Re: Not about business models

[palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer)]

> If we in
> higher education bury our heads in the sand, more and more industries will
> start doing their own educating as the quality of our product fails to meet
> their standards. We can all agree that this would be a sad turn of events.

I agree; that would be sad. However I would rather respect the intelligence
of those who have succeeded in industry and trust them to recognize that we
do a better job than they can hope to do, than suspect them of wanting to
undertake a project which wisdom would argue against. I prefer to have my
physics students taught their mathematics by mathematicians even though I
know the mathematicians will teach them lots of "useless" stuff along the
way that they will never use. There are two reasons for my preference. The
students seem to learn enough mathematics from the mathematicians to cope
in my courses, and I don't want to teach mathematics - it's dull; physics
is exciting. If there's someone around who thinks he can make mathematics
as exciting as I can make physics then I'm willing, even eager, to let him
try. As for industry using industrial physicists, well the people doing the
hiring are probably physicists, and they are the least likely people in the
world to suggest to management "Why don't we teach our people *de novo*?"

> I don't want to
> be caught teaching about vacuum tubes when they need information about IC's,
> nor do I want a student to dictate to me what he thinks I should teach him
> so that he can be a physicist. I think I am better qualified to determine
> what courses are needed. However, I can't retire to my Ivory tower and teach
> what I please.

You are indeed unfortunate. I now get to teach physics and astronomy, just
as I wanted to do when I started here. Many of the students seem to like
it, and when I stop getting asked to teach what I know and, therefore, am
competent to teach, I'll quit. I have to retire in 2000 anyway.

It would be unfortunate if I were to be told that I must now teach about
IC's because industry thinks I should. I certainly couldn't bring to that
topic
the degree of knowledge that the students are entitled to expect; I'd be
reading a chapter ahead of them all year in a textbook I didn't choose. On
the rare occasions that has happened in the past I certainly wasn't
satisfied with my performance, even though I succeeded in fooling the
students*. Let the engineers teach about IC's, including teaching it to
interested physics students.

I don't want to be teaching about vacuum tubes or IC's; is that physics? I
was frequently tapped to teach our electronics course when I first came to
Simon Fraser University, perhaps because I was a radio amateur, but more
likely because no one else really wanted to teach it. I never used my talk
on beam power pentodes (prepared back in my undergraduate days) but it had
more physics in it than one could ever put into a lecture on IC's! I hope
that you really mean solid state device physics rather than IC "physics".

Leigh

*Once I was slotted into the electronics lab course quite hastily. I had
to bone up on logic gates &c. which I had never used practically. That was
not too hard, but that same semester my 14 year old son asked me for some
help on a project he was working on. I had suggested that he build an
electrical time lapse switch for our Super 8 movie camera. (The kids used
it to do animations.) I always bankrolled their projects of that sort, but
I didn't offer advice. I assumed David would make something based on a
relaxation oscillator since he'd learned about them. He had finished the
project but it unaccountably didn't work, so he asked me to take a look at
it. I went downstairs and was confronted with a small aluminum box which
showed none of the characteristics I expected (large paper tubular capacitor,
NE-2 bulb), but it had a rat's nest of wiring on a piece of flea board and
among the small components was a little square plastic piece with pins
coming out of it like the 74 series chips I had been teaching my students
about. I immediately exclaimed to David "What is that!?" Matter-of-factly
he said "Oh, that's a 555." After I recovered some of my dignity and gave
him a lesson in how to avoid cold soldering, the box worked exactly as he
had intended it to, switching ranges and all, and David introduced me to
the Bug Book. Now I didn't have to ponder long on the question "Would I
want to attend a university where professors learn their teaching
specialties from 14 year olds?" I just did not have the depth to teach
that course at a university level.