Life as an Academic Running a Different Race

1
Life as an AcademicRunning a Different Race

• Richard Hoshino
• Keynote Presentation
• CUMC Kingston July 2005

2
Warm-Up Question

• See if you can determine the next two letters of
  this sequence.
• U, D, T, Q, C, S, S, H, ?, ?

3
Year 2020 Question

• Take five minutes and think about the question on
  your handout.
• Write your response on the handout.

4
The Academic Path

• Masters Degree (2 years)
• Ph.D. Degree (4 years)
• Post-Doctoral Fellowship (4 years)
• Assistant Professorship (5 years)
• Tenure (Associate Professorship and Full
  Professorship)

5
North American Values

• The average Canadian watches 22 hours of TV a
  week.
• On average, working couples talk with one another
  only 12 minutes a day.
• 1 in every 8 undergraduate students plays online
  poker for money.
• Only 29 of young adults volunteer.

6
Publish or Perish

• A commonly accepted value among young academics
  that the only way to succeed is to publish,
  publish, publish!
• Often as a consequence, teaching gets neglected
  and administration/outreach gets ignored.

7
A Different Race

• Making a commitment NOT to conform to the
  Publish or Perish game.
• Striving for a healthy balance between Research,
  Teaching, Administration, and Outreach.
• Let me share with you some specific strategies to
  help you flourish in each of these four areas.

8
Research

• Working on Puzzles and Contest Problems (Sudoku,
  Cryptic Crosswords, Putnam Contests)
• Creating Problems for Math Contests (Euclid,
  Canadian Math Olympiad, CRUX, High School Math
  League)

9
Teaching

• Attend workshops organized by your universitys
  Office of Instructional Development (or
  equivalent).
• Form a Math Education Study Group for faculty
  members, graduate students, and honours students
  to get together and discuss teaching issues.

10
Administration/Service

• High School Math League (Saturday morning
  competition for teams of four students)
• Math Circles Outreach Program (high school
  students coming to your university for an evening
  of free pizza and fun mathematics)

11
A Math League Problem

• Determine the number of rectangles (of all sizes)
  that appear in the following diagram.

Dont forget that a square counts as a rectangle!
12
Outreach

• Math Coaching (e.g. Putnam Training, Math League,
  Waterloo Seminar, IMO Training Camps)
• Volunteerism (e.g. mentoring high school
  students, tutoring with the JUMP Program in
  Toronto)

13
Thinking of Life as Service

• Academics serve their colleagues through
  research, serve their students through teaching,
  serve their university through administration,
  and serve their community through outreach.

14
Humanities/Math 101

• Free university program in the humanities for
  underprivileged people.
• Three prerequisites for enrollment
• Must live below the poverty line
• Must be functionally literate
• Must have a passionate love for learning

15
The First Race (1973)
16
Boston Marathon (2003)
17
In Closing

• We make a living by what we get, but we make a
  life by what we give.
• - Winston Churchill