Michaela Ream (The Quad)Physics professor and education advocate Frank Marsiglio has been appointed as the new interim dean for the faculty of science.
Marsiglio will serve as the new interim dean from October 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019, while the faculty begins their search for the next dean of science. Previous dean and artificial intelligence researcher, Jonathan Schaeffer, resigned earlier this year citing leadership decisions from the upper administration that he “cannot support.”
While the new job wasn’t something Marsiglio had planned on, he said he’s excited to be taking on the new challenge.
“Two months ago, I didn’t know or would have imagined that I would be doing this,” he said.
Now in his third week in the position, Marsiglio said he’s still working on developing long-term goals for his time as interim dean. One of the things he hopes to bring to the position, being a researcher and educator at the U of A for 21 years, is his passion and interest in undergraduate education.
“If I was imagining a year ago that I would apply for the dean position, I would have had time to develop a much clearer vision of what I wanted to do,” Marsiglio said. “But one of the things I’ve been passionate about even when I was a faculty member is developing our undergraduate programs.”
Aside from research, Marsiglio said the goal of any good post-secondary institution is to educate.
“When you want to bring prestige to a university, you try to hire someone that has won a Nobel prize,” Marsiglio said. “But that doesn’t matter. We’re not in this business to gather prestige, we’re in this business because we want to teach, we want to train [students] to be successful at what they do.”
Marsiglio’s passion for teaching and education comes in part from his own journey through academia. From a young age, he said his parents had infused in him the importance of education.
“My parents were immigrants from Italy. They were relatively uneducated, but it was also during the war, so it was a tough time,” Marsiglio said. “But they really valued education, and they really wanted me to do well in school so it became my number one priority.”
Marsiglio was inspired to pursue physics after reading The Thirty Years That Shook Physics in high school, a non-fiction book by George Gamow detailing the discoveries led by famous physicists Albert Einstein, Max Plank, and many more.
Marsiglio’s love of math and physics led him to complete a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Toronto. With the support of his wife and father-in-law, he then enrolled in graduate school at McMaster University to study the physics behind superconductivity: a property that gives certain materials under specific conditions the ability to conduct electrical current with 100 per cent efficiency.
Now as an interim dean 20 years later, Marsiglio said he wants to ensure similar success for the next generation of scientists and researchers at the U of A. Part of that requires ensuring the faculty’s undergraduate programs remain some of the best in the country.
“When I was a student, Queens [University] was always regarded as [the Canadian] university with the strongest undergraduate program,” Marsiglio said. “But I like to think now it’s the U of A, and I’m proud of that.”
“I’ve seen it first-hand because I’ve been teaching undergraduates for over 20 years. When I look at what we do sometimes I feel sorry for them because we drive them so hard,” Marsiglio added. “But I’ve supervised dozens of these undergraduate students in research internships or other projects and they are amazing.”
For students who are just starting their own scientific journeys, Marsiglio said the one lesson he’s learned time and time again in his decades-long career is “perseverance.”
“When I think back on the physicists who inspired me, for all the brilliance they had when they made their achievements, they also worked hard at it,” he said. “They kept at it, and often in the face of discouraging circumstances. That’s the message I’d like to relay for young people starting out. It’s to keep at it and good things will happen.”
