmosphere that other universities experience.

So that’s my take on the issue. In the end, any opinion at this point is highly speculative. UOIT hasn’t revealed exactly how much of a focus they are going to have on the downtown campus. In fact, all the speculation is based on a few bullet points in a presentation. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting discussion, so here is a glass-half-full opinion.

UOIT is still no further ahead in their search for a new name. But a recent news article mentions one idea I like a lot.

Another member suggested asking the government for the name University of Ontario, and if it isn’t granted, the school can run institute of technology beside the name in eight-point font.

It drops the IT part, which seems to be the main issue, but still retains enough of the name so that we wouldn’t have to try and build our reputation up from scratch again.

Sounds good to me!

This publicly available board report from the UOIT website reveals the planned student fees for the 2009-2010 school year. The verdict: everything is going up.

Before you get too up in arms about this, read the background section which states that the tuition fees up to 2010 were already decided upon way back in 2006. In addition, the ancillary fees have always increased at a rate consistent with inflation.

It doesn’t lessen the pain on your wallet at all, but it’s good to note that this isn’t anything new, students aren’t having anything pulled over their heads, and as ancillary fee protocols are a provincial requirement, it’s almost definite the same thing is happening at every other school. But if you were looking to figure out how much money you need to save up at your summer job, here’s the info you need.

Help give UOIT the excellent reputation it deserves! A valid UOIT e-mail address is required.

The Globe and Mail want to hear what you have to say about your university – from teaching assistants to technology services, professors to parking, athletics to extracurricular activities.  The data collected will be published in The Globe and Mail and the results will be made available to UOIT to help identify ways to improve your overall educational experience.

Take the survey and you will automatically be entered to win:

One (1) $1,000 cash award

Two (2) $500 cash awards

The Canadian University Report takes just 15 to 20 minutes to complete – but you have to complete the survey before 12:00 midnight, April 30, 2009.

“In terms of the ratio of long-term debt to revenues … The worst performers are University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) at 219%, Wilfrid Laurier (WLU) at 87% and Lakehead at 76%”

“If one were to estimate the long-term debt per enrolled student at each university … The highest amounts are for UOIT at about $47,000, Lakehead at $13,500 and WLU at $11,100”

I suppose it’s understandable that UOIT has so much debt, being a new school that is still trying to quickly expand. But with our tuition fees already considerably higher than other schools (my grand total for the year with the laptop fee is about $3000 – $4000 more than what I paid at Ryerson) you would think the school would be doing a bit better financially, although we do have a lower student population. Either way, you can’t help but be a little frightened by how huge the gaps between UOIT in first and Lakehead/Laurier in second are in the above figures.

This includes more trips on the wildly popular routes serving the UOIT and Durham College campus, where buses heading to the campus are often jam-packed during the morning rush. Service along Simcoe Street during peak times will be every 7.5 minutes, up from the current 15, making it the most frequent bus in Durham.

There you go. As a frequent passenger on the Simcoe bus, I can definitely vouch for this need in increased service. The bus is jam-packed not only in the rush hours, but all throughout the day.

It’s a great step in the right direction and we will hopefully see some more changes soon. Personally I’d like to see some entirely new routes, like a one way ride to the Oshawa Centre from the school as currently there is no way to get to the mall unless you transfer buses downtown.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

Thomas H. Huxley (1825 – 1895)

The project has been in the works mainly behind the scenes since June 23, 2008, but now UOIT and Durham College are asking the students for their say on the plan so far. A public meeting was held yesterday presenting the master plan so far, and additional feedback is requested for the months to come.

A public website with the current status of the project is available for viewing at http://projects.sasaki.com/uoit_durham/, but the site section with particular interest is the Work-to-Date section. There you can view both of the presentations so far to see exactly what is being addressed (view Phase II to see the most recent status).

The presentation is filled with lots of statistics on classroom usage, class times, work space, and enrolment. You can tell this is being planned out very carefully. Here are a few things I’ve found that should be interesting to any UOIT student:

1. The lowest quality classrooms are all considered temporary spaces (phase 2, slide 9). This was probably obvious to most, but that means we can say goodbye to classrooms in U5, UL, Pavillion (a.k.a “The Tent”), J Wing, K Portable.
2. Amongst other needs, the plan aims to increase both study and residence space.
3. Immediate plans for the new Cyber Crime Center, possibly on the north campus. Good news for anyone in my program, we might actually see this thing in our last year if we are lucky.
4. “Potential to develop high tech research park on North Campus” Sounds interesting, I wonder what that would entail?
5. “Potential Health Sciences program with link to Queens” Now that’s a good way of trying to give the school’s reputation a boost.
6. “Business and IT as separate Faculties” Very cool, shows the school’s dedication to it’s technology base and giving students a more relevant IT education than the typical Computer Science program has to offer.
7. Development of Downtown Campus with CJPS, Business and Communications programs
8. ‘One-stop’ student services building: Housing office, Writing center, ESL department, 1st year experience drop in center, Center for Students with Disabilities, Career resource center, IT front-counter services, Bookstore, Cafeteria, Other (e.g. registrar, bursar, financial aid, academic advising)? Sounds convenient!

Additionally, there are all sorts of diagrams and photos of potential campus layouts and new buildings. I’ve embedded that section of the presentation below. If you are reading from Facebook, click here to view the pictures.

All in all, an exciting future for UOIT and Durham College. If there’s one thing I always felt I was missing out on by attending UOIT, it was the sense of living in a miniature-city of students, like when you set foot on the Queen’s or York university campuses. It looks like UOIT has focused it’s efforts on a more beautiful campus, and if we’re lucky, current students might be able to enjoy at least some of these changes.

UOIT and Durham College students can vote on the upcoming change to the UPASS. In summary, the choices are:

1. Pay $60 a semester instead of the previous $50. Have an optional $80 charge for using the pass in the summer as well should you take summer courses. Service to the school will also increase! Under the new agreement,the UPASS would save each students approximately $520 a school year and $240 in the summer term.
2. Drop the whole UPASS, pay for the bus yourself at more than double the price.

As is probably obvious, I want everyone to choose yes for the UPASS! I use it every day and it’s a great deal! Of course, not everyone does, but I’m rooting for a yes.

There isn’t really any trick to this. Everything will work perfectly if you just start your laptop and log in with a network cable plugged into one of the network jacks at school. It will then prompt you to update your password as it has expired, and will update everything on the network accordingly.

Alternatively, if you aren’t getting this prompt (I didn’t) you can do what I did. Log into one of the computers at the library or mobile commons. You should definitely be prompted to change your password at this point. Then log into your laptop with your old password and the network cable plugged in. After you log in, a pop-up will appear by the taskbar telling you to log in again with the new password you set earlier. Your password will then be updated on your laptop and on the rest of the network.

UOIT is still trying to think of a good new name. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

… individuals were asked to decide between potential names like: Central Ontario University, Lakeridge University, McLaughlin University, the University of Oshawa, Ontario Lakeridge University, Technology University of Ontario.

I’m disappointed with the suggestions so far, but I can’t really think of anything better. I think Lakeridge and McLaughlin are improvements, but still not much better. Amy England, president of the student association, gives the impression students might be against the name change, but I don’t know a single person who thinks that UOIT is a good name for the school. Hopefully something outstanding pops out in the coming months.

1. Hit “Print” in your document.

2. Select your printer and click “Properties”. If you do not yet have the printer you want installed, click “Find Printer” and “Find Now” in the following window, which will retrieve a list of all available printers on campus.

3. Under the “Layout” tab, look under “Print on Both Sides” and select either “Flip on Long Edge” or “Flip on Short Edge”, the difference being in how it will flip the second page. A better explanation of these can be found under the “Troubleshooting” tab, then clicking the “Help” button, but either option will get you double-sided pages.

4. Click OK, and then Print your document!

Checking MyCampus is a pain. I currently have my iPhone and my Netvibes Homepage check it for me automatically so I don’t miss anything important! Save yourself some hassle and set this up.

Protocol: IMAP
Server: itsosims02.mycampus.ca
Port: 143 (standard one), and no SSL (no authentication)
Username: Your Student ID i.e. 100123456
Password: Your MyCampus password or your original MyCampus password if you changed it i.e. Your Birthdate MMDDYY