No Particular Interest

Like one of the commenters on yesterday's post, I too was interested in this part of Grafton's NYRB essay, and in fact had planned to write about this today:

.. vast numbers of students come to university with no particular interest in their courses and no sense of how these might prepare them for future careers. The desire they cherish, Arum and Roksa write, is to act out “cultural scripts of college life depicted in popular movies such as Animal House (1978) and National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002).” Academic studies don’t loom large on their mental maps of the university. Even at the elite University of California, students report that on average they spend “twelve hours [a week] socializing with friends, eleven hours using computers for fun, six hours watching television, six hours exercising, five hours on hobbies”—and thirteen hours a week studying.

There seem to be data to support the existence of these "vast numbers", although I think that reality is (of course) a bit more complicated. That is, it is possible for there to be students who want to have Classic College Experiences (of the non-academic sort) and for these same students to have some, but varying, levels of interest in their classes. They might be taking my intro-level Science class because the university forces them to take a Science class and, despite my best efforts, they will not develop a lasting interest in Science, but that doesn't mean they aren't interested in any of their other classes. It is the challenge for all of us who teach to try to interest as many students as possible in our classes -- not by playing fun little games and handing out A's -- but by engaging their intellects, which, despite popular opinion, do in fact exist.

For the sake of discussion, let's be cynical (or realistic?) and assume that the data are correct: most students in college don't care about academics. They just want to hang out with their friends (in person or via social networking), go to the gym, watch their favorite TV shows, and do just enough studying so that they can go to their professors and whine about how they deserve an A because they worked really really hard.

What are we supposed to do about that? In the context of a discussion about Our Failing Universities, is this something we can fix? Or is this an intractable problem that we inherit from Our Failing K-12 Schools, which might be inheriting it to some extent from Our Failing Families and a national culture of anti-intellectualism? I am only sort of being serious here, but there is a real question: What can universities and colleges, administrators and faculty, do?

As an all-powerful but somehow, at the same time, powerless professor, here is the awesome array of tools I have, as an individual, for attempting to influence the academic interest-level of my students:

- I can try as hard as possible to make my courses as interesting and relevant to students, making connections to their lives, explaining complex concepts in a clear way, and providing stimulating examples and questions that make them think, even after the class is over.

- I can give them homework, reading, and other assignments that are specifically designed to enhance the course materials and provide for a deeper understanding and time for reflection outside the lecture hall. (In theory -- some universities specify how much homework can be given, tying the amount to the number of credits each course is worth; for example, a 3-credit course can only have 3 hours of homework assigned each week, keeping in mind that "hours" of homework is a malleable concept for each individual).

- I can encourage students to seek research opportunities, with me or with other professors, explaining why this might be interesting and useful, but mostly just making students aware of the possibilities.

- I can try to get to know as many of my students as possible, even in a large class, so that I am not just a talking head in front of a classroom, but a real person who knows their name and who clearly wants to engage them in a shared teaching-learning experience.

- I can keep track of how my students are doing, identifying any problems early and trying to help students learn strategies for succeeding with academic work.

- I can participate in teaching workshops to try to improve my teaching and to get new ideas from colleagues for ways to present difficult course material or to teach large classes in a more effective way.

What else? That's already quite a lot, and I think many of us at least attempt to do some or all of those things, with varying levels of success depending on some factors that are within our control and some that are not. And we can be particularly effective at some or all of those things if we are only teaching 1 (maybe 2) courses at a time and can really focus on them.

But is it enough? Now let's assume that we are all super-teachers and can do all those things (well) in every single class, no matter how many classes and students we are teaching, and get our other work done (a bit of research and advising and service here and there) and maybe see our families once in a while. Would our universities stop failing? Can professors reverse the trend? Can we overcome disinterest, disconnection, and sloth? Can we forget salary freezes, inadequate classrooms, the ever-increasing number of administrators asking us to fill out new forms adding up how we spend our time, and scandals involving highly-paid athletic coaches? Can teaching well save the institution?

__ This isn't preschool happy time. If students don't want to learn, that's their problem, not mine.
__ No, I wish we could help, but there are too many obstacles that are beyond our control.
__ Maybe, probably not, but we should try anyway.
__ Yes, it would fix a lot of problems if most professors were excellent teachers.

Never Say: No One

It is always with great trepidation that I read an article about Our Failing Universities, even an article written by a professor rather than a journalist out to make a splash, and even an article in a publication that I greatly admire and enjoy reading (such as The New York Review of Books).

In a recent issue of NYRB, there is a review/essay by Anthony Grafton titled "Our Universities: Why Are They Failing?" (not Are They Failing, but Why). The essay mentions, at least briefly, 8 recent books with titles (and subtitles: every single one has a subtitle!) such as:

The Faculty Lounges: And Other Reasons Why You Won't Get The College Education You Paid For. I have not read this book, but I hate the title (and the subtitle) for a large number of reasons that I can't explain without seeming professorial in the negative-stereotype kind of way.

OK, I will obliquely mention one reason: Do you have faculty lounges at your university? What goes on in them? Or is "Lounges" a verb here?

Anyway.. here's another one:

The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters. I am not really sure what it is that matters, but without reading the book (just the review), I probably agree with the author that there are too many high-paid administrators doing who-knows-what other than making the rest of us do time-consuming pointless things. But mostly I want to know: Have the faculty really fallen? What does that even mean? That we have no say in anything anymore? If so, why am I still on all these committees? Can I quit them? And if the faculty have truly fallen, where are we? It makes me want to say: We are here! We are here! We are here! (Seuss, 1954)

I am skipping over a few other books that have exciting words such as Exclusion and Assault in the title, and others that have already been much discussed in the blogosphere, here and elsewhere.

But I don't want to skip this one: Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. Again, there is that scary and definitive why. This book is, according to Grafton, "a.. recent polemic against the corruption of the humanities". Alas, that is a topic on which I cannot even pretend to have any insight. Within my very limited socio-professional universe, all the humanities professors I know even reasonably well seem to be quite entranced with the meaning of life, unless they are secretly corrupt, and that is why they all wear so much black. Or perhaps the corrupt ones never leave their offices (or faculty lounges!?) and so I have not met them. Or maybe they are at your university, but not at mine.

In any case, what do we think about statements such as these, from the essay:

Particularly in the natural and social sciences, professors are encouraged to feel that it is legitimate to devote most of their energy to research.

and

The message is clear: no one sees classroom learning as a primary pursuit.

We have all seen statements like this before, and I have discussed them before. But I will ask again: Which professors? Where? Certainly there are research professors -- who typically raise some or all of their money from grants -- but most of the science professors I know are serious about both research and teaching, and see these both as important parts of their jobs. If, however, someone devotes 60% of their time to research and 40% of their time to teaching, the statement is true, but misleading. And that brings us to the second excerpt.

Does no ones see classroom learning as a primary pursuit? Is the emphasis on the word "primary"? If so, then perhaps that statement is also true for many professors and administrators at large universities. Classroom learning is just one of many aspects of a university. Even so, the statement is misleading and is an unfair criticism of universities, administrators, and professors of all sorts.

Classroom teaching is not my primary pursuit, but that doesn't mean it isn't as important as research, including research involving undergraduates. Does it have to be more important for more people for our universities to stop "failing"? My colleagues and I teach, advise, do research, and participate in various service activities in our departments, universities, professional communities, and beyond. We are busy people, doing many different things, most of which contribute to the vitality of the university and many of which directly or indirectly benefit students.

I am not saying that universities are perfect and that there aren't many things to fix, but it is quite rare to see the good and the bad considered in a fair and thoughtful way. Maybe (almost) no one would want to read such a book.

In the end, though, this is why I liked Grafton's essay: because he concludes that these books are not constructive contributions to the large task of figuring out how to fix the problems with US universities. He ends his essay:

..  public discussion and scrutiny would become much more productive if informed writers captured the texture and flavor of the American university .. The novelists discovered this territory long ago. Where are the great journalists? They will find students who manage to do excellent work and many more cases of wasted possibilities, and they might gain some insight into why.

That's Stupid

If you are (or were) a graduate student and your advisor suggests that you do something that you think is incorrect or stupid, what do you say? (or what did you say?) I am not talking about unethical or immoral suggestions, but research-related suggestions/ideas that you think are in error, ill-advised, impossible, and/or idiotic. I am curious as to how many people feel (or felt) comfortable disagreeing with their advisor.

Do/did you:

1. Say nothing and do the stupid thing suggested because it's somehow easier/better to do what you're told.

2. Say nothing and do the stupid thing suggested because you are probably wrong and your advisor is probably right and the reason you think the idea is stupid is probably because you don't understand it.

3. Say nothing but find a way to avoid doing the stupid thing suggested (because you are convinced it really is stupid).

4. Ask some questions to make sure you really understand the suggestion, and, once you are convinced it really is stupid, tentatively suggest that maybe that isn't a good idea (maybe even suggest a better idea), or some other response that involves a bit of thinking, exploring, discussing.

5. Say "That's stupid" (or a more polite equivalent) and explain why you think so. If you say something like this, I am also curious as to whether this is an easy thing to say to your advisor (who perhaps enjoys debates about ideas and doesn't mind being corrected) or whether it is extremely difficult (because your advisor might have a bad temper, hate criticism etc.).

I can think of other possibilities, and I am sure there are many more I have not thought of, but mostly I am just curious about the range of responses.

Does anyone think there are trends by academic discipline or are the results likely to be completely scattered because all fields have a wide variety of personalities?

The reason I was thinking about this aspect of grad-advisor interactions is because I was remembering an incident in which a grad student misunderstood an advisor's suggestion. The actual suggestion was very reasonable (says the advisor, who is not me, by the way) but what the student thought the advisor said was bizarre. The student did it anyway, without question. That's a somewhat different case, but is a variant of option #2 above. In this case, the advisor in question doesn't think there was any lack of confidence involved by the student; the student just didn't think and did what s/he (thought s/he) was told.

When I was a student, I used to do something approximating #4, but sometimes it would be a multi-stage process. My advisor would make a suggestion (in fact, he rarely gave me any suggestions or directions, but it did happen on occasion) and, if I didn't understand it, I would ask a few questions, but then I would go away and try to figure the rest out myself. If I figured out what he was saying/asking, fine; if I still didn't, or if I convinced myself he was wrong, I'd go talk to him again. I think that approach is quite common.

Is the direct approach of #5 (even the polite variant) the most rare? As an advisor, I have found it to be somewhat rare, but I think that as long as there is a healthy dose of the #4 approach (questioning, but in a more tentative way), some good discussions can take place and stupid ideas can be discarded and replaced with better ones.

Mad Libs Gone Mad

Letters sent to me as a prospective advisor of prospective graduate students who are prospective applicants to the graduate program in my department continue to arrive, with more appearing in my inbox every week. As usual, and as I have described before, these letters are quite mixed in their level of sophistication.

Here is an unscientific conclusion from my reading of these letters:

I have not seen any correlation between size, type, prestige, and/or location of the undergrad school and whether the letter is impressive or naive.

Excellent, focused, professional letters can come from anywhere. Clueless, naive and (inadvertently) obnoxious letters can come from anywhere.

The only somewhat predictable characteristic is that students from certain countries tend to send form letters, probably to many different professors, probably in the hopes that at least some will reply. I have wondered about this strategy and whether it is effective. The large number of possible recipients might increase the yield of replies, but the obvious form-letter nature of the letters (especially the "Dear Sir" ones sent to female faculty) discourages replies.

The strangest e-mail that I have received in recent months from a prospective applicant was sort of like a form letter, but it was also sort of like a Mad Libs template into which the student had inserted relevant information for each recipient, but not in a particularly smooth or knowledgeable way. The letter went something like this:

Dear Professor of Science,

My name is Student, and I will be graduating from University in spring 2012. I am looking into graduate programs for the fall, and am interested in your research program. Will you be taking on any new MS/PhD students next year? [<-- all that is fine so far]

In particular, I am fascinated by your work on "Title of old, obscure paper that is an outlier in my usual research topics" and how you applied [incorrect name for a technique] to [something I never did] in "Title of second paper that doesn't have anything to do with anything else listed so far." I would like to work on topics like this under your direction as advisor at [name of my university].

Attached is my CV.

Sincerely,

Student

OK, so he tried. He looked up some of my papers, picked a couple that may have looked interesting to him, maybe took some notes of some words in the abstracts or titles, and put this information in the letter.

B for Effort.

I think this can be a very good approach if you know what you are doing and if the things you are writing about are at least a little familiar to you, so you are not just stringing together Science Words and paper titles in a possibly-strange way. If this student had showed the email to a professor, chances are the professor would have seen some of the problems right away, without even knowing anything about me or my work.

We have debated cluelessness here in this blog before. When I have described clueless students, particularly undergraduates who are just starting to navigate the complexity of the graduate school universe, many readers can relate to the feeling that there are unwritten rules and things you are supposed to do and not do (but you have to figure these out by trial-and-failure first).

And so it is, and maybe that's how internet resources (including blogs) can help a bit. But beware..

For example, I have written posts in which I supplied templates for various types of academic letters, with blanks for personalized bits of information. These templates are mostly just to give a sense for the types of information, appropriate length, and scope of various types of letters. I hope they are overall helpful, but if you stick random words in the blanks, you end up with something that is likely more incoherent than what you'd come up with by writing the letter entirely on your own.

Killer Questions

Today in Scientopia, I discuss a reader's question about how/whether students can ask aggressive, possibly undermining questions of speakers without appearing to be obnoxious jerks.

Get A (Different) Room

To the young couple snuggling in the meeting room during the afternoon session on Awesome Science at the X Conference:

ick

You were sitting in the approximate middle of the room, and there were lots of us cranky old professors sitting behind you, thinking you were being unprofessional and disrespectful of the speaker to have your arms wrapped around each other and to be basically sharing one seat during the session. Although the session was quite well attended, there were plenty of seats for all, so you could have each had your own.

Even some of us who think that academia should be more flexible with respect to work-life balance -- for example, that it's great that parents bring their young children to conferences and that grad students should (occasionally) be allowed to take a vacation or even sleep -- thought that your behavior was inappropriate.

Sincerely,

FSP

But that's just what I think. Let's ask the readers of FSP:

If you were sitting in a conference session trying to listen to Professor Z present her latest research results and to Dr. Postdoc's inspiring attempt to impress potential employers, and you saw a couple of entwined twentysomethings sitting in front of you, snuggling and sniffing each other's hair and necks, would you:

A. Think it was cute, sigh at the romance, and say "Young love, how special!"?

B. Avert your gaze and focus on the talks?

C. Snort in disgust and be very grateful that these young people were not from your institution?

D. Poke them and/or ask them to go somewhere else? (alternatives: toss something at them or do something else unobtrusive but possibly effective, without disturbing the session)

E. Other.

I went for the gaze-aversion approach, and was mostly successful, particularly during interesting talks. I found it difficult to ignore the snuggling couple completely, though, so as soon as I could, I changed my seat to be on the other side of the room and unable to see them when I was watching the presentations.

Before I could move to another seat, I saw a colleague glance in the direction of the couple and then, when he realized what he was seeing, he looked around and caught my eye. The expression on his face -- amusement, disgust, surprise, all of the above? -- made me laugh, so at least the snuggling couple provided some entertainment.

Monday Pop Quiz!

Sorry to spring this on you, but I wanted to make sure that you have all been keeping up with the material. This little quiz will help me see how you're doing, and to identify any concepts that are particularly problematic for the class, so I can be sure to focus on those in my lectures in the coming weeks.

Yes, I know this quiz is not on the syllabus. It is a so-called pop quiz. I did put on the syllabus that I would give you some of these throughout the term; I just didn't say when. That's the whole point of them. The fact that this is the first one was not intended to lull you into a false sense of comfort that there wouldn't be any, but if it had that effect, I must say I'm not too ripped up about it.

And no, I don't care if you do better on quizzes if you listen to music, you can't have your ear buds in during the quiz.

The Quiz

Let's say that you happen to read a journal article that was published > 1 year ago and you see that your own (quite old) publications are cited. But: you don't like how your published work is cited in this article -- the authors didn't mis-cite you in any egregiously wrong or unethical way, but you nevertheless don't like how they did it. For example, maybe you feel that they put too much emphasis on some things that we know now that we didn't know >20 years ago when you published your cited paper(s). Or maybe you don't like how they wrote that their results might be in conflict with some results in one part of your old work. What do you do? Do you:

(a) Make an unhappy huffing sound, shrug your shoulders, and forget about it. Maybe you will mention it to the authors if you see them at a conference, but otherwise, it's not a big deal.

(b) Write a brief but polite e-mail to the primary authors, explaining your discontent and then waiting to see how they respond.

(c) Write a formal comment and send it to the authors and ask if they'd be interested in writing a reply, perhaps for publication in the journal in question.

(d) Write a formal comment and send it to the editors of the journal and let them deal with contacting the authors to see about a possible reply, perhaps for publication in the journal in question.

(e) Fire off an angry e-mail to the editor of the journal, insulting the integrity of the editor and the journal as a whole for publishing a paper that contains this unjustified attack on you and your work. Be sure to include lots of dramatic adjectives that show -- unambiguously -- just how shocked you are that this paper was published in a journal you used to respect. 

Time's up. Put your pencils down and pass your quiz forms to front.

Should She Do It?

Today in Scientopia, I reluctantly sort of give some advice about intra-department relationships, in response to a reader's e-mail about her particular situation, but mostly I request comments from readers on this general topic and/or specific situation.

You're Invited

Speaking of talks, I am reminded of an invited talk that was given by an early-career scientist at a conference in the past year or so. I was very happy to see this talk on the schedule. I am a big fan of giving invited talk slots to the youngsters, as they might actually have something new to say, and I admire this particular person's work.

Invited talks by senior scientists can be quite interesting and useful as well, even if they are mostly a review of published work. But, as I've discussed before, there is a difference between giving a thoughtful review talk that integrates a lot of information and gives some perspective gained through time and a review talk that consists entirely of recycled, old material, resulting in a talk that could have been given at any time in the last 28 years and be exactly the same except for the number of wrinkles on the speaker's face.

The aforementioned invited talk by the early-career scientist was a big disappointment to me for the same reasons I have criticized talks by more senior people. It turned out to be a 'review talk', except that the amount of time represented by the work being reviewed was of course much less. The talk I saw could have been given 4-5 years ago. The figures were all excerpted from published work, none of the information was new, and there was no attempt to synthesize or reflect.

I wondered if my opinion of this nothing-new talk was so negative because I had higher expectations of the speaker than I would for a more senior scientist. That is, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if certain senior scientists gave a recycled talk, but I wasn't expecting it from this younger person, so I was even more critical than I would otherwise have been. Maybe.

So then I tried to think of reasons why this early-career scientist might have given a nothing-new, recycled talk. My purpose is not to criticize this individual (more) but to discuss the general issues raised (at least, in my own mind) by this incident.

I should note that the individual in question does not have a tenure-track job (yet) but is searching for one. This is one obvious reason why it's not a good idea for an early-career person to give a lame conference talk, invited or not, whereas a more senior person might not be harmed at all. But perhaps I am being too negative (again). Let's consider:

Reasons why such a talk may not have harmed the early-career person's chances of employment, with parenthetical statements undermining my attempts to come up with such reasons:

1. No one with any role, however indirect, in hiring decisions that could affect this person was in the audience (I consider this unlikely, but I don't know);

2. Even if there were potential future colleagues in the audience, they may not have been familiar with this work and so didn't know just how recycled the talk was (maybe.. but the speaker gave correct attribution to all the figures, and it was clear that they were all from a publication from > 4 years ago);

3. The main thing is that he was invited to give a talk, demonstrating the esteem in which he is held (I share this esteem -- even now -- but note that the conference session organizer is a friend/colleague of his);

4. It was just one talk; give the guy a break (OK, but I saw some excellent talks by other early-career scientists competing for the same jobs; to the extent that these conference-impressions are important, it's clearly better to give an awesome talk than a boring recycled one);

5. Maybe he was asked to give a review of his old work? Maybe that's what fit best with the theme of that session and he reluctantly agreed, although he has lots of cool new work he would rather have presented. (Sure, that happens, but I think if I were in that position I would be certain to explain the situation at the beginning of the talk. I'd say something like "I've been asked to talk about my work on xxxx, although most of that dates from a few years ago now", and then I would try to add something new -- make some new figures, synthesize some old and new results and ideas..)

If the individual in question was a tenure-track professor, being asked to give an invited talk, however boring it turned out to be, might outweigh any negative effects of having given a lame talk. Invited talks can be listed on the CV as such, and, aside from the possibility that a cranky letter-writer might have sat through the dismal talk, the most people reading the CV and making an evaluation won't know anything about the content of the talk beyond its title.

I don't have a problem with that. If the recycled talk was a one-time thing, it shouldn't harm anyone's career if things are otherwise going well. And if the recycled talk was yet another sign that an individual has not had any new ideas or results in 5 years, then there will be other evidence of that.

But: If someone who is still applying for jobs is given the opportunity to give a talk at a high-profile conference, whether or not the talk is invited or is one of many selected from submitted abstracts, if at all possible, don't blow the chance to say something new and interesting.

Out of Practice

Do you practice your conference presentations before giving them? What is your career stage?

In my case, I used to practice my conference talks, but now I never do, so for me, the answer was yes but is now no, and the change is definitely related to career-stage. I do not think this is unusual. Whether it is a good, neutral, or bad thing is another question.

If you used to practice talks but now you don't, do you remember when you stopped? I don't, but I am certain that I practiced my talks through my postdoc and perhaps for a while as an assistant professor. I just don't remember if I stopped practicing talks before or after tenure; I think it was before, but I am not sure.

Although I don't remember when exactly it was, I do remember having an anxious thought, just before giving one of the first talks I had not practiced, "Maybe I should have practiced this talk..", but I only felt that way the first few times I gave a talk I had not practiced. The feeling went away either because (1) I was satisfied with how the unpracticed talks went (i.e., I never felt after a talk, "OMG, I should have practiced that talk."), and/or (2) I am delusional about the quality of my talks.

I hasten to add that I typically finish my talks well within the time limit, so my lack of practice does not have negative consequences in terms of talk duration. Whether my talks are less coherent as a result of not-practicing: I'm not the one to ask.

I am certainly not advocating not practicing, particularly for early-career people. For those inexperienced at giving talks, I have seen very-not-good talks (on the first or second practice) turn into awesome talks with practice.

I am also not saying that I don't put much preparation into my talks. I think about them quite a lot, and I run through various options for the intro in my head, in some cases jotting notes. I just don't do a practice run of the whole talk in advance.

For some people, practicing (and practicing) before a talk provides a sense of greater confidence about the talk. Each practice run might be slightly (or very) different, but by giving the talk in advance (to a friendly group, to your cat, to yourself), perhaps many times, you know how to pace it and you know how to deal with the all-important talk introduction and transitions between topics. There is no question that this is useful (and I think people presenting posters should also have a few introductory lines prepared). It's just that, at some point, some of us decide (for better or worse) that we don't need to do this.

Ending It

What do you do when you are giving a talk at a conference and you have a lot more to say but not enough time to say it all as you had hoped?:

Behavior 1a. Ignore the almost-out-of-time signal and even the totally-out-of-time signal and plow on to the very end as if there is enough time to go through every slide, including a text-rich conclusions slide (or two!), which for some reason has to be read, word-for-word, all the way through.

Behavior 1b. Acknowledge the almost-out-of-time signal but continue to the very end anyway, not skipping any slides, not even the conclusions slides. This type of person apparently speeds up, and perhaps occasionally interjects "I know I'm out of time, but..", and then they keep going. The fact that they are out of time does not motivate them to skip a slide, not even the conclusions.

Behavior 2. Don't skip any of the research info slides, but skip reading the conclusions slide(s). May show the conclusions slide, but say "I'm out of time, so I'll just stop here."

Behavior 3. Skip some or all of the remaining research slides, and go right to the conclusions slide(s) and read them aloud. (opposite strategy of Behavior 2)

Behavior 4. When warned of approaching the time limit, say "I'm just about out of time, so I'll stop right there", thereby possibly leaving time for questions and discussion.

Note that I am only considering the types of people who reach the time limit when giving a talk. Some people finish on time, and this post is not about them.

It is my considered but perhaps unreasonable opinion that it is the rare talk of 10-15 minutes duration that needs detailed text-filled conclusions slides. I typically find these boring and a waste of talk-time. Conclusions slides can be useful if the talk topic was very complex (owing to the topic or the lack of skill of the presenter) or if the presenter is not entirely comfortable speaking English, or whatever the primary conference language is. In those cases, a conclusions slide or two can be helpful for summarizing what was just presented. If, however, the text-filled conclusions slide(s) are just a summary of what the speaker said 2 minutes ago, it's a waste of time for a speaker to read them to the audience, particularly if there isn't time for this.

At the various conferences I have attended this year, I have seen all of these behaviors (and more? did I leave any out?). I always wonder what someone is thinking by going (way) over the allotted time, especially if they are given abundant warning, by automated signals and session leaders, that the time is almost up, and then up, and then more than up. There is one person I know who commonly talks for 20-30 minutes for a 12-15 minute talk, ignoring all of the increasingly urgent but apparently ineffectual pleas for him to stop. [If I were convening a session in which this person wanted to give a presentation, I would assign him a poster, not a talk.]

I am reasonably sure that it is rare for the audience to be thinking "Oh no! Time is up already?! I wish that person could on speaking for much much longer!"

For me, anyway, the main interest and appeal of conferences is not so much the details of what is presented in talks but getting a general sense for what is going on, having informal conversations with people I wouldn't otherwise interact with or even meet, introducing my students and postdocs to the wider Science World, and all that kind of thing.

It doesn't punch a hole in my conference experience if some speakers talk for a few extra minutes, but life would be a tiny bit better if fewer people did this, and especially if they don't read their text-filled conclusions slides, word-for-word, all the way through.

Question 1: Is it mostly the more senior people who go beyond the allotted time for a conference talk? I have seen people of all ages and talk-experience level go beyond their allotted time, but I think it is more common for more senior researchers. This may be in part because students and other early-career people actually practice their talks and therefore know how long their talks are likely to be, whereas we older people are more likely to wing it a bit more and/or to think that our every word is a precious pearl of wisdom.

Question 2: Are the professors who speak longer than the allotted time for a conference talk also the ones whose classes go beyond their scheduled time?

x% of Infinite

Those of us who got some "stimulus" funding (ARRA) in the form of a research grant a few years ago have to do quarterly reporting on the progress of this research, as opposed to annual reporting for a regular grant; in my case, the grant was from NSF. This quarterly reporting is not arduous; it just takes a few minutes of checking the info generated automatically (e.g., number of persons employed by the grant) and updating some text about research activities.

I have no idea who, if anyone, reads these quarterly reports. Unlike annual reports, which have to be approved by a program officer (at least at NSF, I don't know about other funding agencies), once these quarterly reports are done, they seem to be done.

The one part of the reporting that always makes me have to think a bit is the part where I have to report the % of the research that is completed. In some senses, of course, a research project is never really done. You can always do more, and then some more. Particular research questions lead to more research questions which lead to .. etc. That's one thing that is so great about research.

Realistically, though, a grant has a finite time span, so things do come to an end (financially). Therefore, I could answer the question in terms of "How much money is left in the grant?". That is a number that, in theory, can be determined well enough for reporting requirements, although never exactly at any given moment, given the complexity and vagaries of my university's accounting system.

Another way to phrase the question is:"What % of what you said you would do in the grant proposal is done at this time?" That's a tricky question for research projects that veer -- for scientifically valid reasons -- from what was proposed in the proposal. I have written about this before: my research group's grant proposals are our best guess for what we will do to solve the questions and problems posed, but, once the research starts and we get some results, we may find a different/better way to approach these problems, at least in some ways.

In that sense, the % completed of what we proposed to do may be a very different number from the % of the project that will be "completed" by the time the funding runs out.

I have been thinking about this over the last few years as I do my quarterly reports and have to select an answer from a pull-down menu with possible responses to the % completed question. For a long time, I was answering with low numbers because we were in the data-gathering stage (for well over half the duration of the grant), but once we were >>50% in terms of time and money left on the grant, I realized that the % completed should probably kick up a bit, even if we still have a lot more to do.

I suppose at some point I will have to say that the project is 100% completed; that is, when the money runs out, even if the research is not really completed. For accounting purposes, this is probably fine, but it will not be entirely true.

Reviewerzilla

Today in Scientopia, I post a reader's question about what to put in a review for one of the High-Impact Journals. This reader wants to avoid being one of 'those' awful reviewers that bloggers and commenters complain about.

Mean Women

Here is an e-mail I got in response to my post yesterday. The subject line of the e-mail read: University Women's Club - don't celebrate your ignorance. Since I assumed that that was not the motto of the clubs, I guessed instead that it was a clue that the e-mail wasn't going to be very nice.

************

Your blog re UWC was sent to me from one of our clubs.

I am wondering if you have received emails from members of the University Women's Clubs in America or anywhere else in the world.  Most members nowadays are retired professional women with common interests, ergo the interest groups and daytime meetings etc- but our biggest role is in advocacy on all levels - from local to international and fundraising for scholarships and bursaries..  In my province the 23 clubs raised about $250,000 dollars last year.That is a lot of scholarships for women in BC who need the $$.  (When you received your first brochure several decades ago - the UWC members were mostly younger women with small children who stayed at home which was the norm in the 50s and 60s who wanted to use their education outside the home in a meaningful way and to hold discourse with like minded women)

You could have googled about UWCs before embarrassing yourself with your comments. Don't professors do some research before making statements?

Just have a boo at our National website and you will see that we are all about.   www.cfuw.org

Maybe an apology?

Your nom de plume or whatever the nomenclature is in bloggerland........very curious. 

The foregoing is written from just me and not in my official role on the BC Council.

Regards,

Monica von Kursell

--Communications
BC Council

************

Nice! I really wish I could spend more time with people like this. Maybe we can form a club?

Anyway, I stand by my original post, which I do not find at all embarrassing, despite my failure to mention the important fundraising activities of some of these clubs.

** Note: Some of these clubs do advocacy! **

A careful reading of the post might show that I did not disparage these clubs -- not their missions, not their membership, not their existence, whether or not they raise funds for scholarships. I wrote that, while understanding the historic context of the name, I wish these clubs had a different name, one that does not imply that the most common definition of University Women = Wives of Professors.

I still feel that way.

I have been in bloggerland long enough to know that even mild statements about something seemingly uncontroversial can somehow inspire anger and contempt, a reaction I still find ....... very curious. 

University Women

When I started my first tenure-track faculty position, the university resource center sent me a brochure with information about a University Women's Club. I thought "Great! It would be interesting to meet other women professors, researchers, staff..", but then I saw that this club met in the mornings, on weekdays, for tennis, bird watching, a book group, handicrafts.. It was a club for faculty wives and partners. I was confused by the name; to me "University Women" included me, when in fact, it did not in this context.

Every new faculty member got this brochure, whether or not they had a wife. I guess it was more efficient to send it to everyone than merely to have it available for those who wanted it. I recycled the brochure and didn't think about it again.

Years later, on arrival at University #2, I saw no such brochure, or, at least, don't remember getting one, and I don't think my husband was given one either, but we arrived with an infant and didn't spend a lot of time going through our campus mail at that time. There may be such a club; I have no idea.

Fast forward 20 years from the first incident: During an extended visit to another university, my husband was given a brochure to give to his wife in case she wanted to get together with other faculty wives at a University Women's Club, which met on weekdays, typically in the mornings. There is tennis, bird watching, a book group, handicrafts..

That's fine. Some of my good friends and neighbors are married to professors; some of these women work, some do not. I am not criticizing anyone for the choices they make in their own life, and I am not criticizing the existence of such clubs, but..

and it may seem like a small 'but'.. but ..

I wish these organizations had a different name.

The name University Women no doubt derives from bygone days when women were far more likely to be connected to a university by marriage than to be employed there as a professor or administrator. The phrase "University Women" used in this classic sense therefore refers to women who are married to professors and administrators (etc.) at a university, not to women who are professors. The University Women are in-laws of the university.

I think the phrase University Women should instead imply 'women who are directly related to a university; i.e., as students or as employees'. The archaic use of the term University Women to refer to faculty wives is rather unhelpful to those of us who would like to overturn the stereotype (at least in certain fields) of professor = man.

If you heard the term "University Men", would you think of the husbands of female professors? I must admit that the term doesn't evoke that for me, or male professors for that matter. What comes first to my mind is an image of well-groomed male students (wearing sweaters, I don't know why). I am therefore not advocating that University Women = Female Professors, just that University Women does not equal Faculty Wives.

I have no idea how active these groups are, and whether their members are mostly/entirely of a certain age, and (I repeat) I have nothing against these groups, I just think the name of these organizations shouldn't imply that the main association that women are likely to have to a university is as wives.

Destiny's Woman

On a recent, long plane flight, I read The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides), and found a few sentences of interest. If I were an underliner, I would have underlined these, both on the same page of the novel:

Madeleine worried that there was something paradigmatic in this, that she was destined to go through life being cowed by less capable men.

and

Phyllida's hair was where her power resided.

OK, I stand corrected about hair and power.

The first quote is interesting, in part because of the use of the word "destined". Is Madeleine worried about being cowed by less capable men because she can't do anything about it, or because she won't do anything about it? Either way, she has a sense of foreboding that this might be a feature of her life.

But why would it be a feature of the life of a young woman like this character in the novel -- an intelligent, literature-loving, Ivy-league graduate?

Have any of you ever felt that way, particularly early in your academic career?

I never felt that I was destined to go through life cowed by less capable men, but I did worry that I was destined to have lots of experiences in which I was automatically assumed to be less capable than less capable men, just because I am a woman. And in fact, this has been my destiny.

I have met this destiny, and it was mine, but that was then, this is now.

I got older. Some of the less capable men fell by the wayside, some are still around and doing well. All of this matters less and less to me as I get older and have more freedom and confidence in my work.

Even so, I liked the sentence in the novel because it captures a feeling you can have, particularly when you are young, about how things might go in the future, in part because you do not have super-human confidence in yourself and in part because life is unfair and strange.

Just don't be cowed. You don't have to be cowed. Just say no to being cowed. Or, if you are cowed now and then, OK, that happens, but don't let it be your destiny.

You may find yourself in another part of the world

Same as it ever was, or at least how it has been for the past 3.5 months, I am going to be spending a lot of time up at 10,668 meters this week. For this final onslaught of busyness before a (relative) respite, I am taking a blog-break this week -- or, at the very least, things will get very sporadic around here for a while.

While I am suspended over various oceans and continents of the world and doing in-seat exercises to avoid deep vein thrombosis, I think it would be entertaining if the readers of FSP would share stories of

THE STRANGEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU AT A CONFERENCE.*

* or workshop or other types of professional meetings.**

** It's sort of cheating if you tell a story of something that happened to someone else, but if it's a really good story, go ahead and tell it anyway.***

***My apologies in advance for delays in comment moderation.

Fingered

The other day, I had to gather my social skills (such as they are), brush my hair, and put on my most stylish socks to attend a socioprofessional event that required me to be super-nice to everyone I met there. As I was claiming my name tag from a table near the entrance, I asked the table-attendant what the "1" on my name tag signified; the other name tags that I could see did not have any numbers.

The answer to that particular question is not important to my story. But this is relevant: when I asked my question, a 70-something man standing nearby said "It means this", and he made an obscene gesture.

I thought to myself, "This is a test."

And I was determined to pass that test. I decided to practice being super-nice to him. I figured: if I can be nice to him, then I can be nice to almost anyone.

So, I noted his name and other information on his name tag, and asked him a polite question about himself. This is not what he was expecting (score one point for me), so he said "Did you see which finger I just held up?" (minus one point for him for being so desperate for attention that he had to mention this).

I ignored his question. I saw that the lapels of his jacket sported 5-6 pins indicating various organizations to which he belonged and various awards that he had won, so I made a polite comment about his apparent interests and accomplishments. (I think I should get another point for this, but I won't beg if I don't get one.)

He said "I hate awards, but I keep getting them." [insert unconvincing explanation for why he advertises (with his lapel pins) these awards that he despises but that he also totally deserves because he is awesome although of course he is too humble to say that and only says it because he keeps getting these awards, which he despises, from these organizations, which he despises etc.] (minus another point for him?)

I asked him another question about himself and his interests (I will not give myself points for these because they were rather routine), and then he said, "All you professors only care about yourselves and other professors."

To me, that's even ruder than the obscene gesture, but I was not willing to give up. I was determined to continue to withstand the onslaught of aggressively jerkish behavior. So I said "That's not true. Many of us care about our students."

His reply: "So what? Same thing. You only care about students because you want them to be professors one day so that is just like only caring about professors."

By this point, I was pretty sure that we were not having a rational conversation in which two mature and respectful adults listen to each other and make reasoned arguments to support differing opinions, so instead of responding directly to his point, I told him about some recent outreach programs and also some applied research that seemed relevant to his background (from what I could infer from his lapel pins).

I couldn't tell if he was bored or stunned. It is likely that he was disappointed that I didn't respond in a satisfying way to his obnoxious behavior. He probably thought I was freakishly polite, and perhaps heavily medicated.

In any case, although I am sure he was hating me just as much as I was hating him, I made the first move to exit this grim conversation. I silently proclaimed victory, bade him a pleasant farewell, and moved on to chat with another group of people.

This experience reminded me of other situations in which I have felt uncomfortable by someone's speech or behavior, and my strategy has been to take the high road, ignore the offense or make a mild joke, and just get on with my work. I have found this to be much more effective in the long run than responding in-kind or even walking away.

This is not the most appropriate strategy in all cases -- sometimes we need to yell and fight back or walk away -- but when there's no point in yelling, I find it personally satisfying to be as calm and mature as possible. Thinking of it as a 'test' of some sort is one way that I can get through an unpleasant situation.

I think that it is even possible to derive a strange sort of enjoyment from what is otherwise a ghastly situation if you set yourself a challenge and feel that you succeeded with it.

Hair Today

Someone commented to me in conversation the other day that as long as I have hair like mine, I will not be taken as seriously as I would be if I had a more "classically age-appropriate" hair style; i.e., shorter hair, or at least hair styled in a middle-aged woman kind of way (whatever that is).

Does anyone else believe this? Are women with short/styled hair taken more seriously than women with long hair (for example)?

OK, I know, I have discussed hair before. It is actually not a big issue for me, but it comes up every now and then. The aforementioned conversation was in the context of some of my new professional responsibilities that require me to spend time with a veritable sea of men in suits and ties.

When my colleague made his recent comment about my hair being a factor in my credibility gap (i.e., I am actually a reasonably competent, serious scientist, but I don't look I am), I nodded because it sort of made sense. I've had enough experiences in which people were surprised and dubious to find out I am a professor, scientist, etc., so that it was easy for me to agree somewhat reflexively with this statement about my appearance with respect to my career/position.
But after giving it some thought, my answer to my own question is that hair length/color/style is not very important. Perhaps the context of a situation is somewhat important, but in most professional situations, hair style is just a detail. Appearance can matter for a first impression, and hair style is part of that impression, but it's just part of the overall package. I could get Hilary Clinton hair tomorrow, and I could even put on a red power-suit (perhaps for Halloween), but that would not change the first-order aspects of my appearance and personality. I would remain a soft-spoken, not-tall, uncharismatic, sarcastic female. 

Some men in my field of Science don't treat women as serious, professional colleagues, but it's not because our hair is long or short or pink or yellow. I have spent plenty of time sharing stories with short-haired female colleagues about our similar experiences being in a male-dominated field. And I have had (very) short hair in the past (but not recently); in the context of being taken seriously in a professional context, I don't think it matters.

Agree or disagree?

What Is Your Slide Number?

Last week, I listened to a colleague give a talk in my department. It was a very interesting talk and I paid close attention, but I was also kind of fascinated by how much time he spent on each slide.

He spends much much more time/slide than I do in a typical talk, and therefore he showed many fewer slides than I would have in a similar talk.

For example, if a talk is 12-15 minutes, he will have no more than 12-15 slides (and more commonly 12 than 15). In a 50 minutes talk, he may have 30 slides. In each case, I would typically have twice that many slides, even for a talk on a similar (or the same) topic. I hasten to note that I typically finish my talks well within the allotted time.


I would not blame you for concluding that I give unintelligible and incoherent talks crammed with too much information, but let's assume, just for the sake of discussion, that my talks are reasonably understandable; or, at least, no less so than talks by this colleague, who is a minimalist (relative to me) when it comes to number of slides in a talk.

What is your slide number? (Ns)

Ns = number of slides in a talk / talk duration (in minutes)

Important note: If you have one or more animations that appear within one slide, you need to count those separately. For example, if you show a slide with a picture of a red circle on it, and then, after discussing the red circle for a bit, you hit a key/push a button/click a mouse and a blue circle appears next to the red circle, that = 2 slides, not just 1, even if they are technically within one slide. If, however, you have a multitude of tiny little modifications that appear with successive but rapid mouse clicks, you could still count that as 2 (but not 1).

Are you a minimalist, moderate, or a maximalist when it comes to the number of slides/talk?

Definitions:

minimalist: Ns << 1

moderate: Ns ~ 1 or slightly > 1

maximalist: Ns >> 1 (and typically > 2)

And what does it all mean?