Steven D. Brewer's blog

When I had been involved in the Faculty Senate leadership previously, we had set up a structure to periodically meet with our state legislators, Representative Ellen Story and Senator Stan Rosenberg. Having gotten myself involved with the leadership again, the committee met this morning over breakfast to discuss state politics and higher education as they affect UMass.

We started out talking about the state budget. Revenues are pretty good and running ahead of expectations. The House included sufficient funding for the 50/50 plan (that the state commit, over two years, to return to paying 50% of the cost of the university, for which, in turn, the University has committed to freezing tuition and fees for two years.) The Senate, unfortunately, has only agreed to providing half of the increase necessary to reach the first year's point toward 50/50. In the absence of assurance that the necessary funds will be provided, the Board of Trustees has approved a modest fee increase in the event that the legislature doesn't come through. Apparently, there is concern that, at the system level, the University is not being sufficiently transparent about how much money is actually available and we see a game of brinkmanship between the legislature and the system over how much is really needed to freeze fees. Sigh…

I used the current controversy over The Retreat (a controversal student housing development slated for Cushman Village) to ask about state/private partnerships. A number of people claim that such partnerships are impossible, hence the need to build on property distant from the University. Stan indicated that there have been some projects at other UMass campuses that were problematic and that he needed to research them to understand better why they had been problems but that, in principle, he didn't see any reason why we couldn't have such partnerships here and that he and Ellen stood ready to help shepherd through projects proposed here. But that the Town and the University had just agreed to conduct joint strategic planning and that this would be the place where such ideas might most fruitfully emerge. Ralph Whitehead generously pointed out that I had been an early proponent of such planning. I'm really pleased to see it happening.

We spoke about the general financial picture generally for higher education. Stan and Ellen indicated that there simply hadn't been a lot of interest in higher education generally in the legislature, but that due to PHENOM and others, there had been some increased interest. I expressed my strong concerns that higher education increasingly faces an existential threat from on-line education (MOOCs) and, since we've been starved of funds, we spend much less per student than we used to and yet students are paying more, which makes it increasingly hard to offer a good value proposition. Randy spoke bluntly at several points that they should never lose sight of the fact that when you speak about "student fees" you're really talking about "student debt". Dick Bogartz presented the perspective that undermining public higher education fit nicely into the neoliberal agenda of turning every activity into an opportunity for the wealthy to extract rents from the system.

We digressed for a few minutes to talk about Intro Biology as a case study of what's happening. We have invested a lot of energy into making the UMass Amherst Intro Biology course a model of effective, modern pedagogy. We built team-based learning classrooms for the labs 15 years ago and redesigned the lecture part of the class to use personal-response systems and small-group "model-based reasoning" to solve problems. It is a national model for pedagogy and Randy (and I and others) have been frequently invited to speak all around the country. I personally was invited to Johns Hopkins, James Madison University, North Caroline State University and Randy has been all over.

At the same time, the course has grown dramatically as students flock to the life sciences -- we've almost doubled in size over 5 years. At the same time, we've had no-where near the investment in resources to manage the influx of students: We've hired a couple of lecturers and built one new laboratory classroom.

In response, we decided last year to switch from offering two semesters of lab to a single semester. Our goal is to dramatically increase the quality of the laboratory experience. We would like to have students work with molecular and cellular biology, which we just can't do with the resources available given the scale of the course.

At the same time, the Chancellor keeps asking why we don't just replace the course with a MOOC. I've tried to explain to him several times that we're doing great work and the idea that we would just give up and throw in the towel is extraordinarily offensive. We want to create -- we have created -- a transformative experience for students. We don't want to have students just watch videos online alone and take content-based tests.

It's a challenge. In the end, I think we did a good job of giving Stan and Ellen ammunition for making the case for the state to build and maintain great public universities.

For several years, my brother Phil has been studying Tai Chi with a teacher from the local Park district. This summer, when no-one had offered to teach a class, he volunteered to start teaching. While I was visiting, I came to a class meeting to watch him teach and to take some pictures.

I partly came just because I was looking for an excuse to take some pictures of him to replace the atrocious picture he's been using on his website. I've seen more flattering mugshots. But I also wanted to learn more about Tai Chi because it's obviously become an important part of his life.

Phil is an outstanding teacher. But I've always known that. When we were kids, Phil was always explaining things to me. He has a knack for being able to summarize complex ideas in simple language that anyone can understand. Regarding Tai Chi, he had a confident line of patter to break a complex move down into pieces, summarize the important aspects, and explain how it fit into the larger context of the full pattern.

The students obviously appreciated having someone to lead the practice. They are a diverse group in terms of age, gender, race, and fitness level. But Tai Chi is something that anyone can start doing.

I enjoyed taking the pictures. I arrived a few minutes early to scout sight-lines and consider the lighting. We asked the students if they minded being photographed and none objected. The sky was overcast, which offered gentle suffused lighting. There was a bench that ran along behind the participants and gave me an excellent vantage point to look slightly down, which helped frame the images and keep the sky out of view. I shot 133 photographs, of which I thought about 30 were worth keeping.

I have watched with interest the twitter feed of Nothing to Hide. This feed, created by Daniel Sieradski retweets messages by people that welcome having the NSA read their email, listen to their phone calls, and track their behavior online. He wrote a brief essay to explain why he created the feed which summarizes the underlying issues as well as I could. But he was surprised by how widespread the attitudes are among people that being spied on is OK.

I hope they read what Edward Snowden actually said.

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.

The United States has functioned, to the extent that it has, due to distributing strictly limited powers among various different players so that they can act as checks and balances to each other. The balance among these powers is crucial for the structure to not collapse. Terrorism is not an existential threat to democracy, but the tools to run a police state clearly are. If you think you have nothing to hide, you just aren't thinking very hard.

Watching the twitter sphere explode with indignation over revelations that the NSA has been collecting all the metadata for everyone's internet data -- and probably recording all the actual data, so they can mine it if they want -- is no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. In fact, the biggest problem is that it looks to me like people have to work pretty hard to whip up indignation since anyone with a clue has been indignant about the situation since the original Patriot Act was hustled through congress. People who've understood what was going on have indignation fatigue.

There have been a lot of good comments about the situation -- I liked Rick Falkvinge's post Told You So, which pretty much nails it. As usual @DaveWiner has many insightful comments. I particularly liked this one: "Knowing what they knew, Zuck, Page and Costolo could have helped us all decentralize. They didn't. Another angle for the @arrington crusade."

There aren't any purely technical solutions to the problem, but there are two approaches that help. One is to only share encrypted data with third parties and the other is to provide your own services. It's probably worth pursuing both strategies where feasible. Neither approach, however, addresses the central issue here: the metadata produced as the byproduct of interactions with corporations.

There aren't any simple political solutions either. We need to work assiduously to push back both against the legal framework the government uses to collect the metadata and the ability of corporations to collect and retain metadata about people. Perhaps we need a "do not retain metadata" list, like the "do not call" list, where people could opt out of having data collected about them. It might be a popular program, but it would make it hard to earn a degree or get a loan.

The Biology Computer Resource Center (BCRC) is slated to move to newly renovated space for which we're currently in the design phase. A faculty group met a couple of weeks ago, I solicited input from students, and then a few of us met with the architects last week to begin. I've been really excited because it's an opportunity to think through a bunch of issues where the existing BCRC has always been suboptimal.

There is a lot of talk about BYOD and phasing out computer labs altogether. From the student comments, however, it's clear that students still want/need computers -- but they do also need more support for their own devices -- power, networking, and a big display would be very welcome. They also are looking for better places for groups to work. We are building all these team-based learning spaces which are great while students are in class, but where do the students work after the class is over?

My goal is to create a room that can serve as a team-based learning classroom but that will be managed as a drop-in computing center with particular support for groups to work on projects. I also want it to seamlessly support students on the full BYOD spectrum. Here are a couple of sketches I've drawn of the same space with the same furniture (more or less) arranged two ways.

The room has spots for up to 48 students to work. (Note that not all of the seats are pictured in the drawings -- I got tired of drawing seats).

The 24 tables will be movable, large enough to seat ~2 students, and each 1/3 of a circle. Each will have an embedded mac mini (or similar small computer) with a largish flat panel display, possibly mounted on an arm. There will be a small panel at the side that will have two power outlets, connectors for 2 or 3 of the USB connections on the computer, and (probably) an HDMI connection that goes to the monitor, to allow a student who's brought a computer (or laptop) to use the large display. The network will put all of the computers, either through wireless or the wired network, into a flat network space to enable devices to easily talk to one another.

The room can be divided into 8 regions by rolling cork boards. If you arrange the tables in 3's (circles), each region of the room has a table that seats 6 with 3 workstations. If you arrange them in 4's, you can leave two regions "empty" an use them as a plenary space for students to bring their chairs into for presentations or discussion.

The walls will all (except where there are windows) have chalk boards.

Finally, I plan to have a bit more directive management of the space when it is not being used as a classroom than our current BCRC: students working individually will be asked to fill up regions of the room one before sitting in an empty region so that regions are available for groups that want to work together.

In March, I attended a meeting of the Knowledge Commons at UMass and happened to be there when Becky Sweger of the National Priorities Project came to pitch the idea of organizing a Hackathon as part of the Hack for Change national day of civic hacking. The goal was to bring together technology and community partners to find and build technical and data-driven solutions to local problems. Several of us expressed interest and joined the team to make it happen. This weekend, June 1 and 2, 2013, we held our Hack for Western Mass hackathon using the Random Hacks of Kindness model.

It's been fantastic to be part of such a dedicated team. Becky's done a huge amount of the work organizing, keeping the effort on track and making direct pitches to sponsors and community partners. Molly Mcleod designed a graphic identity for the project and built the website and many ancillary materials. Sequoia McDowell organized the purchase and delivery of all the food. Randall Smith organized publicity and operated our twitter identity. Andrew Pasquale, Don Blair, Carrie Bernstein, and several others have contributed significant time and effort to make the event happen: wooing sponsors, finding community partners, and getting the word out. Everyone has been extremely generous with their time.

Thanks to Niall Sullivan, we also ran a fantastic "kid space" during the hackathon. We installed Minecraft, Scratch, and Netlogo on the lab computers that kids could drop in and use while their parents were particpating in the hackathon. Niall also led the kids (and adults) in physical activities with juggling, hacky sack, and hula hoops.

My contribution was to organize the venue. With the support of the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, I was able to arrange for us to take over the amazing Integrated Science Center at UMass Amherst.The Chemistry Department graciously let us use the Computer Resource Center. We have groups working all over the building in conference rooms and in various nooks, corners, and crannies of the Atrium. During the event, I've tried to make myself useful — and I've also done some photography.

Our Sponsors have been very generous with their support. The UMass Amherst College of Natural Science donated the venue.Paragus, Left Click Advanced, R Studio, and Crocker Communications each agreed to sponsor a whole meal for the hackathon. Communicate Health sponsored a "healthy snack" table, with nuts, fruit, granola bars, and other healthy treats. The Amherst College Center for Community Engagement, National Priorities Project, Free Press, Sunlight Foundation, UMass Amherst IT Program, Five College Statistics Program, Clearbold, Azavea, and Mad Pow all contributed funding. There's been no danger of anyone going hungry during the hackathon.

Our community partners identified really outstanding challenges for the hackathon. Crunching data about the Federal Budget! Getting the word out about a project that helps teen mothers! Organizing to stop the vulnerable families of incarcerated people from being exploited through bad public telecommunications policy! Building a seed bank for Western Mass! Building a database of local wells and water quality! Demonstrating the value of local banking!

My favorite project is soliciting public participation to rebuild the public tree canopy in Northampton, Massachusetts. Last year 70 trees were removed, but only 20 trees were planted. The project wants to get members of the public to identify places to put public trees and then agree to be a steward for a tree planted there to help it survive during its first vulnerable year. They're building a website that can capture geolocation data from mobile devices and let people identify spots where there ought to be a tree. What a fantastic project!

Nationally, there are nearly a hundred events. In Boston, they kicked off their hackathon with a meeting at the Boston City Expo with short presentations by the different hackathon constituencies (civic innovators, technologists, etc) followed by breakout groups to help groups learn about each other. That sounds like a great idea. We kicked off our event with a Friday night social event at a local microbrewery which had a much better turn out than I had expected. I was expecting maybe a dozen people and instead we had 30 or 40. Great beer, great company, and a nice icebreaker for the following days of hard work.

Everyone has worked hard at the hackathon: Great pitches, careful attention, and lots of thoughtful questions. Enthusiastic team building, intense discussion, and lots of focused work. I can't wait to see how these all turn out. Even if projects can't get finished in a single weekend, people can keep working. We have a follow-up event planned for June 26 for people who want get together to show a more polished product. And the activity doesn't have to stop there.

The national organizers will invite some teams to send representatives to the White House to present. It would wonderful if our event and some of our projects were recognized like that -- there's no question to me that the work we're doing is first class and fully worthy of such recognition. But I have to admit that it's not really what's important to me.

A respected colleague of mine, John Jungck, always said that the goal of a good event should be to "begin conversations worth continuing". I see plenty of evidence that the connections forged over this weekend will lead to fruitful collaborations for many years to come. In 5 or 10 or 15 years, I can see all sort of benefits accruing from the work we began this weekend. And I would like nothing more than for someone then to say, "Yep. It all started with Hack for Western Mass."

Visiting Walden Pond got me to read Walking by Henry David Thoreau. Walking is clearly a great thing -- Philip has been talking about long walks and Michael Moore has started a movement of getting people to walk with him. I've spent a lot of time walking (and standing) over the past few days, attending the various graduation ceremonies. And my feet hurt, which suggests I should be doing more walking. Hence my interest in reading Walking.

Or reread. I seem to remember that I read it once before, long ago. I read it much differently as an older man than I once did. It resonated with me much more in my youth.

Thoreau only lived to age 44. He published Walking in the year before he died, bedridden with tuberculosis. I can easily imagine him, traveling over in his mind's eye the places he could no longer visit in the flesh. And we never got the benefit of hearing what Thoreau might have said had he lived to 50 or 60… Or 90. I also read Civil Disobedience differently, listening to Thoreau sneer at the little people around him. Thoreau would have made a good libertarian, nose in the air, supremely confident that he knows better than the proles and plebes all around him.

Thoreau took great pleasure in the wild, unspoiled places of the Earth -- of course, no-one knew, at the time, that the unspoiled places he was writing about were simply a palimpsest overwritten by the disease and genocide that depopulated North America in the centuries that followed its "discovery" by European settlers.

This isn't to say that I don't love wild places too. And appreciate knowing the different plant communities in an oak or maple forest. And sensing the deep time in the rocks and soils upon which the verdant covering is but tissue thin.

But I can also appreciate the wildness of not mowing my lawn for a week. There's all kinds of stuff in there! Blue violets and white violets. Ox Eye Daisies and Buttercups. Sensitive Fern and Creeping Charlie. And the pernicious Garlic Mustard trying to sneak in.

I visited the home of a couple of colleagues that live off the beaten path in Wendell. I drove for more than half an hour up into the wild places and, eventually, turned off the road onto a narrow sandy lane, across a tiny creek, and up to their house -- a glorious contemporary sited above a large curve of an impoundment bordered by boulders and pine trees and wetlands. It was breath-taking.

I spent my later childhood years in a home not unlike that -- a colonial, rather than a contemporary, and in a wet forest behind a farm field, rather than above a spectacular vista. But the long drive and the long lane back into the woods brought it inevitably to mind. And, as I left after the sunset, the swarms of black flies (although for us it was mosquitoes and deer flies).

I chose to live in a small house near where I work and where my boys went to school. Where I can take the bus and ride my bike. And I am content. Such wildness as I need, I can find in abundance close to home. But I should get out and walk more.

Yesterday, I attended commencement and then a dinner for outstanding undergraduates. Each dean of each college and school called their candidates to stand and be recognized and each group would respond with a roar -- except for the School of Education. Only a few thin voices went up. For a moment, I was surprised and then I thought, "Duh. Who would want to go into education in the current climate?"

This morning, I see that similar things are happening in Britain. But this is the story of every teacher I've known over the past 10 years.

The neoliberals have waged a unparalleled war against the teaching profession for a generation. Rarely has an entire profession been so vilified. They have conducted a witch-hunt for "bad teachers" as being at the root of all of society's ills. They claim they want to improve education, but when you look at what they've done, it's clear that their agenda all along has been to destroy it.

In its place, they would create for-profit schools where students are imprisoned in a behaviorist wet-dream, supervised by robots while they fill out bubble sheets. The idea that education should be empowering -- or even involve contact with empowered, well-educated people -- seems absent from their plans.

In the past on these days in May, I would be attending the MTA Annual Meeting in Boston. But it's been depressing, year after year, to watch the gains for educators get clawed back by relentless attacks from the Right. Last year, it was Stand for Children assaulting teacher evaluations. Before that, it was a ballot initiative to eliminate the state income tax. This year, it's retirement health care: they're gutting the plan, making us work longer, pay more, and get less.

In a generation, people will look back and wonder why we did this. The worst part is knowing that it's not really mean spirited -- it's just business. Partly, it's that public education just doesn't matter for the wealthy -- even if they didn't actively believe that disempowering other people's children was a good thing. Mainly, it's just dollars-and-cents. They want to finish the job of destroying organized labor and they want to extract rents from yet another sector of the economy.

Tonight at the Faculty Senate, the first step in developing a strategic plan was adopted. For months, the campus has been involved in a developing a comprehensive review setting the agenda for a strategic plan that was required by the accrediting agency. A committee of 30 with another 100 faculty, students, and administrators developed the document, Innovation and Impact: Renewing the Promise of the Public Research University, which was subsequently presented in a bunch of public forums and the language expanded and revised.

Several people spoke up at the faculty senate, some to praise the document and others to point at various problems and shortcomings. I had prepared some remarks in advance.

  I would like to thank the members of the Joint Task Force on Strategic Oversight, and the many allied committees that have worked long and hard to create the current document. I applaud your efforts. This work is difficult, often thankless, and too often conducted in an atmosphere of cynicism.

  I've heard many people say, "Ho-hum. I've seen these plans come and go." I exhort my colleagues to actually read this document and to recognize that this -- this -- is not just more of the same.

  The document is not perfect, but it is not just a list of numerical targets. It is not just following the crowd. It is not just aspirational language. It is not just a laundry list of administrative goals. It is something qualitatively different.

  This document represents genuine soul searching on the part of many thoughtful people throughout the institution. This document aims to raise the consciousness of all of the members of the University community -- that we find the ground shifting under our feet.

  We need to look carefully at where we are and where we want to go. We need to come to know what we are and decide what we intend to be. This is not a task of the administration -- it is the task of all of us.

  But this is only the first step. Next, we need to take this agenda and begin building the concrete steps to carry us forward toward our goals. As chancellor Lombardi was fond of saying, "time is the enemy". I urge my colleagues to not merely adopt this report, but to go back and read it carefully, and begin helping to figure out how every one of us can start making these things happen.

  We're going to need all of us. This is your invitation.

Very last spoke Tom Lindeman, who reminded us, quite rightly, that the document places too much emphasis on teaching and not enough on learning. In many places in the document, you could probably replace the word "teaching" with "learning" and the document would be fundamentally stronger. He also reminded us that the University does not merely serve the interests of the public. The University must also stand apart and be an independent voice that critiques the public. Academic Freedom, which is not mentioned in the document, must remain a key mission of the academy -- even if, or especially when, the public does not necessarily see that in its interests.

The report was adopted unanimously by the Faculty Senate. Now we move on to step two.

Mi ekvojaĝis dimanĉe matene tre frue por renkonti d-ron José Antonio Vergara kaj lian karan edzinjon, Gladys. Ili vizitas Bostonon dum kelkaj tagoj sed mi havis liberan nur unu tago por renkonti ilin.

Mi renkontis al José Antonio antaŭ kelkaj jaroj. Li partoprenis kunsidoj ĉe AAAS kaj poste tranoktis kun mia familio kaj renkontis la lokajn samideanojn. Ĉifoje, li vojaĝas kun lia edzino kaj turistas en la nordoriento.

Ni renkontiĝis je la 9a kaj poste veturis per aŭto al Concord, MA. Ni vidis unue la Malnovan Nordan Ponton, kiu estas la unua batalkampo de la usona revolucia milito. Ni promenis al la vizitanta centro, exploris la enhavon, kaj babilis kun aliaj vizitantoj: alternejaj studentoj kaj infanoj de Meksiko.

Ni volis viziti la Malnova Pastrejo, la domo de Ralph Waldo Emerson, kiu estas proksime, sed bedaŭrinde ĝi ne estis malfermita. Anstataŭe, ni veturis al Walden lageto kaj vizitis kie Henry David Thoreau havis sian dometon. Estas libro vendejo kaj eblas promeni ĝis la lageto kie nun estas plaĝo. Mi dubas ke tiu plaĝo ekzistis kiam Thoreau estis tie.

Poste ni veturis al Watertown kaj renkontis Jakobon. Ni manĝis ĉe bonega uson-stila restoracio "Not Your Average Joes" kiu havis bonegan manĝaĵon kaj bieron -- kaj la kelnero estis perfekta.

Mi ĉiam miras ke dum tuta tago mi povas tiel facile kaj senatente eniri Esperantujon. Gladys ne parolas Esperanton (kaj mi apenaŭ parolas la hispanan) do de tempo al tempo, José tradukus aferojn por ŝi. Kiam José parolis al la studentoj, li parolis al ili en la angla kaj, malgraŭ tio ke li bone parolas la anglan, kia malsama sperto, kiam por li estas strebo kaj batalo esprimi sin.