Thursday, May 3, 2018

Quest reaches a turning point

A message from the Student Information Systems (SIS) Steering Committee.

We are excited to share an update on the significant work that has been accomplished over the past two years by the multi-departmental team that supports Quest, as well as information on upcoming initiatives.

In 2016, the state of the Quest system was one of serious technical debt. The underlying technology had become stale and many software components were reaching end-of-life; feature customizations made it difficult to maintain a regular upgrade schedule; and the system did not comply with the University’s disaster recovery and uptime requirements. In short, it was becoming increasingly inefficient and posing a risk to the institution.  

Over the past two years, the Quest team has completed a tremendous amount of work to upgrade and enhance the system. The hardware, operating system, database, and application have all been upgraded to the most current technologies, and it now also complies with disaster recovery and uptime needs, capable of an easy fail-over if needed.

During this two-year time period the team also supported the following critical projects:

• A complete reimplementation of how OUAC student applications are received in Quest,
• the launch of the University’s new financial reporting system Unit4,
• the de-customization of the Student Centre, and
• improvements to OSAP processes in support of a provincial government initiative.

The complexity and importance of this work necessitated significant effort and testing to ensure the seamless transition and completion of each initiative.

We are now in the favourable position of refocusing our efforts on the more tangible, client-facing work that will benefit students, faculty and staff across campus. Over the coming months you will see more communication about these initiatives with ample opportunity to provide feedback and help prioritize this work. A new website will be launched to provide updates on this process, provide visibility into what is being done, and help to keep the dialogue open and ongoing.

If you have requests or ideas you would like to share, we are happy to hear them and encourage you to speak to a member of the SIS Steering Committee:

• Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs: Jeff Casello, Lynn Judge
• Information Systems & Technology: Bruce Campbell, Daryl Dore, David Kibble
• Registrar’s Office: Cathy Newell Kelly
• Finance: Patricia Hancock

Comp sci grad student wins Murray Martin Prize

This story originally appeared on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

We live in a world increasingly dependent on the Internet for information retrieval, social interaction and general leisure. A growing number of Internet users with cognitive or visual impairments need assistive technology to make information accessible to them, but visually complex web pages can be difficult to navigate for assistive technology.

It’s novel insight into this problem that earned Michael Cormier, a PhD student in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, the 2018 Murray Martin Prize for Best Research Paper by a Math Grad Student. His winning paper "Purely vision-based segmentation of web pages for assistive technology," co-authored with supervisor Dr. Robin Cohen, is published in a special issue on assistive computer vision and robotics in the journal Computer Vision an Image Understanding.

Grounded in computer vision, a subfield of artificial intelligence research, this work hinges on the clever insight that web pages can be considered as visual images. Cormier used this foundation to design a novel computer vision model that segments web pages both hierarchically and optimally by using a Bayesian approach to detect edges, and which also considers classification. 

Vision-based methods are not sensitive to implementation language or complexity, meaning this innovative model has applications far and wide in accessible technologies. His foundational work creating this model offers rich information and novel insights that form a viable launch pad for future computer vision research to take off from. 

A direct application of this work to the field of assistive technology is improving systems that produce alternative presentations of text. It enables users, especially those with cognitive and visual challenges, to interact with web pages through a series of augmented experiences. Practical functions like decluttering pages or zooming preferentially, are desirable for everyday use. 

The $3,060 Murray Martin scholarship is made possible thanks to generous donation from Pitney Bowes Inc. in honour of Murray Martin, the retiring chair, president, CEO and director whose continued investment in research and development has ensured the company’s industry leadership. 

MFA thesis exhibition and other notes

The Fine Arts department is presenting MFA Thesis Two from May 3 to Saturday, May 19 in the University of Waterloo Art Gallery in East Campus Hall, which features the work of two MFA candidates.

In Gallery One is Aaron MacLean's "Provisional Zones," an immersive installation made mostly from found and discarded objects.

In Gallery Two is Tait Wilman's "Search Party," an installation and video exploration of identity - how it is constructed, consumed, and what role the landscape plays in the formation of Canadian identity.

The opening reception takes place tonight from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

The exhibitions are free and open to the public.

IST staff members Eric Bremner and Tyler Struyk will be giving an IT seminar based on their experiences at the recent DrupalCon 2018 in Nashville, TN.

Bremner is a developer with the WCMS team in Client Services who started working at the University in 2012 as a computer consultant for University Relations before transitioning to the WCMS team in 2014. He is the lead programmer for the UWaterloo Scholar project and works with Tyler Stryuk on the current Drupal 8 implementation.

Tyler Struyk began working at Waterloo six years ago. He has a background in a variety of programming languages and has developed many new and innovative projects that have changed the way our content management systems work. Since 2007, he has specialized strictly in Drupal and PHP. He is an active module maintainer and contributor to the Drupal Project. He prides himself on being an expert in almost all aspects of Drupal, including theming, designing and customizing modules.

The Athletics and Recreation Open House takes place today in the Student Life Centre from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. There will be tours of both CIF and the PAC leaving the Warriors Tent inside the SLC Great Hall at 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 P.M. for those students interested in learning more about how to get involved and active this spring. Check the Facebook event for more details.