🚀 go-pugleaf

What follows are two brief versions of the information provided to Students
and Faculty.  This information is being posted to relevant newsgroups,
all-students@ug, the education mailing list, and parker mailing list.

Following that is a letter of concern voiced by one of the students
currently involved in the CS program at Dalhousie, and a voice of experience
from Chris Maxwell, one of the students involved in working against the
NSCHE report.


Notes on meeting held Friday March 22, 1995 to discuss DAL/TUNS CS merger
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Later this year, or next, TUNS will be moving some facilities out of a
building they currently rent for roughly $1 mil/yr to the Maritime Mall(M.M).
Rumour: Departments moving to M.M. will be Industrial Engineering, Applied
Mathematics, Continuing Education and Computer Science.  On the organizational
level Engineering, Computer Science and Architecture will move to the M.M.
  Dalhousie President Tom Traves and TUNS Vice President, Mr Rhodes have
been in meetings to discuss a mutual possible merger of some departments,
in the past few weeks, perhaps months, without input it seems from actual
departments and students.
  If the merger does go through, the merged departments will form their
own institution called the "Institue for Applied Science and Technology"
with Mr. Rhodes as the President of the institute (herefore dubbed "East 
Campus").  

Possibilties if the merger goes through
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  These are guesses/rumours as to what would happen if the merger goes through.

 - CS will become its own facility
 - CS and some courses will get moved to the East or TUNS campus.
 - The advanced courses such as third and fourth year courses and graduate
   work will move to the east campus.

 There are many problems that can be forseen, if this happens such as
people going for double degrees, geographic location, computing resources, 
the mutual benefit that is currently shared between the CS and other
departments shared right now at Dal(who seem to have NO knowledge of this 
merger at all).



*****************************************************************
Summary of the Rumours shared with students and staff on Friday.

Dalhousie and TUNS will merge.
The surviving institution will be Dalhousie.

What is currently TUNS will become the Institute for Applied Science and
Technology. (IAST)
IAST will have 3 faculties: Engineering, Architecture, CS.
Rhodes (currently Pres. of TUNS) will become a VP of Dalhousie and the
President of IAST.

>>This location is quite possible, but in any event, I would expect a
>>location on or near the current TUNS campus.  I suppose there is a
>>vague possibility that CS could be located on the Dal Campus, but I
>>wouldn't hold my breath.

IAST will be located in the Maritime Mall (End of Spring Garden, on
Barrington).

Options: All of CS will move to Maritime Mall - classes, offices and labs.
	Classes will be split between the two campuses.  
	Faculty may move down.  
>> Any arrangement for housing faculty is possible ranging from all CS
>> faculty moving downtown to all CS faculty moving to Dal to some
>> downtown and some at Dal.  My guess is the first, but I worry most
>> about the third.
	Advanced classes at Maritime Mall (3, 4, and Grad classes) &
>> Again, any arrangement is possible.  But I do worry about advanced
>> classes all downtown and 100/200 level courses at main Dal campus.
	Principal courses at Dalhousie.
>> You mean basic courses and service courses

The Faculty of CS under the IAST will be removed from the faculty of Arts &
Science, isolated administratively.  CS will likely take on a more
Technological Cast.

>> even more serious is the possibility of geographical isolation.
>> Administrative isolation can be overcome to maintain a certain multi-
>> disciplinary character if your in proximity to other disciplines.

****************************************************************************
Letter to the President

For the most part, I think students already are, or will undoubtedly be,
genuinely excited about the new possibilities offered by amalgamating with
TUNS.  However, we are very concerned about the implementation of such a
project.  What may be considered "implementation details", is, from our
perspective, the center of our lives.

In order to make a positive contribution to the project, we are submitting
this shortlist of concerns we feel need to be addressed in order to ensure
the amalgamation lives up to its potential.  Most of them are in relation to
the geographic and academic isolation of CS if it were required to relocate.

- What kind of CS degree will be offered by Dalhousie?  The merger offers
new possibilities for truly expert degrees, as B.Com. and B.Sc., and each
will have to reflect a different focus of the discipline in order to
conserve the reputatioin Dalhousie's CS degree and to cater to workplace
demands.

- What happens to combined degrees?  The unique and distinguishing facet of
CS is its application to every field imaginable, but that requires students
acquiring skills in many disciplines.  Combined honours, double majors and
other diversification into other related fields are crucial to research,
grad schools, the job market and simply to attract students and accommodate
their interests.

- CS Students wishing to enroll in other courses (and perhaps obliged to in
order to fulfill requirements), cannot realistically commute between two
separate locations and manage a decent workload.  Even assuming a shuttle
bus scheme, scheduling courses between faculties, particularly at senior
levels where only one section is offered for each course, is logistically
unfeasible. 

- Students from other faculties wishing to gain the computer skills
essential to their profession, may be discouraged by the added scheduling
burden for what are, after all, lower-priority courses.  That would be a
loss not only for them, but for CS students whom need exposure to the links
between information technology, who it serves, and how best it should serve
them. 

- What happens to the coop program, which is different in structure and
obligations and caters to a different market?  The merger provides students
with a more integrated and complete CS Technical background, but some
employers are also looking for students who do root cause analyses and other
projects coupled with expertise in one or many other fields.

- What happens to the resources?  Conceivably, a larger student population
in a new encompassing program will be met with more resources.  One of the
crucial, if less measurable, resources is the actual faculty and technical
support staff: they are our wealth of information, answers and questions,
and we feel strongly about keeping them close to the students.  But we feel
equally strongly about the rest of the university resources which we and the
faculty use on a daily basis, and to whom we also provide a great deal of
services.  Its the kind of interaction that makes CS make sense.

 CS does badly in a vacuum.  We thrive because everyone needs our expertise
and creativity applied to each and every field of study, research and work.
There are obvious rewards from an integrated CS program that covers from the
technical to the theoretical, but they will not be reaped if they are not
applied.  And the students whom understand this global picture and have
ambitions of applying CS to their field of choice think twice before coming
to Dalhousie if the CS program is felt to be isolated from the university
that needs it and that it needs to thrive.

Before making any final commitments, we would ask you to please reconsider
the possible losses and repercussions of uprooting CS and weigh them against
the clear gain in embracing TUNS's incredible technical knowledge and
expertise.

Thank you for your time and concern
  - a concerned student, of many, Anne Rensonnet

**********************************************************************

  At the NSCHE Conference last year, one of the speakers spoke on the 
subject of imposition of change.  The govt seems to be following his 
advise to the letter, the Presidents are NOT.  He said the 
imposing change from above has time and again failed.  From an 
Organisational Behavior perspective, it helps in extreme to 
empower the people who will be working in the new system to feel that
they have contributed to the final effect.  If you simply 
say that this is the way it will be after closed door consultations
and ignore all suggestions, the effect has consistently been to fail completely.

(Conjecture as to how this comes about:)  The lower-downs always sabotage
the process either through failing to perform duties assigned to them; going
on strike; doing duties as instructed but not with sufficient attention,
detail, or rigor; and mostly doing duties as instructed, but failing to
understand the objective and so wasting effort.  Job satisfaction falls
markedly, attrition due to employee departure to "greener fields" goes way
up.  In the case of students, loyalty to the school drops, alumni
contributions drop markedly, interest in moving the school along drops,
enrollment drops because word spreads that it is a horrible, substandard
place to learn.

   The end result is that efforts undertaken in this fashion are a dismal 
failure time and again, and inevitably results in increased costs, decreased
productivity, and in some cases final closing of the organisation.  

I would highly recommend that you take a lead from the government, which has
undertaken extensive consultation on the subject, and as a result of the
conclusions that were found during those consultations, given the mandate to
the lower echellons (that's you) to achieve the desired result in a manner
that suits them, as long as the end result is achieved.  You are failing the
test that they have set you, and you risk destroying that which you attempt
to save.  

***********************************************************************

Personal Note: My interpretation of the information is that TUNS will
continue to exist as an Institute, but under the parent of Dalhousie.  The
potential isolation (geographically and administratively) from Dalhousie and
from the Sciences, as well as a likely push toward a more applied technology
rather than a mathmatical computing spin is not something I look forward
to.  I do however see a great deal of potential for a merger which results
in the full range of classes related to CS, increased industry input, and
continued association with virtually all aspects of Arts and Science.
-Marni
--
           Dalhousie Student Computing Science Society
               dscss@ug.cs.dal.ca, dscss@ac.dal.ca
Be Involved!!! Take Part!  Finger us to find out who is representing you.