Dinner on April 7, 2008
Diners:
Graduate students Michael
Goff, Catherine Williams, Josh Tokle, Megan McCormick, Robert Bradshaw
Faculty members Dan
Pollack, Steffen Rohde, William Stein, Ginger Warfield
Future Graduate Student (we
hope!) SonyaLeibman
Absent for health reasons
was Selim Tuncel, which gave us a chance to say nice things about him and his
chairmanship.
After several dinners that
somehow never got written up, suddenly we had one where the conversation was as
lively as ever, but somehow sufficiently coherent to make it absurd not to
write it up, at least briefly. So here goes.
I think a key element to the
success of the conversation was DanÕs genuine curiosity, arising from the fact
that he has just started in as Graduate Advisor. So when the food ordering and
the introductions were over and the customary expectant pause ensued Dan
unhesitatingly dropped into it the question ÒWhat about the qualifying exams?Ó
It was a long time before the next pause. The first issue was ÒWhy just once a
year?Ó For that one I made use of my longevity: when I first came in the early
70Õs they happened twice a year, and one result was that for the second half of
winter quarter Padelford was full of ambulatory stress-baskets for whom
course-work became increasingly irrelevant. Of course, it was also true that it
was an all-or-nothing deal, so unless you passed all three of them in fall, you
had to take all three over. Much has happened since then, including de-coupling
the passes, and adding the option of Ò3.8ingÓ one subject. ThereÕs even a
slightly obscure one (at least it didnÕt sound as if the graduate students knew
about it) whereby someone who has agreed to advise a studentÕs thesis can give
him/her a reading course that culminates in an open oral exam with other
faculty members attending. The mention of oral exams struck a chord with
Steffen, whose academic background in Germany included many such. He commented
that if you can get the student to relax and just discuss the mathematics you
can find out more about their real mathematical competence than several hours
of written exam may supply. A very cogent point, though the art of getting the
students to relax is a non-trivial one. From there, the conversation swirled
though numerous variations on the theme of prelims. Faculty members were
startled to hear of heavy speculation among the students about who would be
writing each exam, based on evidence like who runs the summer review course. Of
course, they never find out for sure which speculation was correct, but that
doesnÕt slow it down. After all, theyÕre into problem-solving, right?
I got the impression that a
number of potentially useful ideas went by in the midst of the very interesting
batch of comments and suggestions. However, since I am not (thank goodness!)
the Graduate Advisor, I didnÕt have to take note of which ones they were!
The other good question that
was presented came, appropriately enough,
from the Graduate Student Representative. Michael asked why we donÕt
have alternate year courses in some topics officially listed, since they always
seem to turn up. Turns out that one has a pretty straightforward answer: once
you jump through all the hoops required for getting a course into the catalogue
by name, you have settled yourself neatly into a straightjacket as regards how
many quarters it lasts and what the syllabus is for each quarter and a smallish
change in the interests of the faculty members teaching it can be hard to
accommodate. Better we keep calling them Special Topics Ð but maybe we need to
make sure the appropriate level graduate students are kept apprised of them.
As we polished off that
question, we also polished off the last of a quite impressive amount of food,
so we decided it was time to sort out our shoes and head out into the evening.