I will never be UBC's ambassador to UCLA

I am just back from a trip to Los Angeles during the UBC Reading Week (Spring Break). I spent two days at UCLA and two days at Caltech. I talked with colleagues I have known for a number of years and I gave seminar talks at both places. It was a good trip: my work was well received (or they were just polite) and I heard about a number of interesting ideas that were new to me.

When I am in Southern California I try to eat Mexican food when I can. I know of one good Mexican restaurant in Vancouver (Tio Pepe's on Commercial Drive) but in general that is something in the LA food scene we don't have much of up here. After my UCLA talk on Tuesday when I was on my own and had time to spend before my Caltech driver came to get me (that is another story) I wandered around Westwood Village until I found a likely restaurant. I had a nice meal of that Mexican slow cooked pork (carnitas) and a couple of margaritas.

Still with time to spend, I started walking around again. I began to feel ill to my stomach, in that way you recognize may need to find release. It could have been a stomach bug or simply that I ate too much rich food I was unused to. I had checked out of my hotel that morning, so had no room to return to. Campus was too far away. I mentally consulted my dead mother, who has advice on (almost) any situation. Actually, her advice to me has improved steadily since her death and in general she is more compassionate. In this case, I remembered she had useful perspective even when she was alive: that involuntary bodily functions were never something to be embarrassed about, that trying to suppress them was unnecessary and unhealthy. I found a quiet, dark street with some side shrubbery and after some pacing back and forth found release there.

If you read a news report about a UBC professor embarrassing himself in public near the UCLA campus, please don't forward them my picture.

Interviewing for Academic (Professor) Positions in Mathematics

Our department has advertised several faculty positions this year, two in Applied Mathematics. I am on the committee of about eight for these two positions. One is in my area, Scientific Computing, and one is in Fluid Mechanics. We had about a hundred applicants for the scientific computing position, of whom four we could invite to interview. I made a first pass through the applicants, dropping any without significant research papers or in the wrong area. In the first pass, "significant" only meant that they were in journals I recognized as good in the field or was unsure of. Examples of good journals in my field are the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Journal on Scientific Computing, SIAM Journal of Numerical Analysis (more theoretical), and the Journal of Computational Physics. The applicant field was deep this year, so these criteria were met by about half the applicants. Looking more closely at the publications and letters of recommendation got me to about ten that I took to the committee. We discussed the relative merits and came to our list of four to interview. Some demonstrated or potential for teaching ability is also considered, but as a secondary criteria. This is the reality at most research universities like UBC.

Of course I cannot go into the specifics of candidates for this search or any other. They came to UBC for two days. They met with the head of our department and a representative of the Dean of Science. They met with faculty members in Mathematics and other departments. In these meetings, we got a chance to hear some details of the research and got a sense of whether they would be good colleagues. Of course, these are top people, who are likely to get other offers elsewhere, so part of all this is to make them have a good impression of UBC. They gave a research seminar and were taken out to lunch and dinner by different groups. It was a while ago that I interviewed myself, but I remember it was high intensity - both exciting and exhausting.

This week, the committee will meet and make a recommendation to the department on acceptability of candidates and for those that pass that bar, the order in which job offers would be made (continuing until one accepts). The department votes on the committee recommendation and makes a recommendation to the Dean of Science. If the Dean approves, offers go out.

I gather this is all more effort in interviewing that for a job with equivalent salary in Industry. At least in part, this is due to the potentially long term commitment we expect to make to faculty members at UBC. We expect any junior faculty member to get tenure after five years or so. The expectations for tenure are actually quite high but with this careful hiring practice, most new UBC hires make that level. At that point, they are guaranteed employment for the rest of their careers. Of course, nothing is really guaranteed. Tenure can be revoked in cases of gross incompetence or misconduct and some kinds of criminal activity. Again, after all the care at hiring, these cases are very rare.