Alex Usher, President, Higher Education Strategy Associates, is echoing a theme I touched upon here a few weeks ago. But he is better at it!
I talked about how Canada is in a global war for talent. He wants “our universities to unleash their inner Vikings”.
I said that the opportunity is unique for Canada and that the time is now is based on many factors. He says it more bluntly. It is simply because “two of the world’s greatest repositories of scientific talent are broke”.
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Gordon Campbell is not gone yet, but the Business council of British Columbia can hardly wait to start dismantling one of his main legacies. It is urging the Liberals to “pause and re-set” their climate policies — noting that “the world has not unfolded” with as much vigour on emission policies as the government envisaged when it set out on this course in 2007.
In other words, others’ failures (to apply the Kyoto Protocol) should lead to more failures!
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Industry Minister Clement has announced a $300 million investment in a research and development project by aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney Canada. The investment is expected to “create more than 700 highly skilled jobs during the project work phase, and more than 2,000 jobs during the 15-year benefits phase.”
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The British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education surprised local post-secondary educators this month when it declared a six-month moratorium, starting Sept. 1, on new degree programs, saying it wants to take time to assess the province’s educational needs.
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Jonathan Borwein just sent me these priceless photos of the Halaman Ferguson structure “under construction”.
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Any one who has walked the streets of the Latin quarter in Paris knows about the special reverence with which the French treat their scholars. The streets carry the names of no other but Laplace, Fourier, Monge, Poincaré, Curie, Perrin, Becquerel, Gay-Lussac, Pasteur, but also Balzac, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Hugo, among other giants of mathematics, the sciences, arts, and literature.
There is no NorthWest 55th street in Paris.
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In response to my post, “Buckling under the weight of an award”, David Brydges wrote, “Someone must have planted a Higgs Boson in your award! After all, particle physicists believe that it is the origin of mass.”
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Carrying the olympic torch
I attended yesterday a memorial service for Virginia Greene (1944-2010). I didn’t know her well. I had met her on the UBC Board of Governors that she joined about a year ago. She was already frail and suffering the effect of chemotherapy. But I do remember thinking: wow, what a classy woman. Continue reading
Last Sunday, the Canadian Mathematical Society had a banquet in downtown Vancouver, where they officially gave out their annual prizes. I was honored to receive the David Borwein Distinguished Career Award.
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The most important new information that Isabelle Blain provided, and the most validating of NSERC’s new evaluation system, was the result of a survey –conducted by NSERC’s staff– of the panelists who dealt with both systems (from 2008-2010). They seem to prefer the new one.
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Of the many recommendations that NSERC received in 2007 from both the internal and international reviews, they picked the one that asks, “to separate the process of assessing scientific or engineering merit from assigning funding”.
Fair enough!
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As promised, here is a first installment of several posts I am preparing about the Discovery Grant program after my public debate with Isabelle Blain, NSERC’s VP for Research Grants & Scholarships. This first one will give the background behind the changes, and some of their effects on the community at large. The next post will deal with a comparison between the old and new systems for evaluating NSERC’s Discovery Grant applications, while in the third post, I will discuss the “Stockholm Syndrome” among panelists.
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UBC President, Stephen Toope
I have always been puzzled by my own self:
The Public Policy Forum recently held a meeting in Calgary to explore resource industries’ productivity, sustainability and competitiveness. According to Elizabeth Cannon, President of the University of Calgary (“Resource sector may lack flash, but it stars as an innovator”), the conference “showcased some impressive examples of on-the-ground innovation.”
Canada is in a global war for talent, yet there is a crisis in our graduate and postgraduate educational system. Our government is committed to create “the best-educated, most-skilled and most flexible workforce in the world”, yet for the 10th year running, the Conference Board of Canada gave the country a D grade for educating and graduating PhD students.
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“Top Test Scores From Shanghai Stun Educators” is the most viewed and most emailed story in today’s NY Times. In the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, Shanghai students outscored all other countries in reading as well as in math and science.
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Another feature of Bill C-470 (see previous post) is that it contains compensation disclosure provisions –with a floor of $100,000– that are aimed at improving the accountability and transparency of charities.
The AUCC finds the following problem with this provision:
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Bill C-470 drafted by Liberal MP for Mississauga East-Cooksville, Albina Guarnieri, passed first reading in Parliament in October. It was supposed to be a call to arms against charities whose salary structures make “a mockery of the concept of a charity.”
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Practicing for his upcoming state of the union speech in front of teachers and students at a community college in Winston-Salem, Virginia, U.S. President Obama called Monday for more spending on education, innovation and infrastructure to ensure a future where America does not lag behind other countries.
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Researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine by Robin Williams. Not so when they’d seen a scary or boring video beforehand. I kid you not.
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Piece of Mind 
