Professorial Thankfulness

Ignoring for the moment the rumor that most of us professors are real people with families and lives outside the Academy, let's imagine a Thanksgiving dinner in which we give thanks for things that are relevant only to our professional existence. Let's also dispense with the boring thanks to our graduate advisors, our students, NSF program directors, the guys who deliver the liquid nitrogen to the lab, and so on. What does this leave? A lot:

I am thankful for the night custodian who leaves the lights on in my corridor so that I don't have to walk through a dark building when I work late at night in my office.

I am thankful for the baristas at my four favorite cafes near campus, especially when they already start preparing my favorite caffeinated beverages as soon as they see me.

I am thankful in a personal, selfish, self-hating way for global warming. As a scientist and citizen who cares about the environment, I am aghast at global warming and our government's criminal rejection of even modest attempts to curb CO2-emissions, not to mention the attempt to silence climate scientists, distort climate data, and confuse non-scientists. But at this time of year, I find I am not a good enough person to strongly disapprove of the mild weather. I am struggling with this issue on a personal level, but may defer direct confrontation with my hypocrisy until my New Years resolutions.

I am thankful for my new Macintosh computer, which is fast and aesthetically pleasing.

I am thankful that no mice have died in my office recently.

I am thankful that I still have more than a week to write my NSF proposal.

I am thankful for the second law of thermodynamics.

Here or There?

Is it better for there to be senior women science professors in as many universities as possible, or is it better for there to be at least some universities that have a relatively high concentration of senior women scientists? [assume that it is not possible for there to be sufficient representation of women science professors at all universities on a time scale that is relevant to the reasons why I am pondering this question]

In other words: Should a senior woman scientist leave a university that does pretty good job at hiring and retaining women faculty for a university that does a dismal job of both? In real life, there are many other considerations about family and life and research facilities and so on, but let's ignore those for the moment.

I don't know the answer, but I have been thinking about it a lot recently.

Role Modeling

Today I talked informally with some women grad students (not my own), most from other universities. Some were considering not seeking academic jobs because they wanted to have 'a life'. I asked them why they didn't think they could have a life and an academic career as well, and the answer was that they didn't know anyone who did both. Some of these schools have no women faculty or, at most, one (unmarried/childless) in our general field. So I kicked into Role Model mode, telling them about my family and demonstrating that it is entirely possible to have a family and be a science professor and to enjoy both.

I am happy to do the Role Model thing, but I'm always amazed that it is as important as it is.

I Volunteered For This

Our department has a boring, dry, ugly newsletter that appears every few years. One of the administrative assistants has always been in charge of it, and she has other priorities, and years go by without a newsletter. So.. I volunteered to organize, write, construct, create a new newsletter. In a way, it's yet another little task that I do while the important guys in the department make the big decisions, but only in a way. I actually like doing this kind of thing -- writing, putting together words and images to communicate with people. And I did volunteer. And now I have to create something.

I have been poring over a lot of departmental newsletters this past week, looking for inspiration. My first conclusion is that there are a lot of boring, dry, ugly newsletters out there. Newsletters filled with lists of names, epic poems written for men getting awards, and photos of diverse groups of young students Doing Science.

It's quite possible that my enthusiasm for doing something new and different will get stomped on by the reality of creating this thing whilst also writing a proposal, giving an invited talk a couple thousand miles from here, teaching, attending a conference a couple thousand miles from here, and finishing up some papers by the end of the semester. And studying for my own final exam in my intro language course!

But I would like to do something fun and aesthetically pleasing with this newsletter. I am getting sort of fond of the idea of 'interviewing' some of our new faculty members rather than just writing a few paragraphs about each of them, with questions like "Why do you do what you do?" and "How did you get here?", not just "What do you do and how do you do it?".

The Chair's view of this newsletter is that it is a vehicle for attracting donations. I will try not to let that harsh economic reality intrude too much on my enjoyment of the project, which I mostly see as a way to communicate with friends and alums of the department. I find myself imagining that I am writing it for some of my former students, and thinking about what they might want to know about the department now.

Any suggestions of what you like to read or see in an academic newsletter?

Face(book)less

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I am taking an undergraduate language class this semester. So far, it's been great, though it's always strange for me when we do conversation drills about what jobs we want to have when we graduate, what classes we are taking, and what our parents' hobbies are.

By far the strangest experience was when we had to show and talk about photographs of our family and friends. Many of the other students got out their laptops and opened their Facebook pages. It was just like what I've read about -- endless flash photos of drunken parties with people hanging off each other whilst holding alcoholic beverages. This might have presented opportunities for learning some words and phrases that are not in our textbook, but the instructor didn't seem to want to linger much on these photos.

I have a webpage with photos of my family (husband, daughter, cats), but these photos must seem boring to my fellow students, who are all at least half my age. What would a Facebook for science professors look like? Perhaps I should start bringing a camera to conferences so I can take crazy photos of people clustered around a poster display. Or, if I wanted to get really wild, I could take pictures at faculty meetings. Now that would be scary.

Hyphenated-Last-Name

When I got married, I didn't change my last name. I guess we both could have hyphenated our names, but that wasn't very appealing to either of us, and I certainly wasn't going to hyphenate if my husband wasn't going to. Instead, we did that to our daughter. It just seemed too strange to me to contemplate being in a family in which my daughter had my husband's last name and not mine (too), even stranger than our all having different last names.

Then we had to decide which name would go first. We decided to decide based on what sounded best, and we agreed that the order that sounded best was my name first.

Our first plan was that she would have two last names without a hyphen, but we were told at the hospital when her birth certificate was being filled out that it was illegal to have a 'space' in a last name. I said "What if our name were van Gogh or da Vinci?". They said no go(gh). Perhaps we got an uninformed person doing the birth certificate, but I was desperate to go home and they told us we couldn't leave the hospital until we gave our daughter a last name with no spaces. Bizarre.

So she has a hyphen, and a long last name that doesn't quite make it intact onto some forms.

At her preschool, which was associated with the university, she was not unusual for having a hyphenated last name. At her elementary school, there are a few others, but not many.

The only one who has ever been upset about our daughter's last name is my mother-in-law. She didn't like the hyphenation and she particularly didn't like the fact that my name was first. She told us that she hoped people would think that that name was a middle name and that the real last name was her son's (no matter that my mother-in-law has kept the name of a man she divorced and loathed for the rest of his life).

If at some point our daughter decides she'd rather just have one last name and lops off one (or both), or changes her name when she gets married -- that's up to her and I won't mind whatever she chooses. For now, though, her having a part of my name and a part of her dad's works really well for our family, and we're happy with the decision we made nearly 10 years ago.

Equal Rights for Girls and Boys

That was the title of an essay my elementary-school aged daughter wrote this week. She and her classmates each had to choose a topic related to a "right" that was important to them. I was impressed by her essay because (1) I'm her mother, and (2) The essay was written from her heart, using her own examples, which were:

- Politics. Even young children couldn't escape the onslaught of campaigning in the recent elections. We passed dozens of lawn signs on the walk to school, we had constant phone calls and knocks on the door by campaign workers, her school let the kids vote in their own voting booths set aside for kids, and the mother of one of her school friends was running for office. This led to conversations about whether there had ever been a woman President, Vice-President, how many women Senators there are, and so on.

- Her grandmother/my mother. The combination of the elections and my mother's recent visit reminded my daughter that her grandmother was the first woman mayor of the small city where I grew up. She was fascinated by the story of how people doubted her grandmother, but grandma was a great mayor and won over some of her critics. So she wrote about that. Role models work!

- Sexist chants on the playground. These have existed for eons. My daughter says she wasn't really bothered by them because they are so stupid, but she thought they were an example of how some attitudes might start really early and then never entirely go away.

I'm glad she chose this topic. It was interesting to see her pull together in writing various things she's been thinking about lately (maybe she should start a blog?).

I told her that I thought she was going to write about how kids should have the right to choose their own name -- she has a long, hyphenated last name, and I wouldn't be surprised if some day one name gets lopped (that would be fine with me; eventually it will be her choice). She said she likes her complicated last name because it's something unique and special about her and it makes her feel connected to both of her parents.

Too Many Women

Each fall, our department has a career forum for students (undergraduate, graduate) and anyone else who wants to come. There is typically a panel with representatives from various types of academic institutions (small colleges, research universities, medium-sized universities), from industry, and from government agencies. The panel members speak briefly about their jobs and then there is a lot of interactive question-answer time with the audience. After,there is informal social time for additional interaction between students and the panel members. It's a great thing, and it's organized by a female assistant professor in my department. What's not to like?

One of my senior male colleagues approached me to discuss his concerns about this forum. I don't know why he came to talk to me. I have nothing to do with the organization of the forum. All the credit for it goes to my junior colleague, who initiated it and organizes it.

He was concerned because the forum is "female-dominated". Most of the speakers are women, and of course the organizer is a woman.

I asked him: "Why is this a problem?" Apparently it is obvious, but he spelled it out for me, since I was having trouble understanding: Male students might feel "excluded" from the forum because there are more women than men involved.

This is the point at which I stared at him, stunned. And then I laughed. There were so many possible responses, and not all of them nice.

Opting for nice (as usual), I said: "If I refused to attend departmental events because they were dominated by the opposite gender, I would never leave my office."

He said: "But that's different." End of conversation.

There They Go Again

I may be completely delusional (as opposed to partially delusional, which I freely admit to being), but I really don't recognize the academic universe described in a recent article in the Sunday New York Times (Education supplement). The article discusses which statistics reported by a college or university might not give a true picture of the institution.

I liked the start of the article: an example of a University of Michigan student who has taken small classes with a cohort of fellow students for much of her undergraduate career. The point is that these environments and programs exist at big universities, not just at small colleges.

But then there's a section titled: "Prizes and Ph.D's: They Don't Teach". I do not recognize the academic environment described. Not even close. Is there really any U.S. university, no matter how highly ranked and festooned with Nobel Prize laureates, at which teaching is not important? The scary thing is that the following quotation comes from a 'career and college counselor' and author of a guide to colleges:

"People who self-select into Ph.D. programs are academic research types, not teachers," he says. "Their knowledge is so deep and so profound they often don't have the ability to communicate well with undergraduates who need the basics." And this: "A person with a Nobel Prize-winner mind is in the loftiest stratospheres of their arcane pursuit and, in general, is not that gifted a teacher."

Where to start, where to start..

It's true that I often don't have the ability to communicate well with people, particularly when I'm asleep or alone. Otherwise, I typically do just fine.

Re. arcane pursuits: since I have no perspective, despite my deep and profound knowledge of some things, I Googled the term "arcane pursuits" to see if things like inventing magnetic resonance imaging and semiconductors or understanding the causes of diseases really are "arcane". Nope. It turns out that the following are arcane, though: Latin grammar, programming multicast applications, archiving television audio, fly fishing.

Anyway, I am really tired of reading this professors-can't-teach (or the variant: professors-don't-teach) myth in the mainstream press. Of course there are research professors and there are some not-so-great teachers at universities (and colleges), but I don't have any colleagues here or elsewhere who don't devote a lot of time and energy to teaching, to being very good teachers, and to integrating teaching and research. We are better teachers for our intensive involvement in research.

Another myth that is repeated in the article: that full-time faculty are better than adjuncts or part-time faculty: ".. being around (full-time) tends to increase their participation in the life of the campus and their students' development." Without getting into the issue of universities exploiting their adjuncts and not giving them sufficient respect or salary, it is clearly not the case that part-time faculty aren't as committed as full-time faculty.

Get A Job

Today I was perusing the recent issue of Physics Today, and read with interest a feature article on "Hunting for jobs at liberals arts colleges", by Suzanne Amador Kane and Kenneth Laws. There is much in this article that is applicable to any academic job search, including jobs at big research-focused universities.

First, a few things I disagreed with, as these come early in the article:

1."However good your PhD or postdoctoral mentor may be at research, the odds are that he or she knows relatively little about the small-college environment." In the first paragraph, the authors make the case that of 764 college physics departments in the U.S., 513 of them are at colleges or universities whose highest degree offered is the bachelor's. So.. doesn't it follow that quite a few graduate advisors and postdoc supervisors will have come from undergraduate-focused institutions? I realize that there are smaller numbers of physicists graduating from the undergraduate institutions, but even so, my impression is that graduates of small liberal arts colleges and other undergraduate institutions are legion in academia. I am one such SLAC graduate, and I am by no means rare or even in the minority.

2."Faculty positions at liberal arts institutions include a much more significant component of teaching and working with students than do similar jobs in research universities." OK, I know this is not a controversial statement, but it would be a mistake to assume that jobs at research universities do not involve substantial involvement in teaching and other educational activities (e.g., advising undergraduate students in research projects). In fact, I spend all of my weekday time on teaching or teaching-related activities (including graduate advising), and it is primarily at night and on weekends that I have time to do research (+ teaching preparation, grading, and such).

But let's focus on the excellent advice in this article for job applicants:

- In written statements and interview talks/discussions, show that you can articulate your research to a general audience. There will be opportunities to show how technically excellent and focused you are, but don't do this at the expense of showing breadth and awareness of the context of your research.

- Keep track of the materials/formats requested as part of the application, be concise in your cover letter and statements, and don't send a form letter. I have seen a surprising number of applications in which the applicant forgot to change University X to University Y. It's a detail (sort of) and everyone expects applicants to apply to multiple places, but it definitely undermines your message if you write a passionate paragraph about why you want to be at a different university than the one to which you are applying.

- A related point: tailor your cover letter to the specific place to which you are applying, and, if you interview, show that you spent some time learning about the place. This sounds straightforward, but there are some possible pitfalls:

- Don't dig too deep to learn about faculty and others. I have encountered a few interviewees who somehow learned my child's name and age, as well as other details of my career and life, and I just think that's weird. Another interviewee, who had no interest in sports, memorized the starting players and their statistics for the university basketball team. Don't be so insecure to think that there won't be anything of mutual interest that you can discuss with faculty and others.

- Don't treat the senior faculty with more respect than the junior faculty. This used to drive me crazy when I was an Assistant Professor. On more than one occasion, an interviewee would be obsequious to the senior faculty and administrators and patronizing to the junior faculty. Mistake. We all get a vote.

- Also: If you do a bit of research on a department, you won't make the semi-fatal error of assuming that a young-looking woman is a student (or secretary).

- And: I was going to write "Don't be a jerk at conferences if you are on the job market", but in fact, if you are a jerk, that's important information for prospective interviewers. Example: One year at a conference, I was at a social-professional event, and asked the organizer if there was anything to drink besides beer. He smirked and said to me "If you don't like beer, you should get out of here", then turned his back. When he arrived in my office a few weeks later as a candidate for a faculty position (I was on the search committee), he was very uncomfortable talking to me. I tried to put him at his ease, but the interview wasn't going well in general, so the whole thing was kind of unpleasant.

- And finally: It's fine to look into cost-of-living and other lifestyle issues, but I always think it's bizarre when interviewees have already contacted a realtor and selected neighborhoods and schools and such. There's plenty of time for that later, if you get an offer.

- Make sure your letter writers send their letters on time. Some of us write lots of letters of recommendation for lots of students, and it can be hard keeping track of deadlines and the nuances of different positions/schools. I don't mind if someone checks to see if I sent a letter or letters, and I don't mind polite reminders before a deadline. I like it best when I get an organized list of what letters have to be where when. If someone asks me "Can you send a letter to College X by December 1?", that's not enough. I need a copy of the job description and I need the address/email. If I'm writing 20+ letters for different students and different jobs, I am not going to go digging for the information myself.

- A related issue: I was recently concerned when a graduating Ph.D. student asked a research associate for a letter of recommendation instead of asking another faculty member. Junior scientists tend to take letter-writing very seriously, but, depending on the job/institution, the search committee might wonder why all the letters weren't from faculty. Maybe in some cases it's better to have a substantial positive letter from a postdoc, as opposed to a one-line letter from a Nobel laureate (<-- this really happened), but in general, get letters from faculty if at all possible. I have read about 150 letters of reference just this week, so I have more opinions on this issue for a later post.

- The CV: Don't list manuscripts that are "in preparation" -- no one will be impressed. Don't mix citations of abstracts/conference presentations with those for peer-reviewed articles. Put the peer-reviewed articles first. My personal preferences is for the most recent at the top, and then reverse chronological order.

- Whether you're interviewing at a small college or big university, ask to meet with students. You learn a lot about a place from talking to students, and having lunch or an informal discussion with students might well be the most fun part of your interview.

It is too bad that the article doesn't deal more with dual-career couple issues. Instead, the authors refer readers to a 1999 article in Physics Today. There is a website associated with this article, but some of the links are dead and/or useless, with some exceptions.

And finally: After an interview, send a brief follow-up letter to the relevant people (search committee chair and/or dept chair and/or search committee and/or others) to emphasize your interest, and to note any updates in your files (new publications, thoughts based on your interview and interactions with students and others). Don't be too schmoozy and uber-grateful - be succinct and sincere and professional.

That's a lot of information, but most of it is common sense stuff.

Sibling Promotion Rivalry

My mother, who lives about 1500 miles away, just visited for a few days. It was a nice visit, and of course thrilling for my daughter to have her grandmother visit. For me, spending time with my mother always highlights how odd my life is compared to the rest of my family. All of the adult males in my family have been or are involved in The Military and/or Religion as a profession. The adult women of my mother's generation never had careers.

I can accept and understand that they don't understand what I do and why I do it, especially since my research has few obvious relevant applications. What I find a bit annoying, though, is that my family celebrates every promotion step my brother achieves in the Navy, but my promotions to different professorial ranks are of no interest and even seem kind of pathetic to them. They are not sure whether they should be proud of me. After all, it's not as if I'm teaching at Harvard. I think they are also puzzled by my career because:

- Academic promotions are few and far between. My brother gets promoted every few years in the Navy, but my family wonders why my promotions have been so slow to occur. Why did it take 6 years for me to no longer be an "Assistant" professor? (which leads me to my next point):

- The names of professorial ranks are not very impressive. I am sure that this has been written about by many people in the past, but clearly being an "Assistant Professor" doesn't sound very impressive compared to being a Lieutenant or a Colonel. And then, after a few more years and a long involved process, one becomes only an "Associate Professor". My family wondered when, if ever, I would be a real professor.

My promotion to full professor a few years ago coincided with my older brother's promotion to Captain. His being promoted to Captain was a BIG DEAL in my family. There was a big ceremony and a party. My mother was very anxious that I give my brother a present that was suitable for the special occasion. My brother and I have a tendency to give each other joke presents that we think are hilarious but our mother doesn't. I gave him a large chain-saw wood carving of a bear; my promotion went un-acknowledged. I am very proud of my brother and his success, but I told my family that being a full professor was like being an admiral, and maybe one day my brother would get to this level. No one thought that was funny except me.

Conference Junkie

I really like going to conferences. I like giant ones with thousands of scientists, and I like small specialized conferences on a focused topic. To be systematic about it, my conference likes and dislikes include:

LIKES (in no particular order)

1 - Watching my current and former students and postdocs give presentations. At the most recent conference I attended, 2 of my students gave truly outstanding talks. There are few academic experiences more exciting than this.
2 - Seeing lots of friends from the various stages of my academic career.
3 - Talking in person to colleagues I don't see very often.
4 - Giving talks about my research. I am particularly excited about one of my current research projects, and it was very fun to give a talk on this recently.
5 - Meeting new people and learning new things.
6 - Exploring other cities/regions.

DISLIKES (in no particular order)

1 - Having people assume that I am a student or that my research is someone else's project or idea. Now that I've been around and semi-visible for a while, the former seldom happens, but the latter still does. Example: At the most recent meeting, I had a conversation with 2 colleagues about the research project that was the subject of my talk. One of these men, whom I will call Y, has a tendency to work on the same thing I do, after I have already started a project [I have written about this before]. Today I got an email from the other man, saying he would like to learn more about the research that "you and Y" are doing. Correction: This is my research idea and my initial results. Y will no doubt work on this soon, if he isn't already working on it, but the chances of my working with him are less than zero.

2 - Going to professional/social functions dominated by senior men who only talk to each other.

3 - Encountering people who are unhappy because I rejected their paper(s) (in my role as an Editor of a journal).


At a recent conferece, I cashed in on a bet that a colleague and I made in 1996. We agreed that in 2006 at a major annual meeting, whoever lost the bet would take the other out for a very nice dinner. I totally won this bet, and I had a very fun evening collecting on it recently. The bet was that I would regret leaving University 1 for University 2. I do not regret this move. In fact, this colleague, who has himself left University 1 now, conceded defeat long ago, maybe even in 1998, but we agreed to keep to the original agreement about the collection date.

On the Lack of Women

Two of the letters to Science this week on the topic of "On the Lack of Women in Academic Science" demonstrate the main issues very well.

First is an inspiring letter by Professor Emeritus Eugenie Vorburger Mielczarek, a pioneering woman physicist whose actions as a department head and mentor fostered the academic careers of women and men in her department.

At the other end of the evolutionary spectrum, Dr. George Gordon Roberts joins the ranks of those who are 'troubled' by the underrepresentation of men on the National Academy of Sciences panel that produced the On Bias and Barriers report. I sort of know how he feels, though in my case the committees I encounter are typically all-male instead of mostly-female. I am constantly having to deal with decisions and reports issued by all-male committees, including some that have a direct impact on my career and life. It is indeed very troubling.

Even more fascinating is Dr. Roberts' idea that "we" should be telling women to marry men who make less money than they do, so that it is more likely that their husbands will be the stay-at-home spouse when it comes time to raise some kids. I have a higher salary than my husband, but alas, he rather likes his career, so we share childcare activities. Roberts' idea sounds like something an all-male committee would come up with.

R U Serious?

This is probably a classic old professor rant, but what are students thinking when they send text-message-like emails to prospective graduate advisors? I don't pore over student emails, editing them for grammar and spelling, but I do like to see evidence that a student can be articulate in writing.

In the past few weeks, I've gotten email messages from students applying for graduate studies with me. Most emails are fine, but some messages lack capital letters and all punctuation except periods. Some email messages contain abbreviations that might be convenient when typing on a tiny phone keyboard but that aren't cute in a semi-formal letter to a potential advisor. For example: "i want to apply to work with u."

I am sure that it is quite possible for someone to be a creative genius at research and to write annoying emails like that, and I will keep an open mind until I see the full applications and meet the students, but still.. I just wonder why they think it is appropriate to send such emails to a prospective advisor.

And then there are the email messages from current students. Some of these messages are text-message-like as well, though I don't mind that so much if the student is writing to me with a question about class material.

I guess everyone has their own pet likes and dislikes regarding email etiquette. I have colleagues who hate it when their students use their first name in email greetings, or other informal greetings like "Yo Professor!". I get those too and I don't mind them, but I do hate the ones that start "Dear Mrs. X" (or Miss or Ms.). I'd much rather they just use my first name. My husband never gets "Dear Mr. X" emails, so the students are definitely deciding that I must not be a real professor.

I always reply, though. A few months ago, I read an article on professor preferences for email etiquette, and some faculty don't even reply if they don't like the style or tone of an email, but I can't see myself doing that.

Broader Impacts (2)

Lately I have been reviewing a lot of proposals. All of them note that female students are involved in the research and associated classes and internships, and in most cases the % of female students is > 50%. Every single proposal is by a male scientist or group of male scientists, including one that involves 12 men and no women.

I review the proposals based on the science and not the gender of the people involved, but it makes me wonder whether these guys are aware of the disparity. I've reviewed proposals by some of these men for years, and for years they have been writing in the *broader impact* sections of their proposals about the large number of women students in their programs. I just wonder if they look around their all-male or almost-all-male departments and wonder why there aren't more women colleagues.

In my own department, the male faculty definitely think that we're in good shape because we have so many women undergraduates and graduate students. They have said this directly in faculty meetings: we don't have a problem with diversity, we have lots of female students. Then they scratch their beards contentedly. [I might be stereotyping just a bit there; some of them have moustaches and no beards]

I Still Don't Like John Tierney

In today's NY Times, Tierney's views of women's attire evolve owing to his son's interest in the Civil War. His initial impression of women at Civil War battle re-enactments is puzzlement as to why they would want to dress in heavy clothes just to play a supporting role for their warrior husbands, who get to do all the cool stuff, like pretend to kill people and die. I am inferring this from his statement: "We could understand guys wanting to play soldier, but why were their wives willing to camp out with them and swelter in as many as a dozen layers of petticoats and undergarments?". I'm glad he can relate to the guys wanting to play soldier, because I can't.

Anyway, he comes to realize that these women are in fact liberated by their bulky clothes. Even fat women look pretty good when encased in many layers, and the presence of hoops makes them even more appealing (to Tierney). These body-covering clothes allow women "to rebel against the American obsession with fitness..". How clever to work in the word "rebel" in an essay that mentions the Civil War!

I really don't see why Tierney stops his essay where he does, as he doesn't quite get to the natural extension of his argument: that women would find wearing a chador or burkha very liberating as well. If only they could find a man to bring them to a swell event like a battle re-enactment.

Friday Musings About Inequality

I finished the AAUP report, including scanning the data tables at the end. For my university, the numbers are not so great, and even so do not reveal the extent of the problem for women professors in science - engineering - math departments (2% women full professors).

It was also interesting to see that women's salaries as a % of men's decrease from assistant to full professor. I took a pay cut to come to this university because my husband and I were so glad to have two tenure-track positions in the same place, so I
wasn't in a good negotiating position when hired (despite having competing offers from the university where I had my first tenure-track position). I don't think my salary has ever quite 'caught up' with those of the men, and I make essentially the same salary as my husband, despite 4 years of seniority over him. Good thing he does all the cooking, and even helps with the dishes.

My main reaction to the report, however, is that I wish there were a way (1) to convince women that tenure-track faculty positions, even at research universities, are not incompatible with having a family, and (2) to make this true at places where it is not. At my institution, it is mostly true, but many things could be improved.

AAUP Report

I am still slowly working my way through the text and tables in the recent AAUP report (AAUP Faculty Gender Equality Indicators 2006), but one thing that struck me right away was the drop-off in number of women from the Associate to Full Professor levels. On p. 11, the text says "Thus, promotion to full professor constitutes a further point where inequities persist in the career progrssion of faculty women."

There are so few women in my field that my personal (anecdotal) database is small, but I think women lose out at this stage in two different ways:

1 - I know several women who have stalled at the associate professor level because they don't have sufficient papers, grants, or international repute. By the current standards of our field at a large research university, these women do not meet the standards for promotion. BUT, I can think of many many men who have been promoted to full professor with similar moderate to low levels of productivity.

2 - I know several women who were not promoted despite numerous grants, publications, etc. (and high quality teaching). These women could sue, but instead most have accepted offers at other institutions that will value them for their excellence.

What Is On Your Computer Desktop?

Question for Women: What image is on your computer desktop?
	Photo of your kids
	Photo of your pet(s)
	Nature scene
	Some other photo that you took (including people other than your kids)
	Some other photo that came with your computer
	Plain color or a pattern
	Other
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Question for Men: What image is on your computer desktop?
	Photo of your kids
	Photo of your pet(s)
	Nature scene
	Some other photo that you took (including people other than your kids)
	Some other photo that came with your computer
	Plain color or a pattern
	Other
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Desktop Kids

Today, a small group of colleagues (male and female) and I had a discussion about what photos we have displayed as backgrounds on our computer desktops. The men had photos of their kids. The women did not. This relates to my last post about how science professor men get points for being caring family men, and science professor women are taken less seriously as scientists if they are also moms.

I must admit that I don't really want a picture of my child as a desktop photo. I have a few photos of my daughter in my office, and on my walls I have a few pictures she drew for me, so it's not as if I ignore her existence when I am in science professor mode. I just don't need or want to be surrounded by cute photos of her all day.

I wonder if these male colleagues with child/desktops are actively advertising their sensitive-family-manliness, or whether they just like having a photo of their kid(s) on their desktop. Or both.

The Incredible Invisible Professor

Some recent comments reminded me of a conference I went to recently with my family. My husband and I took turns attending the meeting and playing with our daughter. When I was in mom-mode, I became invisible to colleagues passing in the street of the small town in which the conference was held. When I was alone, everyone waved or stopped to chat. The difference was really striking, especially since my husband was visible whether he was with or without our daughter. When he was with our daughter, some people commented how nice it was to see a high-powered researcher in family mode. Men get cosmic credit for being scientists AND parents. Women get taken less seriously for being scientists AND parents.

Follow The Leader

This week, I was going through security in an airport, and was too short to reach over and get a gray bin from the stack behind the counter where we were all removing our laptops, shoes, and clear ziploc bags with < 3 oz. containers of liquids and gels. A tall man behind me reached over and shoved the stack closer, where we could all reach them easily, and I thanked him. He ignored me, but smirked at his friend next to him and said "Lead, follow, or get the hell out of my way.", which I believe is a slight reinterpretation of a quotation by Thomas Paine, and perhaps more recently a self-help book title. Somehow, I don't think this inspirational leadership mantra was intended as a means for tall men to insult short women.

On the plane, I sat next to a very polite and pleasant man who, when he saw me working on some papers, asked me what I do. I told him that I am a science professor (specifying my field of science). His first guess was that I teach at a community college. Nope. His next guess was that I teach at a local small college. Nope. His next guess was that I teach at a small church-affiliated university in the region. Nope. Finally I said that I am a professor at the Big University of X. He was surprised because he has a neighbor who was a professor there, and this neighbor was a very distinguished man who wrote a famous book. And his point was.. what?

The amazing thing is that I know his distinguished neighbor (long-retired), and I teach a class that he used to teach. By any measure (# of papers, grants, books, citation indices, honors etc.), I am more successful than the distinguishd professor ever was in his long career, but I will never be distinguished. I will never look it and I will never act it.

I once went on a lecture tour as a Distinguished Lecturer for a professional society. At one airport, I waited and waited for someone to meet me, and after a long wait, I was paged. It turns out that the student sent to pick me up had been waiting in the same place I was, and had seen me, but it hadn't occurred to him that I could be the distinguished professor he was supposed to meet.

Reviewing The Jerks

A member of my university's Board of Regents once asked a group of us who were assembled to explain tenure to them, "Do you have to be liked to get tenure?" The answer is no, of course. You don't have to be a nice person to do great research. But do you have to be a good person, in the sense of not being too much of an unethical jerk (as opposed to just a regular jerk)?

Almost always, I can focus on the science when I am reviewing a paper or a proposal by a regular jerk, and if I don't feel that I can be objective (to the extent that one should try to be, anyway), I don't do the review. Right now, I'm torn about whether to review a proposal that was sent to me recently. I think that the PI's department and the students and researchers will benefit greatly from the equipment that is part of this proposal, and the PI is probably just a figurehead senior guy who was available to put his name on the cover page.

A review of the proposal should therefore not focus too much on the fact that he hasn't published in decades and hasn't had an original idea since 1973, or on the fact that he is a flaming jerk, serial molester of students, and currently involved in an affair with one of his students (formerly an undergrad in his department, now his grad student). She is 48 years younger than he is, and her research project is, unfortunately, a sham (and is described in the proposal). OK, I think I just decided that I can't be objective about this one. I hope that other reviewers will overlook the unproductive jerk PI and be positive enough that the students (other than his girlfriend/student) and others in his department will get the benefit of the grant.

Professor-Student

This term, I am doing something that I really don't have time for but am doing anyway: I am taking a class. As a student. With undergraduates. My university allows staff to take one course/term, and we pay only fees but no tuition, but part of the deal is that we have to take the course for a grade or pass/fail (no audits allowed).

I am taking an introductory language class to improve my ability to speak a language that I need to know for some of my research activities. In the past, I've taught myself some basic skills in this language by tapes, books, a tutor, informal conversation groups, and of course travel, but I felt that I wasn't making any real progress beyond really basic conversation.

This class meets every day. We have homework every day, and right now, I am studying for the latest quiz. It feels very strange to be studying for a quiz. I am more than twice the age of any other student in the class, and I am older than the instructor. I was very aware of this at first, as were they, but after a few weeks we settled into a comfortable routine. The class is very interactive, so we have conversations in class about our lives: our families, hobbies,what television shows we watch, what grade/class we are in. The other students give presentations on their parents and siblings and so on. I give presentations about my husband and daughter, and otherwise I am getting a lot of practice with the negative form of verbs. I do not watch television, I am not in a grade/class, etc.

Aside from the strangeness of being an 'undergraduate' again, there are other things about this class that are very different from my usual day-to-day experience here in Scienceland. Some of these differences are related to the fact that the class is part of the Liberal Arts college:

- The class is 89% women students. I have not experienced anything approaching this ratio in any class I've taken or taught since my days at a women's college, decades ago.

- The instructor is a non-tenure-track adjunct who teaches 3 times as much as I do in any one term, no doubt for significantly lower pay and respect. She is amazing. She grades our homework every night and makes useful comments, and every day she is well prepared for class with an interesting activity and exercises. I know that universities rely on such people, but such reliance should come with better treatment: more respect, better offices, more job security, more pay.

Despite the time, which I don't really have, I am glad I am taking this class. It makes me stretch my brain in a different way, and I like that. It also gets me out of my building and my lab and into a new and alien environment, but an interesting one.

Overcommitted

I have been mulling over some recent reviews of an NSF proposal that wasn't funded. There are a lot of positive critical comments in the reviews to help with revising the proposal, and we got enough Excellents and Very Goods to definitely warrant resubmission. So, although I'm disappointed, I feel optimistic, and I have enough funding to keep me going for a while, so the rejection doesn't have dire consequences. As usual, though, I brood over the criticisms that I consider off-base/unfair, though fortunately I only brood over these for a few days.

Since the few days of brooding are not yet up: The comment that is most annoying in these reviews is one that says that I shouldn't get this new grant because I already have enough funding and am "overcommitted". I have a long record of showing that I can handle several simultaneous projects, get results, and publish them, so this criticism is baseless. Moreover, I have been on enough panels to know that there are men in my field who have more grants than I do, that this criticism is not applied to them, and that they just keep getting more grants.

I suppose I shouldn't look at absolutely everything through the Gender Lens. My husband has gotten reviews that have said he already has enough funding, but those comments have been phrased in terms of "and there's not enough money to go around", whereas in this case, the criticism is of me and my ability to manage my time and my research group.

In an effort to be not quite so relentlessly negative, I will say that most of the reviews said very nice things about my research group, and I will try to keep those comments in mind. I feel very fortunate to have the funding that I do, and to be able to support my excellent grad students and other researchers. Next time..

No Faculty Left Behind

There's a bizarre op-ed essay in the New York Times today. Eugene Hickok, from the Heritage Foundation (and a former Bushee), thinks that universities and colleges need to be more accountable for the performance of their students. I would hope that if he really wanted to make a strong case for this point of view, rather than writing the typical conservative rant, he would use facts instead of delusional myths. For example:

"Faculty members decide what they want to teach and when they want to teach it, if, indeed, they teach at all."
On what planet is this true? Should I inform my university, which seems to be unaware of this 'fact'?

".. undergraduate instruction, which is something of an afterthought on many campuses."
OK, I get it -- he's not just on another planet, he's in another century. This statement has not been true for a while at even the most research-oriented universities.

"Faculty members typically spend fewer than 200 hours in the classroom. That amounts to just five 40-hour weeks."
He can do math! Unfortunately, he does not seem to have spent any time in a real college or university -- that is, in the kind of place where professors spend time preparing for classes before actually walking into the classroom (not to mention grading), and where faculty do research, not to mention enriching service activities. At my university, the mandated time split between teaching-research-service is 40-40-20.

"And there needs to be a greater emphasis on teaching students what they need to know, rather than what faculty want to talk about."
Maybe he and his all-knowing colleagues can give us scripts to read so that we don't stray from the appropriate and relevant topics? That would eliminate the need to prepare for classes, and since he's not counting that time anyway, why not?

And then there's: "(the academy) is a culture seriously out of touch with much of America".
I suppose that's his unoriginal way of saying that we are liberals and most real people aren't. In any case, I don't feel particularly out of touch with my students at my large state university (other than of course the usual professorial phenomenon of getting older while our students stay the same age). There are exceptions: I do not feel 'in touch' when I have student who think God uses natural disasters to punish sinners and anyone else who happens to be around, nor am I in touch with students who don't believe in evolution but who make sure to get the latest flu shot. However, Eugene Hickok would no doubt be relieved to know that I feel very much in touch with sexism and discrimination, and that parts of the Academy are very much in tune with the rest of society with respect to how it treats women.

There's No I in Team If You're Batting A Thousand

Subtitle: Faculty Meeting Today!
Sports Analogy/Metaphor/Cliche Count: 3!
Number of Sports References I Understood: 1!

In addition to the loathsome sports references, there were 2 additional issues, both of them perennial, at today's meeting:

1.
At the past 2 meetings, I have made a point about Situation X, but the discussion went nowhere. At today's meeting, Professor Senior Colleague made the EXACT SAME POINT, and the Chair said "That is an EXCELLENT POINT. THANK YOU for bringing it up. What do YOU think we should do about it?" etc. I guess it's good that a real person finally made the point, instead of just me.

2. Over and over again, the senior faculty bring up the issue of the more junior faculty (including 'junior' full professors like me) being unwilling to make a commitment to spending several summer weeks in a teaching program that requires substantial travel. THEY have paid their dues, and they are perplexed that the rest of us aren't willing to take our "turn at bat" (that's the sports references I understood). I am tired of pointing out that I DO NOT HAVE A WIFE. With the other professional travel that I do in the summer, I would be away for 5-7 weeks each summer, and that is just not possible. Nor do I want to spend that much time away from my family. There are other options for instructors for this program, but these are short term options (postdocs, senior grad students, adjuncts). The senior guys keep making the point that these are inferior options because we need 'continuity'.

Well, maybe they should make the junior faculty promise not to have babies, and no one should be allowed to become ill or make any other commitments other than teaching this course every summer. The senior guys get all dramatic about how people like me are harming the undergrads by not doing our share of the summer teaching, as if our own children are abstract concepts they can't quite imagine. I have made the point that this is another example of Business As Usual in our department, but so far no one is actually listening.

Huge Girl Sale

I just saw a sign advertising a Huge Girl Sale, and couldn't resist using that for a title. The next street over is having a Monster Sale. Both sound scary, especially if the Huge Girl Sale is infested with dolls. It might be time for another poll -- which is the scariest kind of doll: Barbie, Bratz, or American Girl? I think they are all creepy each in their own special way.

Academics R Us

My favorite academic novel of all time is Straight Man by Richard Russo. I recently read Intuition by Allegra Goodman, but I don't think it qualifies since the action mostly takes place in a lab only loosely affiliated with a university. So.. what do you think?

Which is your favorite academic novel? (published in last decade)
	Straight Man by Richard Russo
	Moo by Jane Smiley
	The Lecturer's Tale by James Hynes
	Small World by David Lodge
	Thinks.. by David Lodge
	Publish and Perish by James Hynes
	Other? (leave a comment)
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Pink Butterflies

A colleague of mine just attended a welcome reception for new faculty at his university, and everyone was given an informational packet about resources and programs at the university. One colorful brochure had lots of pink on it, and pictures of butterflies, flowers, and babies. The brochure didn't have a lot of content to it, but my colleague thinks it was intended to make the point that the university cares about hiring women. He looked around the room and didn't see many women, even though the reception included the humanities as well as the sciences. He says he feared that the brochure was intended to prove that the university was aware that it had a problem, in place of real action. In our field, this university has no women faculty, and has never had any. The grad student/postdoc population, however, is 50% women, as it has been for a while.

Confessions Of An Immature Professor

Today a colleague was looking for my husband, but couldn't find him, so the colleague came to find me instead to ask me where my husband was and to see if I knew the answer to the question he was going to ask my husband. It happens with some frequency that someone will look for my husband, not find him in his office, and come to my office to ask me where my husband is. I don't mind so much if my husband is out of town and someone has been looking for him without success for a while, but other than that, it's just another interruption in my day. AND, the *strange* thing is, when people can't find me, they don't go ask my husband where I am.

Anyway, today this colleague asked me his question because he couldn't find my husband. It was a logistical/technical thing, and it wasn't something I could answer because it involved my husband's lab and the fee structure for an apparatus. My husband's lab tech could answer this question, but it's not a typical *pillow talk* topic for us. This is the same colleague who confused me with one of my female colleagues a couple of days ago, so when he asked me his question, I didn't say that I didn't know, I just made something up. It wasn't life-or-death and I doubt if the time he ends up wasting will set him back in a serious way. If he ever wants to ask me a question that is really intended for me, I will answer as graciously as I can. But not this week.

Even On Weekends

Today (Sunday) I was in the department to do a few things before the next hectic week starts. A senior colleague was showing a semi-distinguished visitor around the department, and stopped to introduce me. I have met this visitor several times before, but he never remembers me, so I just pretend that we've never met. That's fine -- he's old(er), some people are not good with names/faces etc. etc. What bothered me was that my own colleague described my research field completely incorrectly -- he confused me with another woman faculty member in our department. It's not a huge department, we all have our research niches, and the research field of the woman he confused me with is very different from my own field. I don't even look like this other woman. It was a minor but bizarre little event. I corrected him, and he was briefly embarrassed.

What To Wear, 2

More random thoughts on Un/Professional Attire

I used to think that my husband could wear whatever he wanted to conferences year after year, but that I couldn't. I was envious that he would just throw some nice-ish shirts into his suitcase (the same shirts he wears for teaching), and not think anything more about it. A few years ago, however, a Rather Famous Person in his field said to him at a conference "Is that your meeting shirt?". I laughed so much, and am still too entertained by this to this day. Now, although I can't say that he gives a huge amount of thought to what he wears at conferences, he does at least pause and wonder, "Did I wear this last time?".

Another challenge for the Modern Young Male in academia today: I have several students who wear baseball caps ALL THE TIME, even at meetings. I think I wrote about this a few months ago. My female students may well come across as more serious just because they dress more professionally at conferences. When a prospective graduate student approaches me at a meeting to discuss their application or potential application to work with me, I don't mind if they are wearing a baseball cap or are otherwise informally dressed, but I greatly dislike talking to people (students, anyone) when they are chewing gum. Memo to prospective students: lose the chewing gum before talking to potential advisors.

I have a male colleague who makes crude and lascivious comments when he sees women (young or old) dressed in an alluring way. His behavior disgusts me, but there is some satisfaction in the fact that most women think he is a troll. He once said to me "You should see me in the summer when I'm not wearing a shirt and I'm tan and in shape from hiking in the mountains." I just laughed, in what I hope was a not very nice way, and said "I could do without seeing that". I prefer to think that there is no one on this planet who would respond in a positive way to his invitation, but the fact that he is married implies that there is at least one person who at some point found him attractive.

Men and women in my field tend to dress rather the same (not counting the baseball cap fashion, which seems to be a male phenomenon) in the U.S., even at meetings, but this was not the case during my recent year in Europe. This became clear to me the first time I was invited to attend a science/business/social event, and asked a colleague what level of formality of dress was typical. He said "Oh just wear what you wear to work in the department, that's what I do." So I did. And he did as well, and he fit in perfectly with what all the men were wearing. The women, however, were extremely elegantly dressed. One woman was wearing a slinky, low-cut red silk dress with high heeled shoes. Another woman was wearing a see-through filmy top over black lingerie. I wore a black sweater and black jeans, similar to what several of the men were wearing, so I was dressed appropriately, but apparently it was only appropriate for the gender I am not. At least I wasn't wearing a baseball cap..

It Starts Early

A few months ago, my elementary-school aged daughter asked: "What's it called when someone says that girls can't do something, like math or a job or a sport, just because they're girls?". I explained about sexism and stereotypes, and gave examples. Since then, she has been very alert to pick out examples at school, in movies or books, and in our extended family. She recently surprised my mother by saying "That's a sexist stereotype!". She was absolutely right. Now the family thinks that I have indoctrinated her, although she really figured it out herself and I just put a name to what she was seeing at school and in the world at large.

Oppression O' the Day

Despite my apparent obsession with the topic of women-in-science, I really don't have to work hard at all to find examples of ways in which women are patronized, discouraged, and discriminated against on a daily basis. Some of the examples are trivial:

Trivial example: I was laughing in the corridor with a colleague yesterday, and someone (male) passing by told me that I "laugh like a schoolgirl". My immediate thought was that this must be one of the people in my department who thinks I am too young for a leadership position.

Some examples are very serious:

Serious example: A promising undergraduate student who is doing senior thesis research and has plans to go to graduate school has to change her thesis topic because she is pregnant and can't be exposed to the chemicals in the lab in which she was working. Her thesis advisor (female professor) has ideas for alternate projects, but this morning, the Undergraduate Advisor (old male professor, has a wife who raised the kids etc.) gave the student a stern lecture about how she will have to make compromises and it's going to be really difficult and he's not sure she can do research now etc. etc. He also has "intellectual" concerns about the alternate projects. This is one of those cases where mandatory retirement for aged faculty is really appealing. The student is fortunate, however, that her thesis advisor is going to make sure that she has the support she needs and can do a senior thesis.

We Don't Want To?

Too bad NYT columnist John Tierney doesn't have a fact-checker for his essays. If he did, he might have avoided publishing such a deeply flawed column today (NYT, September 26, 2006, "Academy of P.C. Sciences").

It is clear that Tierney is a very sensitive guy, though. His essay oozes with empathy for the lone man on the NAS committee that produced the "Beyond Bias and Barriers" report. I don't know how Robert Birgenau survived the experience of being on a committee in which everyone else was of the OPPOSITE GENDER. Well, OK, I sort of do, since I've been on 57 MILLION committees where I was the only female. I am sure that Tierney would have no trouble believing that those committees all produced objective, scientifically-sound, non-P.C. results, since the gender ratio was apparently skewed the appropriate way.

[note: Several years ago, one of my graduate students said to me, "I don't know if you realize this, but every once in a while, a little bit of sarcasm creeps into your speech." Then he laughed in a not-entirely sane way.]

What sort of person assumes that a committee whose membership is female-dominated is incapable of producing an objective, relevant, accurate document?

What would it take to convince Tierney that there is a problem? A committee of men concluding the same thing as Shalala et al.?

I don't know about you, but based on my own experiences, I found this less than compelling as an explanation for why there are so few women in science:

"As Science magazine reported in 2000, the social scientist Patti Hausman offered a simple explanation for why women don’t go into engineering: they don’t want to."

I saw nothing in the essay that explained why so many women students "want to" do science and engineering as students. What happens to them after that? They get a Ph.D. in science or engineering and THEN discover that they are more interested in "social values", "people contact" blah blah blah? And since when do science and engineering not involve "people contact", not to mention "social values". Hello! Ever heard of climate change, natural disasters, and energy resource exploration and extraction, not to mention TEACHING students, most of whom could technically be considered "people"?

Yes, what about those women who do not have "different priorities" than men? What about women who are interested in "learning how (a) dishwasher works."? Why don't they succeed in greater numbers? How nice that Patti Hausman found social science, so she doesn't have to care how her dishwasher works, but don't say that we don't have a problem here because we surely do. How cheap to dismiss a report because it was written by women about women. How weak to avoid the main issues and dismiss a problem for which there is abundant evidence, no matter who compiles the data.

Reinventing A Very Stupid Wheel

Someone should come up with a Geneva Conventions-type document for faculty. Somewhere in there should be a mention that faculty meetings, including *retreats* that last more than 6-7 hours, are cruel and illegal. There should, however, be a specified set of punishments reserved for people who enjoy these events so much that they make them last even longer by talking about non-essential things, like themselves.

With what little lucidity that remains to me until I recover from my ordeal, I will say that my considered opinion is that I just wasted a huge amount of time going to this thing. We talked AT LENGTH about the same old stuff, came to the same old conclusions that we need to talk more about these things, and nothing was accomplished.

And what is more, almost the first thing out of the meeting's discussion leader was an incorrect statement attributing one of my accomplishments to one of my senior (male) colleagues. It was very classic. I wish I'd been sitting there with a copy of "Beyond Bias and Barriers". I could have said "Um, excuse me, but what you just said is covered on page x in Chapter 3. Shall I read this to you?" and then everyone would gasp as they recognized their unintentional discriminatory behaviors and they would all vow to change and it would be amazing. As I said, I am not lucid right now.

Women As Bad Investments

It's taking me a while to read through the whole report recently released by the NAS on the lack of women scientists and engineers, but I like what I've read so far (I am part way through Chapter 3). Even though the results are mostly obvious to women who are already deep into a career as a scientist or engineer, it's still nice to see it written out.

For example, this is what I and others who have commented on my blog have been talking about recently:

".. on average, people are less likely to hire a woman than a man with identical qualifications, are less likely to ascribe credit to a woman than to a man for identical accomplishments, and when information is scarce, will far more often give the benefit of the doubt to a man than to a woman. Although most scientists and engineers believe that they are objective and intend to be fair, research shows that they are not exempt from those tendencies."

Will anyone recognize themselves in this and change their wayward and discriminatory behavior? I do not believe so. I do have some hope, however, that the recommendations that administrators and funding agency directors take specific actions might have some effect, especially if there is accontability and if there are more women in these positions.

So, overall, I like the report very much. I like seeing forceful statements and calls to action. And graphs. I really like graphs, even when they are scary.

It is a weird feeling to see that I belong to such an exclusive set: in my field, < 5% of full professors at research universities are women (and the number is lower at my university). I participated in the survey that went into the database that is graphed, so I really am in there. Does that mean there is something strange and/or lucky about me that got me here? I use the word lucky to indicate that I really do love my job, however much time I spend dealing with (and complaining about) obstacles and jerks. I am really not a very aggressive or competitive person, so am not especially 'male' in my personality. I can be quite assertive (which I think is more elegant than being aggressive), and I love research and teaching, so I have never been (too) tempted to give up. And I've been lucky.

Another Planet

Sometimes when I read an article about Academia, even a corner of Academia that I supposedly know a bit about, it is not uncommon for the article to diverge wildly from my own experience. Either I am out at 7-sigma (or beyond), or the articles are skewed by the random anecdotes chosen, or something..

Example: An article on CNN.com today, "Some universities shift future professors' focus to teaching". News flash: it's not just about research anymore. It hasn't been just about research for quite a while, at least in my field. Sure, there are some professors not teaching or teaching poorly, but teaching has been a major component of tenure and promotion decisions at many research universities for more than a few years. According to the article, the job market "..seems moderately more interested in teaching skills than in the past". I would change "seems moderately" to "is significantly", and perhaps define "in the past" a bit more specifically.

And then there was a quotation by an art history grad student who just wants to teach and not do research
"It's unfortunate to know you have to go through all that other stuff to get to do something you love," she said." Isn't "all that other stuff" the things you need to know in order to be able to have something interesting to say? And more than just knowing a lot of things that you can repeat to students, research gives you the opportunity to be creative, go in new directions, teach others things they can't read in books. I don't know much about art history from personal experience (though some of my best friends are art historians!), but I would hope that research and teaching complement each other very well, just as they do in the sciences. I would never argue that you can't be an outstanding teacher without doing research as well, but in my own case, doing both research and teaching makes me better at both.

Metaphorical Cats and Roosters

This morning, my husband showed me an article in which a political contest between 2 women was described as a "catfight". I think the description illuminates more about the reporter (and his editor(s)) than anything else.

We searched for news articles that use beast-adjectives to describe acrimonious political contests involving 2 men, but didn't find anything easily. I can think of one good one, but it would never be printed.

Rewarding Awards

The issue of Awards (prestigious grants, honors etc.) just won't go away. I recently finished my term on one awards committee, but have recently been asked to be on a different one. I said yes because this one involves early career faculty. This type of award can have a major impact on someone's career, and it's important to have a diverse committee.

This phenomenon of getting asked to do something after just finishing a similar activity also seems to occur with reviews. I will just finish one review and send it off, and within minutes or hours, the next request will come in from a different journal. It's as if editors sense a reviewing void and rush to fill it.

But back to awards: I had some early career awards that helped me a lot, and I think it is important for more senior faculty to encourage younger colleagues to apply for those that can be applied for, and nominate younger colleagues for other types of awards. As you get older, awards aren't so critical, but they are still a gauge of how you're perceived in your field, and to some extent a monitor of your visibility.

Of course, the whole awards thing can also be disheartening. For example, as an associate professor, I was nominated for an award that involved a nice bit of unrestricted research funding for a couple of years, but my chair unfortunately asked the 'wrong' person for a letter. I got to see the letter, and found that although the writer thought highly of me and my work, he felt that I had published "too much", and was working "too hard", and that this was "not healthy". He encouraged me to slow down. He thought that I was a "victim" of the modern pressure to publish too much and write endless grant proposals, and that he would be encouraging this if he supported my nomination . So, I didn't get the award and it went to a male colleague who had published a lot and written endless grant proposals.

Other experiences with awards have been more satisfying. A few years ago, I realized that neither my husband nor I had been nominated for fellowship in a particular professional society in which one of our spectacularly unproductive senior colleagues was a fellow. One could reasonably ask why we would want to belong to a *club* that had members like that, and there is no good answer. In any case, there was no reason we weren't fellows of this society, other than it had not occurred to anyone to nominate us. Our colleague clearly wasn't going to rouse himself from his torpor to nominate us, so I pointed out my husband's fellowlessness to another colleague (who had just assumed we were both already fellows) and this colleague got the process started. Being a Fellow (can't someone think of a better name for this?) has no effect whatsoever on one's life, but to me it felt like correcting a slight imbalance in the academic universe.

The Professor News

Thanks to Maxine for reminding me about the letters to Nature (Aug. 24) re. the Barres' commentary. The statistics on the number of women who have received some major awards is shocking in an unsurprising kind of way. Also very interesting was the letter about how changing the wording in an NIH proposal announcement and instructions - and changing the make-up of the panel - seems to have 'fixed' the problem they had both with getting women to write proposals for the young investigator grants and how the grants were awarded. For example, removing the description that "high risk" proposals were encouraged may have been one factor in increasing the number of women who applied.

That interested me in part because I don't think that the "high risk" wording, or the other descriptions mentioned, would have stopped me from writing a proposal. In fact, I find the concept appealing. I've long assumed (with some evidence from observations when serving on panels) that women's proposals are in some cases deemed to be "too risky" (for a woman?) whereas men are given the benefit of the doubt for similar proposals. So, a proposal that was not going to be undermined by a high risk factor might actually work for women IF the reviewers and panels apply fair criteria when evaluating them. In other words, I guess I'm a hurl-myself-at-the-castle-wall type (apply and see what happens).

Random note about Nature letters, which all start with "SIR-". If the editor-in-chief were a woman, would these all say "MADAM-"? (Maxine?)

In other professor news: I temporarily set aside my reluctance to read yet another barrage of New York Times articles about Harvard, and read about the demise of early admissions. If it helps those who are socioeconomically disadvantaged with their chances of admissions, that's great. I am too cynical to believe that this will happen, but will keep an open mind and see what happens. Speaking entirely selfishly as someone who applied early to one college, got in, and was done with the process in a low-stress and efficient way, I very much appreciated a process that defanged my father's obsession with the application/admittance process.

My Far Flung Correspondent

From an email from my conference-attending husband, in Europe: "You would hate this conference. Lots of senior men dominating the meeting. A few senior women, mostly keeping quiet."

Better Living Through Least Publishable Units

In recent weeks I've been on a committee that selects a recipient for one of the highest awards in a field related to my own, and it's been very interesting to observe the dynamics of the committee and also to reflect on the careers of the very successful nominees for the award. I suppose I am a "diversity" member of the committee. No woman has ever won this award, and I think only one has ever even been nominated. Many other members of the committee are past winners of the award, so as you might imagine, their opinions carry a lot of weight. And then there's me.

It will surprise no one that recipients of the award tend to have vast numbers of papers, even if the total is inflated by lots of Least Publishable Unit (LPU) papers such as "Results of My Experiments with Material X", followed by "Results of the Same Experiments with Material Y", and let's not forget the papers with multiple parts, like "Part I: My Data" and "Part II: Now I Am Going to Think About my Data."

And then there is the phenomenon of giving someone an award because he got some other awards which he got because he got some other awards and so on to infinity. Even if the early awards were well deserved, it's surprising how long you can coast on that without doing anything more creative than edit books of other people's original articles (a useful and necessary thing to do, I admit).

This recent committee was quite divided between one group that wanted to award someone with a War-And-Peace length CV with some important papers and a fair number of LPU's, and another group that favored someone who had fewer papers, but a large number of his papers were creative and had a high impact on the field. That is of course not an objective description, and it reveals what my (losing) choice was.

Many of us know colleagues who "shingle" publications by publishing more than one paper on something that probably could be just one paper, and often this practice is spoken of with contempt. Yet, publishing LPU's clearly hasn't harmed some prominent people. You wouldn't be able to get a job today if you had a CV full of LPU's and shingled papers, and you most likely wouldn't get promoted either. But perhaps there is some point at which the shear number of papers starts to impress people. I don't completely understand this phenomenon.

Is this another depressing and cynical post? I guess, but I will say that I am at least slightly optimistic that these old-style committees, awards, and such will change in the not-so-distant future.

Should One Rant to Administrators?

I guess I will find out soon because I did rant to an administrator (via email) today and he replied that we should chat more about my Issues this week. I was really fed up about a whole lot of things, and reached my tipping point when two weekend departmental functions came up in quick succession. My husband and I went to one event yesterday, and we told the powers-that-be that we would try to find childcare for an event that is 2 weeks away, but we hadn't found anything yet. We were told we have 3 more days to figure it all out. I am not feeling too motivated to do that.

Overall, I think I balance life and work very well, but it's a rather delicate balance. The balance can handle such things as travel (in fact, my husband just left for a conference), major deadlines (proposals), assorted visitors, minor illnesses and so on. I could even handle extraneous departmental functions if I had to, but that's where my attitude problem kicks in.

Last year, in a reorganization of the leadership positions in my department, for the first time in 10+ years every single position was given to male faculty (some were elected, some were appointed). The reason given to me for why I was not as qualified as my male colleagues is that they would be better able to "balance research with other responsibilities". The colleague who told me this has a stay-at-home wife. Of all the reasons one could come up with for why I shouldn't have a position of responsibility (my strange sense of humor? my tendency to be sarcastic in a place where sarcasm is not always appreciated?), this is the last one I would have thought possible. In fact, it would not have occurred to me. You will just have to believe me that in my case, this particular reason is bizarre. But there it is.

So, I have that still seething in my brain, and then these extra events come up that are easy for the guys with Wives to attend but challenging for other people. If my colleagues think I have trouble *balancing*, even though I dealt with everything that came my way and more for the past 10 years, then why should I continue being an uncomplaining team-player? I am done being nice about dealing with extra administrative activities because (1) I dealt with them for years, and it got me nowhere, and (2) I'm a full professor, and I can complain about stuff like this. My rant today wasn't just about the immediate issue of departmental functions on weekends, it was that the current department organization and culture will impact our recruitment and retention of faculty. If we keep going as we are, at the very least we have a major morale problem among the women faculty (20% of the department!), and at worst we won't be able to recruit excellent candidates who see our regressive departmental structure and culture.

Nothing But Time

Working at home just doesn't work for me -- it never has. I need to be in my office, surrounded by all my office stuff, without the home distractions of people and cats. I don't think this is any more virtuous than people who work successfully at home, though. The key thing is what you accomplish, wherever that may be. I have postdocs and students who prefer to work at their homes, and that's totally fine with me as long as we have enough time in the department when our schedules intersect, and as long as they are making progress in their research.

I was recently entertained when a colleague who NEVER comes to the department at night or on weekends, and seldom in the summer months either, stopped by the office one weekend to check his mailbox after one of his many vacations. He saw me coming out of my office, and was very surprised. He said "I didn't expect to see YOU here". So I said "Why not?" He had no response to my question. It occurred to me then that perhaps some people who 'work' at home (as opposed to the ones who really do) assume that no one else is working in the off hours either.

When I was a grad student, there were lots of grad students and postdocs working late at night and on weekends in the department. In my department now, it's the faculty and postdocs who are there at all hours, and we seldom see grad students at night and on weekends. I have always assumed that this means that the students are better at working at home than we older people who 'grew up' working in the office. And, without getting into the whole cat vs. dog issue, for some reason a large number of people in my research group have dogs, and these dogs require a lot of attention and company. This is fine with me -- I like both dogs and cats, although at present I only have cats at home. I have been strangely fascinated to watch two dog-owning but childless people in my research group juggle schedules that are much more complex than mine (a non-dog-owning mother of one). They love these dogs, of course, and the dogs are important for their emotional well-being, so we all just work around it, just as my students and postdocs have to deal with my occasional absences or erratic schedule when my daughter doesn't have school.

The 60 Hour Week

A recent op-ed essay in the NYT about the end of summer noted that most academics work a lot more than 40 hours a week, though we have somewhat erratic schedules and our work is not typically 8-5. I have some colleagues who are strictly 8-5ers, but am not one of them. I would have a hard time with a strict schedule, and with working so few hours. I added up my hours in a typical week, and easily got to 60+. Maybe I am less efficient than some of my colleagues, but even so, I wouldn't feel satisfied with working so little. It takes about 40 hours for teaching and administrative work each week, and then there's the research I want/need to get done. It doesn't really feel like it's so much time because the work is so varied, and much of it is interesting and fun.

That said, I am not looking forward to an upcoming faculty 'retreat'; i.e., an all-day faculty meeting on a weekend. Overall, I am fortunate that my department has very few evening/weekend activities that are not family-friendly. Some of my colleagues in other departments at this university have lots of such activities, and they are always torn between not going (possibly harming their standing in the department; stressful for tenure-track faculty) and going but having less time with their kids/spouses (+ the expense of baby-sitters). I don't have to deal with that much, but these retreats are different. Even if we could find an all-day babysitter who could come to our house as early as 8 a.m. on a weekend, it would probably cost about $100 for my husband and I to attend this retreat thing. I don't mean to be cheap, but the general idea of paying to go to an all-day faculty meeting is annoying. The previous chair refused to pay a student to babysit faculty offspring during these retreats because he says it wouldn't be 'fair' to those faculty without kids. I think that reason is bizarre. In the past, my husband and I have flipped a coin to see who goes and who doesn't (the loser of the coin toss attends the retreat).

Men 12 : Women 0

The official departmental speaker list was posted today. Twelve weeks of male speakers, no women speakers. It is possible that a woman will be invited in the spring as part of a special effort to promote the invitation of women scientists as speakers. Swell. I mentioned this 12 : 0 situation to one colleague today, and he explained to me, very patiently, that there are no women speakers because none were invited, so it's not that we turned down anyone's request for women speakers.. we just didn't even invite them in the first place. Oh, so that's fine then <-- sarcasm.

It is too bad that he spoke with no data to back up his hypothesis because he is not correct. I had one woman speaker on my list of possibilities, and I really find it hard to believe that I'm the only one. And even if I am, does that mean that only women faculty are interested in inviting women speakers? We have had women speakers in past years, so it does happen.

Maybe we've already invited everyone there is to invite? Some of the most prominent women in my general field have actually been here 2-3 times in recent years, so maybe we have to recycle women? We do, but only if we restrict ourselves to already famous people.

The possible speaker on my list is an early career person. I didn't sit down and make sure there was a female name on my list. I just thought about who might give an interesting talk about something new and exciting, and I thought of her. Unfortunately, she didn't make the cut this time, perhaps because she is not yet famous enough.

Meanwhile, I'll be giving 4 research talks. I always hope that when I'm invited to give a talk that I'm invited at least partially because someone is interested in my research, and not just to provide gender diversity, although I don't mind doing the role model thing as well. I would just prefer that research interest come first, as that would enhance my effectiveness as a role model (though I've doubts about how effective I really am, as I've noted before).

Teaching

Over the summer, I've done a lot of the kind of teaching that involves working individually with undergraduates and grad students on research projects. Tomorrow will involve a dramatic switch to the stand-in-front-of-a-big-class and *lecture*, although of course we aren't supposed to really *lecture*, because students apparently don't learn well in that format anymore (did they used to? is it really such a bad thing even today?). Unless I'm willing to throw out a large proportion of my course's content, which I am not willing to do, the class is going to be mostly *lecture* format. I like to think that my socratic style, use of some in-class activities, thrilling mix of powerpoint+chalkboard-writing+demonstrations, and availability for discussion/help outside of class make the lecture format effective for this class. Maybe my pedagogical imagination is limited, but this is a big university, I get these students in class for < 2 hours/week, and I have a huge amount to teach them.

Predicted positive aspects of this class:
- It's an interesting subject and I enjoy teaching it.
- Typically, at least 50% of the students in it WANT to be there; the rest have to take it for various degree requirements.
- There have been some interesting new developments in this sub-discipline, and I'm looking forward to incorporating these into the class. It's not my major field of research, but it's not too far removed from what I do, so I can also mention relevant aspects of my own research.
- It's a great course for taking a bunch of students who know nothing about the topic at the beginning, and ending up with a group in which at least some will be so interested that they will get involved in research by the end of the year.

Possible negative or worrisome aspects of this class:
- In the 15+ years I've been teaching this or similar classes, I've never had so few female students (a trend or a random occurrence?).
- It's the first 'serious' course in this discipine that some students have taken, and it can be a bit of a shock for some.
- Although there are some allied science/math prerequisites for this course, the registration system does not have the ability to notice if students have actually taken these. It always amazes me that students without the prereqs do not think it is their responsibility to know the information in those courses, and they want me or the TA's to give them extra help and/or they just don't think they should be expected to know this information. I hope this is not an issue this semester.
- The other professor who teaches this class is convinced that he does it better than I do owing to his superior intellect and teaching skills (or something), and he likes to chat with me about my shortcomings. I do not enjoy these conversations, although mostly I think they are ridiculous. I am sure there are things I could do to improve as a teacher, but I happen to know that my teaching evaluations are better than his (I was on a committee that looked at such things for the department) and I've won teaching awards. See earlier post on patronizing colleagues.

Grads & Jobs

I have attended or participated in quite a few Ph.D. thesis defenses over the past few weeks, and in every case, the graduating Ph.D. student is going to a postdoc or short-term teaching position (e.g., sabbatical replacement). Our department has many recent graduates who are now in faculty positions at universities and colleges around the world, but almost none go directly from being students to being professors. I think that's a good thing overall for both the early-career scientist and the department, but it can be stressful for those with partners/spouses/children to move around so much and have the uncertainty about the future continue for the first few post-graduate years. Some choose to take a less desirable job right away rather than gamble with the uncertainty. I've seen some promising women scientists leave the research track for just that reason.

Only one graduate in the past 10 years from my research group is now a professor at a small liberal arts college, and that person attended a SLAC as an undergraduate. When I was in job-search mode, I got interviews at SLACs, as did my fellow job-seekers who had attended SLACs, but it was very rare for a SLAC to interview someone who had spent their entire career at large universities. Colleagues at small schools admit that they discriminate in this way because they think that someone who hasn't been part of the culture won't fit in or won't appreciate it. I don't think they would completely eliminate from consideration an otherwise excellent candidate, but having attended a SLAC gives one an edge for applying for faculty positions at one. I think this general approach filters out some excellent candidates who might have enjoyed a small liberal arts college experience but couldn't afford it or had other reasons (economic, family etc.) for attending a large university. An extreme example of this is one prominent SLAC whose department in my field consists almost entirely of faculty who attended that school as an undergraduate. At present, everyone in my research group (other than me) has been at medium to large universities for their entire academic careers and none of them are seriously considering faculty positions at small schools for reasons varying from lack of interest (wrong balance of teaching vs. research) to a strong feeling that they won't fit in. So, there's definitely some self-filtering at the application stage as well.

It can be a bit perilous to take a job at a SLAC (depending on the SLAC of course) if you have research aspirations beyond what can easily be accomplished at a small school, unless you don't stay there long (1-2 years, maybe 3 years max) and if you work insanely hard to do well at both teaching and research while you're there, despite having what is likely a huge teaching load and few research resources. That said, it is quite possible to develop an active research program by taking advantage of NSF and other programs that encourage research at undergraduate institutions.