Recommended Reading
Top Billing! Shepherd’s Pi – Free Tools for the New Scientific Revolution
This important post by Lewis Shepherd is of particular interest to those readers who are quants, scientists, university researchers, computer experts, intel analysts, DIY geeks, engineers and business innovators:
….One groundrule was that invited private-sector speakers were not allowed to give anything resembling a “sales pitch” of their company’s wares. Fair enough – I’m no salesman. The person who immediately preceded me, keynoter Vint Cerf, slightly bent the rules and talked a bit about his employer Google’s products, but gee whiz, that’s the prerogative of someone who is in large part responsible for the Internet we all use and love today.
I described in my talk the radical new class of super-powerful technologies enabling large-data research and computing on platforms of real-time and archival government data. That revolution is happening now, and I believe government could and should be playing a different and less passive role. I advocated for increased attention to the ongoing predicament of U.S. research and development funding.
….To supplement those points from my talk, here are some items from Microsoft Research’s new focus on scientific tools, available for free here. Most of these are open-source tools and “research accelerators”
The post is long and rich in links, apps and explanations.
Defense Horizons (Dr. Sean Kay) – From Sputnik to Minerva: Education and American National Security
….Public discourse following the September 2001 terrorist attacks initially implied that this new challenge would inspire a Federal response in realigning educational security infrastructure, as had Sputnik. By 2003, however, evidence indicated that the level of educational investment was disappointing. For example, the United States had enormous deficits in critical language expertise, especially in Arabic, Farsi, and Pashto. In 2003, the Department of Education noted that, of the 1.8 million graduates of American colleges and universities,a total of 22 students had completed degrees in Arabic.11
The Washington Monthly (Kevin Carey) – The Mayo Clinic of Higher Ed ( Hat tip to Eddie)
….Next, Lehmkuhle had to hire professors and decide how to organize their work. Traditional universities isolate their faculty in academic departments that often view one another as strange denizens of another planet at best, outright enemies at worst. Departments also accumulate administrative structures-chairs, vice chairs, and so on-over time. Lehmkuhle didn’t have enough money to pay for vice chairs, and he wanted professors from different disciplines to work together. The solution: no departments.
Traditional universities also separate teaching from research. These functions are not just disconnected, but often antagonistic. Many professors vying for tenure in the publish-or-perish system are openly encouraged to neglect their students in favor of scholarship. Lehmkuhle resolved this tension by making tenure at UMR contingent on three factors: teaching, research in the academic disciplines, and research about teaching. For UMR professors, applying their analytic powers to their own teaching practice would be a standard part of the job.
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