Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> (01/11/90)
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 922. Wednesday, 10 Jan 1990. (1) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 01:45:00 EST (16 lines) From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@OAC.UCLA.EDU> Subject: Re: 3.916 rewards in heaven, not here (68) (2) Date: 10 January 1990, 07:44:07 EDT (35 lines) From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB (3) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 09:53:34 -0800 (64 lines) From: ruhleder@sloth.ICS.UCI.EDU (4) Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 10:59:06 -0800 (19 lines) From: ruhleder@sloth.ICS.UCI.EDU (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 01:45:00 EST From: KESSLER <IME9JFK@OAC.UCLA.EDU> Subject: Re: 3.916 rewards in heaven, not here (68) Dear Prof Slatin: You answered your own question at the end of your tale of woe in saying that in the Business School it would be taken care of. If you were at UCLA, you wouldnt even have the Mac, if you were in the English Department, grant or no grant. I dont. After 3 years' wait. Seniority? UP to here, I have it. But if you were a TA in Japanese, you would have a computer for every one of you. Not if you were in Chinese studies, though. Who, whom? I say again, as Lenin asked. If you asked for in IBM, though, you might get it, as they are pushing the clunkers everywhere. Them as 'as, gits. But for the deserving poor? GBS described it all decades ago in Major Barbara, no? The poor dont deserve. Meritocracy? One laughs. Kessler at UCLA (2) --------------------------------------------------------------38---- Date: 10 January 1990, 07:44:07 EDT From: FLANNAGA at OUACCVMB On freebies and the deans: Yes, as Kessler says, we in the academic world are the tools of the states who pay our salaries and buy our equipment--up to the point where free will raises its proud head. I run a journal that brings prestige (nebulously, it is true) to my department, my dean and my university, and the journal happens to run in the black, with incoming funds nearly exactly matching outgoing funds. The department pays for a few phone calls, the university supports my e-mail, the dean occasionally gives me computer equipment courtesy of state funds. The university gets respect. I work at the editorship free, the way James Coombs describes the academic's service to his or her community, but I am well aware that editing a quarterly is something that the outside world generally pays well for. I get, or the journal gets, freebie books, in return for recognition in publishers' markets. The relationship between me and my chair and the dean and the university is fragile and can change from year to year. If things are tough, I would have to pay for all new computer equipment and the university comptroller might just sweep my rotary account of funds, before I paid the printing bills. Everything depends on a beneficent mutual trust, which is that of the fragile academy. If I applied to the dean and got turned down, like the gent in Texas, that process might begin to embitter or taint the process of editing, which might in turn cause subscriptions to go down, which would cause less funds to come in, which would cause my chair to flag the account, and all the rest of the bad things that cause bitterness in the fragile academy. Incidentally, I do have to pay for peripherals and supplies from my own budget, and the problem of the replacement or repair of a large piece of equipment, mercifully, has not come up, especially since the department gets the use of some of my outmoded (but perfectly useful and functional) equipment. When things are loose enough, or trusting enough, in the academy, freebies are traded for freebies, relationships are guarded but peaceful and pleasant, and noone grows bitter or unproductive. Roy Flannagan (3) --------------------------------------------------------------74---- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 09:53:34 -0800 From: ruhleder@sloth.ICS.UCI.EDU In response to John Slatkin's message of Jan. 9: John Slatkin wrote about his attempts (futile) at getting the department/school/university to pay for repairs to a Macintosh. I've never thought much about the issue because my department has it's own support staff. When I have a problem, I call support and they deal with it. Now, I'm in a computer science department, so that makes a big difference (I'm a grad student in a ``technology and society'' type of program looking at the computerization of the humanities). So, I called up our department's MSO to ask how things get paid for in our department. In brief, our department gets a lump sum which the Chair allocates. This lump sum is intended to cover everything from printer paper to staff salaries. Our department also pays for support staff who take care of maintenance, etc. HOWEVER, there is another important source of funding for computer service: grants. People who have grants for equipment are expected to also purchase maintenance contracts. People who have other kinds of research grants are ``billed'' for the services they use. So, if someone from the departmental support staff spends 3 hours setting up new equipment for a research group, the grant that the group is on (if there is one) will be billed for three hours of staff time. Now, I'm sure it's true that CS departments start out with a larger lump sum than most humanities departments, but two key factors in our department have been (1) a commitment on the part of the chair to provide computing services to all grads and faculty, and (2) a concerted effort to look elsewhere for funds when possible. All in all, our department is very liberal when it comes to supporting computing-- we have a much more generous environment than many computer sicence departments, much less other departments. By the way, regarding business schools, my advisor is on sabbatical at a Very Famous Business School at a Major Ivy League University (I've been there-- I've seen the Ivy) and computing there, to put it extremely mildly, is abysmal. You can have all the Reputation you want, but try getting computing support, e-mail, disk space.... One concrete suggestion I would make is, any time you purchase equipment, try to purchase a maintenance contract as well. After that, try to work on getting those around you (above you?) to understand that ``computing'' is more than a box on a desk, and successful integration of computing into an academic research environment requires committment to providing support when needed. For more information on how our department manages computing, interested parties may contact Tim Morgan, our Computing Resources Manager (morgan@ics.uci.edu) or Judy Hornaday, our Department Manager (hornaday@ics.uci.edu). Judy Hornaday is going to send me information about a mailing list for deparment managers of computer science departments, which I will post. Karen Ruhleder Department of Information and Computer Sciences University of California, Irvine (4) --------------------------------------------------------------29---- Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 10:59:06 -0800 From: ruhleder@sloth.ICS.UCI.EDU An addendum to my message earlier today: I should probably note that faculty are not expected to pay for maintenance on departmental machines themselves. The idea is that every faculty, grad, and staff person in the department has (1) access to computing, which generally means a terminal or workstation on their desk, (the department doesn't supply PC's or modems for home use), (2) access to electronic mail, including electronic bulletin boards and news networks, and (3) a workspace, which generally means at least a desk and a chair in an office or cubicle. Any problems with 1, 2, or 3, above, are department problems and are taken care of out of departmental funds. This ``departmental computing philosophy'' has been around for many years here, and has survived many Chairs, so I think it is here to stay. Karen Ruhleder