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Submission guidelines
A holiday message from the President
by Feridun Hamdullahpur, President and Vice-Chancellor.
With the holidays approaching and the conclusion of our 60th Anniversary, I’m delighted to send you season’s greetings on behalf of the entire University of Waterloo community. Please enjoy this holiday message from all of us.
Accept my best wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year filled with health and prosperity.
Waterloo Lean leaders win 2017 Share Showcase
David Kibble (IST), Raghda Sabry (HR), Shona Dunseith (HR), Kimberley Snage (HR), Kim Gingerich (Provost’s Office), Scott Smith (High Performance Solutions and Consortium).
Supporting the University's Robust Employer-Employee strategic theme and Excellence Canada initiative, Lean methodology provides a consistent framework and set of tools for improving processes. It is founded on the principles of continuous improvement and respect for people, and empowers employees in finding solutions around inefficient processes.
In the 2017 Share Showcase, put on by High Performance Solutions & Consortium (HPSC), University of Waterloo Lean leaders took home first place, winning the Best Practice award. The Share Showcase is an all-day-event featuring presentations from 18 cross-organizational teams across 4 consortiums who have implemented Lean methodologies to improve processes. The University of Waterloo team presented improvements made to the staff approval to recruit process at Waterloo, using a Star Wars theme to add flare to their presentation. The Lean team illustrated the lengthy approval to recruit process that required several levels of approval and manual signatures, and significantly delayed hiring.
As a first step towards improvement, a visual representation of the approval to recruit process, listing every step from start to finish (a process map), was documented and issues were identified; including the type and number of approvals required. Opportunities for improvement were identified and metrics were captured; such as the time to complete the entire process and waiting time between steps. With all of this information, a future-state process map was created and eight wastes (inefficiencies or unnecessary tasks) were identified.
A future-state process was defined and has now been implemented. The average time, from the beginning of the approval to recruit process to the end, went from 99 days to an average of 7.39 days. The time to complete actual steps went from an average of 8.4 hours to 6.9 hours. The number of Provost approvals was reduced by 77 percent, and the number of times a position went through the approval cycle was reduced from 3 times to 1.
If you would like to learn more about Lean at Waterloo, please visit the Lean site. You can also contact Kimberley Snage, Director, HR Projects, Technology & Analytics, internal Lean consortium lead, or Marilyn Thompson, Associate Provost, Human Resources, Executive Sponsor.
Staff conference extends call for proposals
Due to several extension requests for campus partners to collaborate, the deadline for submissions of proposal abstracts is now Friday, January 5, 2018. So, if you have been thinking about a proposal but unsure about the timing, you have been given the gift of time this holiday season.
Organizational & Human Development (OHD) is inviting proposals for workshop sessions for the 11th annual Waterloo Staff Conference taking place on April 5 and 6, 2018. Session proposals should be for a stimulating or interactive learning experience focused on professional and/or personal development of employees at the University of Waterloo. The workshop or presentation should include discussion items, activities, and/or other methods of engagement, along with clear learning objectives or outcomes. If you have an idea for a workshop or presentation, we would love to hear from you. If you have any questions about the proposal guidelines, or the submission process, please feel free to contact me.
If you are interested, please preview the submission guidelines and sample form to use as a rough draft (PDF) to assist in drafting your proposal and to be aware of important information and expectations. Once complete, please use the online form to submit your session proposal.
For questions about the conference or submitting a proposal, please contact Mark Lisetto-Smith, co-ordinator, communications & events, Organizational & Human Development at ext. 38257.
Leading the new age of data management
This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Waterloo Stories site.
A computer science professor whose fascination with data management began before formal database systems even existed, has been recognized for his work by the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS).
Tamer Özsu, a professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science and world leader and pioneer in data management, has been named a Fellow of AAAS for his principled contributions to database systems research, education and service.
“We are entering a new age of data management,” Özsu says. “The advancements we’re seeing today are similar to the leaps we saw in the 1970s and 1980s, when traditional relational databases were being created, implemented and expanded.”
Özsu’s interest in data goes back to 1976, when he was a part-time graduate student in industrial engineering while working at the Turkish postal administration to develop a searchable directory. “We were struggling to figure out how this could be done, what data structures to use, and how to lay it out so users could submit queries in multiple ways,” he says.
At the time, Özsu was taking a graduate course that introduced the topic. “We had a visiting professor from the US who was teaching a course when a lightbulb suddenly lit up. I thought, ‘Ah, this is the way to solve the problem!’ and I was hooked on database systems ever since.”
Read the rest of the article on Waterloo Stories.
Tuesday's notes
Two Waterloo faculty members — Ian Goldberg and Ken Salem — were recognized as Distinguished Members by the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society. Check out the full story on the School of Computer Science news site.
The Faculty Association’s Status of Women and Equity Committee has extended the nomination deadline for its annual Equity and Inclusivity Award until January 14, 2018.
The award celebrates members and/or affiliates of the University of Waterloo community whose actions have made a demonstrable impact on equity, inclusivity, and/or diversity at the University.