Just so this makes a bit more sense, but WEEF is the Waterloo Engineering Endowment Fund. It's a student run endowment fund started by two engineering students in the early 90s, with the mandate to increase the overall quality of education in the Faculty of Engineering. It's supported by a $75 refundable donation made by all engineering students when they pay their student fees, and by graduates who take "The Plummers Pledge" to donate X amount of money each month after they graduate.
WEEF Director Report
By Alex James
WEEF Director
As some of you may already know, the university will be breaking ground on the new buildings this coming March.
The first two floors of one of these six-floor buildings will become the new Student Design Center (STC). The STC will be a state of the art workshop for students and student teams. It will contain work bays, work benches, meeting rooms, and best of all, a new student machine shop! The size of this project is immense, quadrupling the current space given to student teams. This will allow for the current teams to receive the space they need, as well as allow brand new teams to be given space and resources. The STC will also contain a fully stocked student machine shop twice as large as the current one. It is being designed as an open concept, to promote cooperation between student groups.
This great idea is happening soon, and WEEF would like to be a part of it. WEEF is here not only to increase the quality of education here at the university, but also to give students the opportunity to work on the most cutting edge and exciting projects possible. In that spirit, the WEEF board of directors has come up with a proposal that will allow WEEF to make a very large contribution to the STC. How large?
The total budget for the STC is estimated to be 12 million dollars. The proposed plan will allow WEEF to generate 4 million dollars to the project. The proposal calls for a 1 million dollar donation on the part of WEEF, but the Faculty of Engineering has pledged to match any donation made by WEEF, and the university has agreed to match that figure.
The board of directors believes that this kind of donation is just the kind of thing WEEF was created to do. Other large proposals have been considered in the past years, but none have stood out as much as this one. Add to that the fact that the money donated by WEEF is quadrupled, and you have a very solid large-scale donation. Some of you may be thinking that this large donation will affect the amount of money that WEEF gives out every term. If donated, the money will be removed from the WEEF account over a seven year period. This will allow the amount of money WEEF gives out annually to remain the same, or even rise during this time, depending on the participation rates. The important part is that WEEF will not be giving out any less money if the application is accepted.
The proposal will be presented to the funding council during the month of November, and I encourage anyone who is interested to come and ask questions. You can also send an email to
weef@engmail.uwaterloo.ca. This is a great opportunity for WEEF to make a difference, and I for one am very excited about it.
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. To be honest though, I think the quick start will result in delays. From what I've heard, there really hasn't been much consultation with any of the students on the teams as to their needs, nor has there been any consultation with the general engineering student population about their concerns. I signed a petition about a month ago asking that the faculty sit down with students before this thing gets going because the general feel is that this thing should have some sort of LEED certification and have as little environmental impact as possible. The one problem (not sure how may of you know this) but with the co-op program, engineering students are only in class every other term so one of the big concerns is that the momentum students are making this term will be lost once next term's students come back on campus. With the current engineering dean in place, I would expect to hear some word about some sort of consultation occurring in early January since he's a good guy and seems to actually want to listen. 
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