School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics

School Advisory Committee

Meeting Minutes

July 29, 2011

Present: Steve Davies (Chair), Michael Barnsley, Dean Jones, Christine O'Keefe, Gerry Sozio, Edward Szoldra, Virginia Wheway, Daniel Yuen, Jacqui Ramagge, Marianito Rodrigo, Annette Worthy

Meeting opened: 9:30am

1. Preliminaries

As the committee had many new members, everybody introduced themselves and gave a brief history of their background.

1.1 Apologies

Virginia Wheway was unable to attend due to travel commitments.

2. Chairs Report

At the last SAC meeting there were only three members in attendance (Edward Szoldra, Gerry Sozio and Steve Davies), therefore the committee needed to be reformed with new members. Concerns at the last meeting were that certain subjects were reliant on one person – now resolved and have several people responsible; low quality students (especially foreign students undertaking their Masters) entering maths and needing bridging courses.

The Chair mentioned that he is also on the Faculty Committee and at the latest Faculty Meeting a survey on student experiences showed that Informatics did not do as well as other Faculties. As Informatics contains four schools it is difficult to ascertain the areas of weakness e.g. the survey found weakness in the quality of teaching and professional development with students finding some lecturers hard to understand. Jacqui Ramagge did not think issues raised were about SMAS although interaction between the Faculty schools could improve. UOW’s new Vice Chancellor starts in 2012 and while his interest is in research there were mutterings that some Faculties could merge.

The ERA results are disappointing and need to be discussed at the Faculty meeting. Jacqui said it was important to emphasise that SMAS is a strong school.

3. Heads Report

Staff: 29 staff = 24 full-time positions. Workload calculations show SMAS is approx 5 staff short in maths and 4 short in stats. The Dean has been informed of the need for more staff. This year has been particularly traumatic with passing of Dr Grant Cox as not only was he a much loved member of staff but his workload had to be reallocated at short notice.

SMAS’ ERA results were disappointing and it is felt that reporting results slightly differently will result in better outcomes.

By the end of 2011 SMAS will have hosted AustMS, Maths Teachers Day, HSC Revision Day, Mathematics Explorer Day amongst many other UOW events.

SMAS is heading up an Operations Research Group and Edward Szoldra noted that the ABS also now has an Operations Research Group and offered to help.

There is concern that the new National Curriculum may see decreasing enrolments of math students.

A full report is available on the SAC website.

4. Launch of BMedMath

Annette Worthy gave an overview of the BMedMath. After financial maths medical maths is seen as a “vogue” area of study. The launch of BMedMath is on August 17 at the Chifley Hotel.

It will be made clear at the launch that the aim of BMedMath was to give an alternative to those students who enjoy maths but were being pressured (by parents) to do medicine. Emphasis will also be on employability of BMedMath students. The Graduate School of Medicine has also expressed strong interest in such students and proposed that it be a four year course but Jacqui felt it was important to keep it to three years.

SMAS was congratulated on having foresight to have such a course.

5. Proposed major in Quantitative and Computational Trading within the BMathFin

BMathFin had arisen from a conversation with Tim Berry of Tibra of how to combine Maths, Stats, Finance and Computer Science. After considerable consultation with the Finance industry, a new major was developed for the BMathFin Finsia accreditation. The major starts in 2012 but already some first years are looking at transferring in.

It is envisaged that the major in BMathFin will attract an increase in students as well as industry sponsorship (mostly trading houses). BMathFin is now being copied by other universities and it is estimated that there is a two year window before there is serious competition.

As ethics in trading is important, ethics will be considered in lower level subjects or delivered in other ways. Finsia may also have some suggestions on dealing with ethics.

Michael Barnsley noted that there has been a huge growth in financial mathematics and wondered if that attraction will fade away in light of the GFC. Jacqui responded that she was aware of enrolments decreasing but interest still lies in the trading area and that financial mathematics will need a significant review within five years.

It was also observed that interest was increasing in mathematics and environmental sciences due to current events. However, Jacqui was wary of developing undergraduate degrees where there is no research interest. Moreover, the school is not large enough to accommodate such interests at this stage.

Dean Jones and Gerry Sozio were consulted on how to attract high school students to maths.

Dean was pleased to see that UOW offered courses that were not “just maths”. Most students at Smiths Hill High wanted to do medicine or law and while this mainly stemmed from parental pressure the financial rewards of those careers were seen to be important.

Gerry was also pleased to see that students have a choice in mathematics but UOW needed to get that into the schools. Students responded well to having lecturers present at school, explaining that doing maths can lead to other careers besides being a maths teacher.

6. Research – Challenges and Opportunities

Research: in 2010, SMAS was awarded three ARC Discovery Project grants and one ARC Linkage grant. This year grant applications were submitted for 9ARC Discovery Project, 3ARC Fellowships, 3ARC Discover Early Career Researcher Awards and 1 NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence.

With the ARC, it is difficult to know what is being compared as benchmarks are not released. Journal rankings are being dropped.

Students: 49 PhD, 4 Masters by Research, 31 Postgraduate coursework.

As a benchmark, the University of Sydney SMAS has 58 PhD students.

A challenge for SMAS is the new National Curriculum to be rolled out in 2015 for the Senior Years. There is concern that teachers will find the upskilling difficult due to funding and opportunity. UOW’s Community Engagement Fund is a possible source of funds for this.

Other threats to BMath enrolments is competition from nearby universities.

7. Committee

The role of the SAC was discussed and it was agreed that while it came under the Faculty Committee guidelines, the SAC was more focussed.

It was agreed that the SAC meet twice a year in week 3 of Session (early March and early August) with a 10:00am starting time. Skype/video conferencing is also an alternative for communications. A deputy chair needs to be nominated.

Steve Davies to provide a report.

Meeting closed at 1:00pm