Introducing Geoff

Posted by Geoff Davis at 01PM on 11/09/06 | Categories: Introduction | 2 comments

Hi. Pleased to meet you. I’m Geoff Davis.

People often ask me why I’m so interested in science and engineering education issues. Why worry about all this stuff when I could be doing math or writing code or playing outside?

An anecdote might shed some light:

I started grad school in 1989. I had a lot of company: in the late 80’s, the NSF kicked off a push to prevent a huge shortfall of scientists and engineers that they predicted would soon arise. I got my PhD in 1994, and believe me, there was no such shortfall. I was one of the lucky ones – I landed a postdoc – but the sense of collective despair as people found no jobs after sending out literally hundreds of applications is hard to forget.

Early in my postdoc career, I somehow got the idea that my department’s undergraduate math curriculum needed some serious revamping (ah, youth!). To bolster my claim, I crunched all the enrollment numbers for the previous 10 years and put together an elaborate series of charts documenting major declines in pure math classes but steady growth in the applied classes. I wrote a lengthy manifesto about what a new applied math curriculum should look like and all the benefits it would bring to the department. The chair and vice chair listened politely to a presentation I gave on the subject, then did what any sensible administrators would do: patted me on the head and ignored me.

About 6 months later the vice-chair came into my office holding a copy of my manifesto. They had been handing out copies at a conference he had attended across the country. Apparently one of the organizers had downloaded it from my home page and thought it worth disseminating. I was stunned by the potential power of the web. And was hooked immediately. phds.org was born shortly afterwards.

Until now, phds.org has been largely a showcase for the work of others. The communication has been mostly one-way, as well – the site gets a lot of traffic, but I hear from very few of you. I’m looking forward to an exchange of ideas in the months ahead.