On the Ad Board (A Harvard-centric Post)

The Harvard Crimson had an editorial earlier this week on the Ad Board, the administrative board that implements the rules of the college for undergraduates, and which I served on for a year-and-a-half, ending last June. (I happen to read the Crimson semi-regularly as copies are left in the lounge areas of our building.)

The piece was just so over-the-top negative, and blatantly factually wrong (it's hard to find a stated fact in the text that is actually correct), that it makes this season's political ads look good by comparison. So I took it upon myself to respond.

I suppose only my Harvard readers might care about this, but here's the editorial, and the text of my response is below. We'll see next week if the Crimson publishes it.

UPDATE: The Crimson did print my letter here. (It changed a few things, making it shorter and a bit more generic, but the spirit is there.) Also, since it seems from the comments that many people are simply uninformed, let me point to the Student Guide for the Ad Board; I'd encourage people with questions (or complaints) to read that first, as it gives a lot of detail about how the Ad Board works.

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Bad Board, No; Bad Editorial, Yes

To the Crimson editorial staff:

Having finished a year-and-a-half of service as a faculty member of the Ad Board last June, I was shocked by the opinion “Bad Board” that appeared in the Crimson on October 22. First, it was simply riddled with factual errors. For example, contrary to your statement that resident deans are “outranked” by the faculty, in fact there are only two or three faculty members on the Ad Board at any time, and over a dozen resident deans; we all get equal votes. Even if we didn’t take the resident deans seriously as you suggest (and we do), they could simply outvote us. As another example, contrary to your statement, in disciplinary cases students are always allowed to present their side of the story, both in written form and by attending an Ad Board meeting, where students can make a statement and, if they choose, respond to questions. I could go on, but there are so many additional factual errors that it would take a letter much longer than the original editorial to go through them all.

Second, your editorial fundamentally misunderstands the Ad Board’s setup and purpose. You complain that students cannot hire an attorney for an Ad Board hearing. That is because the Ad Board is not a legal institution, like a court or the police, but an academic institution, to administrate the rules of the college. The Ad Board’s purpose is fundamentally education, not punishment. As you quote, the Ad Board is “primarily concerned for the educational and personal growth of undergraduates, both as individuals and as members of the Harvard community.” Sometimes, when a rule is broken, a punishment must be given, but we view that as a learning process for the student. Attorneys should not be a part of that learning process, much in the same way you can’t hire a lawyer to complain about or negotiate for a better grade in my class. (Please don’t try.)

Finally, your article includes what I would call errors not of fact but of spirit. You say “rulings are clear before it [the Ad Board] convenes”. That’s a surprise to me, as I regularly spent multiple hours in these meetings each week listening to and deliberating cases. Punishments are not, as you say, “one-size-fits-all”; we discuss the appropriate response for each case, based on the rules of the Faculty and the needs of the individual student. We take seriously both these rules and these needs, with the goal of best serving both the students that come before us and the larger Harvard community.

I understand that, as you say, going before the Ad Board is intimidating and terrifying for a student. They are generally there because there is an accusation that they have broken a rule of the College, and there may be consequences. I know of no system we could possibly set up where that wouldn’t be intimidating and terrifying. But students should know going in that the Ad Board will listen to them, fairly, and that no punishment is given lightly.

Michael Mitzenmacher '91

Professor of Computer Science

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Security Issues in Cambridge

Harvard is getting new ID cards next year, thanks to an ambitious student who apparently figured out how to forge IDs (including a duplicate ID for University President Drew Faust). Because, really, how could using unencrypted ID numbers on the card, and giving access to undergraduate computer user assistants access to all ID numbers, ever lead to a problem? (The student also apparently made fake state driver licenses as well. Who says Harvard students don't learn useful real-world talents?)

Of course, Harvard isn't the only institution in Cambridge where students can obtain skills in the security area. Some MIT students, working under the famous Ron Rivest (the R of RSA!), figured out several flaws with the new ticket system for the Boston subway system, including ways to rewrite tickets so that they have lots of money available on them. So, naturally, the subway system sued to keep them from talking about the flaws at a security conference.

In both cases, the systems seem easily breakable (well, at the least the Harvard IDs were easy, not sure about the subway) with a card writer that can be obtained for a couple hundred bucks.

Of course, I'm not surprised, based on previous experience.

I wonder when organizations that want secure cards will realize that perhaps they ought to ask the students to try to break the system before they deploy it, rather than wait for them to break it after.

Problematic Students

One thing they don't warn you about in graduate school -- unless some places have changed their "teaching preparation" classes to be somewhat more useful -- is that, every once in a while, you'll get a student who is, shall we politely say, "problematic". This is the student that takes up 80% of the time you spend interacting with students that semester, and in a negative way.

I've probably seen a few more of these students than the average, because I've allowed my course to be offered through the Harvard extension school. There have definitely been many cases there of students who just enter the class insufficiently prepared, and most of them quickly drop the class. But occasionally there's one who misunderstands and thinks it's our fault (mine and the TAs) that they're failing a class that they may not have had the necessary background for to begin with. (I've recently had to deal with such a student, which brought up this line of thinking.)

For sheer annoyance value, though, my most problematic student was a Harvard student. He or she (let's use "he" from hereon) got a warning from me partway through the semester because he failed to turn in an assignment. I told him he had done fine on the assignments he had turned in, but if he didn't turn in one or more future assignments, his grade would suffer, and he could even fail the class. He said he'd understood.

After the midterm, he did not turn in another problem set. Which would be fine, except that he then made a rather large issue out of failing the class. He insisted on knowing the exact formula I used to assign grades, going over every question on the midterm and final with me, and so on. In short, he refused to take responsibility for the outcome, which is the hallmark of a problematic student.

I'm curious if other teachers have had similar experiences, and what advice they might have in dealing with such students. (My advice -- catch these students early, and document by e-mail what they have been told regarding their performance! And try to spend more time with more positive students.)

Results of the Hiring Season

I've been eagerly awaiting my chance to talk about the results of this year's hiring season for Harvard Computer Science, but wanted to wait until it seemed all the i's were dotted and t's were crossed. I think we're at that stage.

Because of some losses in Computer Science (including Mike Smith and Barbara Grosz being made Deans, of the Faculty and of Radcliffe, respectively) we were really looking to hire this year. Indeed, I think in the end my most important role as chair of the search committee was to make sure that the right people knew that we really wanted to make a lot of offers, and build support for that. The search committee itself was so great that they made the rest of the job (screening, interviewing, and deciding on candidates) relatively easy. Well, OK, it was actually a lot of work. We had hundreds of folders to go through, we interviewed 14 candidates, and because the candidates were so strong, our decisions were challenging. But the committee itself ran smoothly, with everyone really putting in a lot of effort and working to come to agreement. That's one benefit of a smaller department -- we're very collegial about this stuff.

We ended up making six offers. Given the size of Harvard's computer science faculty, this is indeed a lot, and I'm proud of the fact we were able to make the case to our peers in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences that making this many offers was entirely appropriate. (We were helped, again, by the high quality of candidates.) In the end, we will have three new faculty members:

Yiling Chen works at the economics/computer science interface.
Stephen Chong works on information security and programming languages.
Krzysztof Gajos works on user interfaces and human-computer interaction.

We're all looking forward to their arrivals.

I, personally, feel very good about the outcome, and am pleased the search was successful. I'm of course disappointed that not everyone we made offers to decided to choose us, but I don't think any school manages 100% there. (Quite frankly, I'm sure the Dean would have been somewhat concerned with the logistics if all six had come, but that would have been a problem I'd have been happy to work through and live with.)

I expect Harvard computer science will be continuing to grow in coming years, so when you know of graduates looking for jobs, make sure Harvard is on their radar.

Summer Salary Shift

At Harvard (like most US institutions), Harvard pays us a "9-month" salary; we can earn 3 additional months "summer salary" by various means, including grants. For example, you can use NSF grants to pay up to two months summer salary (the 2 months is an NSF limitation -- the 3rd moth would have to come from somewhere else).

When I arrived at Harvard, I found it a little odd that the 9-month salary was distributed over the 12-month year, but the summer salary was all paid over the summer. What this meant is that if you took 3 months summer salary, say, you got paid almost 1/2 (well, 7/16, I think -- consider this a good word problem for your average high-schooler) of your annual salary over the 3-month summer. But I got used to it.

This summer it appears the practice is changing, with summer salary now being set to be distributed over the 12-month financial year. There is some nominal loss (for me and other faculty), in that the money we were going to get paid this summer will now be paid over the 2008-2009 academic year, costing us potential interest. I'm actually also concerned about what havoc this could eventually play with taxes, although with any luck there will be nothing significant. I suppose I'll get used to this as well, but I don't see it as a good thing.

Inside sources have suggested to me that this is part of a move to better keep up with compliance issues for federal grants, inspired by the fact that Yale is apparently currently under an unpleasant government microscope. A quick perusal of Google didn't shed any useful information on Yale's plight, and I'm not exactly sure why the change in practice would make a difference. Anyone with similar stories or insight is welcome to comment...

Writing a Final Exam

For me, one of the hardest challenges of teaching is making up homework assignments and final exams. For homework assignments, there's some assistance from the textbooks (and I re-use problems a lot), but final exams are very challenging: coming up with problems that test a student's learning but under a 3 hour time limitation. Making a final exam usually takes me several hours.

For my final exam, usually about 1/2 is True-False, Multiple-Choice, Give-an-Example-or-Counterexample, or Execute-the-Algorithm-on-This-Small-Example type problem. These are very different from the homework assignments, which are usually proof/computation/programming-oriented, and hence have "bigger" problems. The other 1/2 is more like the homework assignments -- proof-type-problems -- but sufficiently easier (or with sufficient hints) that students can hopefully get through them quickly. Interestingly, although you might think the first kinds of problems are easier, on both halves, student averages are about 70%.

I've toyed with the idea of giving take-home finals (which I do sometimes in my graduate classes), but these days it's just too easy for students to cheat. I know I've had students anonymously mail questions around looking for people to answer them. And arguably it's useful to have the final exam test something different than the type of problem-solving that they do on the homework.

When I think of the time spent making a final, I know I'd be happier not to give one. And of course the students would be happier too. Not better off, I think, but happier. Perhaps there's a different solution....

Things I Can't Talk About

If you're a regular reader, you've probably noticed that I haven't been posting as much as usual lately. Unfortunately, that's because I've been spending too much time on things I can't talk about.

Specifically, for much of the last two weeks, I was at a trial in San Francisco as an expert witness. Luckily, one week of it was during Harvard's spring break, so I didn't miss too much class time. But the case naturally took almost all of my energy and work hours. Not only did I not have much time to blog, but I didn't even have much time to think about things to blog about. Hopefully, that will change, and I'll soon be back to my usual self.

A natural topic to blog about, of course, would be about what it was like being an expert witness. Such a topic fits within the scope of the blog. But the case is just still too close. Instead of talking in generalities, which I think is reasonable and still professional, I'd run the risk of discussing specifics, of either the case, the client, or the attorneys I worked with -- which I definitely think is not, especially in a blog context.

As I pondered this dilemma, it occurred to me that there are plenty of other things still within the realm of professional life that I can't (or, to be clear, I choose not to) talk about. Details of PC meetings is not suitable blog material, as are details of the meetings of our CS faculty search committee -- and pretty much the last few weeks, when I wasn't busy with the case, I was busy with the ICALP PC or the CS search! Nor are discussions of my work on the "Administrative Board", Harvard's rule-enforcing body, for which every case is meant to be entirely confidential. Heck, we aren't even supposed to talk about what NSF panel we serve on when we serve on NSF panels, which I find a bit extreme. (Who couldn't figure that out if they wanted to?)

It is frustrating, since part of the reason I started to blog was because I like to talk about things. But especially because a blog is a public, permanent record, there are interesting, worthwhile, and even entertaining topics... that I can't discuss.

Disconnecting from E-Mail

One nice thing about traveling to New Zealand was that I spent several days disconnected from e-mail. I went a whole 80+hours without checking my mail on both ends of the trip. It was nice. (I could have checked mail, but in New Zealand it seems like all the hotels make you pay for Internet access. I didn't feel like paying. Of course, I had e-mail available at the workshop.)

The experience has suggested to me that I ought to try moving to limit my e-mail during the day. It seems more productive to set aside time to specifically deal with e-mail; maybe first thing in the morning and last thing before leaving the office. I'm not sure how this would work with other people, though; many people treat e-mail like it's a phone call, an immediate connection (including my wife), when of course it's not. I often see "emergencies" pop up in my e-mail box; while I was gone, I was asked to call somewhere for my opinion of a job candidate, and an NSF director wanted me to expand on my research nugget (as usual, by yesterday preferred, by tomorrow would be OK). These people didn't need to get in contact with me that second, but there seemed to be the clear expectation that I'd see their message and move on it within a small number of hours. Is that a realistic expectation?

Of course, these weren't real emergencies, and making a practice of leaving e-mail aside and blocking my e-mail time better would probably increase my efficiency, and possibly my happiness, since I would feel less that I was constantly being interrupted.

Some News from Harvard

A few interesting pieces of news from Harvard.

First, Harvard is setting up a scheme to avoid restrictive access policies of some journals. Essentially, as I imperfectly understand it, Harvard is obtaining from the faculty a non-exclusive right to disseminate articles written by the faculty. The intention is that a Harvard faculty member should be able to say to any journal that insists on having an exclusive copyright to an article, "That's fine, but I work at Harvard, and as such Harvard has a non-exclusive right to my work, which will be placed in an open repository." Stuart Shieber, a Harvard computer science professor and a strong proponent of open access, was behind this faculty legislation. Perhaps all the universities can get together and give a message to the journals that they are the ones that actually pay the faculty, and they will work against journals where the business model depends on restricting access to the research to only those who pay a monopoly-based fee.

Second, the Dean for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard, Dean Venky, is stepping down. Venky and I began about the same time at Harvard, and he's done a lot for improving the visibility and status of computer science and engineering at Harvard. I hope we can find a new Dean that can continue the push to build up these areas at Harvard.

Harvard Improves Financial Aid

Harvard's is again improving its financial aid policy, as described here and here.

It's not as wacky or ludicrous an idea as not charging anyone tuition, but I'm still glad to hear it. (Wait, this doesn't cut my salary, does it...)

NSF FIND Working Meeting

I'm writing this while stuck at attending an NSF FIND (Future Internet Design) working meeting (Nov 27-28). Part of the FIND program is that there are 3 meetings per year where all the FIND PIs are supposed to get together, to talk about the new network that is the goal of the FIND program. This is my first meeting; I missed the last one. It seems to me that this idea of having PI meetings related to grant proposals is an NSF experiment worth examining, and there are some discussions going on here that may be of broader interest, so I thought I'd report. (If this reads as stream of consciousness, I'm generally typing as things go on.)

One positive for me is the chance to catch up with various networking people who I don't see so regularly. The socializing aspect -- just talking to people, finding out what they're working on, making sure they know Harvard is hiring, all this is good. (Jennifer Rexford and I chatted during a break, and when I sat down after the break, she had already sent me a paper to look at. Which I need to go ask her some questions about... I also finally caught up on some overdue researchy discussion with Dev Shah of MIT; yes, I have to go to DC to meet up with someone from MIT...) In this sense, it's like going to a networking conference, and obviously interacting with peers is one of the pleasures of a conference.

The invited presentations aren't doing much for me, however. They're not highly technical talks -- more high-level talks, connecting network research to network users. (We're hearing two talks right now about issues in the practice of emergency networks in disasters.) It's not that the talks are bad, but it's a bit hard to see their purpose. This is a room full of networking people -- they all have well-developed individual research agendas and know what they think the problems are. I don't think the talks are adding much new. (Let's just say I'm not the only one tapping away at the keyboard when I should be listening to the talk. So again, it's just like a conference.)

Besides invited presentations, there are break-out sessions. I'm sitting in on the "network management" breakout session, which far and away seems the largest. About 25-30 people or so in here. It's actually kind of like a conference panel, only a bit more chaotic with so many people. While the discussion is high-level, and I'm not sure we're headed anyplace specific, it's actually a pretty interesting discussion that highlights the scope of the problems of network management. (So many requirements, so many heterogeneous user classes, so many ill-defined goals, so many ill-defined or at least hard to measure quantities, etc.) Interestingly, the group as a whole seems quite convinced of the importance of what I call theory -- modeling, control, algorithms. (The pro-theory comments seemed to begin from Jennifer Rexford and Anja Feldmann, two incredibly pro-theory and powerful network researchers.) This gives me a good excuse to chime in and further emphasize the importance of theory to network management, which I manage to do repeatedly.

Ellen Zegura is giving a talk about GENI and the GENI Science Council. The GENI Science Council is supposed to come up with a "research plan" for GENI, an experimental facility/infrastructure for the development of the next generation Internet. (Network people rightfully complain it's hard to do experimental research on the current Internet at a large scale, so the plan is to design a research infrastructure for these sorts of problems.) There's a notable shortage of theorists on the council, but they seem to have noticed this and added Joan Feigenbaum and Michael Kearns recently. (From my perspective, if you're going to design a whole new network infrastructure, it seems to me you'd want some theorists to help make sure it's done right.) They're still putting together the research agenda that goes along with the planned facility, and they're still looking for input. Essentially, it seems like they're looking for research examples and research experiments that would utilize or benefit from a GENI-scale system, so that they can explain clearly why building a GENI-scale system is a good idea. So if you have ideas for experiments that you'd like to do on a network-wide scale, you might start looking at what GENI's up to. Overall, GENI seems like such a huge project, and it's still a bit amorphous at this point, so that people are a bit confused. Or maybe that's just me. (I did have to get up at 4 am to catch the early plane down here.)

I talked with Ellen later, and got clarification of the GENI state. I had thought this was well on its way to becoming a possibly multi-hundred-million dollar new NSF project, but apparently it's much less further along than I had thought. If GENI is going to happen, it apparently needs to regain some momentum. And GENI seems a key component of the FIND program; it's hard to develop next-generation network architectures if you don't have a network to try them out on.

Before dinner they have a poster session. It's well done for a poster session -- they have food and a cash bar, and food and drink always seem to be requirements for a poster session where people actually stay and look around. There's a nice mix of work; my favorite is an idea multiple groups seem to be working on that there shouldn't be just one network architecture, but multiple network architectures running over the same network substrate. My interpretation is that you have routers/other infrastructure that can run multiple architectures efficiently in parallel, so running side by side you might have our standard Internet with another network with much stronger (or weaker!) quality of service guarantees, or another network where connections are based on virtual circuits, and so on. This makes sense if you believe that a one-size-fits-all Internet is no longer the best idea.

Day 2 is mostly having the breakout session coalesce their ideas into short presentations. Pablo Rodriguez, of fame for example for his work on Avalanche/network coding at Microsoft, gave a nice talk about the economics of P2P and ISPs; he's left Microsoft to work for Telefonica Barcelona, and has developed some insight from the ISP point of view.

Overall, I ended up with mixed feelings about this working meeting. It's useful to get people together to find out about what everyone is doing and to talk about high-level issues. Conferences already serve some of this purpose, though. Some of the value I got from this meeting derives from the fact I haven't been to a networking conference for a while (I didn't feel like traveling to Japan for SIGCOMM this year...). High-level issues don't necessarily get discussed at conferences, but it's also hard to get 50+ people together to talk about high-level issues and get any sort of agreement that wasn't already obvious. I'm skeptical that 3 such meetings are needed each year. However, the plan seems to be for the next meeting to be a graduate student focused meeting, which may be a good idea -- getting graduate students together to meet and talk like this seems like a potentially very interesting idea.

Going to the meeting will pay off, however, if it leads to any new collaborations. If any FIND people are reading this, and you want to add some theory to your work, send me an e-mail. (Of course, you could also go down the hall and talk to the theorist(s) in your locale, which I'd really strongly recommend, unless I'd be interested, in which case try me first!)

Service and the NSF

I recently returned from an NSF (National Science Foundation) review panel. (Of course, I'm not allowed to say when, or for what.) On the way back, at the airport, I ran into a more senior colleague (from an entirely different field -- not EECS) coming back on the same flight. It came up that he had never served on an NSF review panel. He admittedly seemed a bit sheepish about it, but offered the excuse that there were more important things to do, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he meant other service activities, not research and such. Essentially, his argument seemed to be that NSF panels were a waste of his time.

Having served on a half dozen or so NSF review panels, I have some sympathy for this point of view. In particular, being anti-travel, I'm not sure why we have to fly in for a two-day meeting to make decisions; it's expensive for the NSF and time-consuming for me. (It's not clear to me that decisions are any better because of the face-to-face meeting. Indeed, arguably, they can be worse, depending on the group interaction. But government process is government process, so unlike for PCs, not having the face-to-face meeting is not currently an option...)

However, despite the time, I've tried to make myself available when the calls for NSF panels go out, because I've always figured that if the NSF is paying my summer salary (which, in large part, they do), they have the right to ask for some of my time. Indeed, my gut reaction (without working through the arguments) is that it's objectionable that they don't actually require people who have received funding to serve on a review panel at some point during the term of their grant, though I suppose the implementation of that rule could become unpleasant. In short, my moral interpretation is that by taking their money, I'm part of their system, so when they come calling, I should respond, even without an explicit quid pro quo.

Even if one does not subscribe to this implicit understanding, I think it's important for us individually and as a community (including non-academics who don't get NSF funding directly) to do our service for the NSF, particularly in the way of review panels. In general, citizens should be keeping an eye out on how the government uses their money, and in this specific case, as scientists, we should be paying especially close attention to how the government is distributing research money to scientists in our own and related fields, and we should be attempting to influence the process to move in the right directions as much as possible. The panels give us some opportunity to influence the process, and these otherwise near-useless face-to-face meetings give us some opportunity to influence the NSF administrators who shape and make the decisions that affect us all.

So, with all due respect to my senior colleague, and any of you other slackers out there, get over yourselves, and go serve on an NSF panel every other year or so.

Service to the Academic Community: Goals?

Except for the rare award (like the ACM-SIGACT Distingushed Service Award or Aaron D. Wyner Distinguished Service Award), our academic community does not appear to especially value service to the community. Research dominates our mindset. At the same time, on the whole, pleasantly the community seems quite conscientious about giving back. Somehow, conferences get run, workshops get organized, journal papers get reviewed, the NSF panels meet and make their bizarre decisions, and so on.

Strangely, I can't think of any time where a "philosophy of service" has been explained to me -- in graduate school or as a new faculty member, from the theory CS community or from my institution that employs me. Thinking about this, I find it rather odd. Surely, someone should be suggesting what's an appropriate level of time and effort to put into service, and where these efforts might best be applied.

(There is some advice I've seen in books for new faculty members. For example, Robert Boice's book Advice for New Faculty Memberssuggests that new faculty essentially spend as little time as possible on service activities, and make early service opportunities as self-serving as self-benefitting as possible. I roughly agree, but we should make this part of a well-reasoned philosophy of service -- the community should protect it's youngest members and help them flourish.)

I think this topic is ripe for community discussion, and some resulting general guidelines. People should have some guidelines as to what's expected -- what's usual and what's exceptional community service. (And to be clear, here I mean service to the scientific community at large; university service, for example, is separate.)

I'll start with two basic, over-arching questions. (I have more specific ones in mind, but I'll save that for the next post.)

1. How much time should be spent on academic service activities? [My take -- 1/8 time, or at least one hour a day on average, for senior faculty. Less for junior faculty starting out, but increasing steadily toward that. Ostensibly, people in research labs should also be at 1/8 service time -- anyone know of any policies on that?]
2. Should we be better rewarding service, and if so, how?

Harvard Computer Science Hiring

We're eagerly looking for candidates in CS in all areas at the junior level (i.e., assistant profs). (Be sure to tell your non-theory friends as well.) Here's the ad for the search.

What Do Professors Do? Part II

Following up on my last post... in one respect I know I'm spending more time on administrative issues recently. Last semester I started serving as a faculty member on the Harvard "Ad Board" -- literally, the Administrative Board. This is the committee that handles the "application and enforcement of undergraduate academic regulations and standards of social conduct". If you're in trouble for bad grades, cheating, plagiarizing, fighting, alcohol abuse, or anything else that's mentioned in the Harvard rules, your case gets brought to the Ad Board. We also handle several more positive and pleasant administrative duties, of course, but the bulk of the actual work involves the cases of students experiencing serious academic problems or accused of violating university rules.

This is a remarkably time-intensive committee. We meet weekly, and it's not at all unusual for the meetings to last 2-3 hours. Plus there's prep time involved in reading the cases before the meeting. There are only a few faculty members on the committee at a time. Most of the committee is made up of administrators and the "resident deans" -- people who live at the Harvard dorms (or "houses" in Harvard-speak) and are responsible for the care of students.

Several of the resident deans have asked me what I did to get stuck on the committee. I generally answer that I didn't realize it was a punishment! (In fact, then-Dean of Students Dick Gross asked me to serve. As he and Harry Lewis were my senior thesis advisors as an undergraduate, I found it hard to say no. I've found this sort of thing is a problem about going back as a professor where you were an undergraduate; people are more familiar with your name and stick you on committees.)

It is indeed a very challenging committee. I've learned some important things, including all about the infrastructure for helping Harvard students with problems and how I can help lead students to this infrastructure. One perhaps obvious lesson is that most often students get into academic trouble -- in particular, with plagiarism -- because they leave assignments until the night before and then take shortcuts to get them in. I've always been quite strict with undergraduates about homework deadlines -- I think overall students need better time management skills and try to do too much -- but I admit I've softened up since being on the committee. Contrary to many students' belief, I don't want my class to spur a breakdown. But remind your students over and over -- the night before is no time to start a theory problem set (or any other assignment)!

What Do Professors Do?

A number of times I've had undergraduates ask me, essentially, "What else do you do?", which sometimes is an honest interest in what else my job entails and sometimes appears to be a concern that when I'm not teaching them, I'm just sitting around my office thinking up new ways to torture them via problem sets or soaking up tuition money.

At a high level, I know what else I do: research, write papers, give talks, go to conferences, manage and work with graduate students, advise undergraduates, seek funding, sit on department and university and theory-community committees, review papers and grant proposals, act as editor for a few journals, serve on program committees, write letters of recommendation, deal with standard administrative paperwork, and... well, I'm sure there are a few other things as well that I've forgotten. Let's count blogging as part of my job, too. And I consult on the side. Come to think of it, it's a wonder I have time to teach. (That probably explains the students' question. They're wondering if I have 40 working hours a week, why isn't this class better?) Of course, I'm know I'm not unusual; all this seems like standard faculty stuff.

What I've been realizing lately I don't have a good handle on is how much time I spend on these various activities. It has seemed to me that in the last few years -- since getting tenure -- a lot more of my time is going to administrative duties than to research-style activities. If true, that fact along with my poor time-management skills seems like a recipe for disaster. So this semester, I'm going to try a little experiment, and try to track my time in a spreadsheet somewhere, to start getting a better handle on what's going on. And figure out what activities to cut.

Of course, I'm curious -- what are others experiencing? How much time do you think you spend on various activities, and is there a pre-post tenure change? What's the biggest impediment to research time?

SODA vs. FOCS/STOC, full data

Over at the geomblog, Suresh and Piotr have taken my initial data-gathering on citations counts for the theory conferences to the extreme. They point out issues in gathering data (e.g., how does one handle summing conference/journal versions; sometimes the journal version has a different title!), consider the impact of short/long SODA papers, and call for help checking their results. Excellent work!

The implications, whatever they are, remain a point of future discussion.

Citation Counts for Tenure

The discussion on citation counts reminded me of the related question of how much of a role this sort of data should play in tenure decisions.

In the world of extremes, one could imagine tenure decisions being based solely on letters without really looking at citation data. A motivation for this approach would be that letters give you a richer picture of how a person is viewed by their peers in the research community, what their work has been about, and what the potential impact of this work will be in the future. On the other hand, the system can be gamed, by making sure positively inclined people get chosen to write letters. (The person up for tenure might not exactly be able to game the system themselves, but certainly a friendly department chair could...) I have to admit, the letter-based approach feels rather "old-boy network" to me, which leaves me a bit uncomfortable.

As another extreme, one could imagine tenure decisions being based solely on numerical data gathered from Google scholar or other sources. A motivation for this approach would be that the numbers supposedly give you an unbiased picture of the impact of a researcher's work, allowing comparisons with other comparable researchers. The data could also be used to gauge the derivative -- how one's work is changing and growing in impact over time. On the other hand, the system can be gamed, by developing groups who purposefully cite each other whenever possible or by working on projects that give better numbers without really giving high impact. I have to admit, I like the numbers, and in some respects I trust them more than letters, but I still don't entirely trust them, either.

My limited experience with promotion decisions is that it makes sense to gather both types of data and make sure they are consistent. When they are not consistent, then the departmental arguments can begin. When asked to write letters, I know I look at the citation data, and would include it in the letter if I felt it was appropriate.

How Much Does a Graduate Student Cost When Teaching?

Continuing my last question, what other support for graduate students (on the Ph.D. track) do you have? The main two I can think of are the following:

1. Does the department provide funding for incoming graduate students for some period? For example, do all first years get funded by the department automatically? Are there requirements for this funding (such as they have to teach one semester)?
   
2. What department support to students get if they take on a Teaching Assistant role during the semester? Does it cover tuition/stipend for the semester? If not, what fraction?
   

And there's still time to answer the previous question -- what's the annual cost of a graduate student (tuition+stipend+overhead).

How Much Does a Graduate Student Cost?

What's a graduate student cost these days? That is, as a line item on an NSF grant, for a 12-month graduate student, tuition+stipend+overhead, what's a graduate student cost? (Please feel free to answer anonymously, as I'm sure this is the sort of information people are interested in but don't want to reveal by institution. And use whatever additional qualifiers are necessary. For consistency, let's say a 3rd year student.)

This question was motivated by a change made this last week in Harvard's policy regarding how graduate students were charged to grants. Previously, Harvard would pay the student the stipend and tuition money directly, and then pull tuition back out of the paycheck. With this setup, Harvard charged overhead on tuition, since it was treated the same as the student stipend. Apparently, a new federal guideline just came out prohibiting this sort of thing; tuition will now be pulled out of the grant directly, free of overhead.

I was quite pleased to hear this. I had been complaining about this practice for a number of years; as far as I know, overhead on tuition is not standard for most schools. It made Harvard graduate students non-trivially more expensive. This change makes graduate students funded by NSF grants much cheaper for me. Moreover, it also just seems to me to be the right way to do it.

Now that the change is happening, though, I'm somewhat concerned. All of a sudden the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is probably out millions in overhead that it had already budgeted. Somewhere down the line, I'm sure I'll be paying for that out of my grants somehow.