Monday, June 8, 2015

Remembering Jim Leslie, father of distance ed

There had to be a better way.

That was what Physics professor Jim Leslie and his colleague Ted Dixon thought in 1968 as they spoke to high school physics teachers who were having trouble making their way to campus through the worst snow Ontario had to offer in order to attend lectures to improve their qualifications.

Instead of traveling all over the place to deliver lectures, or force others to drive long distances to attend said lectures, why not put the lectures on tape and send them through the mail?

So the physics department purchased a tape-duplication machine, and that's how Leslie, who died on May 29, founded the University of Waterloo's correspondence program, which later became known as distance education, the forerunner to the Centre for Extended Learning. The first lectures were distributed on reel-to-reel tape, with compact cassettes, which had recently been introduced commercially, coming shortly thereafter.

Leslie graduated from the University of Toronto in 1957 and earned an MS and PhD from the University of Illinois. He joined the University of Waterloo in 1963 as an assistant professor in the physics department, with a research focus on superconductivity and low-temperature physics. He would be appointed professor in 1975.

The physics department had been offering courses to high school science teachers who wanted to upgrade their qualifications, and in 1968, after hearing about scheduling issues and transportation problems, Leslie and fellow physics professor Ted Dixon decided to try delivering lectures by correspondence, recording the material on reel-to-reel tape.

"Up to this time other models of correspondence courses used only written material," wrote Physics Professor John Smith, an early participant in the initiative, in 2004. "To make the courses seem more like live lectures, Jim wanted to offer them with an audio component to supplement the written material. It was decided that lectures would be recorded on tape and be accompanied by written notes from the professor."

Later that year, Waterloo's Senate approved the offering of four physics courses—astronomy, electronics, electricity and magnetism, and atomic and nuclear physics—by correspondence. 

"None of the original four instructors had experience in taping lectures, but we were young and eager," Smith recalls. "We quickly learned some of the recording pitfalls—threading the reel-to-reel tape, the background noises caused by telephones ringing, coughing, paper rustling, and people knocking at the office door. Another challenge was to time the lecture so that we did not run out of tape. If a mistake was made while recording, the process of recording over it with a correction of the same time length was almost impossible."

In that first year, there were 130 students.

In 1979, Leslie and Dixon founded Waterloo Distance Education, Inc. with the intention of exporting correspondence course material internationally.

Leslie served as the director of the correspondence program until 1980. By the time he stepped down as director, the program offered more than 200 courses on cassette, including degree programs in a number of fields. The correspondence program was renamed Distance Education in the early 1990s, followed by Distance and Continuing Education, before its re-christening as the Centre for Extended Learning in 2010.

In 1982 Leslie was appointed director of the Guelph-Waterloo Centre for Graduate Work in Physics. He was also a member of the Canadian Association of Physicists and the American Physical Society. In 1993 he was awarded the 125^th Anniversary of Confederation Medal for his contribution to Canadian post-secondary education.

Leslie retired in February 2001. In 2003, he was named an Honorary Member of the University in recognition of his pioneering efforts.

The Centre for Extended Learning has a $1,000 award named in his honour, established in 1982, that is granted during fall convocation to a graduating student who has achieved a first-class standing and who has earned 50 per cent or more of the credits for his or her undergraduate degree through online and distance courses at the University.

Leslie was 79. He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Professor Josephine Naidoo, his three children and several grandchildren.

New members of 25, 35 and 45-Year Clubs named

The annual recognition reception for new members of the University community celebrating milestone employment anniversaries is set to take place later this month, with new members of the 25-Year and 35-Year Clubs being presented with an award for their dedication and years of service.

Beginning this year, a new cohort will now be recognized alongside the 25- and 35-Year Club - those staff and faculty who have marked their 45^th anniversaries with Waterloo. Not only that, but those active and retired employees who would have celebrated a 45 year anniversary prior to this year are being commemorated.

The new members of the 25-Year Club, who started working at the University in 1990 are:

• Irena Baltaduonis, Rita Bandyopadhyay, Michelle Banic, James Barnett, Elizabeth Ann Breen, Peter Briant, Suzanne Burdett, Bruce Campbell, Jeff Caswell, Nancy Chiang, Karen Davidson, Tracy Dietrich, Gerard Doyle, Thomas Duever, Richard Elgood, Giuseppe Facciulo, Jacob Fisher, Karen Fleet, Geoffrey Fong, Elizabeth Harnum, Beverly Hubbard, Wendy Irving, Sabine Kawalec, Xinzhi Liu, Richard Loney, Greg Macedo, Martin MacLeod, Stephen Markan, Christine Morawski, Kirsten Morris, Denise Mueller, Mladen Nikolic, Adrian Pepper, Mercedes Perez, Hoa Mloc Phuong, Johan Reis, Lisa Roenspiess, Christine Rutter, Magdy Salama, Charlene Schumm, Jeffrey Shallit, Pat Shaw, Sivabal Sivaloganathan, Mark Sobon, Mary Soulis, Eugene Starchuk, Susan Steffler, Margaret Stephenson, Chris Triantafilou, Costas Tzoganakis, Kenneth Vetzal, Carolyn Vincent, Leona Voss, Lesley Wade, David Wagner, Steven Woods, and Tanya Yoworski.

The new members of the 35-year club, who started working at the University in 1980, are:

• Lorraine Albrecht, Janet Bender, Bonnie Lee Bender-Vargas, Michael Borkowski, Scott Calder, Janice Campbell, David Canzi, Debbie, Clermont, Patricia Cook, Andrew Cooper, Katrina Di Gravio, Timothy Farrell, Maureen Fraser, Philip Frowd, Ian Goulden, Karen Hammond, Laurie Hanley, Richard Hecktus, Laurie Hoffman-Goetz, Sheila Hurley, Katherine Jackson, Laurie Jones, Yvonne Kingsbury, Wing-Ki Liu, Jane McGeoch, Carol Ann Olheiser, Hilda Rottine, Caryl Russell, Betty Toews, Jim Tremain, Pamela Waechter, Janet Waite, Connie Weber, Judith Whitfield, Frederick Widall, William Charles Woods, Jean Zadilsky, and Karen Zehr.

The inaugural members of the 45-Year Club are:

• Adelheid Bishop, Betty Graf, Helen Hannusch, Nancy Heimpel, Roslyn Keller, Roger  Lycke, Judy McTaggart, Bruce Mitchell, Janet-Lynn Metz, Byron Murdock, Isabelle Anne Nador, John North, Garry Rempel, Ingrid Schugardt, Stanley Shantz, Christopher Springer, and Valerie Whetstone.

The reception will be held on Tuesday, June 16 at 6:00 p.m. in the Physical Activities Complex.

Notes as campus prepares for Convocation

As Convocation ramps up, visitors to campus may find the situation challenging due to the light rail construction at the Columbia Street West railway crossing that will see a section of the road closed, beginning today, for two weeks.

The Registrar's Office distributed a message to graduating students last week about how the closure might impact travel to campus, gown pickup and parking. The gist of that message is as follows:

Visitors should allow themselves extra travel time. The intersection at Columbia and Hagey will remain open, allowing drivers to access Lot X on the University's north campus. Lots N and W are also open to visitors, but please be prepared for possible detours and delays due to increased traffic volume. Attendants will be on site to direct traffic. 

If you have elderly guests, the Registrar's Office suggests that you drop them off at the PAC before parking.

"We appreciate your patience and sincerely hope that you and your family enjoy Convocation," says the Registrar's Office's note.

To assist the campus community during the next phase of ION construction close to campus, a special travel disruption alert page has been set up to outline where the closures are and how they might impact pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Keep checking that page for more information.