VPA Says

This issue is about Troy. I know the guy pretty well, I worked as a tutor for him for two semesters. Hence, I would like to apologize to Troy for all the stress I caused him ;)

My life is pretty busy right now. I may no longer be VPF :) but I'm keeping myself busy with a number of committees.

Probably the most important thing going on right now is the election. (VOTE!) This election is going to be close and there will be a noticeable difference in government depending on who gets in. The federal election affects everyone of us. Even if you have never identified with a political party, I can guarantee you that you have views on political issues. Education, health care, the environment and the economy are all things affected by the federal government. Sigh- if you hadn't been planning on voting I don't know if the bit above changed your mind, but hopefully it did. Over the next while you should see a bunch of material from FedS about the election (especially in regards to education). We will even be hosting a candidates debate. So vote! (Better yet, get educated about the issues before you vote, taking a couple of hours to learn about the issues is an awesome investment of time.)

There's the co-op enchancement committee. Engineering is going to be introducing some mini-courses to be taken during co-op terms. These are intended to give students a stronger understanding of professionalism and other highly desirable traits in the workplace. Although some of the material is engineering specific, there is a lot that could be beneficial to math co-op students as well. Hence, part of this committee's responsibility is to adapt what engineering has done. This work is in the starting phase but looks pretty promising and I have been impressed by the others on the committee.

On Monday I attended a 2.5 hour meeting about the future of CS133. Again, I was pretty happy with how things turned out. By fall 2005 paired programming will be removed from the course and less emphasis will be put on the graphics part of the course. There will be some other changes too. I'm also sitting on the Dean's Nominating Committee for Math. I haven't had any feedback from students which is a little disappointing. I haven't had any students stop by my office hours yet. Even if you don't have an opinion about an educational issue but want to get information and some background, I'm a great resource (and I do love to talk)[ Yes, yes he does — Proofreader Cass]. Hence, I'm making the following offer: the first two people to stop by during one of my exec office hours with the answer to the following question will get a $5 gift certificate to the C&D.

What were the first two courses that I tutored for Troy?
To win, I can't know your first name.

That's it for now

Greg