Public Institutions Try to Avoid Giving Out Contact Information

One thing that really drives me crazy is trying to contact anyone who works in government or the civil service. In many jurisdictions, it seems like they do their best to keep all kinds of contact information (such as name, phone number, or e-mail address) secret from the public.

An example is our local public high school, the Waterloo Collegiate Institute. This high school is paid for with our provincial tax dollars; yet you will look in vain for the e-mail address of anyone who works there. I tried just now to get a work e-mail address for the webmaster over the phone, but no one would give it to me! This is insane.

Contrast that with the University of Waterloo. Not only are addresses and phone numbers available everywhere, there's even a web app to make finding this information easy.

This reminds me of the story about fire stations after the telephone was invented. Some refused to have telephones installed, saying that if they were to do so, people would constantly be calling them and they wouldn't have the time to put out fires.

I would favour a provincial or federal law saying that all civil servants and others paid with tax money must have their work phone number and work e-mail address posted in an easily-accessible place on the institution's web page.

David C. Levy Should Not be Allowed Anywhere Near an Institution of Higher Learning

In the Washington Post, some moron named David C. Levy opines:


An executive who works a 40-hour week for 50 weeks puts in a minimum of 2,000 hours yearly. But faculty members teaching 12 to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks spend only 360 to 450 hours per year in the classroom. Even in the unlikely event that they devote an equal amount of time to grading and class preparation, their workload is still only 36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals. Yet they receive the same compensation.

This guy is the president of some education group? And a former Chancellor at the New School? He shouldn't even be allowed near a university.

Anyone who thinks that the time spent in a classroom dominates the activities of a university or college professor is a moron. For each hour that I teach, for example, I spend 2-4 hours preparing - and that's for a course I've taught many times. Add in constructing assignments & course web pages, marking, helping students during office hours, and a conservative estimate is that the work needed for a 3-hour class is something like 10-15 hours per week. Now, how about creating new courses or revising old ones? Teaching a course you haven't taught before takes something like 10-12 hours preparation per lecture, at a minimum.

Then there are all the other activities: advising students, serving on committees, giving public lectures, and so forth. And I haven't even mentioned research: believe it or not, even at small colleges some faculty do research.

Yet David C. Levy thinks faculty members' workload is "36 to 45 percent of that of non-academic professionals". Get real.

Weirdest Request to Work With Me

I get a lot of requests from students who want to work with me - often Indian students who want to do "summer internships". But here is the weirdest one I've gotten so far:


I, A****** P*****, am a fourth year undergraduate student enrolled for the Dual Degree Course (5 year B.Tech + M.Tech) in the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the leading engineering university of the country.

I am currently in pursuit of an internship/project for a period of 8 weeks during May 2010 to July 2010, which would be of help to me in gaining experience and required knowledge in the field of structural engineering.I have been regularly following your articles in the journal of Finite Elements in Analysis and Design. I have gone through your article Finite element formulation for geometric and material nonlinear analysis of beams prestressed with external slipping tendons which was intellectually very stimulating. I then checked your website and am happy to be genuinely excited about any fortunate opportunities of working under your esteemed guidance. I am very interested in the field of structural engineering and am in the idea of pursuing my doctoral degree in the same field.


Needless to say, I don't work in "structural engineering", and I never have published in Finite Elements in Analysis and Design.

Looking for Graduate Students

My sabbatical will end on July 1 2010, and I'm looking for good graduate students -at either the master's or the PhD level - in computer science who are interested in working on problems in automata theory, formal languages, combinatorics on words, complexity theory, number theory algorithms, or algebraic algorithms, beginning September 2010.

You can see the kinds of things I've been working on lately here.

The University of Waterloo offers excellent financial support for graduate students. You can get information about our School of Computer Science and about the application process for admission to graduate school by clicking on the links.

If you're interested, send me e-mail (which you can find by going to my home page, and tell me what you've done and what you're interested in doing.