| |
    
|
Improving reputation, retaining top faculty are priorities of new department
head
by Laura Walbrink
As the new head of the computer science department, Dr. Youcef Saad inherits both its successes and its imminent challenges. A specialist in scientific computation, he taught at several schools, including the University of California at Berkeley and Yale, before joining the University's faculty in November of 1990. In a recent interview, Dr. Saad identified improving the department's image and retaining talented faculty and teaching assistants as two of his primary concerns.
To some extent, the computer science department remains haunted by the well-publicized internal problems that damaged its national reputation several years ago. In the last five years, "this department has improved dramatically," said Dr. Saad, but a corresponding gain in ratings "comes very slowly, both within the University and nationally."
Increased visibility should help to boost the department's ranking, he said. Dr. Saad plans to organize open houses for industry partners and encourage faculty to become more involved in departmental activities. "The rest is a question of time," but "the ratings will improve, no doubt."
Dr. Saad is pleased with the department's success in recruiting top computer science professors. "We're very lucky to have recruited very good people in the last three to four years," he said. Now, because "everyone else is recruiting," the field has become more competitive.
Although recruiting faculty members is a priority, retaining them is crucial. "I want to make sure that people are not attracted elsewhere for non-essential reasons and that they feel good about the department," he emphasized. Because "Eighty percent of computer science faculty have been here less than eight or nine years," maintaining group cohesion is sometimes a formidable task. Ensuring that "people can work together as a group to secure grant money and improve the curriculum" will create a more effective department and "promote a nice working atmosphere," he said.
Despite the recent publicity about the University's below-average professor salaries, faculty pay in the computer science department is in the "middle range," Dr. Saad said. "Unless there's a large difference, salary is not often a big issue" when professors compare universities. "The main thing," he said, "is not to overload them with teaching responsibilities" so that they have time for research.
Keeping the faculty's teaching course load manageable requires a sufficient number of teaching assistants (TAs), but finding good ones has become difficult. "In the past, it was the opposite-there were too many TAs-but today, graduate students are more interested in becoming research assistants," said Dr. Saad.
"We've debated whether we should require graduate students to TA for one quarter," an option exercised by some departments at the University, "and we're still doing that." Since "some students are not going to be very good TAs," however, the value of teaching experience must be weighed against the importance of providing quality instruction.
The department has attracted considerable corporate funding. "Many of us have contacts with industry," he said, "and small, computer science related companies" are everywhere. "There's a lot of potential in Minnesota."
