UVic Author Celebration (fwd)

Posted on February 4, 2009 by pan

FYI

“Could you please circulate this announcement and invitation to your colleagues?
Thanks very much!

The UVic Libraries, in partnership with the UVic Bookstore, is reinstating the Celebration of UVic Authors program. As part of the program, we are planning to host an annual celebration of UVic Authors beginning in fall 2009. The celebration will coincide with Canadian Library Month (October).

There are three criteria for submitting a book. In 2009, the library will honour books that:

. were published in 2007 or 2008

. are authored, co-authored, edited or translated by University of Victoria faculty, students, staff, retirees, and alumni

. are published in print or electronic format

Note: Please do not submit reprint titles.

Titles can be submitted using the form available at:

http://library.uvic.ca/site/authors/submit.html

More information about the program is available at:

http://library.uvic.ca/site/authors/about.html

If you have any questions regarding the Author Celebration Program please email Inba Kehoe at scholcom@uvic.ca.”

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Re: CHINA – CANADA Scholars’ Exchange program

Posted on February 3, 2009 by pan

the scholars exchange program wendy mentioned is for faculty members
and students who are interested in doing research/study in china

http://www.chineseeducation.ca/htmls/edu/16.html

===

there is another program also sponsored by china scholarship council (csc) with
uvic on phd students visiting uvic or getting degree at uvic

http://web.uvic.ca/gradstudies/news/ChinaMOUstory.html

i had such a student applied last year and just started this january (yes, it’s
a long process), and i think i can share something from my experience (i wanted
to do this earlier but was swamped by various things recently)

  • the student has to apply as usual at uvic (but indicating they are applying
    for the csc scholarship as well)
  • you will evaluate the student as usual
  • if you decide to make an offer to the student, you need to indicate you are
    covering their tuition at uvic (csc scholarship requires the host univ to
    provide tuition waiver. many universities have, but uvic does not)
  • last year, the student had to get their application to csc by march 15 (not
    sure about the timeline this year, but should be in the same range). since the
    student (if still in university) needs to compete through home university (and
    this year it will be more competitive), so normally they need the offer letter
    much earlier than that to qualify at univ level
  • last year, the results of csc scholarship competition were known in may and
    july (two rounds), respectively. if they can catch on the paperwork and visa
    properly, they should be able to show up in sept
  • once they are on campus, you want to advise them to contact the chinese
    consulate general in vancouver (who actually distributes the scholarship
    quarterly) right away. the first installment may take several months to come,
    so you may want to pay their graduate support by term (rather than month by
    month) to cover the tuition payment at the beginning

that’s all i can recall right now. if you have any questions and need further
info, feel free to let wendy and me know. thanks

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Re: Invitation to Lunar New Year Celebration

Posted on January 25, 2009 by pan

monday, january 26 is the chinese niu (sounds like “new” and means “ox”) year. if you have chinese friends, colleagues, students, etc, give them a surprising greeting: gong xi fa cai (good fortune 😉

On Tue, 13 Jan 2009, Sharon Moulson wrote:
> From: Amy Loggin
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 11:23 AM
> Subject: Lunar New Year
>
>
> The Equity and Human Rights Office, Diversity Advisor and the Indigenous
> Counselling Center invite you to pass through Sedgewick C Wing for a
> traditional treat in celebration of the Lunar New Year during the
> afternoon of Monday, January 26, 2009 . All are welcome!
>
> ________________________________
>
> Equity and Human Rights
> University of Victoria
> Ph: (250) 721-8488
> Fax: (250) 721-8570

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Re: BCNET info session (jan 20, 2:30pm, ecs660)

Posted on January 23, 2009 by pan

(i apologize if you receive multiple copies of this message—luckily it has no attachments. since enannounce only reaches faculty/staff members and graduate students, i have to rely on ess and csunion to pass on the massage, as well as a few unpublished mailing lists on the bcc list, so some of you might be cross-listed for multiple copies)

for those of you who had to miss the bcnet information session this past tuesday on its broadband innovation challenge competition (also known as the “coolest applications contest” since it’s actually about network *applications*), here are the slides from the bcnet representative, uvic student, and uvic faculty member

* BCNET Broadband Innovation Challenge
– Tamara Klein, BCNET Communications Manager
– http://panlab.cs.uvic.ca/webb/download.php?id=3843

* Experience of participation last year
– Yasser Haji Valizadeh, UVic student
– http://panlab.cs.uvic.ca/webb/download.php?id=3844

* Support UVic faculty can provide
– Jianping Pan, UVic faculty member
– http://panlab.cs.uvic.ca/webb/download.php?id=3842

* Student/faculty/staff networking opportunities
– discuss ideas, recruit team members, etc
– cookies and drinks: sorry you cannot get them afterward online 😉

(ironically, thanks to computer networks, spammers nowadays can crawl our websites and send every one of us an email asking for netlink username and password—of course you shouldn’t reply, but we still do not have an effective way to reach all our students. if you have ways to counter that, you should show off your idea and prototype on bcnet competition as well!)

Posted in bic, csc, uvic | Leave a comment

Re: library rep

Posted on January 19, 2009 by pan

it’s me, me, me since this academic year 😉

(i’ve sent out a message to csregular on dec 12, since the library had some money for us, and since then i have forwarded quite a few book lists to them already. i will forward that message to you again.)

they still want the library rep to forward the request (although i do not really see the necessity of this since nowadays everything can be handled electrically and peer-to-peer is much scalable than client-server, and more importantly i trust the professional judgment of my colleagues). i will forward all requests i get (unless the books are there or available to us electronically already), but the library decides which/whether to buy (some rules of thumb they use are included in that broadcast message)

i am open to book requests all year around though. thanks

On Mon, 19 Jan 2009, Micaela Serra wrote:
> Who is the library rep in our department to whom I can submit
> a request to purchase a library book?
> Or is there a new algorithm to do so?
>
> ****************************
> Micaela Serra, Professor and Graduate Advisor
> Dept. of Computer Science
> Univ. of Victoria
> Victoria, B.C. V8W 3P6 Canada
> tel.: +1 250 472 5769
> Fax: +1 250 472 5708

Posted in csc, library, uvic | Leave a comment

Re: Announcement to your class

Posted on January 18, 2009 by pan

you may have been seeing the bcnet broadband innovation challenge messages floating around these days. bcnet staff member will come to uvic this tuesday (january 20) and give an information session 2:30pm in ecs660 (the announcement has been sent to enannounce last week, but you know, not all of our students have a chance to check their email yet 😉

so we will really appreciate if you can mention this information session to your student this monday or tuesday before your lecture starts (for your convenience, a ppt/pdf slide is attached to this message). since this contest is about network applications, it’s open to everyone in computer science and software engineering with an application running on the network (nowadays, it’s not easy to find one not doing so)

faculty members are also encouraged to be present to show our support to our students, as well as volunteering to be mentors (since this is about applications, mentoring is not limited to networking faculty at all)

thanks a lot for your help/support again

Posted in bic, csc, uvic | Leave a comment

BCNET info session (jan 20, 2:30pm, ecs660)

Posted on January 15, 2009 by pan

BCNET staff member will come to uvic tuesday, january 20, and give an information session in ecs660 from 2:30–4pm, on bcnet, the broadband innovation challenge competition, the research poster session, and the procedures to participate in these activities. for a quick look at the competition and the winners in previous years, please check

http://www.bc.net/news_events_publications/competitions.htm

in addition, a former uvic student will talk about the experience of participating in the competition and attending the annual bcnet conference last year, as well as the support can be expected from faculty members

the competition is about network applications, and any projects this year or last year running on a broadband network are eligible, and it is open to all bc university students, undergraduate and graduate

drinks and cookies will be provided. the last 30 minutes are for student and faculty networking opportunities with bcnet staff: discussing project ideas, recruiting team members, seeking help/resources, etc

faculty members and course instructors: please let your students in your group and class know this opportunity and encourage them to attend. also faculty members are encouraged to show up and volunteer for mentor. thanks

please mark your calendar and see you next tuesday

Posted in bic, csc, uvic | Leave a comment

Talking to our colleagues (was: RE: Too many A+ grades in a class)

Posted on December 24, 2008 by pan

First, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

i think we all can have more trust on the professional judgment of our colleagues—i might be wrong, but i am not worried, as far as we can keep these things in an *open* and *fair* manner: talking to our colleagues

(so probably it is the time to leave the office door open while inside, and to remove the cover from the door window—encourage our colleagues to knock your door if they see you still have a chance to talk)

i believe both they are doing their job with professional consciousness. i also believe the students have done really hard to get their a+, if not, next year, we probably have 70 students in this class

(i am not against blackboard or moodle, but i really encourage people to have course/research materials publicly accessible, as a service to the community, as well as letting students know an a+ is a real a+)

after all, what’s the difference between worrying about giving out too many a+’s and letting students shortcut our academic and research programs?

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Re: book purchases for Computer Science

Posted on December 12, 2008 by pan

i am the new library rep for our dept. i was told that there is some money left in the computer science budget to purchase new books for our library (please see the email attached below).

i think we’d better choose the books ourselves first, so if you know some books that our library should have (catalog search at library.uvic.ca can tell whether our library already has or not), please email me the list.

or if you want to see what are the new books available, please login to http://cm.blackwell.com (use the ID and password embedded below) and check the review reports and use the search function there. you can submit the request directly on blackwell’s website, but please also email me a list (including title, author name, publisher, isbn, etc), so i can aggregate all the requests from computer science and forward one list to katy.

i trust the judgment of our colleagues, so i will forward all your requests to the library, but i cannot guarantee whether every book requested will be purchased or not. i am not the one to make the decision, but i was told some rules of thumb people at the library use:

+ they hope to the book will be of interest to someone outside the computer science dept as well, since they want to serve a big population

+ many books from springer are available electronically and uvic has site license for all computers on campus (or through proxy when off campus), so normally they do not want to buy the print copy

+ also normally they do not want to buy multiple copies.

i do not think i can make the best choice alone myself, especially in the areas that i am not familiar with, so i do need your recommendation, and we want to make the best use of the budget (it will not be carried over).

please email me your list before friday decemeber 19, so i can get the dept list compiled and forwarded to the library. thanks

Posted in csc, library, uvic | Leave a comment

Re: finals

Posted on November 26, 2008 by pan

you can see me tomorrow morning (also i am usually in office pretty late as well). i am sorry to hear the scheduling issue for you, but we are all bounded by university regulations

http://web.uvic.ca/calendar2008/FACS/UnIn/UARe/Exam.html

we have listed the final exam policies in our course outline

http://courses.seng.engr.uvic.ca/courses/2008/fall/csc/361

and have stressed in the very first lecture. we have also passed the draft and finalized final exam schedule to students immediately after it became available, so we cannot make changes after the schedule is finalized

what we can do has to be *fair* to all students. since you have cited yyy and zzz, i will have to cc to them as well. you may want to talk to our chair as well, so i will put her on the cc list.  -j

On Wed, 26 Nov 2008, xxx wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if it would be possible to set up a time to meet sometime
> this week or next to discuss the final exam as I have classes during your
> office hours. I have talked to yyy and zzz and they seem
> to have no disagreement with me taking the exam on the 18th so I thought
> maybe if I discussed it with you in person maybe I could change your mind.
> I assure you if this wasn’t a chartered flight I would just change it to
> another day but as its not possible I need to try to get a resolution.
>
> Thanks,
> xxx
>

Posted in csc361f08, fairness | Leave a comment