UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO Faculty Association of the University of Waterloo NUMBER 124 FAUW Forum J AN/FEB 2004 AN INTERVIEW WITH THE ASSOCIATE VICE-PRESIDENT, ACADEMIC FORUM EDITORIAL BOARD Edward Vrscay Vera Golini (Dept. of Italian, and Director of Women’s Studies) Applied Mathematics Editor interviews Gail Cuthbert Brandt in the first year of her administrative position. We learn a little about Prof. Cuthbert Paul Fieguth Brandt’s student years (most of her undergraduate years were spent Systems Design Engineering at Waterloo) and her career as an academic. Regarding her new role Paul Malone in the administration, Prof. Cuthbert Brandt discusses plans to Germanic & Slavic Studies strengthen UW’s connections with the rest of the world, ongoing Jeffrey Shallit departmental reviews and the roles of service and mentorship in the Computer Science university. She concludes with an invitation to meet more people and to receive suggestions and comments, particularly in the areas David Williams Optometry of interdisciplinary and international programs. (Page 3) Catherine Schryer English Language & Literature ex officio YOU DO THE MATH Pat Moore Faculty Association Office Production But practical math – reckoning and reasoning. This is what UBC Emeritus Professor Klaus Hoechsmann recommends for early years of primary school. Prof. Hoechsmann argues that young children should be engaged in exercises involving “mindful rote” as opposed to trying to make them “think like mathematicians.” Take the 1932 Grade 3 arithmetic test on Page 8. Inside this issue: Letter to the Editor 2 Are you a real doctor? 3 Interview with Gail 4 FAUW EVENTS Cuthbert Brandt Reckoning and 8 COUNCIL OF REPRESENTATIVES Reasoning MEETING Friday, April 2, 12:00 p.m. Women 10 Underrepresented in Sciences at Top ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Research Universities Friday, April 2, 1:00 p.m. A light lunch will be provided President’s Message 12 (Location to be announced) P AGE 2 NUMBER 124 LETTER TO THE EDITOR Microsoft, MathWorks, and PeopleSoft problem. If each research person pays $100 per year for the license, then all of a sudden a significant chunk of research Dear Editor: change is diverted from research into research framework. I believe that our activities are significantly different from Last fall, a student wrote to me asking about the status of corporate research-and-development activities in the sense that curriculum changes associated with the Microsoft Canada the research prototype is, itself, the final product if the Academic Innovation Alliance partnership announced in research project has any ongoing scope to it. Tying this to a August 2002. My reply to this student is copied below for proprietary framework with a yearly license fee is akin to the your information. company single-sourcing a key component in its final Since writing that reply, I have been thinking more product. Most companies will not do this. about software issues with Microsoft, MathWorks, and PeopleSoft. In response to your invitation to share my George Freeman thoughts with readers of the Forum, I offer the following Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering opinions, qualifying that I have not had the time to carefully research all details. E-mail to student I believe that the biggest mistake we, as a low-budget operation, can make is to encode our operations into a Re: Questions about curriculum and C# framework that is controlled elsewhere. None of these As far as I know, no curriculum changes have been proposed companies has our educational goals as their man- in association with the Microsoft agreement. Some of us date. Microsoft seems to recognize this at least and has formed would like to use .NET technology (or MS Visual Studio, or a relationship with UW that respects the differences. C#) as the lab technology in certain courses. I believe the The drug-dealer model of business seems to me to be current agreement is largely focussed on our experiments with very popular these days – hook your customers on low-entry- .NET for improving our online training and delivery of some cost proprietary technology and then milk them carefully for labs and for a proposed outreach course to introduce high- all they are worth. Prime example – the music CD indus- school students to programming concepts. No course changes try. Eventually people notice and revolt. In medium-scale have come before our department program committee in this software engineering efforts such as SISP, it is very easy to regard. You might get more info from Prof. Bill Bishop hide behind a thin layer of complexity because the fair cost of (manages the .NET projects) or Prof. Tony Vannelli (our doing the project is too difficult to establish. The artificial department chair) on the exact status of the agreements and complexity then protects a layer of necessary support staff progress on these experiments. I’ll copy them on this reply. who do not have the educational goals of the institution as Personally, I am very much in favour of trying C# in our their mandate. When the time comes to change the framework, programming language course (ECE 150). The idea has been two sets of support people are needed. See the problem? floated and gotten bogged down in committee discussion and, Business-at-large seems to have slowly come to realize at least from my perspective, is dead for the moment. We are that this costly layer sits between its needs and the data that it very much more involved in considering larger-scale needs to conduct its work. Hence, the sudden revulsion for IT curriculum revisions to the Electrical Engineering and spending and the big interest in open standards such as XML Computer Engineering programs, which we want to remain and SOAP. Look at why the web became so popular so vital and current; to monitoring the new Software Engineering quickly. Virtually all of its components are open standards – program, where the first class of students is in third year; and not controlled by any commercial interests and so simple that to consideration of a potential new program in the barriers for alternate implementations are all but Nanotechnology Engineering. The Microsoft .NET gone. People interested in economic growth should be arguing framework, C#, ASP.NET, etc. are one vendor’s technologies. this kind of case (especially with respect to legal protections We already teach the concepts which would allow students to of intellectual property). understand those, or competing, technologies for clearer At UW, the situation is even sadder. The fragility and programming interfaces, web service support, etc. artificial complexity of SISP are such that only highly trained Personally, I have high regard for Microsoft, and for its specialists can tinker with it safely. We thus find ourselves in products, and would welcome arrangements where we benefit a rather ironic – no, dysfunctional is more appropriate – from access to their technologies and they benefit from our situation: It is enormously expensive for us to repair this implicit advertising through use of their technologies. There software technology in spite of the fact that we offer some of are other companies, such as The MathWorks (vendors of the best programs in North America for training students in MATLAB), whom I hold in very low regard and whose these very technologies that require repair! In addition, our technologies I would not consider for courses or infra- students don’t get Co-op jobs from the exercise and, at the structure. Universities, especially in selfish times such as same time, the resources which could help them – and help us these, don’t have the resources necessary to just buy what they – are instead directed into this IT layer. need and mount their programs. Thus, we seek the healthiest MATLAB, a great framework for rapid software possible symbiotic relationships with corporations. If they try simulation prototyping, is a distributed version of the same (Continued on page 3) FAUW FORUM P AGE 3 “ARE YOU A REAL DOCTOR?” by David Williams School of Optometry I can remember from my early days as a practising ‘physician’ then you should say ‘physician’, not optometrist being asked this question. On occasion, I ‘doctor’.” must confess, I have actually lost my self-control and Looking in more detail at the OED entry, one finds responded, “Are you a real patient?” a tremendous range of uses of the word. A sampling I did have the good fortune to be instructed by an follows: excellent linguist and thinker who told me that we must distinguish between a person’s vocational designation 1303: Seynt Gregory . telleþ mo hymself a lone Þan and their professional designation. I must point out that alle þe doctours do echone. there are actually NO doctors. The word ‘doctor’ is not a 1548: This kyng . in marcial affaires a very doctor. vocational designation nowadays. There are dentists, physicians, optometrists (inter alia). These are 1660: After those two, Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet, vocational designations. People holding degrees called Doctor Merriman is requisit to preserve health. Doctor of Dental Surgery, Doctor of Medicine, Doctor of Optometry may be addressed as Dr. X, Dr. Y, Dr. Z, but 1700: Doctor, a false Die, that will run but two or three the term ‘doctor’ does not accurately describe what they Chances. They put the Doctor upon him, they cheated do. They practise dentistry, medicine, optometry. him with false Dice. On the other hand, I recall walking out of my Ph.D. 1785: Doctor, a composition used by distillers to make defence, and being greeted by one of my committee spirits appear stronger than they really are. members with the quip, “Now you’re a real doctor”. And that is historically true. A quick look through 1821: The cook, at sea, is generally called doctor.