Dear colleagues and friends, A number of members of the categories e-list will already be aware that Gabor Lukacs and the mathematics department at the University of Manitoba are involved in a dispute with the university administration over matters of academic standards and even academic freedom. Since Gabor is an active member of our community, we thought you might be interested in a petition we are planning to send to the university early in December. The text of the petition may be read at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=10YZB9O_W3ljWqxte41VtU2qWQmepkx4yqwDaKq2pdifnHRA7ncE-qbSh8Lap&hl=en&authkey=CNT8_MsO or alternatively downloaded from http://25a8.ch/upload/ProtestUofM.pdf Further information about this incident may be found at http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Campus+torn+dispute+over/3767102/story.html http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/tag/gabor-lukacs/ http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/court-battle-over-phd-106366028.html http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/letters\_to\_the\_editor/disabled-by-exam-stress-letter-of-the-day-106674068.html http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2010/11/03/man-exam-anxiety-lukacs.h... http://profmondo.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/it-doesnt-add-up/ If you are interested in signing this petition, please email gavin.seal@epfl.ch with your name, position, affiliation and e-mail as you want them to appear. The deadline for signing this has been set to Tuesday, 23rd November. Regards, Gavin Seal and Robert Seely [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
Can't say I'm a big fan of bureaucratic hurdles. The goal in our department is to produce credible researchers. To do a good job on this requires a certain investment of time on the part of the adviser. If the student is inadequately prepared the adviser's time is wasted, therefore we set academic hurdles, not bureaucratic ones, for the purpose of bringing the student up to speed before spending too much of the adviser's time on what should have been accomplished in courses and independent study. What concerns me in this case is the proportion of discussion devoted to bureaucratic hurdles vs. research accomplishments. I would be more comfortable with it the other way round. Vaughan [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]
participants (2)
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Gavin Seal -
Vaughan Pratt