Waterloo Engineering Endowment Fund

Waterloo Engineering Endowment Fund (WEEF) is a semi-autonomous non-profit organization within the University of Waterloo which is funded by undergraduate students which funds lab equipment, student projects and other facilities. There are two governing bodies guiding WEEF: the Funding Council and the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors (which has 2/3 student membership) sets the policy and direction of the Fund. The Founding Council, which is made up of one student representative from each class, reviews the requests for funding and recommends its distribution.
History
The Waterloo Engineering Endowment Foundation was started in 1990 by Avi Belinsky and John Vellinga, two Waterloo Engineering students who saw an opportunity to not only improve the quality of their own education, but also to allow future generations to do the same. WEEF solicits donations from those who benefit most from an improved undergraduate program at Waterloo: undergraduates and recent graduates. These donations are added directly to the principal of the fund. This principal is never spent, allowing the interest each year to grow (hence coined “the gift that keeps on giving”).
How the money is spent
The interest is spent each term on undergraduate laboratory equipment, student projects, computer upgrades, academic tools and teaching facilities, aiming to create the most benefits possible for engineering undergraduates. The decision of where to spend the money is made each year by the student Funding Council, consisting of a representative from each undergraduate engineering class. Each term, the council meets to review the term’s proposals (any student or faculty member can submit a proposal) and decide where to spend the money. Since its inception almost 20 years ago, WEEF has given over $4 million to Engineering, and has a principal of over $8 million. This amounts to $85000 every term, and that number grows every year.
Benefits include the following:
*Student Design Center in Engineering 5, used by student teams to build, test and perfect their equipment
*Computers and Monitors for Undergraduate Labs, used by engineering student body for class, course work, research and design projects
*Mechanical, Technical, Electrical and Safety Equipment for teams such as Midnight Sun Solar Race Team, UWStart, UW Robotics, Formula SAE, Waterloo Rocketry and Clean Snowmobile Team
*Departmental Equipment, such as Distillation Column (Chem), 3-D Printers (Arch), Circuit Hardware (Elec), Linux Cluster Upgrades (Elec & Comp) and many more
The fee
The Student Endowment Fund contribution is one of the most significant sources of donations to WEEF. This is a voluntary, tax-deductible $75 donation made by the engineering undergraduates of Waterloo. Since it is voluntary, the fee is fully refundable upon request during the first three weeks of the term. As of March 2011, the principal of WEEF is just under $10 million, yielding about $60, 000 dollars per term in new equipment and funding for special projects.<ref name="uwaterloo1"/>
How to get WEEF funding
Proposals for WEEF funding are accepted from Engineering (including the School of Architecture) students, staff, and faculty. All proposals are considered, provided they benefit undergraduate engineering education at UW. Funding is allocated once every term by the Funding Council consisting entirely of students. WEEF funding is commonly used for equipment or supplies rather than services or expenses.<ref name="uwaterloo2"/>
The WEEF Lab
WEEF spends its millionth dollar upgrading the WEEF Lab, which was renamed in its honors. More recently, WEEF has donated $1 million to the student design center that houses the first two floors of Engineering 5. WEEF is proud to have funded equipment used in every engineering discipline such as magnetic stirrers for chemical, machines and tools for the architecture workshop, formability testers for mechanical and mechatronics, surveilling equipment for civil, environmental and geological, LABVIEW software for systems, and oscilloscopes for electrical, nanotechnology, and computer. WEEF has also put forward money so that every first year textbook can be kept at the DC library.
WEEF Director
The WEEF director is the leading figure for the Waterloo Engineering Endowment Fund. The Director’s role is to oversee the Funding Council and other representatives of WEEF, as well as managing the fund and day-to-day activities.
The WEEF staff
The WEEF staff are responsible for the day to day administration of the Foundation including processing refunds, promoting WEEF, distributing allocated funds and answering inquiries. The WEEF Director's responsibilities extend to chairing the Funding Council Meetings, the Board of Directors Meetings and the Annual General Meeting, and to managing and overseeing all work not directly under the Board or the Funding Council. The director is supported each term by a team of assistant directors and by Mary Bland, executive assistant to WEEF.

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