Greg and Kat's blog

Many people have asked what I am doing on my sabbatical (officially “study leave“). I guess I should say a little more. According to the University,

The purpose of study leave for Lecturers… is to provide a period of time during which the individual is relieved of his/her employment duties in order to complete a project or course of study which will enhance his/her work at the University in the future.

Sounds good. What I officially proposed to do to make the world a better place is:

• Learn more about programming language design and implementation, so I can teach CMPT 383 (Comparative Programming Languages) and possibly CMPT 379 (Principles of Compiler Design) in the future. This is something I have always been interested in, but one of the gaps left by not doing a full undergrad in CS. (I was mostly math.)
• Revise the distance ed version of CMPT 165 (Intro to the Internet and WWW). The old version is a little crufty and has been shoved into a “breadth course” role that it wasn’t intended for.
• Finish the distance ed version of CMPT 120 (Intro to CS and Programming). That has been almost done for a couple of years, and needs to be polished off.
• Get back to the biological modeling stuff that has been shoved to the side of my desk for two years while I have been undergrad director.
• Continue to participate in the School’s recruitment and outreach activities.

And the unofficial stuff:

• To get to the “more about programming languages” stuff (and because it will be interesting), I intend to learn a programming language a month.
• I’m trying to convince Amanda that she needs a CMPT faculty member to do international recruiting and partnership stuff. (Her new title is “Manager of International Recruiting and Partnerships”.) Basically, I don’t care where she needs me to go: I’m willing to literally go to the ends of the earth for the University… as long as the University foots the bill and I can take a few extra days to tourist-it-up.
• A few games may be played, particularly for the first two weeks. I haven’t taken more than a few days off (to go to North Carolina) for about 20 months. I’m not going to feel even the slightest bit bad about a couple of weeks of god-game addiction.
• I probably should figure out what I want to be when I grow up. In particular, does that involve getting a PhD, or climbing some administrative ladder, or some other career entirely?