[aclug-L] Re: ACLUG

[Kirk Lancaster <lancaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom Hull wrote:

> The SGA thing is a two-edged sword. Most of us have no association
> with WSU, so pretending we're a student organization is somewhere
> between confusing and dishonest. (I did something like that way
> back when, and I've never been sure it was worth it.)

As Faculty adviser to the WSU chapter of Pi Mu Epsilon, I should note 
that once someone joins Pi Mu Epsilon, he/she is a member for 
life and we have never restricted our activities to WSU students. 
It happens that most active members are students, but this is not 
by design.

>
> Is any other sort of WSU association possible? E.g., sponsorship
> by the CS or Math department as some sort of community-outreach
> program? This could, for instance, be exploratory toward developing
> some sort of curriculum which WSU could eventually profit from.
> (An old "pet idea" of mine is to develop a BSCS program with a
> major in open source software development. Someone will do this
> sooner or later, but right now it would really boost WSU.)

This is an interesting idea which might have problems.  The math 
department has the largest number of faculty in any (WSU) dept. 
The academic interests of ACLUG (e.g. open source development) 
might or might not correspond to the interests of the math dept. 
The number of faculty in CS is quite small.  (Is it true that CS 
students do not take classes from Ph.D. faculty members in CS 
until their senior year?)  The academic standing of the math 
faculty may be much higher among mathematicians than is 
the standing of CS faculty in CS; that is, from the research 
point of view, math is much better than CS.  So, do you "go 
with" a small, overworked CS faculty (closer to your interests) 
or a larger, more accessable math faculty (not as close to 
these interests)?  
What if math and CS merged and formed programs which 
include common areas of study?  Math suggested a union 
two or three years ago and CS rejected it.  Math and CS 
are starting to work more closely together; finite math/discrete 
math, which was taught in the math dept. until (about) 1990 
and was then taken over by CS (university politics), is now 
being taught by mathematicians - this frees CS faculty to teach 
CS.
If there is any real interest in these ideas, express it and perhaps 
the departments might think about it.

(By the way, one of the four "concentrations" for math majors 
is one in computing.)
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