Contested science policies vs. Senate scandals: the battle for the limelight

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Ghoussoub

The Canadian twitter world has been split in the last couple of days. You have of course the Duffy-Brazeau-Harb-Wallen-Wright-Perrin saga filling the trend boxes. But then, you have the story of the Tories’ problem with science, be it defunding, muzzling, commercializing, disbelieving, doubting, preventing, etc. The latter must have restarted with the incredible announcement about the National Research Council (NRC), presented as “Canada sells out science” in Slate, and as “Failure doesn’t come cheap” in Maclean’s. What went unnoticed was the fact that the restructuring turned out to be almost orthogonal to the recommendations of the Jenkins report about the NRC.  Continue reading →

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The faculty at UBC-Vancouver also want in!

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Ghoussoub

It can get quite lonely for faculty representatives on the Board of Governors. I have written before about the latent disparity in status between the elected and the appointed. But there is also the occasional dreadful feeling: what if no one cares? What if your colleagues on the faculty do not find issues of land development, faculty housing, collective bargaining, flexible learning, faculty industrial engagement, district energy, and the international college, among others, worth thinking about, let alone dealing with? I was therefore comforted to see that eight faculty members at UBC-Vancouver have declared their candidacy in the election for the two slots available to them on the presidential search committee. Surprisingly, the faculty at UBC-Okanagan will have an equal number of representatives on that committee. Both are already known. One is an uncontested candidate for the election there. The other is one of the four Governors chosen by the MRCC to represent the Board on the search committee. Continue reading →

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Nota Bene

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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. Continue reading →

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How far and how much could a university administration commit its successor?

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Ghoussoub

Ever since Stephen Toope announced the date of his resignation from the presidency of UBC, I and a few other members of the Board of Governors have been struggling with some tough questions. Should this administration stop, or at least slow down, its relentless pace in land development and large-scale capital projects? And if not, how far should they go in committing the incoming administration to a vision of campus they may not be willing to adopt? Continue reading →

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UBC’s search for a president: Two down but many to go

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Ghoussoub

The Chancellor has just announced the official launch of the search for a new president of UBC to succeed Stephen Toope. “A Search Committee of 22 members broadly representative of the University community – faculty, staff, students and alumni – will be selected.” I was happy to see that both UBC-V and UBC-O Senates had approved the “Terms of Reference” for the search committee as proposed by the Board, in particular those pertaining to its exact composition. Indeed, the new terms contain a couple of positive changes –from past ones– that signal some progress in the continuing discussion regarding the role of the faculty in the university governance. However, many challenges remain. ->

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The people who let you “matter” and those who don’t

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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.” Continue reading →

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Tell me about El CASA

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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? Continue reading →

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A “piece of mind” on university governance revisited

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Ghoussoub

“Your post was so highly elliptical that individuals involved will be pissed and onlookers will be puzzled,” wrote one friend. The latter part of his statement got my attention. A few other personal emails, Menzies’ comment below, and Wakefield’s column in the Ubyssey confirmed to me that my last post was –uncharacteristically– elliptical, which led different people to read it differently. Some even read in it the opposite of what I had meant. While my former Jesuit teachers would have been proud of this rhetorical powerplay, I have decided to give it another chance. This is unfortunate because larger issues of university governance seem to be heating up lately, such as those ably raised by Elly Walton’s in, “Are universities as open as they should be?” and by Alex Usher who seems to have missed many points in “Time for a New Duff-Berdahl?“. I shall try to get to the issues they raise as soon as I can. Continue reading →

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When the faculty needs to step up for their universities

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Ghoussoub

(From the archives) 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. 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?

Continue reading →

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

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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 Ghoussoub

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 Ghoussoub

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 →

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

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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 →

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Suzanne Fortier’s last salvo

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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 Ghoussoub

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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University Governance, Gender Equity and the 2% Solution

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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? Continue reading →

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The 2013 BC government budget and what it means for UBC

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Ghoussoub

The BC 2013 budget document is out. It doesn’t even use the words: productivity, innovation, research, university, or college. By taking a leaf out of the feds’ work manual, the provincial government is expecting us to rejoice upon hearing that the cuts are not as deep as announced in earlier budgets. One wonders whether all this has anything to do with Don Wright deciding to work with the NDP. In any case, it is not a good omen for post-secondary education overall, and it surely gives the NDP many holes to fill and capitalize on in the upcoming election. Here are some figures. Continue reading →

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“Mathematics is alive and well, but living under different names”

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Ghoussoub

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.  Continue reading →

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Why do I have the best job in the world

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Ghoussoub

Just imagine if you receive a Valentine’s card every day of every week of every one of the last 10 years. OK! not the loving and lusting kind, but the feel good and appreciative type. “Dear BIRS Director, The attached paper, `Byzantine Agreement in Polynomial Expected Time,’ was just accepted for publication. It solves a longstanding problem in theoretical computer science. It was there, listening to the talks of the workshop on shared memory, in the beautiful surroundings of Banff, that we first had the idea of applying ideas from shared memory to this problem, which is not about shared memory. So we have BIRS to thank.” Alan Bernstein, President and CEO of CIFAR, was not convinced. He managed to interrupt me to say so, which is not normally easy to do. It was during the panel discussion following the announcement of the CIFAR-TBC partnership. He is the one with the best job in the world, he said. So, I had to bring out the big artillery. Continue reading →

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Will BIRS bring CIFAR and the mathematical sciences together?

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Ghoussoub

My inbox started filling up at an unusual speed. The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) had just announced a partnership with The Banff Centre (TBC). “The two institutions are teaming up to create a physical home for CIFAR, with the hope being that their big brains will cross-pollinate with …,” wrote the Calgary Herald. The dozens of messages from colleagues and friends had one thread in common. Isn’t this what the 2100 scientists who attend the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) every year have been doing for 10 years now? No problem guys, haven’t you heard that imitation is the best form of flattery? Yes, but “how come BIRS is not even mentioned in the TBC press release, even though it is a perfect in-house example of the marriage of the arts and science of which its President speaks?” All very good questions indeed. Continue reading →

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