From chemistry-request@server.ccl.net Fri Dec 27 02:36:37 2002 Received: from ccl.net ([192.148.249.4]) by server.ccl.net (8.11.6/8.11.0) with ESMTP id gBR7abh14482 for ; Fri, 27 Dec 2002 02:36:37 -0500 Received: from arlen.ccl.net (arlen.ccl.net [192.148.249.10]) by ccl.net (8.11.6+Sun/8.11.6/OSC 2.1) with ESMTP id gBR7abj14113; Fri, 27 Dec 2002 02:36:37 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 02:36:37 -0500 (EST) From: Jan Labanowski To: chemistry@ccl.net cc: Jan Labanowski Subject: All the best in the coming New Year!!! Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear CCL subscribers, This is your coordinator speaking... (no... it is not about you helping CCL, this will be my next message {:-)} -- BTW I am not kidding). The New Year is coming soon... Yes... I did not post my traditional "Holiday Tree" in many languages, since I want to be politically correct. With the Globe looking like a powder keg, this is probably a sensible pragmatic approach, though obviously an opportunistic one. But the New Year is less "political" (or religious, as one may say). SO, PLEASE ACCEPT MY BEST WISHES FOR THE COMING YEAR!!!. Of course, there are different calendars, but for convenience, we seem to have agreed that the coming secular year is 2003 and it starts in a few days. For many of you the 2002 was a hard one. Even if we were lucky enough to hold to our jobs, and even if we had some personal or professional successes of our own, we hear around about the tragic victims of the economic recession. But this time recession is different... It is not the merciless but predictable economic cycle. It is something more frightening... The basic assumptions that at some level of management or leadership people just do it for fun of being "the influential and powerful" are no longer valid. Yes, the big (and small) corporations for ages were using all the dirty tricks, exerting pressure and influence with money or threat. But the "corporations" did it for themselves, for "corporations". But now, rules changed: many "leaders" are driven by their personal greed. It is no longer about having a bust in the Board room, it is about jumping from one company to another scooping as much as possible, and demoralizing the management below them. Today a CEO of a car company, tomorrow a great leader of the chemical company, and next maybe a leader of some big shopping chain, for example. Not only it is difficult to expect that people with such "wide interests" will stay on the job long, it is hard to assume that they will be able to create long term vision, beside the short term gimmicks based on nice plots and diagrams produced on their laptops by software which considers R and D an expenditure on the same level as lobbying expenses or waste disposal charges. How much of this mentality is now a part of Academia. Without quantifying, it is safe to say that the model of "dying at the place where you got your tenure" is quite outdated. It is nice to move from endowment to endowment, and this is not a sin. At the same time, scientists are quite conservative (or just not flexible enough) and still most of us probably believe that we are the core of institutions which employ us and we are the most important for their reputation. But it is sometimes hard to confront this point of view with reality. In the US, and elsewhere, the support for education at academia is diminishing at a scary pace. Many Universities in the US (and situation is even worse in many other countries), in the past 10-15 years lost up to a HALF of their support for education from the state. At the same time, they grew an army of "administrators" who were supposed to offset these losses by other income, like federal and corporate contracts, patents, licenses, technology transfer (i.e., commercial spin-offs), investments, aggressive fund raising, etc., etc., With time the academic faculty (or technical people in the industrial or government R and D) is/are not the leading force shaping the institutions. The sources of revenue are... And the public is happy... The basic education is slowly converted into educament ("school has to be fun"), and the scientists are finally doing something what we need, rather then wasting time on stuff which nobody understands. And beside, more voters have kids in elementary school than in college. The money is the most important for the survival of the Universities and research organizations. Reputation is not necessarily the most important thing, and, quite frankly, may be at odds with the flexibility and utility of these organizations, i.e., their ability to raise money. Who wants those morons who give so many preconditions and are so picky? In the old times, the scientists were looking for money to support what they wanted to do, now they look for work which will bring some money so they can afford the grad student. But it works, and as an effect of this approach, some universities are doing pretty well, and their "overall research budget in real dollars" grows. Great... But should they still be called Universities? The myth of the better, the prestigious, the "Research" university is that "top notch" scientists "doing important things" (i.e., doing stuff for which they get money), can educate the students with "the latest greatest", and of "practical importance", and for "critical sectors of national economy". In fact, the people who bring big money, seldom teach, and have even less time to advise their graduate students. Essentially, it often looks like consultants/contractors are renting a space and auxilary services at the University in exhange for overhead. Of course, as always, there are exceptions, which as a rule are bought with a 4 hours-a-day of sleep. How much more good things they could do if they did not have to chase money bandwagon? To "motivate" faculty to bring "money" there is a constant pressure to dismantle the tenure system (in some states, the tenure is essentially an empty name). The professors' productivity will be evaluated. If they do something useful, that obviously, someone wants to give them money for it. The tenure system was designed to give faculty a guarantee that even if there is nobody else who agrees with them, they still have a chance to be stubborn. The idea mostly forgotten nowadays, since faculty interests and convictions are not really relevant or important in the academic environment. They are expected to make a magical act of being objective, and work for hire at the same time. But it cannot work. This comes after marginalizing the "Free Press" and "Media" which no longer sell newspapers/news, but sell ads for their corporate or political customers. The Catholic Church (and not only) goes through terrible spasms of scandals, sexual (and earlier business and banking ones), and while we still can find individuals whom we can trust, we have doubts in the institutions. The "Olympic" spirit is a joke. And your family doctor will get a cut > from your prescriptions and lab tests. And the porn is the largest business on the Internet. And when you ask kids what they want to do when they grow up, the answer is: "make big money". Maybe it was always like this, and we just pretended that we did not see it. On the other hand, "O tempora, o mores" was spoken in 63 BC. We need some hope that respect, rather than money/respect_for_money is the most important aspect of science, political life, human interactions and cultural life. And my great wish to all of us is that we will find this respect to our institutions, to our peers, to those above and below us, and to ourselves in this coming 2003... Have the best... (Even if you do not agree with me {;-)}) Jan Labanowski CCL Coordinator