When the faculty needs to step up for their universities

Posted on April 6, 2013 by

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. Continue reading →

Posted in Board of Governors | 2 Comments

The not-so-secret war between the universities and community colleges

Posted on March 30, 2013 by

The folks of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) may have entered the budget lockup in a sunny mood, but they can’t be now, in spite of their rosy post-budget announcements. The colleges on the other hand are laughing all the way to the federal bank. As I had written sometime ago, the growing influence of Canada’s Colleges, especially PolytechnicsCanada, in Ottawa should not be underestimated. The colleges seem to have scored with government again and for the third year in a row. Canada’s universities on the other hand keep loosing ground and are –more than ever before– on the defensive. The AUCC, which is supposed to represent their interests in the capital, may need to start re-assessing its strategy, its ways, and its means. Continue reading →

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Bill, Joram, Olek, Ted and Bob

Posted on March 24, 2013 by

I am not posting today about Budget 2013 as many of you may have expected. I am writing instead about friendship, scholarship and death. Today, I was planning to drive down to Seattle to participate in a memorial service for a mentor, a colleague and a friend, Bob Phelps, who died on January 4, 2013. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it –My apologies to Colin Clarke, Robert Israel, Afton Cayford and Ed Granirer, who were counting on me to get there. I therefore decided to have my own memorial thing for Bob, by simply reminiscing and writing about him and about our friendship, which spanned over 35 years. But then it dawned on me that an inordinate number of lifelong friends and colleagues have walked away from us lately: Bill Davis, Joram Lindenstrauss, Alexander Pelczynski, Ted Odell and now Bob.  Continue reading →

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NSERC: Time to press the “reset” button on its relations with government and the scientific community

Posted on March 21, 2013 by

There is no doubt that Suzanne Fortier bears a big responsibility for the unprecedented changes to the landscape of government support to university sponsored research and innovation. But it is hard to believe that she is solely responsible for this major metamorphose in the Council’s modus operandi and mandate. The community argued for a long time about whether her policies at NSERC were government-imposed or internally conceived and executed. Here is an attempt to relay and understand the little we know about past Government/NSERC/Scientific Community interactions, and to draw a few lessons for the future. The President of NSERC is –or supposed to be– the quarterback of these interactions and it may be useful at this juncture to have a debate on what is required. Continue reading →

Posted in R&D Policy, Op-eds | 2 Comments

NSERC: Time to press the “reset” button on the mandate

Posted on March 18, 2013 by

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. Continue reading →

Posted in R&D Policy, Op-eds | Tagged , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Suzanne Fortier’s last salvo

Posted on March 6, 2013 by

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. Continue reading →

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It takes more than talent and hard work to win academic awards

Posted on March 2, 2013 by

Upon seeing the announcement by NSERC of its “Top Researchers,” I couldn’t help myself from tweeting, “UBC a no-show! Get off your comfortable arse and start nominating your colleagues.” I was surprised by how many non-UBCers retweeted my scream. I then remembered a recent conversation with a UBC senior executive, who was expressing his disappointment about the latest elections to the Royal Society of Canada: 4 fellows from UBC, 14 from U. of Toronto. We agreed that our university is not doing a good job nominating its deserving researchers. But a recent incident –and of course this remarkable intervention by the Governor General– reminded me of another serious obstruction to bringing the awards home. Continue reading →

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