History of WEEF
The Waterloo Engineering Endowment, as it was originally called, began as a vision of the future for our school in 1990. At the time, new equipment was badly needed and there were concerns that this was affecting the quality of education in Waterloo Engineering.
The Plummer's Pledge, a program where grads pledge donations for three years after graduation, had been introduced the previous year. Two students, John Vellinga and Avi Bellinsky, when talking about Plummer's Pledge and about the large endowments of many schools in the United States, came up with the idea and the initiative that would grow into WEEF.
They wrote a proposal and organized a referendum on the inclusion of a refundable Voluntary Student Contribution (VSC) of $75. On Engineering Society B the result was 94% yes with a voter turnout of 36% and Engineering Society A gave a 95% endorsement with a 40% voter turnout.
With the strong endorsement form the referendum the University of Waterloo Board of Govenors, at its April Meeting, approved the $75 VSC and added it to the student fee statement. Funds were collected in May of 1990 and the first funding allocation was made eight months later with the purchase of $10,680 worth of 386s.
By 1993 the principal of the fund exceeded $1 million and the total funding was greater than $150,000.
In 1997 a special $100,000 large project funding decision was made to fund the upgrading of department computer labs.
In the first semester of 1998 the principal stood at $2.7 million and WEEF spent it's 1 millionth dollar. As part of this funding, WEEF allocated $50,000 to upgrade the Graphics Lab, a proposal that would benefit the education of almost every first year engineering student. A proposal was made to change the name of the Graphics Lab to the WEEF Lab, in light of the large amount of funding it received from WEEF.