I hope you are having an enjoyable and productive summer. I trust you have set aside time for a vacation and to catch up with teaching, research and student initiatives. Enrollments for the Fall term are going well and the Campus has been busy with conferences. The upcoming conference "Living on the Edge – Birds 2000" will be a particularly large ad important event.

Opportunity Fund is closed
A special thanks is in order to all of you – faculty, staff, pensioners and board members – who helped make the Opportunity Fund a great success. Specifically, over $2 million dollars were donated by the internal University community. However, your support for the campaign came also in numerous other forms. Many of you canvassed the campus and raised awareness regarding the goals of the campaign. Many offices organized plant sales, casual days, bake sales, parties and other special events where money was raised and donated to the Opportunity Fund. Your actions clearly showed that we who work here believe in our university and have a deep level of commitment to it. Thank you again for your support.

In case you do not recall, the Opportunity Fund raised $60 million ($10 million more than the initial target), with half the funds coming from the provincial government in the form of matching monies. In early June we held a special event to mark the official close of the Opportunity Fund. This event was primarily organized for major donors and government officials, but many members of the university community also attended and we made sure that none of the contributors -- large and small -- were overlooked. I particularly want to recognize the achievements of Chancellor John Crosbie who gave extraordinary leadership to the Campaign. The closing ceremony also highlighted the many aspects of our modern university and we have prepared a video of the event, which will be available shortly.

We are already seeing tangible benefits of the capital campaign: the new University Centre in St. John's, the addition to the student centre at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook and substantial increases in the number of scholarships. We are also seeing daily progress with the construction of our new Field House on the St. John's campus. While this construction will cause some disruptions and inconveniences, the facility will bring long-term benefits to our university. Facilities Management is trying to minimize the disruptions and your patience is appreciated.

Good news on the research front
On July 18, Dr. Gilbert Normand, Secretary of State (Science, Research and Development), announced the award of $14.4 million over four years to launch AquaNet, Canada's newest federal Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE). AquaNet will be led by Dr. William Driedzic of Memorial University and will be headquartered at our Ocean Sciences Centre. AquaNet will support fundamental and applied research and it will help the Canadian aquaculture industry globally by increasing the efficiency of aquaculture production through species diversification, biotechnology, environmental sustainability, and the training of highly qualified personnel. I think that this is the largest research award Memorial University has ever received. However, AquaNet is great news for many more reasons as well. First class aquaculture research at Memorial with national and international connections will strengthen particularly the small communities in Newfoundland and it will help to alleviate the worldwide shortage of high-quality foods.

AquaNet is indeed excellent news for our university and it demonstrates Memorial's strength in this field. I know many of you worked hard to make AquaNet a reality, and it is wonderful to see this initiative succeed. Memorial University has the expertise to be a national leader in many other fields as well, and I look forward to helping in this regard.

Labour relations update
Negotiations are ongoing with CUPE (at the University and the Aquarena) and with MUNFA. We are all working hard to find ways of making positive changes and I am confident that negotiations will soon result in mutually satisfactory agreements.

Summer is a good time for a BBQ
Last year about this time, a group of employees got together and put on a summer BBQ party to celebrate the University's 50th anniversary as a degree granting institution. It was a great success and I hear that the same committee is hoping to get everyone together to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of Memorial University College, and the 25th the anniversary of Grenfell College. This new summer tradition is a good way to get together with colleagues informally. I hope that you will be able to come.

With best wishes for the summer,

Axel Meisen
PRESIDENT AND VICE-CHANCELLOR

Visit the president's homepage at:  www.mun.ca/president