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Thanks a million: Request Tracker surpasses 1,000,000 tickets
The 1,000,001st RT ticket requestor joins IST’s Service Desk staff who triage RT tickets, and IST’s RT administrators, to celebrate the 1,000,000th RT ticket.
A message from Information Systems & Technology (IST).
The Request Tracker (RT) system recently reached the 1 million ticket milestone after 10+ years of being used to report campus IT issues.
The use of RT on campus dates back to the late 90’s when the system’s functionality was more limited and partially command and text-based.
Since then, Best Practical, the developer of RT, has continued to update and improve features in this open-source product. Originally used by Information Systems & Technology (IST) to track incoming requests, the popularity of RT has grown over the years. The May 2009 IT Task Force Report recommended “A common request tracking system, such as the IST RT system, should be employed universally across campus.” Since then, the use of RT has grown and is now used by all faculties and many departments on campus to track both IT and non-IT requests.
IST continues to maintain, support and host this single campus ticketing system to enable cross campus collaboration on incoming requests and provide high-quality service to our clients.
Tomorrow, help us celebrate a global day of giving
A message from the Office of Advancement.
Our matching gift donors can hardly wait! That’s because tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, and they have committed to matching — dollar for dollar — gifts made online during their specified hours, up to their personal giving cap. A total of $23,000 is available during the five special matching hours. That means the impact of YOUR gift made to any area of the University may be doubled! How great is that?
Meet our matching gift champions:
- Cindy Forbes (BMath'79), Global Chief Marketing Officer, Manulife Financial, and Chair, Board of Governors, University of Waterloo, will match your gifts from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. EST;
- Dan Langlois (MAcc '92), Partner, KPMG LLP and Tracey Langlois (BMath '93), will match your gifts from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. EST;
- Sherry Shannon-Vanstone, President & CEO, Profound Impact Corporation, will match your gifts from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. EST;
- Steven Woods (PhD '96), Senior Engineering Director, Google, will match your gifts from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST;
- Paul Salvini (BMath '92), CEO, Accelerator Centre, will match your gifts from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. EST
Gifts will only be matched on December 3 during the hours specified for each champion, and only until the champion’s personal matching cap is reached. Only one-time gifts made online are eligible to be matched.
Can’t wait til tomorrow? You can make your gift online now and we’ll count it in our Giving Tuesday total. Thank you for joining the Giving Tuesday movement and for making this our most successful yet.
Employees invited to pension plan information sessions
The University's Pension and Benefits (P&B) Committee will be hosting public information sessions for members of the University of Waterloo pension plan on December 9 and December 13.
The information sessions will provide an update on pension plan funding including potential plan changes under consideration by the committee to:
- Increase member contributions rates to restore the cost sharing between members and the university back to the 50/50 target, along with an overall funding strategy to maintain the viability of the pension plan; and
- Make the periodic changes to the pension benefit caps under the pension plan.
The background for the changes under consideration by P&B, as well as the details on the changes, will be explained during the presentation. After the presentation, the actuary and members of the committee will be available to answer attendee’s questions.
The meetings will each be 1.5 hours in length and will be held as follows:
- Monday, December 9, 2019 - RCH 301 - 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
- Monday, December 9, 2019 - RCH 301 - 2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
- Monday, December 9, 2019 - RCH 301 - 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
- Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - RCH 301 - 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
- Tuesday, December 17, 2019 - RCH 301 - 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Pension plan members are encouraged to attend. Managers are requested to allow employees to take time to attend these meetings during work hours.
"The Pension & Benefits Committee would welcome your thoughts on the proposed changes to the pension plan contribution rates, caps, and funding strategy – please share your thoughts via the web form," says the committee's memo.
All stars, all around
President Feridun Hamdullahpur and Director of Athletics Roly Webster pose with Academic All-Canadians Stephanie Ryall and MacKenzie and Kennedy Strong.
by Herb Shoveller. This is an excerpt of an article originally published on the Athletics and Recreation website.
While maintaining a 90s average is not a small feat for most post-secondary students, it's even more impressive when accomplished by a varsity student-athlete.
This fall, 253 University of Waterloo student-athletes were honoured for their academic achievements, each receiving the Academic All-Canadians by Fairfax Awards. The sum of these achievements is the best in the University's history and tops Ontario says Roly Webster, director of athletics and recreation.
"We are fortunate to have coaches who put academics first," said Webster. "With the help of our senior leadership team, I believe we have an environment that not only demands academic performance, but can also provide the proper support to be successful."
Amongst the recipients is varsity runner and fifth-year biochemistry student Stephanie Ryall , earning an average of 97.8 per cent in fourth year.
With both her parents as teachers and avid runners themselves, Ryall's love of learning and athletics comes honestly.
"I have been involved with running since Grade 5 or 6. I think the competitive running translated into being competitive in school," said Ryall. "I have always been passionate about education."
Ryall trains daily, running about 100 kilometres a week, including a 20-kilometre run on Sundays.
Following Ryall's graduation in spring 2020, the young athlete hopes to pursue an MD-PhD program.
MacKenzie and Kennedy Strong, twin brothers, were also honoured with Fairfax awards. MacKenzie's average was 97.5 per cent, while Kennedy checked in at 98.83 per cent. Both are in their second-year of chemical engineering and remain active varsity baseball players —MacKenzie a centre fielder and Kennedy a pitcher.
"Growing-up, school and sport were priorities in our family," said MacKenzie. "We tried other sports when we were younger, but by Grade 10, we decided to concentrate on baseball."
Mirroring their parent's athletic talents (their father a hockey player and their mother a swimmer), the twins considered an education south of the boarder, but were both influenced to stay in Canada because of Waterloo's strong reputation.