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6 • WATERLOO CHRONICLE • Thursday, January 19, 2017 By Bob Vrbanac Chronicle Staff a dding to the pool of engineers coming out of the university of Waterloo and train-ing more entrepreneurs at Wilfrid Lau- rier university are the highlights of $50 million in funding announcements made by the federal and provincial governments last Friday. Waterloo MP Bardish Chagger, government house leader and minister for small business and tourism, announced $32.7 million for the univer- sity of Waterloo's new Engineering 7 building. It will allow the school to add another 1,000 students to its world renowned engineering program by the time the $88 million project opens in the spring of 2018. "That puts Canada on the path to take the global lead in innovation," said Chagger. "It's pre- paring us for the economy of the future. "It helps us to take an idea from concept to market." The funding is from the federal government's Post-secondary Institutions strategic Investment Fund launched in 2016. The $2 billion fund helps enhance and modernize research facilities on Canadian campuses, and supports discoveries needed for a clean, sustainable economy. It couldn't have come at a better time for uW. The school committed to starting construction on the building before it had secured all the funding for the project. sullivan convinced university of Waterloo president Feridun hamdullahpur they needed to start construction of the building, which will house the schools' 7,500 undergraduate students. The need was acute and they couldn't afford to continue to turn away some of Canada's best and brightest students. "We have students with a 95 per cent average who couldn't get in," said engineering dean Pearl sullivan. "That's unacceptable." The new building features an Engineering Ideas Clinic that allows professors from differ- ent engineering faculties to teach new concepts through hands-on learning. Getting in there and finding out how things work is something that sul- livan said students are missing in the digital age. "This will help them to get to the heart of prob- lems and conceptualize ways to solve them," said sullivan. With uW celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, hamdullahpur said it supports Waterloo's history of innovation. "The Engineering 7 building is a prime exam- ple of Waterloo's unconventional, creative, inno- vative thinking," he said. "It will be home to worl- leading talent and research, continuing to expand the impact of disruptive technologies that will help to put Canada at the forefront of the global economy." That includes 20 garages for student design teams, a cutting edge additive manufacturing lab working on the potential of 3d printing, and a robohub that will allow for the testing of aerial mobile and magnetically levitated robots. Cambridge MPP Kathryn McGarry was also on hand to announce a change to the OsaP and grants system that will see more students in finan- cial need get a free education by 2018. "Fiscal need shouldn't impede accessibility," she said. Earlier in the day she announced $2.22 million in provincial funding for WLu's energy efficiency management project, which will reduce energy consumption costs at the school by $1.4 million per year. The federal government also contributed $4.45 million to the project that could lead to a 30-per cent energy reduction. Chagger announced $9.93 million in funding for a new WLu project that will result in research and teaching labs and more space to train entre- preneurs, start-ups and management leaders in tech and finance. Funding for the Lazaridis hall project will repurpose the school's Peters Building and sup- port the work of the Lazaridis Institute and the schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship and social innovation. 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Waterloo Parkdale Plaza: 519.603.5425 476 Albert Street, Waterloo | waterloo@promartialarts.com RSVP to reserve your spot: PMAWaterloo.eventbrite.ca BIRTHDAY PARTY with every membership FREE* FREE*Uniform included with purchase FACEPAINTING10-1pm Character Education Classes: • Little Rhinos: Ages 3-5 • Basic: Ages 6+ • Leadership Training: Advanced Classes Mentorship Programs: • Character Education: Building Character For A Lifetime® Bullying and Predator Prevention BOARD BREAKINGBOARD BREAKING FUN FOR THEWHOLE FAMILY! MEET AND GREET WITH ROCKY THE RHIN O! Universities get $50M in funding to support cutting edge programs Associate professor Sebastian Fischmeister demonstrates some of the autonomous driving work the University of Waterloo is doing in its real time embedded system lab to MP Raj Saini, MPP Kathryn McGarry, MP Bardish Chagger and MP Brian May last Thursday. It was followed by an announcement by Chagger of $32.7 million in funding for the new Engineering 7 building. BoB VRBAAnC PhoTo By Scott Cressman For the Chronicle The next step in plans to close st. agatha Catholic Elementary school will come into focus at a Jan. 24 public meeting at holy rosary Catholic Elementary school in Waterloo. The meeting next Tuesday will reveal where the Waterloo region district Catholic school Board wants to send the small st. agatha school's 100-or-so students in the fall. The board started its school Closure review in fall 2016. a nov. 9 public open house in st. agatha featured three plans that would close the Wilmot school and send students else- where next year. The three options included moving stu- dents to st. Clement school in Wellesley Township, moving them to holy rosary school in Waterloo, or splitting students between the two. The meeting will announce which of those three options the school board prefers and gather feedback from parents. staff from the Catholic school board will be available to answer questions. The open house runs 4 to 8 p.m. at holy rosary school on Thorndale drive, in the school gym. Board trustees have not yet made a final decision to close st. agatha, but school board staff recommended last June doing so because of high repair costs and low student enrol- ment. There is no option being discussed in this closure review that would keep it open. Trust- ees are planning to make a decision at their regular school board meeting on March 27. The school needs $1.6 mil- lion in wide-ranging repairs by 2020, according to the school board, and that doesn't include work to the school's portapack. The st. Clement school, by comparison, is marked for $4.3 million in work by 2020, according to the Catholic school board's projections. Over the past year, many st. agatha parents have expressed frustration that their small rural school has to close. They've questioned the fairness of the school board's decision to consider closure again, just two years after the st. agatha community success- fully fought a similar review. The rural school also avoided closure in 2009. Parents have also said that their school can't grow its stu- dent numbers when concerns about closure hangs over it. Future of st. agatha school to be discussed in meeting at holary rosary set for Jan. 24