Thursday 14 December 2000
Room 2511, JCMB, King's Buildings
The meeting opened at 11am.
Present: Stuart Anderson, Paul Jackson, Martin Lange, Monika Lekuse, Neil McGillivray (Secretary), Gordon Plotkin, Don Sannella, Alex Simpson, Alan Smaill, Perdita Stevens, Ian Stark (Chair), Colin Stirling.
Apologies: David Aspinall, Julian Bradfield, Martin Hofmann, Massimo Felici, Stephen Gilmore, Jane Hillston, Kostas Tourlas.
Ian Stark welcomed everyone, and apologised for the fact that the meeting clashed with a CS1 staff meeting, hence the number of absences.
1.1 Institute appraisal documents Gordon Plotkin had made the revised LFCS appraisal documents available on the web as requested.
1.2 Postgraduate Assistants Ian reported that Lennart Beringer and Marco Kick had been appointed to the two postgraduate assistant posts agreed at the last meeting, and were progressing well with their technical reports and software support tasks.
1.3 Journals The last meeting considered whether or not the order for the "Journal of Combinatorial Theory - Series A" should be cancelled. Consultation with Mark Jerrum has since confirmed that this journal is still useful, and so it was agreed to continue with this order.
1.4 Research staff appraisals Ian confirmed that a list of Research Staff had been drawn up some months ago and that appraisals could now be arranged. It was pointed out that most of the delay in this issue had been connected to the recent uncertainty regarding the LFCS support team. It had been agreed that Neil McGillivray would be responsible for this area, unfortunately Neil's transfer from the ITO had been delayed.
Ian reported that some staff had experienced difficulty in getting on to the appraisers courses run by the Personnel Department. Don Sannella pointed out that there were probably sufficient numbers of trained appraisers already to at least being the process. Gordon Duckett is supposed to arrange with Personnel an appraiser training course within Informatics; Ian had sent him a list of LFCS staff wishing to attend.
1.5 2001 Milner Lecture Ian reported that Christos Papadimitriou had accepted the invitation to give next year's Milner Lecture and that he would be visiting the Division during a week in May 2001. It is hoped that this will coincide with the Division's week-long Jamboree.
1.6 Director of LFCS Colin Stirling had taken over as Director on Samson Abramsky's departure.
Ian tabled various items for information, including a report on the LFCS supervisor's meeting in August. He also listed recent changes and appointments of LFCS staff. Currently LFCS has:
Ian noted that one of the new students, Feng Wan, had now left, stating that he had found it difficult to balance the workload of his CS1Ah Teaching Assistant post with his PhD studies. Gordon Plotkin suggested that giving a postgraduate student numerous tutorial groups did not comprise appropriate `Teaching Assistant' duties.
Perdita Stevens agreed, but noted that she had recently had an enquiry about a studentship that highly praised the Informatics Teaching Assistant idea. It was suggested that Course Organisers should perhaps be more careful in future when assigning duties to these posts.
Ian presented an outline of the LFCS grant portfolio, currently around £2.7M. Members reported on their own new grants and proposals in preparation.
Ian reported on the LFCS budget, with a review of planned and actual spending last year, and the plan for this year. He also tabled a report on the recent EPSRC regional seminar. Stuart Anderson asked whether the EPSRC rules on funding EU PhD students had changed; Ian responded that they had, to our benefit. Previously the maintenance component of quota grants awarded to non-UK students had been lost, and now could be retained (though not actually given to those students).
3.1 Administrative support staff Colin Stirling reported that he had been involved in discussions regarding the current JCMB Administrative Support Staff situation. Colin pointed out that Neil McGillivray had now been transferred from the ITO, but that Kendal Reid was likely to be moved to the Division Office sometime early in the new year. The meeting felt that they had not been kept as up-to-date with these changes as they would have liked, and agreed that if Kendal was moved to the Division Office the Informatics South Admin. Team would again be left under-staffed. Colin pointed out that 50% of the Division's Academic Staff was based in the JCMB.
Stuart Anderson noted that discussions on how best to support JCMB staff would continue in the new year, he pointed out that a meeting was being planned around 10 January 2001.
Whilst the general feeling was one of concern about the worrying drop in the number of JCMB Administrative Support Staff, Ian positively pointed out noted that the bookkeeping support had improved greatly this session.
3.2 Theory Postgraduate course Colin had asked John Longley to convene a working party to consider future directions for the TPG. Alex Simpson reported that the first meeting had taken place last Monday. Alex pointed out that he had still to receive minutes of this meeting, but that something would be produced for the next Research Committee meeting.
3.3 Workshop on Events Gordon Plotkin asked why this had not happened. Colin agreed to follow this up.
3.4 LFCS achievements Colin outlined his desire to introduce an LFCS Achievements web page, announcing the achievements of the institute and its members. The meeting agreed that this would be an appropriate addition to the LFCS web pages. Colin agreed to collect and produce the information.
3.5 Grant overheads There is now a Divisional "target" of 20% computing officer and 20% secretary per FTE research staff employed on a grant. Perdita warned that even where grant bodies permit it, reviewers have in practice marked down proposals for making this kind of overhead claim. She asked that Monika collect referees' comments on grant applications, particularly those concerning recharging and infrastructure charges. Sharing this feedback would be useful and could be considered when making future applications. Ian asked if we kept any records indicating what percentage of our applications was successful.
Monika confirmed that neither of these was currently available, but it should be possible to collect the information.
Colin praised the current level of cost recovery in LFCS, which is ahead of Division norms: for example, LFCS brings in £45k of recharge income on £231k of research staff salary; ICCS has more than three times the research staff salary, but this generates only £58k of recharge income.
Paul Jackson reported on the Graduate School meeting of 22 November 2000. There were apparently no significant changes proposed to the MSc, despite the recent loss of funding and failure to win MTP's.
Alex Simpson reported that some students on the TPG were unhappy about sharing MSc courses, regarding them as inappropriately paced. It was suggested that courses aimed purely at PhD students are in general more effective.
There was discussions about the small number of applicants for PhD places from our own undergraduate and MSc courses last year. General experience with MSc students has been poor, although this year's intake seem good. Ian commented that local applications are probably affected by the shortage of undergraduate honours courses in areas of LFCS interest.
Taking these factors into account, it was proposed that where possible we should try to have MSc and shared courses classified as primarily PhD training or as undergraduate honours.
Alex voiced concerns over credit for teaching TPG courses. It seems unclear whether or not all staff are entitled to this. Perdita Stevens argued that they should not, as only a small number of staff have the opportunity to teach such courses.
Colin asked why we have historically found so few PhD candidates from among the MSc students, when for example IRR regularly take 50% of relevant MSc students on to PhD. Good relations established during project supervision may be a part of this, although it was questioned how the timing of this worked. Although some LFCS PhD students had previously done the MSc, most often this was because they had originally interviewed for PhD but been advised to delay a year and complete an MSc first.
Paul highlighted the Graduate School's comments on Teaching Assistants, in particular the final point about 1st year PG students doing Teaching Assistant duties. The meeting agreed that these students possibly lack the required expertise, but that they should not be totally excluded from consideration. Perdita suggested that some sort of training should be offered. There was strong agreement with this, and that it should be arranged internally rather than through the University TLA.
Ian asked about the contents of the letter going out to PhD applicants, as revised for this year; in particular what mention it makes of Teaching Assistant work. Colin reported that the Planning and Resources Committee had discussed the contents of this letter. No-one present had actually seen the text of the letter.
Finally, Ian announced that Paul Jackson would be overseeing LFCS PhD Admissions for the next session.
In Julian Bradfield's absence Ian briefly took the meeting through his proposal to host the annual Computer Science Logic conference here during September 2002.
The meeting agreed that this was a tremendous opportunity for LFCS and the Division, and that it would be appropriate to offer sponsorship of £1,000 for the event. Rather than simply offering money, the meeting asked Ian talk further with Julian and select some specific item to sponsor: suggestions included visiting speakers or student support.
Given that Divisional meetings already occupied Wednesday afternoons of weeks 4 through 9 next term, the meeting picked Wednesday 14 March 2001, in week 10
Ian asked whether or not the meeting felt it was appropriate to extend the membership of the committee to include all Category A Research Staff. It was agreed that Ian should circulate this idea to members of the committee to poll the general feeling.
There being no further business, the meeting closed at 1.10pm.
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