We need to continue to argue for more equitable representation for the faculty at UBC-Vancouver. After all, they are the ones who made, and will continue to play a primary role in upholding this university’s national and international reputation. They are 90% of the 3500 faculty members at UBC, and while representation for both the Vancouver and Okanagan campuses is important, a 2-2 ratio (4-3 if you count Senate) for faculty representation from the two campuses is extraordinarily disproportionate, and so dilutes the voices of those on the Vancouver campus.

Of the eight candidates at UBC-Vancouver, three are from the Faculty of Arts; four are from Medicine and one from Science. In other words, at least one of these huge and venerable Faculties will be deprived of a voice around the table. Contrast this with the fact that three members of the Alumni association Board will be on the presidential search committee.

In any case, kudos and congratulations to the eight faculty members from UBC-Vancouver who put their names forward in order to contribute to a most important exercise and a crucial decision. They have all already won.

Filed under: Board of Governors ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/05/17/the-faculty-at-ubc-vancouver-also-want-in/feed/ 0 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/05/15/nota-bene/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/05/15/nota-bene/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 21:32:50 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=13569 Continue reading →]]> I was not surprised to receive some push back on my last blog. I have also had a chance to revisit some of the issues I raised and the way they sounded. They are important, and it is certainly my responsibility as a member of the university community to bring them to the fore.

In my previous blog, I had reflected from a document prepared by Ms. Eleanor M. Joy of Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP, in the context of assisting the Faculty Association in preparing its case to the arbitrator. Here is the administration’s clarification about the facts underlying capital funding.

• “over 90% of total funding for capital projects is not supported by the operating fund, but rather is fully funded from sources such as government, fundraising, land development taxes, or, in the case of student housing projects, is supported by the income generated by the project itself.” I am perfectly willing to vouch for that. I am also awed by the huge effort and financial “wizardry” it took to achieve this incredible burst of construction on campus. I did not always agree with the priorities put forward by the administration, but I did respect their prerogative to push their vision forward as long as they are in charge. History will look favorably at their incredible achievement in transforming both campuses during challenging times, but I will stick to my guns as to the need to be conservative vis-a-vis future commitments now that we are in a transitory period.

• “the $610.5 million transfer is a cumulative amount that actually represents $90m of annual allocations. It covers much more than capital servicing costs, and includes core academic funding ranging from library collections to student awards.” I have no reason or any ground to question the veracity of this information.

• “the interest on long-term debt has in fact decreased from $33 million in 2006 to less than $24 million this year.” Here, I am simply flabbergasted by the discrepancy between these numbers and those of the PcW report.

Oh, and there is that spontaneous aspect of blogging, where it is fun to get a little carried away by a finely constructed sentence or a seemingly clever simile. How can you resist referring to Baron de Haussmann, when you are thinking about your home institution while walking down Boulevard Haussmann in Paris? And let’s keep in mind that History has also been more than kind to the extravagant Baron.

This member of the Board believes in the importance of debating fully, difficult and complex questions that face the university community. I also believe in recognizing facts, setting the record straight and being fair.

I have never been accused of being overly cautious, or of being immune to hyperactive (academic) entrepreneurship and initiative. But, I have to admit that the steady stream of capital projects that the UBC administration has been generating and executing during the past seven years, has challenged even my own inclination towards unabashed growth, development and change. The students who will always see themselves as the class of construction, should realize that there are Governors who are equally concerned about belonging to the “Board of the construction bubble,” with all what it represents in terms of sanctioning the current priorities, investments and financial commitments and their potential effect on the university’s future.

Subjected to the hyperactive financial wizardry of its Vice President-Finance, UBC has become a permanent construction site. I wonder sometimes whether he is trying to out-do Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, responsible for the rebuilding of Paris in the 19th century, before his critics forced his resignation for extravagance. One former dean mentioned half-jokingly that it seems he needs to start another project before the high from building the previous one starts to wear off.

A complete list of the projects under construction at UBC is routinely given to the Governors, and I do not recall ever seeing total expenditure drop below the $1.2-billion figure. I once remarked at a Board meeting that I thought I was joining the Board to help UBC beat U. Toronto academically, until I realized that we are actually competing with Dubai. Whether we –administration and Board– have been doing the right thing for the last few years remains to be seen. But the environment has changed and it is time to reassess.

UBC is facing uncertainty on at least two fronts: a potential change in provincial priorities – whether or not the government changes – and a guaranteed change in its leadership, which will bring changes to the administration along with a new strategic vision for the university. These facts must be factored into the analysis, the rationale and the scale of any/all the proposed projects that this administration will bring forward to the Board before June 2014, the date when the President steps down.

Even when favorable to the proposed projects, the Board should be more deliberate than usual in its approval processes by considering carefully the internal and external contexts under which the capital projects are supposed to be initiated and completed.

First, we have to address political uncertainty. We should not assume that our relationship with the provincial government will be “business as usual,” after the upcoming provincial election. Whether or not the incumbent government gets re-elected, there is a very real prospect that a freshly elected government will chart a new path. There will be campaign promises to fulfill and both major parties are committed to managing its deficit and balancing its budget albeit with different target date. We have seen how, in just about every province, budgetary considerations have negatively impacted provincial allocations to universities, sometimes adversely. Any movement in this direction could have a very negative and direct impact on our “operating debt” projections.

Second, we should be wary of over-committing the next administration. Most projects under consideration today constitute major long-term financial commitments on the next UBC administration. We have often discussed how such moves by an outgoing administration constrain the flexibility of those coming in. It is especially unacceptable when the scale of those commitments dwarf those inherited by the current administration from its predecessors.

There are other considerations such as the unsettled business of coming to an agreement with the bargaining units. We are at a delicate stage of the bargaining process with the Faculty Association (FA). In the context of assisting the FA in preparing its case to the arbitrator, Ms. Eleanor M. Joy of Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP uncovered that over the last 7 years, the central administration has transferred $610.5 million out of the General Purpose Operating Fund (GPOF), in order to invest directly or indirectly in capital assets, in such a way “that the GPOF actually showed a deficit as at March 31, 2012.” The report shows that the interest on long-term debt increased from $2,228,000 in 2006 to $31,480,000 in 2012. During the same period, the professional and consulting fees increased from $9,591,000 to $26,296,000. While these numbers may be challenged by the administration, they raise a hard question: Are mega-investments in capital projects affecting the university’s ability to support its human resources?

We should be analyzing the long-term impact of the “Flexible Learning Initiative” (our version of MOOC!) and how it may affect the large supply of student housing –and other capital projects– that we are building or planning to build.

We should proceed with more caution vis-à-vis the nascent international college (now Vantage). No major commitment to build its infrastructure, such as the Orchard Commons, should be made before some kind of an initial period, where a pilot could be tested. We should be cautious not only about investing in its infrastructure, but also about hiring the small army of instructors that is supposed to run the program.

The transition to a new administration triggered by Stephen Toope’s announcement sheds a new light at what belongs to this administration to decide and envision and what should be the purview of the next one, which may have different academically-oriented priorities where it wants to spend money, or whatever is left.

Addendum: I have just learned that Maureen Howe has stepped down from being chair of the Board’s Finance committee. This is most disappointing. In my opinion, this Board needs more of Maureen not less.

The first change is that there will be spots on the search committee for 3 faculty members (two from UBC-V and one from UBC-O), which will be elected by and from faculty members in the bargaining unit. In other words, these spots are reserved for the rank-and-file faculty members and cannot be filled by senior administrators including deans and associate deans. This is a significant change, which will set a precedent in the ongoing discussion as to what faculty representation means on the various university standing committees.

Another significant aspect of the new terms of reference is that they allow the Management Resources & Compensation Committee (MRCC) to appoint at most one elected Governor to represent the Board on the search committee. The other three will still have to be Government-appointed members. This is not ideal –as far as I am concerned– but is surely an improvement on past searches, where all Board representatives were somehow decreed to be externally appointed Governors.

The rationale behind this move is self-evident. Yes, there are slots for faculty, students and staff on the search committee to be filled through elections. But these can never play the same role as their counterparts, elected Board members, who have been exposed to the whole range of university files, hot or not, controversial or not, confidential or not. To put it bluntly, the process requires faculty members who have also been to all those closed sessions of the Board, the number and frequency of which are beginning –unfortunately– to exceed those of the open sessions.

But by recalling that I owe my own free, unshackled and independent voice on the Board to the fact that I was elected and not appointed, I came to the conclusion that aspiring to get elected (again) by the faculty to the president’s search committee is –after all– the right way to go. This I shall do, hoping to earn one more time (the third!) their support and trust in order to represent and project, to the best of my ability, their vision of their university and of the person who will be leading it into the future.

Filed under: Board of Governors ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/28/ubcs-search-for-a-president-two-down-but-many-to-go/feed/ 0 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/23/the-people-who-let-you-matter-and-those-who-dont/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/23/the-people-who-let-you-matter-and-those-who-dont/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:40:42 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=13335 Continue reading →]]> Being singled out by the Ubyssey as one of “The people who mattered at UBC in 2012-13” brought much honour and satisfaction, but also introspection. For someone who fusses regularly about whether his latest actions mattered, the mention by the venerable students’ newspaper was more than significant. First, you think of the people who helped you “matter,” but then you remember those who go out of their way to prevent you from “mattering.”

Many people mattered when I was “pushing through UBC’s housing action plan, an attempt to address the problem of attracting world-class faculty to one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets.”  Stephen Toope mattered enormously and helped me matter.

Yes, I have “picked fights with NSERC, the federal agency in charge of research grants, for cutting money to graduate research programs.” But here again, those who really mattered are the courageous, principled and honorable colleagues (Greg Martin, Don Fraser, Jim Colliander, Walter Craig, Karel Casteels, Octav Cornea and many others) behind this, this, this and this.

The students’ newspaper also mentioned that I have been “an outspoken voice for democratizing university governance, since UBC’s Board of Governors is largely appointed by the province, not elected.” The fight on that front is unfortunately far from being won, as there is no shortage of people trying to prevent you from “mattering.”

The struggle to secure a more inclusive, more transparent and more democratic governance structure for the Board of Governors (BoG), for the UBC Properties Trust (UBCPT), and for UBC Investment Management Trust (IMANT) must continue.

The status of the elected members of the Board of Governors needs to be revised upwards. The lack of faculty representation on the Boards of UBCPT, and of IMANT is a relic of times past and needs to be rectified. These issues matter enormously for the future of a university, whose estate -literally- is in full development.

The upcoming search for a UBC president is hugely important to all these issues. It is therefore imperative that the members of the faculty make themselves matter in this selection, and not leave it to a handful of appointed members, who, for some reason, believe they know better.

Filed under: Board of Governors ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/23/the-people-who-let-you-matter-and-those-who-dont/feed/ 1 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/19/tell-me-about-el-casa/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/19/tell-me-about-el-casa/#comments Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:55:46 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=13279 Continue reading →]]> Once again, I had to perform the unpleasant annual task of writing to more than 120 colleagues and their co-applicants all over the world to inform them that their proposals to run a research workshop at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS) in 2014 were not successful. Many of these declined proposals were excellent and some of the disappointed researchers were repeat applicants. The problem? 170 applications received in 2012 (more than double the number of the 2003 competition) for the available 48 weeks of programming at BIRS. The private sector has obvious answers to such increases in customers’ demand. But what do you do if your product is research capacity, your capital is scientific credibility, and your financier is the public sector?

Every year, BIRS hosts over 2000 researchers from 400 institutions in more than 60 countries who participate in its annual series of 48 weekly workshops, each hosting up to 42 researchers in disciplines in which mathematics, computer science and statistics are used in novel ways. The format allows scientists to exchange the latest advances in their fields of study and provides an environment that fosters new collaborations and ideas.

A unique aspect of BIRS is that it is a joint Canada-US-Mexico initiative, which is funded by Mexico’s National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT), Alberta Innovation, the US National Science Foundation (NSF), and Canada’s Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Another remarkable feature of the Station is that it is located on the site of the world-renowned Banff Centre in Alberta, which is already internationally recognized as a place of high culture with programs in music and sound, the written, visual and performing arts, leadership and management that draw in many hundreds of artists, students, and intellectual leaders from around the world.

It had been clear to me for a while now that we need to increase the opportunities offered at BIRS by expanding its capacity to no less than 75 workshops per year. In other words, we need an additional research facility, where BIRS can support 25-30 workshops in addition to the 48 programs that currently run in Banff every year.

It is also imperative that BIRS upholds its well-established scientific standards while developing its expanded program. The international BIRS Scientific Advisory Board should therefore continue to apply the same rigorous and uniform peer review process when selecting all of the 75 workshops.

Last but not least, and in order to preserve the coherence of the BIRS vision, it is highly desirable to secure a facility that is located in a place of high culture. A place which draws in artists, students, intellectual leaders and other creative forces, who would interact with the international community of mathematical scientists participating in the BIRS programs.

Against this backdrop, enter Francisco Toledo and El Centro de las Artes San Agustín Etla. Also known as CASA, El Centro is located at San Agustín Etla, a town that lies in a picturesque canyon in the foothills of the Sierra de San Felipe seventeen miles north of the city of Oaxaca. CASA, which opened its doors on March 21, 2006, is committed to be a public space, where education, artistic creation and experimentation could thrive. It was founded by Francisco Toledo, a prominent Mexican painter and graphic designer, who purchased the property in 2000 in order to create the first eco-arts center in Latin America. CASA is funded through the National Center for the Arts, the State Government of Oaxaca, and private foundations including the Harp Helú Foundation.

“Today CASA is comprised of a set of spaces providing for artistic initiation and creation. It has spaces equipped for the production of digital graphics, traditional graphic and dyeing workshops and textile design, photographic developing and organic printing. Under the assumption that the interaction with people from different lands stimulates creativity, promotes tolerance and strengthens a community, CASA invites artists to perform residencies giving priority to projects of ecological and community care.”

Francisco Toledo is convinced that mathematical scientists from all over the world can/should be part of these interactions in order to help stimulate another level of creativity, right there in his beloved Oaxaca. Toledo has consequently offered to donate a parcel of land adjacent to CASA on which could be built a facility, where some of the BIRS programs can run. Recent meetings with the Director of CONACYT, the Governor of the State of Oaxaca, and the Harp Helú Foundation were extremely promising.

Stay tuned!

Back to my last post, I wanted first to point out that the debacles at the Universities of Oregon, Virginia and Texas were –as already mentioned by Chris Olds– the direct consequence of having Boards of Trustees consisting solely of government-appointed members. Even Canadian universities, such as Concordia, are not immune from the damage that certain non-academic control freaks can sometimes cause, once solidly entrenched on University Boards. I also wanted to stress that faculty have the means to fight back and win if and when they decide to act. Unfortunately, it is not always the case.

Not unrelated is the fact that the selection of the next President of UBC is the most important action that a Board of Governors takes. In reality, the Board appoints a presidential search committee, which manages the search, does the selection, and submits the name of the candidate for the Board’s approval. Extrapolating from the dozens of appointments of VPs, Deans and other senior managers that I have witnessed in my past 5 years on the Board, this last step is a mere formality. In other words, the most important piece in the Board’s contribution to the process is its role in defining the terms of reference for the search committee, and in appointing its membership. The latter includes a bunch of people from the Board and others, who normally must get elected by the various bodies representing the recognized stakeholders at both UBC campuses: Alumni, Students, Faculty and Staff.

In the post I tried to argue that the presence of Board members on the search committee is extremely important and indispensable. This is because governors –at least the long serving among them– are de-facto exposed to the whole range of university files, hot or not, controversial or not, secret or not, and there are lots of those.

Now past terms of reference –and NOT the University Act–used to dictate that all representatives of the Board on the search committee should be chosen from the contingent of government-appointed members. On the other hand, past terms of reference used to also dictate that the President of the Faculty Association as well as three other faculty members from UBC-Vancouver should also be on the search committee. All this occurred before the addition of the Okanagan campus, which drove the membership of the search committee to 21 people.

My main premise here is that the terms of reference for the upcoming search should reflect current realities, including those related to the imminent end of the terms of several appointed members of the Board, the newness of the terms of others, as well as what/who these individuals represent considering that we are in the middle of an election campaign.

In other words, I am advocating that capable and knowledgeable members of the Board be selected to serve on the search committee, EVEN IF they are merely elected. These governors have at least as much legitimacy as any other governor, who may or may not represent/reflect the policies of the government in place, albeit before or after the search process is completed.

Some claim that the appointed members are entitled because they are “independent”, i.e., not bound by the constituencies that elect representatives. How government appointed board members are any more “independent” when their service is tied to government’s whimsy is a bit of a mystery, of course. They may not receive and follow direct orders from the government that appoints them, but they surely must reflect at least the philosophical mindset and political values of that government. The existence of such an implicit litmus test may become more evident than ever, if and when a new government arrives on the provincial scene.

Filed under: Board of Governors ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/10/a-piece-of-mind-on-university-governance-revisited/feed/ 0 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/06/when-the-faculty-needs-step-up-for-their-universities/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/04/06/when-the-faculty-needs-step-up-for-their-universities/#comments Sat, 06 Apr 2013 01:23:11 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=13069 Continue reading →]]> Stephen Toope announced yesterday that he would be stepping down as President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of British Columbia at the end of June 2014. This is a very unfortunate turn of events for UBC, and not only because the guy is good, real good. I will not expand here on his remarkable legacy at UBC since he still has a while to go. This will come in due time. I will write instead about why I think Toope’s decision and announcement come at a very bad time for the university. The Board of Governors has already started dealing with the succession, yet most of its non-elected government-appointed members may soon be confronted with a radical change in provincial politics. The faculty may therefore have to step up and take a leadership role in the search for a new president.

I have written before about the importance of the Board of Governors in its dual role of sanctioning, supporting and overseeing the actions of the senior university administration.  But what about situations when non-elected members of the Board are fully in charge e.g., without the input and support of the senior administration?

Two examples come to mind. In 2010, the Trustees of the University of Oregon –all appointed by the Governor– fired the President, Richard Lariviere, because he wanted to use non-state funds to provide badly needed salary increases to retain and recruit faculty at his university. The faculty reacted and within days, the Board had to appoint the President’s closest friend and advocate, Robert Berdahl, who had chastised them in a scathing public letter.

Then came last year’s debacle at the University of Virginia when the chair of the governor appointed Board orchestrated the resignation of the President Teresa Sullivan. Again, the faculty and senate fought back. Faced by the prospect that no academic was willing to take over the position –even on a temporary basis, the Board relented and reinstated Sullivan in order to restore order and dignity to the University.

Both episodes show that even the full support of government does not provide an appointed university Board legitimacy, if the faculty doesn’t support the direction it is taking. A Board without the institutional support of the administration and without the trust of the faculty is nothing more than an emperor with no clothes. Even worse! What if the Board didn’t even have the support of government: a situation that we may experience soon in BC. Do we run the risk of plunging in an institutional vacuum?

The current situation at UBC is of course very different from the two abovementioned US universities, and I would like to think that we are immune from the unconscionable actions of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas. We have a President who is exiting on his own terms while at the zenith of his powers and his accomplishments, hardly a crisis situation. Also the Board of Governors at UBC is of the hybrid type, i.e., it also comprises a few elected members (from faculty, staff and students) and not only government appointed representatives. So, where is the resemblance?

First, similar to U. Virginia and U. Oregon but for different reasons, we are in a situation, where a Board is in charge of recruiting a president and the senior administration is on the sidelines –for obvious reasons. Second, and in spite of the hybrid nature of the UBC Board, the non-elected government-appointed members regard themselves as the “independent members” of the Board and therefore firmly believe that they should be running the selection process –among others.

As I had mentioned before, the status of the elected members of the Board feels sometimes like the one of women within the Catholic Church. They are appreciated and tolerated but they are not allowed to be ordained nor say mass. This already constrains the process to very few governors.

But all this would still be manageable if the Board didn’t have to face the reality of turnovers, first in the chair’s position whose term is ending in June, that is before even the search starts, but also in a large set of appointed members whose terms end before the completion of the presidential search, and last but not least in the likely introduction of new members who are unfamiliar with all the issues.

Fine, we may still have a couple –the newest and greenest on the Board– to put on the search committee. But here is the kicker. British Columbia is facing an election in May, and if the political winds change –a real possibility, it seems– then all appointed members could be replaced overnight by the incoming government.  The fact that the process may include two or three private-sector people from the Alumni Board of Directors is neither enough to guarantee independence nor to inoculate the process from the prospect of political turmoil.  We therefore need the elected members of the Board to step up during these potentially uncertain times to insure stability and continuity.

Fortunately, there will be slots for faculty, students and staff on the search committee to be filled through elections. But these can never play the same role as elected Board members, who have been exposed to the whole range of university files, hot or not, controversial or not, secret or not.

Yes, we may need the expertise of governors from the private sector to quiz presidential candidates about the future of the UBC town, but we also need knowledgeable core members of the University community who have spent time on Board committees, who know first hand the nuts and bolts of the university’s academic files, and who are also well aware of the fast-evolving world of post-secondary education and advanced research.

The university would be well served if/when the Board uses an inclusive, transparent and –dare I say—democratic process to help the UBC faculty step up for their university.

The biggest (new) item in the budget is $300 million in funding for a new Canada Jobs Grant program to help train or retrain Canadians for “labour market demands.” The grant will be for short-duration training at “eligible institutions”, that is –you guessed it– community colleges, career colleges and trade union training centres.

To add insult to injury, the colleges also get $12-million out of the $15-million re-assigned to NSERC, which contributes further to the bleeding of the Discovery program, the prime source of funding for university researchers. This seems to be in response to the following assertion of highly questionable facts by PolytechnicsCanada in its pre-budget submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance:

“Facts worth noting about the current R&D funding for academic-industry partnerships: Annual federal support for higher education R&D (basic and applied research) is $3+ billion, mostly directed to basic research and supporting graduate students. Applied research funding for academic-industry partnerships stands at $400 million of this total. Worse, annual funding for college applied research, despite recent gains, now stands at only $35 million.”

To add another injury to insult, Budget 2013 also calls for the expansion of the eligibility of NSERC’s Industrial Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRA) program to include college undergraduate students. This seems to be a reaction to the following “chutzpaesque” statement in the Polytechnic-Canada submission.

“The bias that Bachelors’ degrees are the purview of the university sector alone needs to be broken. Federal action can focus on the equitable inclusion of college undergraduates for industrial scholarships and internships, either through the research granting councils or any new funding for attracting international undergraduates.”

It also looks like the community colleges are very good at smelling where government’s new priorities are heading. Budget 2013 also provided $23 million over two years ($10 million for for “marketing initiatives” and $13 million for the Mitacs Globalink program) to promote Canada as an international study destination. This is a far cry from what the Chakma report has been calling for on behalf of the universities, and may again have more to do with the following submission:

“Polytechnics Canada recommends that the government launch a more equitable and updated marketing effort for higher education that captures the diversity and quality of all Canadian post-secondary institutions. We strongly urge that the government create new scholarships for international undergraduate students (as opposed to those focusing on graduate students alone), making any new awards open to all colleges and polytechnics that are eligible to offer Bachelor’s degree programs.”

The colleges made their entrance to the world of federal research funding back in 2009 after a well-heeled campaign –through the Conference Board of Canada and the Globe and Mail –among others. Commissioned reports and articles in the press started positioning colleges as the avant-garde of Canada’s efforts in innovation and technology transfer. Soon after, came the announcement from CFI calling for $32.5 million for a College Fund. “Although research isn’t a core mandate for community colleges, the College Fund will be supporting programs that involve working with industry to bring products and ideas to market.” NSERC (not CIHR and not SSHRC) also established a $15-million College and Community Innovation (CCI) Program.

The colleges scored again in the 2011 budget, which brought them the chairs! The colleges then received –again through NSERC– ongoing funding for 30 new Chairs with a mandate to conduct applied research in fields where  “there is an important industrial need.” A further $12 million over 5 years is allocated to NSERC’s Idea to Innovation program that supports joint college-university research in areas of commercialization potential. Moreover, the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) then received $80 million in new funding over three years to help small and medium-sized businesses accelerate their adoption of key information and communications technologies through collaborative projects with colleges. I wondered then whether College CERCs would be next.

The latest skirmishes started before the budget announcement and as soon as the CBC headlined, “Peeved Harper aims at ‘remaking Canadian labour force,” with the provocative subtitle, ‘Too many kids getting BAs and not enough welders,’ one Conservative insider says.” This was followed by Chris Sorensen’s essay on “skills mismatch” and “all those bartenders and baristas with expensive university degrees.” 

This, combined with the continuous and agressive calls of PolytechnicsCanada to the federal government to “update the logic behind programs that support innovation or skills, and require better outcomes for the existing funding levels,” their pleas for “equity” and for “less bias” were taking a toll. Luckily for the AUCC, Alex Usher intervened and stopped the bleeding by pointing out how “the talk about skills shortages in Canada is data-free and factually-challenged.”

The AUCC then woke up and countered on Twitter: “700,000 new jobs created for university grads between 2008-2012 compared to 320,000 for college & trades grads.” And “Most jobs in high demand in Canada require a university degree: recent CIBC report.” Here is another tweet, ”Between 2011 and 2020, AUCC estimates there will be 2.1 million jobs created for university grads.” And another, “Uni grads not getting McJobs. Stats Can shows they earned 50% more than high school students in 2005.”

But the damage was done and the budget was already on its way to the printer.

Well, Leo Charbonneau now wants all of us to get along, but it surely is easier said than done as illustrated by his own blog post in which he royally disses “the data” of James Knight, exiting president of the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC). OK, the latter did not help himself with statements such as: “Where in a university calendar would you find anything about GPS?” Can someone please give him a tour of a geomatics program at any university nearby?

Fortunately for the universities, exiting U of T’s President, David Naylor seems to have broken free from the shackles of being … a president of a Canadian university. He is speaking up and forcefully about these important issues.

In any case, it is a fact that Canada’s colleges are fast becoming the lobby to reckon with in Ottawa. “Les mauvaises langues” say that there are many more MPs representing ridings with small colleges than in those with major universities. Whether this is a factor or not in the shrinking position of Canada’s universities in Ottawa’s corridors of power remains to be seen. The performance of the AUCC needs to be assessed and “Piece of Mind” shall try –hopefully in the near future– to do its bit in this direction.

I had written about the unique persona and the tremendous influence of Joram Lindenstrauss. But today I remembered how he always made a stop at the University of Washington before coming to see me in Vancouver. He had spent a year there in the early days of his career, loved the Pacific Northwest, and developed a close friendship with Bob Phelps and his wonderful wife Elaine, a tireless champion of everything progressive. I used to drive down to pick Joram up from their home in Seattle. Yes, I had written before about how much our geeky lives of mathematicians/researchers/travelling salesmen are intertwined with those of our families. And you don’t need to be a Paul Erdős to experience this extremely rewarding lifestyle. When colleagues host you in some far away country, you are –more often than not– the guest of their families, their parents, not to mention their in-laws and their neighbors.

I had re-blogged what Tim Gowers wrote about Ted Odell. And when Tim writes, you can rest your pen. I have known Ted since 1982, when I spent a year at the University of Texas at Austin. Ted and his wife Gail were wonderful hosts. I remember him telling me how intrigued he was, when he, who was born in Woodstock, NY (yes the famous one) saw upon his first arrival to Texas a cowboy tying his horse before entering a McDonalds. He had never seen another one since.

Ted was an expert in combinatorial, measure-theoretic and set-theoretic methods in analysis. Gowers wrote about his contribution to the solution of the famous distortion problem for Hilbert space. Very recently, with Richard Haydon and Thomas Schlumprecht he achieved remarkable new results on the structure of Lp-spaces. He also settled an old problem with Bill Johnson proving that the isomorphism class of a separable infinite-dimensional space has infinite diameter. Ted was a beautiful mind.

Mathematics for Bill Davis was a uniquely social sport. It was simply an excuse to talk, debate, chew the fat, and have fun. This purely Ohioan boy was unusually cosmopolitan in his cultural, musical and culinary taste. I suspect that his 1976-77 research study term at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was an eye-opener to this American midwesterner for the richness and the sheer delight of experiencing life in different cultures. He had time for me and surely for picking on my english accent very early on and as soon as I stepped off the boat in North America back in 1976. In 1988 and before all the craze about novel ways for teaching and the role of technology, he helped create Calculus&Mathematica, an innovative calculus-learning device.

He wanted the students to “Give it a Try”, to enjoy “the experiences of introducing ideas and topics, the challenges to intellect and patience, the excitement of beating the course and solving a very difficult problem. There is no more rote manipulation in this class. Problems are open-ended. Students no longer simply memorize a formula and then plug it in to solve a particular equation. They play, conjecture, test, conjecture, play more, and almost always come to the correct conclusion.”

That was a turning point in Bill’s life. “There’s nothing more fun than that. Sitting and talking with students who have just discovered that math can make sense.” Since starting to work on the project, and work with the students in the lab, Bill’s wife, Jo, declared that “he was finally fit to live with.”

Aleksander Pełczyński died on December 20, 2012 only a few months after the passing of Joram Lindenstrauss. An amazing coincidence considering that they are both considered to be the fathers of modern Banach space theory ever since their joint and defining role in uncovering the true impact and depth of Grothendick’s “Résumé”.

Olek was a student of Stanisław Mazur. He was a member of the Polish Academy or Science and the editor-in-chief of Studia Mathematica, which was founded by Stefan Banach and Hugo Steinhaus. Studia may be the only mathematical journal in the world that had to publish papers with notes such as, “The author of this work has been murdered by the Nazis in March 1943. The manuscript which he sent to the editor in 1941 was recently found among the papers left by S. Banach.”

Pełczyński  started his mathematical career during that tragic era of Polish history, which may somewhat explain his deep knowledge of European and American history. These sinister times may have also helped shape his relatively enigmatic personality, and his reluctance towards assuming positions of responsibility both on the Polish and international scenes. On the other hand, his mix of cynicism and sarcastic humour was there for everyone to see.

Olek’s influence on Polish mathematics was huge. His students, all of whom are close and dear friends, became prominent mathematicians. Even those who are working in Canada, the US, Paris and Denmark are still involved and engaged in Polish mathematics.

Olek’s sense of humour was twisted, complicated and almost incomprehensible. Our non-mathematical conversations were mentally exhausting, as every sentence he uttered could have several meanings and interpretations. His influence and effect on his students, even after they achieved international prominence, was profound and somewhat terrifying. I felt that he liked me. I didn’t know why, though I think I amused him. I respected him greatly, but he remained an enigma till the very end.

I don’t know when, where and who initiated the kind and gratifying notion that Bob Phelps was my “North American father.” He surely treated me like the son he never had. But Bob was kind and generous to everyone. I wonder sometimes what would have happened if Bob had succeeded in recruiting me at the University of Washington, back in the 80′s.

I had known of Bob since I was a student in Paris. His “1966 Lectures on Choquet theory” was a required reading for all of us students of … Gustave Choquet. The truth is that every book by Bob Phelps is a must-read for students interested in functional and nonlinear analysis. They were all bestsellers.

Phelps worked on merchant ships during World War II as a radio operator, and was therefore late getting into university. But once there, his career was meteoric, establishing with his thesis supervisor, Errett Bishop, the amazing fact that “all Banach spaces are sub-reflexive,” years after dozens of papers had been published proving that, “If a Banach space is sub-reflexive, then …” The Bishop-Phelps theorem is now one of the most important results in functional analysis, with applications to operator theory, harmonic analysis, integral representations, variational analysis and optimization.

The “Rainwater seminar” and the “John Rainwater’s papers” are well known to the older mathematicians of the rain-soaked Universities of British Columbia and Washington. Not unlike “Nicolas Bourbaki,” though much less ambitious, John Rainwater became a pseudonyme used by several mathematicians of the Pacific Northwest, including Bob himself, who eventually decided that JR deserved a biography of its own.

Bob was also an all-round athlete, who practiced rock climbing, mountaineering, biking and of course running. One of the disappointments of his life may have been that he couldn’t get me interested in jogging –let alone running. He was however successful in getting my wife to run with him, not only in the Pacific Spirit Park around UBC, but also –to my horror– in the “Jardins du Luxembourg” in Paris. Michel Talagrand told me repeatedly that Bob Phelps saved his life by introducing him to running. I didn’t know how.

Once he realised –more than 30 years ago– that I was born in sub-Saharan Africa, he started introducing me to the audiences of my talks and seminars, as “the mathematician from Timbuktu”. On April 2, 2012, Bob sent me an email, “I thought of you when Timbuktu hit the news today.”

His last email came on September 11, 2012. He had just received my call for proposals for BIRS. “Dear Nassif, Sorry, I won’t be able to submit a BIRS proposal this time.  Maybe when I’m 90 (four years from now). Bob”

His health was starting to decline then, but I didn’t know. I will always cherish my memories of Bob Phelps. Rest in peace my friend.

In response to an open letter by 331 mathematical scientists, including 27 Canada Research Chairs and 35 fellows of the Royal Society of Canada, Suzanne Fortier made a statement that shocked even the cynics among us –science policy junkies. She wrote back that “our highest rated Discovery Grant researchers have a higher incidence of working with industry than their colleagues.” Such a statement by the President of the sole government agency that is mandated to support basic scientific research at Canada’s universities spoke volume about the thinking and management style of Suzanne Fortier at NSERC during the last seven years.

One could only conclude that the former President was not only determined to redirect academic research funding towards short term industry needs, but that she was actually convinced that Canada’s best researchers are those who work directly with industry. That was radical and went beyond the much talked about “decision-based evidence making” syndrome. One could only assume that she was under the direct spell of the “educational zombies” referred to by David Naylor, and not merely acting under pressures from government or … business deans.

Whereas Mike Lazaridis was constantly pleading for government support of “research that tackles big questions, not just research that looks at commercial gains”, the 2012 joint pre-budget submission by NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC and CFI to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance never once addressed the need to support basic research. Their memo described how “the global job market is increasingly being driven by talented, skilled, creative and highly mobile people who are commercializing innovative ideas and developing new business processes that drive economies and improve quality of life.”

And guess what! We have no evidence that government did anything else but listen to the 3 presidents and act upon their recommendations: It directed  them to re-allocate $37-million to industrial partnership programs in their 2012 budget. Government will probably do the same to their budgets in each of the following fiscal years –or simply cut. We shall learn more tomorrow!

Between the scientific community and the political class, “mon coeur balance”

Upon reading Golby’s comment about “the EPSRC not taking sufficient advice from active researchers,” I remembered a conversation where people were comparing the management styles of the past two NSERC presidents. Fortier’s predecessor, Tom Brzustowski is known to have been in tune with the wishes and aspirations of the active research community, keeping an open mind and continuously sensing its pulse and seeking its advice. In contrast, the consensus on Fortier was that she was more focused on relations with government, hence on spending more time and energy with the political class.

This could in principle be a good thing for Canada’s science, provided of course this “political coziness” is used as a bridge between the scientific community and the political class, ultimately supporting all honest efforts to move Canadian science forward. It is hard to determine whether that was the case or not during the last seven years. While it is clear that NSERC did not get necessarily “spoiled” by the government, there is always the possibility that the cuts would have been deeper, had she kept more daylight between NSERC’s mission statement and the government’s de-facto political agenda.

Most relevant to the discussion and to the precarious position of the scientific community is what happened on March 16^tth, 2009 and the days that followed. Obama had just announced the doubling of the budgets of the NIH and the NSF, and the Canadian government had just announced billions and billions of dollars of spending in a stimulus budget. Yet, that same federal budget managed to chop $147.9-million from the three granting agencies that fund research at Canadian universities. Whether intentional or not, the government seemed to be sending a loud and threatening message to Canada’s research community. The reaction was swift and 2,250 researchers, including some of the country’s most respected scientists, signed an open letter to the Prime Minister calling the funding cuts “huge steps backwards for Canadian science.”

But soon after, reports started coming out from Ottawa and from certain post-secondary institutions that the NSERC leadership and some university presidents –I might add– were unhappy, even angry with the reaction of Canada’s scientific community. They argued that the public and vocal support for the Tri-council and for university research was neither warranted nor wanted! Go figure!

More recently, a bewildered scientific community read the almost identical press releases of the presidents of CIHR and NSERC regarding their 2012 budget allocations, which were obviously disappointing to rank-and-file researchers. The president of SSHRC had refrained from issuing one. NSERC’s release was entitled “Economic action plan 2012″ and praised government for its actions. Yet, a week later, NSERC called for a meeting of all VP-Research in Canada’s universities to unfold a “deficit reduction action plan” for 2012 and 2013.  Not one single word was uttered to –at least– express the mildest of disappointments about a government decision to cut funding for basic research. But how then government could ever know the consequences of –and the communities’ reactions to– their policies?

What are then the lessons to be learned?

Either NSERC’s leadership truly believed in the need to alter NSERC’s mandate towards addressing the research needs of Canada’s industry and was in total agreement with the government’s budget allocations to R&D. In this case, it is fair to conclude that this leadership wasn’t in tune with neither the aspirations of the scientific community, nor the findings of the presidents of our leading universities.

If not, then one has to agree that such situations are rather delicate for a politically appointed leadership, as they require a great deal of moral courage, personal strength, objective outlook, persuasive skills, strong leadership qualities, and a solid scientific reputation to stand on.

The next leader of NSERC may need to have all these attributes, so that he/she could commend the respect of both the scientific community and of government in order to connect the –currently missing—bridge of ideas between them. Quite a tall order!

Filed under: Op-eds, R&D Policy ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/03/21/nserc-time-to-press-the-reset-button-on-its-relations-with-government-and-the-scientific-community/feed/ 2 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/03/18/nserc-time-to-press-the-reset-button-on-the-mandate/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/03/18/nserc-time-to-press-the-reset-button-on-the-mandate/#comments Mon, 18 Mar 2013 06:58:07 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=12420 Continue reading →]]> Cathleen Crudden, President of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC) has already hinted at it in her blog post on the occasion of Suzanne Fortier’s exit from NSERC. “Choosing her successor will be a critical task. With academic and industrial researchers calling for more funding of basic research over the last several years, the CSC hopes that the next person to sit in the big chair at NSERC will be a champion for basic research in science and engineering.” And what Fortier’s fellow chemists are saying now is not any different from what other scientists have been saying for the past six years. That NSERC has been experiencing “mission drift” was also a highlight of the recent report of the expert panel commissioned by the government of Canada to review all federal support to R&D. But the need to redress NSERC’s diminished support for basic scientific research during the Fortier era is only a part of the story.

Indeed, the button needs to be also reset not only for the drifting mandate of NSERC, which is the subject of today’s blog entry, but also on the management style and modus operandi of its leadership, and on how they need to interact with the nation’s scientific community and with government. These will be addressed in tomorrow’s post.

Paul Golby, the newly appointed chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), wrote recently that in order to deal with a surprisingly similar situation afflicting NSERC’s counterpart in the UK,  he had “spent his summer visiting universities (in the UK) and meeting researchers to better understand feelings within the community.” I surely hope that the Minister of State (Science and Technology) and the chair of NSERC’s council will follow suit and connect with Canada’s scientific community before proceeding with their search for a new president.

Golby “found that the strongest concerns were that EPSRC is putting short-term impact ahead of academic excellence, that it is micromanaging the grant portfolio to achieve this, and not taking sufficient advice from active researchers.” The little he knew that he was also summarizing the feelings of the Canadian scientific community, which is in the process of assessing the last six years of Suzanne Fortier at the helm of NSERC and probably the end of an era.

Putting short-term impact ahead of academic excellence 

The support of basic research was not a priority of Suzanne Fortier. This statement reflects an overall consensus, not only by the chemists, but also the mathematicians, the physicists, and many others among Canada’s scientists. Mme Fortier talked about “protecting the discovery grants program”, while in reality she was overseeing its demise in so many ways. Just take a look at the slopes in the following graph starting in the year 2005-06, then include the additional $30-50M cut –announced in 2012– from the Discovery Program due to the termination of the Major Resources Support (MRS) and the downsizing of the Research Tools and Instruments (RTI), and decide for yourself on where support for basic research is heading.

While the total budget for basic research was admittedly stagnant over the past 6 years, this data should be analyzed in a context where the number of applicants to the Discovery Grants program kept increasing from 3300 in 2010, to 3482 in 2011, to 3900 applicants for the 2012 competition. Furthermore, some of the DG money was siphoned away towards new programs such as Accelerator grants and Frontiers, which even though they still counted as “Discovery,” they were now directed towards specific government and NSERC priorities.

But the story doesn’t end here. NSERC’s postdoctoral and doctoral scholarships, which were supposed to be as “protected” as the Discovery grants, have been dramatically reduced. In the past 7 years, the number of PDF awards has dropped from 255 in 2006  to 98 (out of 1254 applications) in 2012, and the success rate from 25.4% to 7.8%.

And where did the money go? According to NSERC communications, “some reassignment has taken place to manage pressures within the Scholarship and Fellowship suite of programs – for instance, increasing the funding available for Industrial Postgraduate Scholarships and the CREATE  program.”  

Dirigisme, research prioritization and re-allocation of funds

CREATE and the Industrial scholarships are typical of the ways used by the Fortier administration to redirect the research enterprise while claiming to maintain the spirit of the expenditure. This innocent looking re-assignment of funds within the Scholarship and Fellowship suite of programs, was nothing short of an earthquake in the landscape of supporting HQP. Indeed, while fresh Canadian PhDs practicing any scientific discipline and aiming for any post-secondary institution could –up to the recent past– apply to the PDF competition, they now have to look for a CREATE team that could “train them in professional skills that complement their qualifications and technical skills, in order to facilitate their transition to productive employees in the Canadian workforce.”

Oh! and by the way, “up to 50 percent of the CREATE grants will be dedicated to the industrial stream,” and “at least 60 percent of the CREATE funding will be directed toward NSERC’s priority areas”.  Doesn’t this remind you of the EPSRC directives –which ignited the revolt of the UK scientists– such as the one that states that “Applied probability will be “grown” in the UK, and all remaining areas of mathematics are to be “under review”. Or that the agency would reduce funding for synthetic organic chemistry, but will increase funding to the area of catalysis.

Match-making and force-fed innovation

No other program illustrates the Fortier legacy better than “Engage.” So far, NSERC staff have distributed –without peer review– more than $30-million in Engage grants, which are designed to cover direct project costs for up to 6 months and a total of $25,000 to help set up industry-academic partnerships. These grants fund researchers who can address a “company-specific problem” for an industrial partner, who will own all Intellectual Property (IP) if any, without contributing a penny to the project. That’s right: NSERC now subsidizes companies to effectively hire academics to do their work. Our academics, instead of dedicating themselves to fundamental, peer-reviewed research, can be branch plants for industry. And furthermore, NSERC will pay for it!

Fortier’s high hopes were to use the “Engage program” to fully pay for a first date with industry, hoping to eventually turn many of these “Engage relationships” into Collaborative Research and Development grants (CRD), where industrial partners are asked to share the cost. But so far, the conversion/success rate has been abysmal. Indeed, through a Library of Parliament request, MP Kennedy Stewart learned that “348 distinct researchers have received both Engage grants and Collaborative Research and Development grants since these programs have operated, and this without regard to the years or the order in time. This number represents 10.62% of the total number of grantees for these two programs.”

Make your own conclusions, but make no mistake. Canada’s scientists understand that the government should be –and is– trying to figure out how to increase innovation and industrial R&D in this country. But turning NSERC into an outsourcing service for industry – without peer-review, and with subsidies to boot – is entirely the wrong way to go. And this is where the scientific community took issue with the Suzanne Fortier approach. 

Accountability may have been the biggest casualty 

The “binning system” may be another cornerstone of Fortier’s legacy at NSERC. Under the cover of responding to recommendations from internal and external reviews of its Discovery Grants program, NSERC developed a new evaluation system, which was supposed to be more fair (equal grants for equal merit) and more dynamic (history and track record do not count).

But you know there is a serious problem, when the members of NSERC’s Evaluation Groups (EG) are the first to call foul, and announce that they are shocked, surprised and offended by the results of an NSERC’s Discovery Grant competition – the one they just finished running.

It turned out that without any consultation, the scientific community was being asked to accept a rigid, unstable, unpredictable, discriminatory system, with minimal uniformity, transparency and accountability and maximal bureaucratic grip. A system that fundamentally changed the mandate of the Discovery Grant program, from one that supports excellence in research to another more focused on training HQP, from one that protects and uphold support for basic discovery to another that favors those who could afford to recruit students and trainees thanks to industrial support for their solution-driven work. We understand that NSERC is now reviewing its “binning system” by consulting the scientific community. Better late than never. 

Fending off university-attacking zombies

Last week, David Naylor, the president of the University of Toronto, made a strong speech about what he describes as educational zombies — government and industry calls for more job-specific education at universities and more research aligned with industry needs. He uncovers how one of these zombies has already had an effect on research funding. He showed the following data about the funding patterns for NSERC over the last 30 years. Note the last six.

He also noted that not only our innovation and competitiveness indicators did not improve over this period, but that “this funding ecosystem, combined with many disincentives to excellence, makes it harder for us to reach the top tier of the podium.  Perhaps this is why no Canadian has won a Nobel Prize for 20 years.”

It should be interesting to see whether Suzanne Fortier will be fending off university-attacking zombies, now that she is the rector of McGill university, a contender for the top tier of the podium. In the meantime, choosing her successor at NSERC will be a critical task.

Filed under: Op-eds, R&D Policy ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/03/18/nserc-time-to-press-the-reset-button-on-the-mandate/feed/ 3 ghoussoub Comparative 7 http://nghoussoub.com/2013/03/06/suzanne-fortiers-last-salvo/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/03/06/suzanne-fortiers-last-salvo/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:44:12 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=12369 Continue reading →]]> You all heard the news by now, and I got more than my share of phone calls, emails and tweets informing me about it. Suzanne Fortier is to become the 17th Principal and Vice-Chancellor (President) of McGill University, effective early September, 2013, for a five-year term. In other words, Madame Fortier will stop being the President of NSERC, effective immediately. We wish her and all our colleagues at McGill well. But before she moves to the other (receiving) end of the divide, Dr Fortier will still have one more kick at the can of disrupting science and engineering funding policy. But it won’t be in Canada, this time around.

Indeed, the chairman of NSERC’s counterpart in the UK, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has just announced his decision to commission two independent reviews: one to look at how EPSRC obtains strategic advice to help it develop effective policies, and one to evaluate its overall peer-review processes.

The first review will be of EPSRC’s strategic advice routes. The Panel will conduct the review during spring 2013 and report its conclusions to the July Council meeting. It  is comprised of:

• Dr Suzanne Fortier, President, NSERC Canada (Chair)
• Professor Richard Brook, President, AIRTO Ltd
• Sir David Wallace, Master of Churchill College, Cambridge
• Professor Helen Atkinson, Leicester University

What is remarkable is that Dr Paul Golby had been appointed EPSRC Chairman in April 2012 in order to deal with a revolt by UK scientists against policies introduced and implemented by the EPSRC chief executive, David Delpy. Golby writes that he had “spent his summer visiting universities and meeting researchers to better understand feelings within the community.”

A luxury for Canadians! But guess what!

“He found that the strongest concerns were that EPSRC is putting short-term impact ahead of academic excellence, that it is micromanaging the grant portfolio to achieve this, and not taking sufficient advice from active researchers.”

But for the life of me, weren’t these exactly the same concerns that the Canadian scientific community had expressed about Madame Fortier’s dirigisme at NSERC during the past six years?

More about this later, when we analyse in depth, Madame Fortier’s legacy at the helm of Canada’s largest granting agency for science and engineering.

It goes without saying that you need to nominate, nominate and nominate, and of course you need to have the talent to nominate. But is it enough? It was a story much closer to home that got me thinking about the missing third ingredient.

The VP-Research had just announced UBC’s internal awards for this year, and one more time the mathematics department was nowhere to be seen on the list of happy winners. Yet, I was aware of the department’s continuing success in getting prestigious external awards, from Sloan’s to Fellowships in the Royal Society –the original one, that is. I, for one, have had in the past few years a 100% success rate in my nominating efforts (to external awards) of deserving colleagues. So, what gives?

I asked first whether the department had nominated anybody for these internal awards. The response was disconcerting: “We have mostly concentrated on external Math prizes because, frankly, we have in the past had zero luck with the UBC prizes. As you know, it takes a lot of work and intrusion to put a nomination together, and is very disheartening to be brushed off. In the past, we had no math reps on any of those campus-wide prize committees so these all seem like a hopeless long shot.

It doesn’t take a Hercule Poirot to corroborate all what was in this loaded message. Yes, 2005 was the last time someone from Math had won a major internal research award at UBC. No one from the mathematics department -at least since then- had indeed been called upon to serve on the VP-Research award committees. And yes, the departmental nomination committee had given up on the internal process, though it is not clear when this counterproductive reaction had started to prevail.

It is of course hard to sort out what came first in this chicken and egg situation, but I am ready to defend the conclusion of my colleagues on the departmental nomination committee. From firsthand experience, I agree that the disciplines of winners are tightly correlated with those that are effectively represented on award panels.

It is not enough to have the talented candidates for the awards, and it is not sufficient to nominate. It is becoming a requirement that disciplines be effectively represented on award committees by panelists who can understand them, evaluate them, and explain them. And this prescription is particularly vital in the case of the mathematical sciences.

My latest stint on the national Killam Prize (supposedly the Canadian Nobel) and Fellowship committee was particularly illuminating in this regard. After 3 years on the committee, I came out with the strong conviction that, unless mathematics is represented on the committee, no mathematician would ever stand a chance of being recognized, appreciated or selected.

You need someone who can explain and translate. Yes, the conceptual levels of elliptic curves and modular forms are far removed from the daily dose of intellect required from most panelists, but putting an L-function on a computer chip in order to help secure financial transactions in a digital economy, may not be. But these are intellectual quantum leaps for most panelists, hence the need for in-house expertise to take them through them.

I am not sure whether I am willing to accept the administration’s assurance, “that awards decisions are made by an independent committee of expert faculty members with no administrative interference (and that) The process is standard peer review, with all of its strengths and weaknesses.”

That no faculty member from one of the largest academic departments of the university, representing such a core discipline had been asked to be on the award committees for almost a decade is by itself an administrative interference. Whether this bottleneck was intentionally created (i.e. reflecting someone’s personal agenda) or accidentally induced (i.e. based on a sheer ignorance of the creative forces at hand) is unfortunately harder to investigate.

These are non-trivial matters, since they can spill over to other aspects of university life. Just take a look at this webpage stating that, “UBC Science faculty members conduct top-tier research in the life, physical, earth and computational sciences.” Are the mathematical sciences not sexy enough to be mentioned on promotional pages, or is it another alarming and astonishing case of ignorance by a communication officer?

Then, a dear friend wrote, “On the other hand, probability is mentioned on the website…  Someone has good taste!” Le malheur des uns fait le bonheur des autres.

Filed under: Op-eds ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/03/02/it-takes-more-than-talent-and-hard-work-to-win-academic-awards/feed/ 0 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/25/university-governance-gender-equity-and-the-2-solution/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/25/university-governance-gender-equity-and-the-2-solution/#comments Mon, 25 Feb 2013 03:59:54 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=12070 Continue reading →]]> It has been the talk of the town. Not that UBC is addressing past gender inequity in professors’ pay, but by the way it is doing it. Other Canadian universities have distributed salary adjustments to female faculty, but UBC was unique in its move to give an across-the-board pay hike to all: a “2 per cent salary increase to base academic salary retroactive to July 1st 2010, for all current full-time female faculty members, after discovering “a pay differential of 2% … that could only be explained by gender.” This decision, which will cost UBC an additional $1.8M annually, never went through the Board of Governors. Some of my colleagues on the Board learned about it from the Globe and Mail. Some are still unaware of it. Most are ignorant of the way it was implemented and of its consequences. Yet, this financial decision goes to the heart of the Board’s fiduciary responsibilities. What gives?

Whether the decision is right or wrong and whether its implementation has been ideal or flawed, are important topics in their own right. My focus here is on what they reveal about our current university governance.

I did ask and I was told that this (recurrent) expenditure does not concern the Board of Governors, since the compensation will be coming from the Deans’ budgets “through savings obtained by appropriate cuts and efficiencies.” Ditto for the general salary increase that is being negotiated (or not) with the Faculty Association … if they ever converge to a settlement.

This brought to the forefront an important governance issue that had been bothering me for a while, and that the Board (and probably the administration) had neglected to foresee and to address. About 3 years ago, the UBC administration devised and implemented a new decentralized budget model, whereas every fiscal year, Faculties are assigned their budgets according to a certain formula. After that, the Deans are supposed to have total autonomy over their revenues and their expenditures. So, whatever they do –and whatever the central administration does through them– becomes de-facto one step removed from the Board’s oversight and fiduciary responsibilities.

In other words, UBC may now be resorting –knowingly or not– to financial deals, which are negotiated and implemented by the central administration, executed and paid for by/through the Faculties, all under the radar screen of a Board of Governors that is too far removed from the transactions. And the equity deal came to exemplify the governance implications of this decentralization to the Dean’s level.

To better understand the ramifications of such a state and its impact on the accountability chain, imagine you are sitting in a Board meeting listening to how rosy the UBC finances are (hearing one more time the good debt vs. bad debt lecture) and how we are looking good and ready for yet another expenditure on capital projects and the likes. On the other hand, you are a faculty member being subjected through your Faculty to budget cutting exercises by Deans who are struggling to find savings and efficiencies to pay for the 3-year retroactive annual 2% increase for our female colleagues, for an inescapable forthcoming general wage increase for the faculty (very likely another 2% solution, which will cost $5.8M per year), not to mention other funds needed to uphold those centrally skimmed CRC salaries, or to match another one of government’s largesse such as a CERC or two. How can you then make up your mind and how would you vote on a given expenditure if you had a choice?

Needless to say, the externally appointed Governors, who are less likely to know about the second part of the equation, and are unaware of all competing priorities, often end up basing their decisions on an incomplete set of information. I have written before on the danger of dropping our guard and treating as small change our governance processes. The Board is currently conducting a self-review on governance, and I am committed to spend my last year on the Board working on maintaining and strengthening the integrity of the oversight mechanisms.

As to the 2% solution, no one can argue, in view of the evidence, as to why a correction is needed. The real question is how much, and how. There surely must have been fairer ways than to opt for an across-the-board distribution. I have heard that even within the administration, there was no consensus as to the best way to proceed. A good argument against the case-by-case approach came from my friend, SFU computer scientist, Veronica Dahl, who commented on the SFU experience with such a process. “The review became a burden for the professor and the administration … and for many cases it was an exercise in justifying the original salary decisions.”

I, for one, would have argued for a hybrid model, where the distribution could still be across-the-board, but only after having removed from the pool various subgroups, which may have not suffered to the same extent –at least financially– from gender inequity. These groups may include women faculty whose salary is above a certain cut, those with CRC positions, those whose partners were hired through a spousal appointment, and those who have had hikes in their base salary for holding administrative positions (Are we the only university that still does this?) Individuals in these groups can then be looked at on a case-by-case basis. This would have been a fairer process and may have channeled more cash to those colleagues who had suffered most from gender inequity in their compensation.

Some say that the administration chose the easy and least controversial way. One colleague wrote: “I wonder why the committee declined to deploy the full suite of readily available statistical techniques.” Outsiders keep saying that UBC is rich anyway, forgetting that thousands of our faculty members are still without a contract since July, 1 2012. One colleague wrote, “I think they were sloppy/lazy/scared/whatever.”

All what I can vouch for is that the “they” were not the Governors of the University of British Columbia.

Last year, the government had projected a $20 million in planned funding reductions for the whole post-secondary education sector for fiscal year 2013/14, and a further $30 million in fiscal year 2014/15. These reductions were to be achieved through administrative efficiencies. This equated to an approximate 1 percent cut to the operating grant in 2013/14 and a further 1.5 percent reduction in 2014/15.

This budget has reduced the cut to $5 million. The rest of the cuts have been delayed by one year. More precisely, the budget for 2013 reflects a reduction of $5 million for administrative savings and discretionary spending. On the other hand, it provides an additional $2.4 million for the UBC Medical School, hence the announced reduction across the sector for  2013/14 is $2.6 million.

The 2014/15 post-secondary budget will be cut by $17.6 million. This reflects a reduction of $20 million –supposedly in administrative savings– but again a $2.4 million increase for the UBC Medical School (for an annual ongoing $4.8 million for the Medical School).

A further $25 million reduction –again in administrative savings– is reflected in Year 3 of the fiscal plan. Government has effectively pushed out, by one year, the $50 million reduction for administrative savings identified in Budget 2012. Obviously, a lot can happen in that time frame …  Like an election or something.

For UBC, this means a reduction of $1.25 million to the 2013/14 base operating grant instead of the $5 million anticipated earlier this month by the UBC administration. So it is still a net budget cut.

Note that back in July 2012, the government had announced a total salary freeze and an end to bonuses for all public sector senior managers, including those at schools, universities and health organizations. The freeze affected more that 220 senior administrators and senior managers and professionals at UBC.

Filed under: Board of Governors ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/21/the-2013-bc-government-budget-and-what-it-means-for-ubc/feed/ 0 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/18/mathematics-is-alive-and-well-but-living-under-different-names/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/18/mathematics-is-alive-and-well-but-living-under-different-names/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2013 08:33:56 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/?p=11796 Continue reading →]]> That was the assessment of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) back in 1996. “This comment is still apropos,” they wrote in their latest report of 2012. “Although the mathematical sciences are pervasive, they are often invoked without an explicit awareness of their presence.” That was the very first paragraph of the introduction to a study recently released by the US National Academies, entitled, Fueling Innovation and Discovery (FID): The Mathematical Sciences in the 21st Century: A must-read! I have just ordered 20 copies to distribute to my university’s administrators, and to various science policy makers. ”Our first Coursera online course is on Game theory. It will be given by a faculty in computer science,” said the provost to the Board of Governors. I cringed in my seat. 

How many around this table, I wondered, do realize that “Game Theory” is nothing but a relatively recent development in mathematics: a theory developed in the second half of the last century by two of my mathematical heroes, John Von Neumann (of Los Alamos fame) and John Nash (The beautiful mind).

Mathematics is everywhere, yet no other discipline suffers from such a curious case of invisibility, both in the business world and in the academic world. A recent Op-ed in Scientific American states: “The deepest mysteries are often the things we take for granted. Most people never think twice about the fact that scientists use mathematics to describe and explain the world. But why should that be the case?” 

And most people, including Deans of Business schools, are not aware of how mathematics is driving innovation — in its most financially lucrative form, I must add. From the stochastic models and differential equations controlling the financial markets, to the advanced number theory used to protect credit card transactions, to the Fourier transforms performing instagram enhancements, to the eigenvectors determining Google search results.

People use the results of mathematical research everyday, yet they don’t seem to know it. Do you want a proof? Just go to any social event, announce that you are a research mathematician, and you will invariably get the inevitable question. What mathematics is there left to research?

In the business world, mathematics is invisible because it is often not called “mathematics.” It is called “analytics,” “modeling,” “operations research”, or simply generic “research.” Credit for applied mathematical advances may go to “information technology,” “industrial engineering”, “financial engineering” or just “plain engineering”. Unfortunately, it means that approaches to industrial problems that are based on new and sophisticated mathematical technology, could be difficult to sell to a higher management that is often not scientifically literate enough to appreciate it.

The FID report wonders how many people are aware of the mathematics used to make a single cell phone call –beyond the fact that we enter numbers in the decimal system, which are then converted into sequences of bits (zeros and ones)? Techniques such as “error correcting codes,” “linear and nonlinear filtering,” “hypothesis testing,” “spatial multiplexing,” “statistical waveform or parameter estimation,” are indeed at the core of wireless technology. They are all based on tools of the mathematical sciences, such as matrix analysis, linear algebra, random matrices, graphical models, and so on.” Yet, wireless technology is credited to engineers and “innovators”– whatever the latter means.

The OECD defines mathematical literacy as “an individual’s capacity to identify and understand the role that mathematics plays in the world, to make well-founded judgements and to use and engage with mathematics in ways that meet the needs of that individual’s life as a constructive, concerned and reflective citizen.” The OECD was thinking of 15-year olds, when they wrote this. They may need another definition for CEOs, business leaders, and university administrators.

Twitter had its own take on the situation: ”I just read that last year 4,153,237 people got married. I don’t want to start any trouble, but shouldn’t that be an even number?”

That Mathematics is also invisible in the academic world is a more subtle phenomenon, but much more painful. Painful enough to make me want to agree with physicist, Eugene Wigner: “Mathematics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”

This will be discussed in a future blog entry, which will be dedicated to my friend, John Hepburn.

How would you feel when Poet Laureate Alice Major, writes:  “I’m just back from the Banff International Research Station for Innovative Mathematics and Discovery. I feel like a kid impressing her classmates with news of a trip to Disneyland – not the Disneyland of pre-programmed rides and candy floss, but the Magic Kingdom of collision, of discovery, of our human handprints on rock.”

“Making it” in New York is always a convincing argument, so I quoted a message from George W. Hart: “The workshop (Mathematics: Muse, Maker, and Measure of the Arts) will have a significant impact on my work both as a mathematical artist and as a designer of The Museum of Mathematics, which will open next year in New York City”.

“I got more ideas in the 4 days I spent at this 5 day workshop than I do in a typical 4 months period at my home institution,” said University of California, Santa Cruz Professor, Richard Montgomery.

Bar-Ilan University Physicist, Yitzhak Rabin, wrote yesterday: “This workshop was characterized by exceptionally high level of scientific interactions and discussions. There were several important suggestions by some of the participants that I am going to incorporate in my research on nuclear pores. I have also started several new collaborations in the areas of polymer-grafted membranes, laser-induced florescence studies of DNA translocation through nanopores and single molecule imaging of chromatin dynamics.”

Then, I went for the “coup de grâce,” by recalling when I had received  the news of the birth of “Small Number” at BIRS not far from the birthplace of another one of his enlightened ancestors, Chief Crowfoot. I have risen out of the minds and souls of mathematicians, math teachers and First Nations Elders. I was conceived at a “First Nations Math Education Workshop” at the Banff International Research Station (BIRS). 

Now, you see the pattern. Essentially every day of the year, I receive a testimonial about a discovery, an interaction, an achievement, a flash of inspiration that occurred at the Banff International Research Station. No one writes me about their disappointment when an idea doesn’t pan out, when a problem doesn’t get solved, when a promising thought fizzles out, though this  must surely happen, even at BIRS. Can you beat that, Alan?

And what about my other job, you may ask? Well, it surely has its ups and downs, but then how can you do better than hearing from one of your students who had just graduated: “I got an offer for a one-year postdoctoral fellowship in Paris, a 3-year visiting assistant professorship at UC-Irvine, and I am expecting an offer from the University of Alberta. Which one should I take?

And only today from one of my former graduate students: “…. I just heard form Michigan State University.  They are making me an offer for a tenure-track position. I’m sure I could not achieve this without your support and generosity, and all I learned from you during my PhD. Thank you very much.”

And that’s only one day in the life of a very fortunate man. Happy Valentine’s everybody!

But first, what is CIFAR? Founded in 1982 by James Fraser Mustard, CIFAR is a private, non-profit institute, which “identifies major new areas of scholarly research where Canada has potential to lead.” It then supports the research of a select group within these areas “by providing them with such time-freeing benefits as teaching release, funding to hire graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and general research funding.”

The 12 research areas currently supported by CIFAR are Cosmology and Gravity (since 1986), Nano-electronics (since 1999), Quantum Materials (since 1987), Quantum Information Processing (since 2002), Earth System Evolution (since 1992), Integrated Microbial Biodiversity (since 2007), Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception (since 2004), Experience-based Brain and Biological Development (since 2003), Genetic Networks (since 2005), Institutions, Organizations, and Growth (since 2004) Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being (since 2005) Successful Societies (since 2002).

CIFAR receives direct funding (i.e., not competitively nor through the Tri-council) from the federal government and the Provinces of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. We don’t know how these governments evaluate the CIFAR program, whether through peer review or via KPMG (which seems to coordinate the evaluation of the Perimeter Institute).

In any case, where are the mathematical sciences in all this? The short answer is that they are fundamental in all these themes. In other words, no serious research can be done in any one of the above subject areas –including the social sciences– without quantitative analysis, albeit mathematical or statistical. Ironically, but not surprisingly, the BIRS workshop, which was running during the week of the formal announcement of the CIFAR-TBC partnership, was on “Topological Phenomena in Quantum Dynamics and Disordered Systems,” and several leading CIFAR fellows were attending it. Great! Are we now dealing with a risk of duplication, or with an opportunity for collaboration?

Then came the following heart warming letter to the editor of the Calgary Herald from Clifton Cunningham, a distinguished mathematician at the University of Calgary.

“Math is everywhere. From the sophisticated number theory used to protect your credit card transactions, to the Fourier transforms performing your instagram enhancements, to the eigenvectors determining Google search results, you use the results of mathematical research everyday. And it’s closer than you think. Literally. The finest minds in contemporary mathematics have been coming from across the planet to the think-tank known as the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS, http://www.birs.ca) for high-level workshops and collaborations almost every week of every year, for 10 years now. You use the fruits of past mathematical research in your everyday life, and the work going on now at BIRS, located in The Banff Centre, will affect your life in the future. Count on it.  Advances in mathematics lead to advances in science, which lead to advances in technology.

It’s happening right here, right now, at the Banff Centre. Which is why it is absolutely bizarre that Stephen Hunt’s recent article in the Calgary Herald, Banff Centre partners artists with big thinkers, makes no mention of the fact that the Banff Centre has partnered artists with big thinkers for 10 years, at the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery. The soon-to-come addition of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) to The Banff Centre is fabulous news, but let’s not forget the context and pretend this is something new. The big thinkers at the Banff Centre are already here: at the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery. Math is everywhere. And it’s here, too.”

So, what should we make of all this? Well, one could easily understand why the mathematicians are disappointed that BIRS, the multidisciplinary, the inclusive, the international, the peer reviewed, the pioneer, and the open resource hasn’t been mentioned.

The way I see it however, is that this is an opportunity. I have often described how BIRS has made The Banff Center a place of convergence between the mathematical sciences, the Sciences, the Arts and all creative forces. This new partnership could be a precursor of a long overdue “rapprochement” between the mathematical sciences and CIFAR. That the mathematician/computer scientist Denis Thérien and the physicist/statistician Pekka Sinnervo are now in leadership position at CIFAR, cannot be unrelated to these new developments.

Our eyes are also on Alan Bernstein, the relatively new President and CEO of CIFAR, a man of vision, who had in the past –ably and successfully– steered CIHR into its present re-invigorated state. Dr. Bernstein is surely familiar with Charles Darwin’s musings that he wished he had worked harder at mathematics, so as to possess the “extra sense” that he felt mathematicians can bring to understanding the world. Otherwise, he could at least remember that he owes our common friend and my colleague, Lon Rosen, his math and physics teacher at the University of Toronto, big time: He owes him not only for the dose of mathematical indoctrination but also for arranging that Alan take over his chair as cellist in a local string quartet, a position which Alan then enjoyed for 30 years.”

Filed under: Banff International Research Station, R&D Policy ]]> http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/11/will-birs-bring-cifar-and-the-mathematical-sciences-together/feed/ 0 ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/10/11708/ http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/10/11708/#comments Sun, 10 Feb 2013 17:53:33 +0000 Ghoussoub http://nghoussoub.com/2013/02/10/11708/ Continue reading →]]>

Reblogged from Mathblogging.org -- the Blog:

This post is part of the series Mathematical Instruments in which we introduce you to some of the math bloggers listed on our site. Today:

Nassif Ghoussoub -- Piece of Mind

Apart from "Piece of Mind", any places like other blogs, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, etc. we can find you on?

I do also Twitter but nothing else. I have another “UBC Board of Governors” blog connected to the University Housing Action Plan.

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