Submission to the LRP steering committee

Below (under the cut) is the text of the submission I am about to send to the Long Range Plan steering committee. I missed the April 18 deadline for submission of discussion papers, basically because I was too busy and exhausted at the end of the semester, but the committee web page states that “comments and ideas are welcome at any time”, so here are mine. There’s very little here that I haven’t already said on this blog in much more detail (the relevant posts are linked below) and it’s possible that some of the committee members have seen those posts already; this is just a short summary. (A PDF version is also available.)

It’s 2 am, where is my long term strategy?

The September issue of the CMS Notices has a front page article on the long-range strategic planning exercise. We learn that the NSERC Major Resources Support program is being shut down; the mathematics institutes, which have been supported through MRS in recent years, will have to find some other funding mechanism.

Our community is thus being asked to develop a long range plan for mathematics and statistics in Canada. The plan should examine our discipline, identify scientific trends, and propose the right structure of resources to develop the mathematics and the statistics. It should not, however, deal with individual allocations. [...] It has worked well for the astronomers and the physicists, so why not for us?

Because we’re neither astronomers nor physicists, perhaps?

There are of course many issues. First some scientific ones: where is our discipline going? Getting some sense of this is important for explaining what we then want to do, not in the sense of only deciding to fund, say, number theory or geometry (mathematics in its own organic way has been doing very well on its own), but in giving the right structures. For example, a question of proportion: the mainstream (80% or so) individual funding of research is complemented by collective vehicles (the Institutes, BIRS), which have had a transformative effect (think of the increase in the number of post-doctoral fellows) and which have a remarkable record of leveraging additional resources from provinces, universities, and private sources, as well as foreign granting agencies.

Well…

There are worse ways to start that discussion than pointing out that the two most important “structural” new ideas in mathematics in recent years had nothing to do with leveraging funds from provincial governments, international cooperation agreements, or with institutes for that matter.

Can you see the pattern?

Since we talked about logical puzzles recently, here’s one for you to try. The International Mathematical Union has recently announced that its permanent office will be based at the Weierstrass Institute in Berlin. Two clicks from the front page, and you get to The Mathematical Community in Berlin, featuring photographs of 12 of the distinguished mathematicians who supported the bid.

Look at these photographs. Can you see a pattern?

For comparison, here’s a photo of the IMU Executive Committee.

Letter to NSERC: Canadian mathematics does not need “priority areas”

The latest NSERC newsletter informs us:

At NSERC’s request, the Canadian mathematics and statistics communities will conduct a collaborative long-range planning (LRP) exercise over the next 15-18 months. The exercise will include broad consultation, identify areas of strength and establish a unified vision of priorities and directions for mathematics and statistics research in Canada. The resulting plan will inform the Mathematics and Statistics Evaluation Group of the priorities for current and emerging areas, thereby allowing for the best use of resources to advance the work of the communities as a whole.

Key partners in this process include the Canadian Mathematical Society, the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society and the Statistical Society of Canada, as well as the three Mathematical Institutes (the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, the Centre de recherches mathématiques and the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences) and the Banff International Research Station.

Currently, the Mathematics and Statistics-NSERC Liaison Committee is working with the communities to establish a steering committee, which will develop Terms of Reference that reflect how the communities at large will be consulted and discuss how their input will be incorporated into the final LRP report.

My opinion is not exactly being solicited at this point, and it may well get filtered five times through the fine cloth of poll aggregators when it is formally solicited, to remove my name and any identifying details that might add weight to my story. I do, however, have enough experience with “priority areas”, and especially with falling through the cracks between them, to want to speak up now.

I also would really like NSERC to hear directly from the individual mathematicians, not just from institute directors and those in positions of power. Institutes are designed to support group-based research and prioritize areas; individual mathematicians need to develop their research programs according to their own best judgement. We do not always see eye to eye. It makes no sense for the institutes to control the prioritization of our individual grants.

Here, then, is my story.

Right back at ya

If you’re female and you’re reading this, stop whatever else you’re doing for a moment and go read these three posts at Women in Wetlands, now also on my blogroll. (Found in the comments here.) They offer sensible and practical advice on how to respond to situations such as this one:

Imagine you are in a meeting among colleagues, post-docs, support staff, and clients. You are part of a group who has received a $1.2 million grant from BP (British Petroleum) to do environmental impact assessments at some of their drill sites. You have just given an overview of your research project (to assess the effects of oil exploration activities on wetlands in Kookamoonga, BP’s newest drill site). When you finish and look to the group for some positive feedback, a senior male scientist (known for being loud and opinionated) states that:

“The research proposed by Mary involves a large amount of fieldwork in a VERY remote location, and in my opinion is too difficult for a woman to lead or conduct. I think it would be best assigned to Bob (his protege’) to head up; maybe Mary can be responsible for the sample processing and data analysis back here at BIU.”

What do you do?

I’ve been in some variant of every single one of these situations, including the one just described, and I wish I had been better prepared to deal with them.

It’s tempting to think of the Senior Male Scientist as some old guy that you don’t know well and never talk to anyway. In real life, though, it could be your friend or mentor, someone you trust, someone whose opinions you value. He might not say explicitly that a woman can’t lead – he’ll just suggest a male candidate to replace you – and, mind you, it’s not sexist at all, he just wants the best possible person to direct the project, and in any case this is a matter of professional judgement and you should not be so sensitive about it.

The beauty of the responses suggested in the WiW posts is that they’re civil enough to be used on a friend and that they let you make the statement you need to make without getting dragged into unnecessary discussions. There’s no point in analyzing the Senior Male Scientist’s possible intentions. You just need to respond to the words you’ve heard.

There’s another reason to avoid protracted discussions of this sort: verbal sparring can only get you so far. I’ve seen enough situations where Dr. X was universally praised by colleagues for his excellent arguments and professional demeanor in the debate with Dr. Y, it was just so very unfortunate that the department would have to side with Dr. Y anyway. The debate would be a spectator sport, as opposed to something that could actually affect the outcome of the case. The lesson for you is that, instead of spending your time debating Senior Male Scientists with regard to their choice of wording, it could be more worthwhile to figure out why exactly the department sided with Dr. Y and how this might be applicable in your case. (That could be money, prestige, any number of things.) Making good headway in that direction is far more likely to convince Senior Male Scientists that they should take you seriously.

Which is not to say that you should not argue with Senior Male Scientists. You absolutely should, if only because having a good response will make you feel in control of the situation and that’s good for your morale, or because these things do make a difference in the long run. But short responses work better than long ones, and don’t give the Senior Male Scientist an opening to bring up the ever looming topic of your sensitivity if you can help it. That’s of course easier said than done. I haven’t always been good at it. I wish I had read posts such as these many years ago and taken some time to practice the responses in question. Then again – if you can’t come up with a good response, keep in mind that it’s only words…

Gender dependent

That’s what I thought when I read the articles linked below, even though gender is never mentioned explicitly. Instead, there seems to be an implicit assumption that everyone involved is male. (Presumably white, too – but that would be a story for someone else to write.)

First, there’s this stunning book review by Scott McLemee, linked also at Crooked Timber:

The most powerful figures in this system [Italian academic promotions], says Gambetta, tend to be the least intellectually distinguished. They do little research, publish rarely, and at best are derivative of “some foreign author on whose fame they hope to ride…. Also, and this is what is the most intriguing, they do not try to hide their weakness. One has the impression that they almost flaunt it in personal contacts.”

[...] Gambetta argues that the cheerful incompetence of the baroni is akin to the mafioso’s way of signaling that he can be “trusted” within his narrowly predatory limits.

“Being incompetent and displaying it,” he writes, “conveys the message I will not run away, for I have no strong legs to run anywhere else. In a corrupt academic market, being good at and interested in one’s own research, by contrast, signal a potential for a career independent of corrupt reciprocity…. In the Italian academic world, the kakistrocrats are those who best assure others by displaying, through lack of competence and lack of interest in research, that they will comply with the pacts.”

Also, this from the comments at CT:

I experienced this in a past position, and reached the same analysis as Gambetta. My attempts to signal that I would leave if I didn’t get better treatment were exactly the wrong ones to send. The people who won the battles were those signalling “I can never go anywhere else, so I will fight to the death to get my way here”.

I’d be interested to know how many of those incompetent-and-proud-of-it academics are female. Because, at least over here on this side of the Atlantic, somehow I don’t see a lot of female professors (or lawyers, or businesswomen) showing off their weaknesses on purpose.

On democracy in math departments

More at I Can Has Cheezburger?

NSERC Discovery Grants: various updates

The results of the 2008 Discovery Grants competition are now available: GSC 336, GSC 337. This is clearly an improvement over last year’s situation, when the budget for the mathematics GSCs was cut quite severely. I don’t have the time to do detailed statistics as I did in an earlier post on the subject, but for a quick comparison, let’s look at the top tier of GSC 336 grants. In 2007, the three highest awarded amounts were 57K, 39K and 35K; all other grants were valued at 32K or less. In 2008, the top three grants are 52K, 48K, 44K, and five more are valued at 42K each. No, it does not mean that all the best researchers applied this year. It means that last year there was much less money available, as I’m hearing from sources close to the bean counter.

I would hope that the 2007 GSC budget was a one-time screw-up and that the GSC budget will stay around the 2008 level in the future. There are, however, a couple of additional considerations that unfortunately have to be brought up.

NSERC Discovery Grants, on a tight budget

Last Spring, the NSERC Discovery Grants applicants received the following letter from NSERC (I quote from mine):

The 2007-08 Discovery Grants program budget was under great pressure despite the injection of close to 6 million of new funds. This situation was due to the substantial increase in the number of applications which could not be matched by a corresponding growth in the program’s budget. Therefore, the budget was insufficient to meet the needs of the large number of new and returning applicants. For the Pure and Applied Mathematics “A” Grant Selection Committee 336, this resulted in the budget awarded to renewal applicants being approximately 16% lower than the amount previously held by that group of researchers. This made the competition more difficult than in previous years and the resulting recommendations are reflective of this extra pressure.

The NSERC Discovery Grants program, evaluated

As some of the readers here may know, the NSERC Discovery Grants program is under review.  An international committee was struck last year to evaluate the effectiveness of the program.  The report of that committee has now been posted on the NSERC web site.

In a nutshell, the committee says: the program works just fine. There is room for a little bit of improvement (and the report makes specific suggestions in that regard), but no major overhaul is either needed or recommended. Also, the program could use more money.

The main issue specifically addressed in the report is the following. The “success rate” in the Discovery Grants competition is roughly 70% (i.e., in any given year, 70% of applicants are funded). This is much higher than, for example, the 30% success rate in the NSF individual research grant competition. Does it mean that NSERC is not applying high enough standards? Should the Discovery Grants program support instead a smaller group of the top-ranked applicants, funding them at a higher level, and cut off the “long tail”?

Here’s what it looks like from a mathematician’s perspective.