By Pietro Luciano Buono (PLB) and Peter Berg (PB)

30 March 2010

The University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), located in Oshawa, Ontario, received its first cohort of approximately 800 first-year students in September 2003. Being part of the second group of faculty hired at the university, we interviewed during the winter of 2004 inside a brand new, entirely wireless, spacious and luminous Science building. Ok, it was not complete and the rest of the campus was still under heavy construction so that people with security helmets still outnumbered those without, but it was a good start and the impression was positive. This was not so for the first group of pioneering professors who started the university in 2003. Oshawa was known for its GM plant rather than for its higher education, the campus only existed on drawing boards and academic programs were generously put together by consultants. In a nutshell, they had to make a leap of faith! According to the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper, Oshawa was changing though: new people were arriving in Jaguars and jet planes: UOIT's new faculty members!

Amongst this group of pioneers was Dr. Greg Lewis whose research focuses on bifurcations and dynamics in large scale geophysical fluid models. He has been the seed of the Dynamical Systems group at UOIT. How was that first year at UOIT? Well, as you may guess, the first year of a university is like the first year of a child - any new thing is cause for celebration and is marked for posterity. Greg recollects that not a week was going by without some kind of inauguration and, of course, this was accompanied by its speeches, photo ops, wine and cheese, etc. We don't know what the records of many centuries-old universities tell about their first year of existence, but we hope they took some time to celebrate! Anyhow, this had a very good effect from the point of view of an interviewee as we felt that this small group of pioneering faculty was already closely knit together and there was a strong sense of camaraderie. We wanted to be part of it.

What added to the appeal was that some of us (PB) were treated by most universities neither as a mathematician nor a physicist due to our degrees in both disciplines. In contrast, the Science Faculty considered inter-disciplinary research an asset. There still are no departments within the faculty and research conducted in the Science Building ranges from decomposition chemistry to differential equations. On the down side, we knew it would be more challenging to obtain research grants than at more established places. Moreover, having few faculty members to fill many committees did not exactly ease the workload. These disadvantages were compensated for by the lack of hierarchy amongst professors. We were all assistant professors and in the same boat. That lifted the spirit.

So, the second year started with now five faculty members in mathematics and physics, three of which (Greg Lewis, PLB and PB) with a research program that involved Dynamical Systems and its applications, such as traffic flow theory and equivariant bifurcation theory. It was time to let the word out that UOIT was ready to have a voice of its own and showcase its research. This had to be done on several fronts if we wanted to sustain our research programs and create the conditions for growth. First, we put together a proposal for a Master of Science program in Modelling and Computational Science. But in the meantime we needed to begin supervising students and so with the assistance of colleagues at neighbouring Ontario universities, we managed to secure Adjunct Professor positions and begin co-supervising graduate students. Secondly, we began the interdisciplinary Faculty of Science Colloquium which in its first year hosted thirteen speakers, with five talks on Dynamical Systems. As a conclusion to this stimulating year, Greg Lewis (assisted by PLB) organized the Southern Ontario Dynamics Days in April 2005.


Taken on the occasion of Marty Golubitsky and Dan Offin's visit to the infant UOIT. Left to right: Greg Lewis (first math faculty), Luciano Buono, Marty Golubitsky, founding dean Wiliam Smith of the Faculty of Science, Dan Offin, Peter Berg and Dhavide Aruliah. Shorts and sandals cropped by the authors.

A funny anecdote illustrates the casual and friendly atmosphere on campus in those years. Dan Offin from Queen's University was visiting one of us (PLB) and we were discussing research on the office's whiteboard, when an older, well-dressed, distinguished looking fellow poked his head into the office. We immediately struck a pleasant casual conversation for a couple of minutes and he was introduced to Dan. After the fellow left, Dan's comment was very enlightening and went roughly like this: "What! The Provost of the University just casually walks down the halls and stops by the professor's office for a pleasant chat? Heck, I don't even know who the Dean of Science is any more at my institution, let alone the Provost!" That same Provost later inspected PB's office when he was spreading his cycling gear across his entire room for drying, resembling a public laundry rather than a faculty office.

Of course, in those first years, interaction with people ranging from colleagues to taxi drivers to relatives and friends always attracted its barrage of questions and curiosity: Are you guys a real university? Where is Oshawa? Is this really a new university? What does the acronym UOIT mean? You don't teach on the blackboard? What do you mean by a laptop program? So, on the way to the 2005 SIAM Conference on Applied Dynamics Systems in Snowbird, one of us (PLB) was anticipating the usual routine while stepping inside the shuttle and sitting next to an equally young passenger called Kevin Mitchell who asked the usual question: "So, what university are you from? And so the rehearsed answer came out: "It's a new university in Ontario...". However, this time, Kevin stopped the story short. Not only did he know about UOIT, but had been invited here for an interview. In the end, he decided to settle down at UC Merced, yet another 2003 start-up university. It was great to share experiences and stories with someone who was living the same challenges we were having at UOIT.

These are some of the rewards when you take a risk and join a small university which is still lacking a reputation, within its first years of existence! Looking back now, it is great to see the progress we have made so quickly. It also gives us the satisfaction of saying to new faculty being hired:``back in the old days, things weren't this easy, everything had to be done from scratch!