What we do right in Waterloo
I have posted enough about what is broken… Not everything is. Heck UW is in great shape compared to other schools in Ontario. So what works? I currently work in a great example of what works at UW—despite the natural aversion to change in some areas we embrace risks that challenge our assumptions on how things work. What are some of the good projects in the time since I have been working at UW that I know of:
- VeloCity (but I am biased)
- Living and learning programs in housing
- Special Projects Group in IST even existing (a project team tasked to build stuff in the age of ‘just buy it’)
- Institute for Quantum computing. Before Perimeter was here, IQC has been pushing quantum physics from theory to practice.
- The Daily Bulletin – a blog like thing that has been online since before the internet (there was a gopher presence)
- Engineers without Borders started at UW
- The Warriors football team got their own field even though everyone seems to like basketball more—but you can’t share a home field with another team.
- The Research and Technology Park and its growth—it is the place to be if you want to connect to what is really going on in the Waterloo tech space. This one is the biggest in my mind.
- Canada 3.0 – ambitious, out of place, unexpected, brilliant
There are countless other projects, big and small, that have been exciting to know about or participate in. All of them show that even in the face of a challenging culture that is found all across higher education, UW finds a way to make cool stuff happen.
I am not going to drop the ‘we can do better’ position but I do need to celebrate some successes every once in a while.
