Thursday, July 16, 2026

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• Have your say on the future of the Staff Excellence Fund
• Air quality advisory and guidance
• A wide web of words

Have your say on the future of the Staff Excellence Fund

A message from the University of Waterloo Staff Association.

The UWSA is seeking staff feedback as part of a review of the Staff Excellence Fund (SEF), which supports programs such as the Waterloo Staff Conference, Keeping Well @ Work, Ways to Play, and staff-led initiatives. Whether you're familiar with the fund or hearing about it for the first time, your input will help shape recommendations for its future. The survey takes about five minutes to complete and is open through July 24. Take the survey now.

Air quality advisory and guidance

A message from Kate Windsor, Executive Director, Safety, Security and Transportation

Environment Canada has issued a warning as wildfire smoke continues to affect air quality across southern Ontario. 

At this time, there are no changes to indoor University operations. Classes, exams, research activities and other indoor campus operations will continue as scheduled. 

The Safety Office is working directly with departments whose employees work outdoors to provide guidance on appropriate precautions and any necessary adjustments to outdoor work. 

Instructors are encouraged to postpone any planned outdoor activities until air quality improves.  

Air quality conditions can affect individuals differently, particularly those with asthma, other respiratory conditions or other health concerns. Community members are encouraged to monitor conditions and follow Environment Canada recommendations, including limiting outdoor activity when appropriate. 

We recognize that air quality conditions may affect people differently, and some community members may have concerns related to air quality, health conditions or commuting.  Employees and managers are encouraged to use existing workplace flexibility practices, where appropriate and operationally feasible, to support individual circumstances during the current air quality conditions. Students with health concerns are encouraged to use available University support resources and follow Environment Canada's health guidance. 

Current conditions and health guidance are available on the Government of Canada’s Air Quality Health Index website. 

We will continue to monitor conditions and provide updates as necessary. 

A wide web of words

This article was originally published on Waterloo News.

In an age of search engines, online databases, and AI assistants, it is easy to forget that for most of modern history research was done using books, paper, and pencils. If you have ever looked up a definition or searched the etymology of a word online instead of driving to the library, you have the Waterloo innovators behind the New Oxford English Dictionary Project to thank.

When the original Oxford English Dictionary — the largest and most comprehensive history of the English language ever created — was published in 1928, it was the result of more than seventy years of collective effort. Researchers had begun collecting historical examples of word use in 1857: in the decades that followed, more than 800 volunteers collected millions of quotations, which they wrote out by hand on slips of paper. 

Between 1884 and 1928, Oxford University Press (OUP) published 125 small books containing definitions as they finished them, which they then collected into a 12-volume set containing more than 400,000 definitions. There was just one problem: the dictionary had taken so long to assemble that it was already out of date! By 1933, OUP published the first of four eventual supplements containing new words: users would have to look up a word in the original dictionary, then check the supplement separately if they couldn’t find it.

In the 1980s, the publishers at OUP decided it was time to create a second, complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary — ideally in less than seventy years. That’s where the cutting-edge Department of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo came in.

The longest book ever digitized

Dr. Frank Tompa, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, was a young professor specializing in databases. At the time, databases were relatively simple and small collections of information stored on tapes or large disks and strictly organized. When Waterloo administrators arranged with OUP to help with the New OED project, they turned to Tompa and his colleague Dr. Gaston Gonnet to figure out how to digitize and organize the dictionary. “We didn’t know what this database would be like, or how it would work,” Tompa remembers, “but we knew that it was too important to say no.” Together with graduate students, administrators, and professors from across the University, they created the Centre for the New Oxford English Dictionary in 1984.

Read the full story on Waterloo News.