Chapter 25: A New Phase Starts

Becoming Head of School

Late October, 2000

During the few days before my interview with Mark and the others at UNSW, I looked through copies of the more recent Engineering Faculty handbook, making notes about the current subjects and Computer Science course, the teaching staff that the school had, and similar materials. I wanted to get my thoughts in line, I am sure they would want to know how I would handle restoring the school’s reputation and getting staff morale back to a reasonable level. The School hadn’t changed the content of its main undergraduate course – a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering – since the school was formed, back in 1991. The subjects were the same, there were still the same four course specializations, it was as if nothing had changed in the field of computer science in the last ten years.

What I noticed – and looking into the survey of University rankings confirmed this – was that very little had changed in the absolute ranking of UNSW over the last ten years. Sure, the names of the courses had changed, as had the subject titles, but, in essence, the course wasn’t that much different from how it was back in the 1980s – or even in the late 1970s, when I got my undergraduate degree. It wasn’t that the reputation of UNSW’s computer science course had declined, instead, other institutions had overtaken it. It appeared that the ‘First Year Unit’, which Murray Allen had instituted, had been scrapped, and I wondered how the pass rate from first year to second year had been affected. It was as if the School had been making time for the last eight or so years, not keeping pace with developments in technology, not adapting to the dramatic changes that had taken place.

There hadn’t been any attempt to provide any ‘structure’ to the school, while there was a statement that the areas of Computer Science Engineering that it covered were ‘Artificial Intelligence, Computer Systems, Information Engineering, and Software Engineering’; no attempt had been made to define what those fields covered, set up individual departments, or assign individual academic staff to areas of responsibility. I got the feeling that once Hiller’s pet plan of getting fee-paying students in from overseas had been stymied, he pretty much lost interest in the job, and really didn’t care about leading the school.

The more I investigated things, the more I felt I was about to take on a huge challenge; I would have three months before the start of the 2001 academic year to start to turn things around. I wouldn’t be able to make any big changes to the course structure for next year, that would be the major project for 2001, to bring the curriculum up to date. I looked at the staff list, several of the academic staff had arrived after I had started my sabbatical, and I didn’t know much about them, but there were still some who I knew well – Paul Compton, Claude Sammut, Ken Robinson, Gernot Heiser, Bill Matheson, Geoff Whale in particular. Geoff was probably the person I would put in charge of a reconstituted ‘First Year Unit’, I recalled at one stage, he was the Department’s senior tutor, and was particularly skilled at working with students who were having problems understanding some of the basic concepts of computer programming. I talked to Michelle about my thoughts, she agreed with me, saying ‘the School was still stuck in the early 1980s’.

“Are you still sure you want to come back there with me?” I asked her.

“Absolutely, I think it will take the two of us to get things sorted out,” she said. “So, you will be stuck with me!”

“I can think of worse things,” I said.

On Thursday morning I drove across to Kensington and parked in the carpark where Mark had suggested. I walked the short distance up to the Faculty office in the Mechanical Engineering building – right past the new Computer Science Engineering building – and took the elevator up to Mark’s office, knocking on the door just at 10:00 am. I was invited in, Mark was sitting at a conference table, with several of the others from Computer Science – Ken Robinson, Paul Compton, Geoff Whale, Claude Sammut – and two other men who I didn’t know. He introduced me to Alan Pettigrew, the Deputy Vice Chancellor, and Professor McConkey, the president of the Academic Board.

“Good morning, Will, Professor Morris,” Mark said. “I believe you know almost everyone here, except for Alan, the Deputy Vice Chancellor, and Professor McConkey, the president of the Academic Board?”

“Yes, I’ve worked with the others from the Computer Science school before,” I said. “Good morning, everyone, it’s good to see you all.”

“I won’t beat around the bush,” Professor McConkey said, “I’m sure you know that under the previous leadership, the School of Computer Science Engineering has suffered a loss of reputation, there’s low staff morale, we are struggling to get research grants, and attract the best students. We are looking for you to return from your extended sabbatical and take over the School, and I – we – would like to hear your thoughts on how you would address the issues, as you see them.”

“Thank you, President McConkey, first, let me say that I enjoyed very much my previous time working here at the University, it was probably the most rewarding stage of my career, and it was only an unfortunate ... disagreement? ... with the previous head of the school that forced me to take a leave of absence. I am looking forward to returning to my alma mater, and doing what I can to rectify the problems that have arisen in the last few years.

“I have spent the last few days looking in detail at the latest reports on university reputations, reading the course and subject descriptions, and getting feedback from some of my colleagues in the IT Industry, so I can get a better understanding of what the problems with the School are. From what I can see, it’s not so much that our rankings have declined, but other institutions have overtaken us. When I look at how the courses are structured, the outlines of each subject, it’s as if nothing has change in our teaching since the late 1980s, we’ve ignored everything that has happened, all the developments in the information technology field in the last ten years. It’s almost as if the person in charge of the school lost interest in running it.”

I noticed a few heads nodding, and a thoughtful ‘hmm’ from Professor McConkey. I saw Mark Wainwright smiling; I was on the right track.

“What I have to say that in the time I’ve been away from the University, I’ve been running my own consulting company, rather successfully, too, if I might say. It’s grown from a few employees to now having a staff of well over a hundred, here and in Canberra, and we continue to win major contracts in both the government and private sectors. Just last week, I interviewed for three senior positions to cater for the growth in our business. I believe I have a unique understanding of what skills; what expertise, and what knowledge information technology businesses require of their staff to be successful in today’s marketplace. I – and my company – have successfully managed a wide variety of contracts, applications development, networking, infrastructure, strategic consulting – and I know what skills are required for people to carry out those jobs. One of the key pieces of knowledge that I can bring to the position of Head of School of Computer Science Engineering is I have a very detailed understanding of just what skills, knowledge, and experience someone who wants a good career in Computer Science needs to have to be marketable, to be sought out as a potential employee. I know what makes a good employee, someone who will never be out of a job, someone whose skills will be in demand by any employer, public or private sector. I know what the world outside of the University is like.

“UNSW has never chased the latest ‘language or technology of the month’ in its computer science training, we endeavoured to instil a solid foundation of basic computer science knowledge that a graduate can build on, and over their career picking up new skills as they are required. However, there are some core skills that we are NOT imparting, the knowledge that is fundamental for someone to be a successful computer science graduate.”

“What do you think those core skills are?” Mark asked me.

“I would identify three key ‘non-technical’ skills, for want of a better description,” I replied. “These are skills that aren’t specific to computer science, but anyone working in the field needs today. They are Project Management, Technical Writing, and Public Speaking. For Project Management, I would like us to provide some formal certification, either the PMP qualification, or PROMPT II, or something like that.”

“That’s something that all of our engineering graduates need to have,” Mark said. “I’ve been trying to get that into our undergraduate degrees for several years, without much success.”

“I’m sure for any professional engineer, having that knowledge and the certification would be a bonus,” I said. “The one area where we have difficulty filling positions are for good project managers; in our company, it’s the project manager who is the main point of contact between us and the customer. We don’t have ‘account representatives’ or ‘sales engineers’ or any of those pseudo-marketing roles. But finding someone with that experience and qualifications is difficult.

“The technical writing – in the form of training materials, user documentation, project proposals, reports – most recent computer science graduates can’t string a readable sentence together to save their lives. Grammar, punctuation, sentence construction, whatever, they don’t know how to write succinctly, concisely, accurately, clearly. Some of the stuff I’ve seen is embarrassing; it’s not even at primary school level; at least the level I could write at primary school. Sadly, that problem needs to be addressed BEFORE someone starts at University. But we need to instil those skills during the course, at least. I would suggest that all assignments include some formal written component as part of the assessment, be it either documentation in terms of a design document, a user guide, or at least something where the student has to convey their ideas and understanding in written, ideally grammatically correct English.

“The public speaking, a lot of people can’t stand up and present to a small group of people, they don’t know how to organize a speech, they can’t convey their ideas intelligibly, and they don’t know how to handle people who disagree with them.

“There are other ‘non-engineering’ subjects that computer science graduates need to understand, too. Basic accounting and business management concepts, modern history, how the Australian government and political system works, the fundamentals of economics ... I look through the degree syllabi, and I would scrap most of the maths and physics subjects and make them more business oriented. I can recall, back in 1976, I had to study Chemistry I – that was a huge waste of time. Same with the pure maths subjects, and some of the second year physics.”

“We would get a lot of pushback from the science and maths faculties,” Mark said. “They feel that any technology-based course needs a solid maths and physics foundation, we’ve already got some concessions in engineering-specific subjects from them as it is.”

“Just trying to protect their turf,” I said. “Now, given how close we are to the next academic year starting, I would assume that we are not able to make any changes for the start of the 2001 year, but one of my priorities for the next twelve months will be a complete review of our undergraduate courses. There are also some aspects of software engineering and computer programming that we are not covering, things that I would consider pretty basic knowledge that any programmer needs to cover. Object-oriented programming, the use of advanced integrated development environments, interactive debuggers; these are all standard development techniques that are used for just about all application development work. The other thing we need to teach our students is effective team programming; the old concept of the lone programmer, working all hours of the day in their basement or bedroom, existing on coffee and Jolt cola ... that’s not how things work these days. Most programmers work as part of a team, there are techniques used called ‘Scrum’ development, ‘agile programming’, which are all based on a team development approach.”

“We have always used a team development approach for some programming assignments,” Ken Robinson said.

“I know, and it has been partially successful,” I said. “I’m not sure how we teach those techniques in the university environment, I would be open to suggestions. But once a person graduates and starts working in a commercial environment, that’s how their work setup will be. If they don’t know how to develop applications in that team environment, they will be left behind.”

“Now, as you said, Will, you won’t be able to make any curriculum changes for next year, so what do you see yourself doing initially?” Alan asked me.

I spoke about how I would meet with every member of the academic staff, get their thoughts on what we have been doing wrong.

“There needs to be some definite structure to the school, with specific departments covering the different aspects of the broader computer science field. One area we were not concentrating on what hardware and embedded systems, another is what I term ‘development discipline’, change management, software version control, documentation standards; all of the supporting development management techniques that were expected in any professional development environment.”

I also mentioned that I wanted to bring back the highly successful ‘First Year Unit’, and mentioned to Geoff that he would be the ideal person to head that up. He agreed, and mentioned that when Hiller had scrapped it, he and others had warned that it would have a detrimental effect on the pass rate of first year students. He said that his warnings had proven to be correct, but Hiller wasn’t interested; to him, that was part of ‘the old regime’ that I had supported, and because of that, it had to be removed.

They then asked me questions about how I would look at addressing the decline in research activities of the school, my response was first I needed to find out what specific areas of interest each staff member had. There were plenty of areas with considerable international research programs taking place, Linux Kernel development, embedded systems, web-based technologies, object-relational databases, large data models, the list was endless. It really depended on encouraging all academic staff finding a field that interested them, and making sure they were hooked up with other researchers, other developers around the world. Once that was done, the publications would start to flow, once people got caught up in the excitement of contributing to the development work.

Professor McConkey seemed to be happy with my plans for the school and asked me what I saw as my priorities if I took over as head of the School.

“I know this sounds rather bureaucratic, but I think the first task is getting some structure, some goals and objectives to the school. What are the various disciplines that we concentrate on, how have we should structure our academic staff to support those disciplines, and how that would be reflected in the various electives that we offered in the final two years of the degree program. That sets the objectives for what we are all about as a school, we know what it is we are meant to do, and any activities that don’t fit into that plan ... well, we need to ask ourselves why we are bothering to do them?”

“Do you have any initial thoughts on that?” Alan asked me.

“I would prefer to wait until I’ve spoken to the academic staff,” I said. “They are the ones who know about the current subjects that are being taught, how they are received by students, and what areas we are not covering at the moment. What I don’t want to do is let my own personal interest and biases influence how the course should be structured. I have a particular interest in the development of the Linux operating system kernel, for example, but that alone isn’t justification for making a detailed study of that part of our degree course. The same with networking and Internet technologies, just because that’s what I like to work on doesn’t mean that it should be a priority for UNSW’s Computer Science Engineering school.

“Once I’ve got that structure worked out, then we can look at our curriculum. What aren’t we teaching that we should be teaching? What subjects really don’t contribute to us having a good, comprehensive degree course? Finally, who should be teaching each subject, and do we have the right number of academic staff, with the knowledge and skills required to cover all of the subjects. That should get our subjects, our course structure, and staff lined up with our corporate objectives.

“The final stage will be looking at our facilities. We will know what we want to teach, and the resources we will need to teach those subjects effectively. Do we have enough lecture rooms, tutorial spaces, lab facilities. Are our teaching systems adequate? Do we need to acquire additional hardware or software? There’s no point purchasing or setting up systems until we know that they will be needed. In one sense, that’s how I’ve developed my company, we look at what projects we have coming up, what will our customers need us to do for them. Do we have the necessary resources to deliver on those projects? What workspace do we need for our staff? Do we need laboratory resources, or development systems to test and prove solutions? Only then, once we know there’s a proven business need, do we spend the money and hire staff or purchase equipment. If you don’t follow that discipline in private business, you are on a fast path to bankruptcy; if you don’t move fast enough, then you either miss out on business opportunities, or are unable to do the work.”

“A pity more of the academic staff here haven’t had that level of real world experience,” Mark said. “Sitting here on the campus doing our research is all well and good, but it’s hard to replicate the experience a person gets doing a job for real.”

“Now the only thing that I will definitely do before the start of the next academic year is bring back the First Year Unit,” I said. “I’m amazed that it was disbanded, it was very successful in reducing the high level of dropouts at the end of the first year of study. Dr Geoff Whale, as I believe I’ve already said, would be the perfect person to head that up; he’s got a very good understanding of the issues that some beginning students face here, and he knows how to get them back on track.”

“That’s makes sense, I know that since the original unit was abolished, pass rates for first year computer science students have been dropping,” Mark said. “Is there anything else you would like to state about how you would take over running the school?”

“There is one condition,” I said. “If you want me to be head of the Computer Science Engineering School, then I will want Michelle Jones as my executive officer. The task that you have in store for me is going to be very complicated, very difficult to rectify the damage done over the last decade. I’m going to need all the help I can get to keep track of every issue, to keep on top of everything, and I will need Michelle for that.”

“That’s a rather unusual request,” Professor McConkey said. “We rarely allow new people to bring in their own personal staff, it could easily create resentment among the existing staff, they would feel that they are being bypassed.”

“I can’t see a problem in this case,” Paul Compton said. “Most of us in Computer Science who have been around for a while know and respect Michelle, she was the rock that held the school together, administratively. I would be more than happy to see her here, as Will’s right hand; I would have a lot more confidence that he would be able to fix things with her working with him.”

“I agree with Paul,” Claude said. “Michelle was the main reason our precious First Year Unit was so successful; without her working with us, we never would have achieved the successes that we did. I’m sure she’s a big reason why your company has done so well, Will. Plus, she will keep Will in line, make sure he knows what’s going on, and what work he has to complete, and when. She even managed to make me more organized!”

“Fair enough,” McConkey said. “We will take counsel from the existing Computer Science staff, you know both Will and Michelle, you know their abilities, you know what they’ve done in the past.”

That pretty much wrapped up the ‘interview’, Mark suggested that I join him and Alan for lunch at the Senior Common Room Club, which was still over in the Electrical Engineering building. I shook hands with the others – Paul, Graham, Claude, and Professor McConkey, and the three of us walked across to the club.

“Where are you living now, Will?” Mark asked me. “I understand you sold that lovely old Federation house you owned in Lane Cove.”

“Yes, when my wife died, I sold everything that would remind me of her,” I said. “I’m now living in a renovated terrace in Balmain. I’m involved in several real estate projects in the Inner West with some business partners who have a property development company, we specialize in renovating and restoring run-down properties in the area. Just before the new year, I saw a row of terraces, just off Darling Street, for sale, and put in an offer. We restored them, four are rented out, but I live in one of them.”

“I’m glad there are some developers interested in more than just knocking down anything that’s old,” Alan said. “The city has lost too much of its architectural heritage as it is.”

“I agree, Alan,” I said. “That’s what we are trying to do, keep as much of the original buildings as possible, turn old, run-down properties into something liveable, have people moving back into the inner city areas.”

“You seem to have been involved in plenty of activities since you took your break from here,” Mark said. “Not just growing your company, but the property development, and I’m sure you’ve kept your fingers in the world of politics, too.”

“Yeah, an old friend of mine is running for the inner-city seat of Bligh, the one that the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore held, until there was the ruling that a person can’t hold an elected position in both local and state governments,” I said.

Over lunch, the three of us talked about things in general, including some of the changes that had taken place on the campus in the time that I had been away, new buildings, replacing the old huts that had been next to the Electrical Engineering building with what was called ‘The Quadrangle’.

“There is still a lack of reasonably cheap eating places,” Mark said.

“I can remember the ‘build your own sandwiches’ in the Mechanical Engineering undercroft,” I said. “There was a photo of a massive sandwich a bunch of mechanical engineers students made – that was when you paid by how much it weighed – I think it cost just over twenty dollars.”

“That must have been some sandwich,” Mark said. “How high was it?”

“At least thirty centimetres,” I said. “They used every possible filling that was available, I have no idea how anyone could have got it into their mouth! Do they still make the sausage sandwiches on the barbeque grill down at the bar in the squarehouse? I can recall going there for lunches, having a beer or two...”

“There is still the bar, and you can get drinks, beers, whatever you desire,” Alan said. “I’m not sure about the sausage sandwiches, I don’t get down to that end of the campus all that often.”

“One thing we didn’t cover in the interview, Will,” Alan said, “was assuming we offer you the position, how soon could you start?”

“Well, there’s a few things that I would need to finish off at work,” I said. “Then do a proper handover to the people who would be picking up the things I do. We’ve been planning for the time when I would return to a job here for some time, it’s not like this has come out of the blue. I suspect I could start around the middle of November; the same would be for Michelle.”

“That gives us something to plan around,” Alan said. “After we’ve finished lunch, we’ll go back, discuss things, see if we can work in your request to have Michelle Jones as your executive officer. From what I’ve seen, you will be in for a huge task, getting everything worked out, and the more assistance you can get, the better the chance of things working out.”

“I can’t – at this stage, anyway, Will – I can’t confirm that we will be offering you the position,” Mark said. “The same with Michelle Jones as your executive officer. But I can tell you this, when the rest of us meet this afternoon, I’ll be pushing strongly that we get the two of you in to run the school. That probably comes as no surprise, I’ve always been a strong supporter of you, and personally, we should have appointed you as head of school when Murray Allen retired. That would have saved so much disruption, and we would be in a much better position now. Still, what’s in the past is done, and there’s one thing that came from your fight with Professor Hiller, and your enforced absence. The experience you have gained running your company, seeing what skills people need working as a computer science professional, I think of all of the academics in the school, you’ve got the most practical and realistic understanding of what our graduates will need. That came out in your suggestions of what additional material our graduates need to cover as part of their undergraduate degrees. I agree completely with you about Project Management, technical writing, and public speaking as being essential skills, but I’ve had little support in adding those to all Bachelor of Engineering courses.”

“I agree with you, Mark,” Alex said. “I’ve always believed that we need to have significant industry experience in our senior academics. It’s all well and good to have a solid research background, to have published articles in a range of professional journals, but in the engineering and applied science fields, you can’t replace actual hands-on work experience. That’s why we require relevant industry experience as part of all engineering degrees, they need to see how their theoretical knowledge is applied in the real world.”

“I think you are right; I’ve learned so much more in the last few years, running real life projects, and that’s been the inspiration for some of the research I’ve done in the networking, operating systems, and similar fields. You see a need that’s not being met, or a deficiency in the existing products, and work on a solution. Plus, managing a real-world project is so much more complicated that some academic exercise, there are things that can – and do – go wrong that you would never have thought of. Now, it’s time I was getting back to my current job; thank you so much for the opportunity today, I am looking forward to returning, and tackling the issues that I’ve seen in the Computer Science School.”

We shook hands, Mark told me to expect a call sometime tomorrow, and I headed back to my car. On the drive back to St Leonards, I thought how well the interview went. It wasn’t an interview in the traditional sense, I never felt that I was competing for a position, they had already made up their mind that they wanted me to take over as Head of the Computer Science School. Today was an exercise to confirm in their minds that I knew what needed doing, and I had some sort of plan to address the problems.

When I got back to the office, I first told Michelle how everything went, and that they reacted positively about my requirement that you would work there with me.

“Really?” she exclaimed. “I thought they might have baulked at that suggestion.”

“No, both Paul Compton and Claude Sammut sang highly of your skills, saying you were the reason the First Year Unit was such a success,” I said. “By the way, I’ll be getting that running again, with Geoff Whale in charge of it, I think.”

“He would be good there,” she said. “Should we say something to Mary Beth, tell her how things went?”

“Yes, let’s go now.”

We went across to Mary Beth’s office, and I told her how the interview went, and that I said I wouldn’t be able to start until mid-November at the earliest.

“They will probably call me tomorrow,” I said.

“Well, I’m really happy for you, Will, I know that’s what you’ve been wanting,” she said. “I’ll be very sad not to have you here alongside me. Now, I need to get every cent’s worth out of you before you leave, so, can I get your thoughts on the network upgrade, Will?”

Michelle went back to her office, telling me we could talk more on the drive home.

“I am truly very happy for you, Will,” she said, and moved over to put her arms around me. “But for myself, I’m going to be so sad, you know just how much I love you, and how much I have come to rely on you being in the office right next to me. I owe you so much, you trusted me enough to first offer me a job here, then you handed over the running of your company to me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you, to thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me. It’s times like this I somehow wish our lives had turned out differently, and you and I got together, married ... But that’s all moot, our lives took another path, and in the main, things have turned out well for both of us. I still have my fantasies...”