Year-in-Review

June 2002

Professor wins national award

Shane O'Dea, English, was named as one of the 10 national recipients of the prestigious 3M Teaching Fellowships. Mr. O'Dea has been a faculty member at Memorial since 1970 and has been consistently recognized for his teaching excellence, his personal interest in his students and his high academic standards. This is the third time that faculty of Memorial have been honored with this award; the other two recipients were Dr. Penny Hansen in 1990 and Dr. Michael Collins in 1998.

Inco Innovation Centre for Memorial

It was announced that the Inco Innovation Centre will be established on the St. John's campus. Inco will spend $10 million on the facility and provide operating support of $1 million over 10 years. The centre will address the scientific, technical and human resource needs of the Voisey's Bay project and will focus on education and research in mining, exploration, metallurgical processing techniques as well as other innovative activities. The Innovation Centre will be located in the former Thomson Student Centre building. Renovations and modifications are set to begin in late fall 2002, with a target completion in 2004.

Board reports to government on name

The Board of Regents recommended to the provincial government that the name of the university be shortened from Memorial University of Newfoundland to Memorial University. The university's name is defined by an act of the legislature; the board provided advice in light of the change of the province's official name to Newfoundland and Labrador.

Tuition reduction for fall semester

The Board of Regents announced a reduction of 10 per cent in tuition fees for Canadian graduate and undergraduate students, starting in September 2002. Tuition fees for students in the Faculty of Medicine and the Marine Institute, as well as fees for international students, will be frozen for another year. The tuition reductions were made possible by the provincial government's allotment of $3.5 million in this year's budget specifically to enhance the affordability of university education.

Memorial University opens Advanced Computation and Visualization Centre

Memorial University announced the opening of its new Advanced Computation and Visualization Centre (CVC), the most powerful research computer system in Atlantic Canada. The CVC gives researchers unprecedented access to parallel computing and high-end graphics capabilities, useful for numerical modelling and simulation-an emerging and increasingly popular way for scientists to visualize complex processes or structures. Core funding for the CVC, in the amount of approximately $680,000, was won by a team led by Dr. Mark Whitmore, director of the CVC, in a national competition held by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Research chair in petroleum geoscience

Andrew J. Pulham is Memorial's latest Canada Research Chair. Federal Industry Minister Allan Rock announced the approval of the new Canada Research Chair position in petroleum geoscience on June 25. Dr. Pulham's research examines the principle controls affecting fluid flow in oil and gas sandstone reservoirs, particularly those having relevance to Atlantic Canada. The Canada Research Chairs program was established by the Government of Canada to enable Canadian universities to achieve the highest levels of research excellence. In its 2000 budget, the federal government provided $900 million to support the establishment of 2000 Canada Research Chairs in universities across the country by 2003-4.