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Include A Generic People Interface
by Sini, local member of the international branch in the department well-being group
I've repeatedly run into the question of why there is a need to treat a minority differently, or to study it. Isn't it sexist to do gender-specific studies, or racist to have special support for foreigners? Wouldn't it be fairest to just treat everyone the same way?
My standard answer ties to a larger theme of addressing market failures: times when 'natural' competition cannot provide optimal results by itself. Consider a premise that it is better to have a large pool than a small pool of talent to engage the best minds from. This expansion demands changing the hiring market. As a simple example, if we require international applicants to know Finnish in the selection phase, our pool remains a puddle.
An environment designed for natives only, as an artifact of "how things have always been", equates to isolating the minority and demanding more of them than members of the majority. One may argue that our department consists of exceptional individual achievers who got where they are with universal personal excellence only, but the reality is that a little help from friends and networks goes a long way. In the end, our pool is still almost unchanged if we only recruit locals or truly exceptional outsiders who can make it without this kind of support. To top it off, humans are social creatures, so awareness of being different from the norm induces isolation and stress.
Addressing market failures requires intervention, starting from basic translation and advisory activities, for example. It benefits from studying stereotype issues so that we can break out of them: for example, speaking fluent Finnish is not a metric of academic brilliance, and neither is the ability to express oneself in perfect Oxford English. (We really just need to make ourselves understood.) Also, those networks need bootstrapping - you can pitch in here, too. Well-timed mentoring can make a real difference on an individual level.
Breaking down isolation in its various forms makes for a better work environment for everyone, and ultimately leads to better science. Nationality variations are just one example. Take a look at your colleagues/students - you can reach out to someone different every day!
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The CS Blog Task Force
Sini is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the CS department, currently working on usable security in the Secure Systems group.
Aaron is doing his PhD in the NODES group at the CS department. His research focuses on mobile computing and energy efficient design for multi-interfaced mobile devices.
Ella is a PhD student in the Nodes group. She is interested in e.g. distributed algorithms, real-life data mining, clouds and ubiquitous computing.
Giulio is a Professor at the CS department. His area is Human-Computer Interaction. For more information, please find his homepage here
Tomi is a Professor at the CS department. His area is Software Engineering. For more information, please check
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