4 ms·

Not pointed out in the article is the fact that Strickland is still an "associate" professor at Waterloo -- something sure to be rectified asap -- indicating th

Not pointed out in the article is the fact that Strickland is still an "associate" professor at Waterloo -- something sure to be rectified asap -- indicating that the department there wasn't super keen on promoting her to full professor, for some reason. Oops!

kgwgk 8y ago
Do you know whether she was super keen on being promoted or are you just assuming she was being pushed down “for some reason”? (I have no idea, myself.)
- anon946 8y ago
  I have no idea either, but it's probably worth pointing out that, for better or worse, promotion to full will entail a certain degree of bean counting. Thus, there are a number of perfectly respectable ways to not meet those metrics. For example, someone who decides to tackle a very hard problem with very high risk of failure is likely to look less productive on paper.
  - nopinsight 8y ago
    Is the admin work for full professors that much more involved than for associate professors?
    - anon946 8y ago
      Not in my department, but I have no idea how representative it is.
    - joker3 8y ago
      I think it varies by department and university, but I know that one of the professors in my grad school department had to take on more committee work when she got promoted.
  - api 8y ago
    > someone who decides to tackle a very hard problem with very high risk of failure is likely to look less productive on paper. This is the central problem with today's academic research environment.
    - anon946 8y ago
      Agreed.
- plg 8y ago
  In many top universities in Canada, promotion to Full Professor doesn't confer any particular benefits. No salary raises (unless your Faculty are unionized, and you are below the mandated "floor" salary for Full Professor ... which is very unlikely, because it's so low, by design). Same workload. If anything it's worse because you might be asked to serve on more departmental and faculty committees.
  - fhood 8y ago
    Sure but it still means something to the rest of the community, which is important. My parents are professors, and I can assure you that there is at the least a psychological difference.
    - plg 8y ago
      Yes I agree
nopinsight 8y ago
And she was elected as a fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2008. In CS and AI, such an election typically happens years after attaining full professionship. If her subfield is anything like CS, it is yet another anomaly.
chriskanan 8y ago
Academic evaluations are very imperfect and are biased toward "what have you done lately?" Major breakthroughs do not count for as much as sustained research output. For tenure and promotion, typically work done before joining the institution is not used in the evaluation, and the prize winning work was done during her PhD research. This is in the US, but I assume Canada is reasonably similar. Also, see this article by Peter Higgs complaining about the need to "keep churning out papers": https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...
Taniwha 8y ago
I don't know about Canada but "Full Professor" means something different in most Commonwealth countries than in the US. Typically a University dept will have a single professor who likely is head of dept, if there's an endowment there might be a second one (and if you get a Nobel I suspect there's lee-way to confer one)
lazyant 8y ago
Please get the facts before spreading wrong ideas. She has said that she never applied. Also some people are commenting (I don't know if this is true) that a professor has more paperwork etc to do for the same salary so she may want to focus on pure research.
jgmjgm 8y ago
Oh, lord. Please stop the assumptions and do a little digging before you post. She was on the radio today saying that she just never bothered to go through the paperwork. But if it makes you feel better, I'm sure it was a huge conspiracy.

kgwgk 8y ago

Do you know whether she was super keen on being promoted or are you just assuming she was being pushed down “for some reason”? (I have no idea, myself.)

anon946 8y ago
I have no idea either, but it's probably worth pointing out that, for better or worse, promotion to full will entail a certain degree of bean counting. Thus, there are a number of perfectly respectable ways to not meet those metrics. For example, someone who decides to tackle a very hard problem with very high risk of failure is likely to look less productive on paper.
- nopinsight 8y ago
  Is the admin work for full professors that much more involved than for associate professors?
  - anon946 8y ago
    Not in my department, but I have no idea how representative it is.
  - joker3 8y ago
    I think it varies by department and university, but I know that one of the professors in my grad school department had to take on more committee work when she got promoted.
- api 8y ago
  > someone who decides to tackle a very hard problem with very high risk of failure is likely to look less productive on paper. This is the central problem with today's academic research environment.
  - anon946 8y ago
    Agreed.
plg 8y ago
In many top universities in Canada, promotion to Full Professor doesn't confer any particular benefits. No salary raises (unless your Faculty are unionized, and you are below the mandated "floor" salary for Full Professor ... which is very unlikely, because it's so low, by design). Same workload. If anything it's worse because you might be asked to serve on more departmental and faculty committees.
- fhood 8y ago
  Sure but it still means something to the rest of the community, which is important. My parents are professors, and I can assure you that there is at the least a psychological difference.
  - plg 8y ago
    Yes I agree

nopinsight 8y ago

And she was elected as a fellow of the Optical Society of America in 2008. In CS and AI, such an election typically happens years after attaining full professionship. If her subfield is anything like CS, it is yet another anomaly.

chriskanan 8y ago

Academic evaluations are very imperfect and are biased toward "what have you done lately?" Major breakthroughs do not count for as much as sustained research output. For tenure and promotion, typically work done before joining the institution is not used in the evaluation, and the prize winning work was done during her PhD research. This is in the US, but I assume Canada is reasonably similar. Also, see this article by Peter Higgs complaining about the need to "keep churning out papers": https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...

Taniwha 8y ago

I don't know about Canada but "Full Professor" means something different in most Commonwealth countries than in the US. Typically a University dept will have a single professor who likely is head of dept, if there's an endowment there might be a second one (and if you get a Nobel I suspect there's lee-way to confer one)

lazyant 8y ago

Please get the facts before spreading wrong ideas. She has said that she never applied. Also some people are commenting (I don't know if this is true) that a professor has more paperwork etc to do for the same salary so she may want to focus on pure research.

jgmjgm 8y ago

Oh, lord. Please stop the assumptions and do a little digging before you post. She was on the radio today saying that she just never bothered to go through the paperwork. But if it makes you feel better, I'm sure it was a huge conspiracy.