Against the Drafts

From time to time, mostly in the summer, I advise students from small colleges in research projects. Most of these students do very well, but on occasion there are students who don't like the BigU environment. In particular, they don't like the fact that they are not the main focus of professorial attention. I spend a lot of time interacting with my undergrad researchers throughout their projects, but this time is surely less than what some of them are used to.

I like to think that my SLAC interns are getting a glimpse of what life might be like for them as graduate students at a BigU, for better or worse. So, in addition to getting a research experience, they are getting a cultural experience that might help them make informed decisions about their post-graduation plans.

Below, in abridged form, is correspondence between a SLAC intern and me, highlighting an example of differences in expectations and priorities between a small college student and a BigU professor:

FSI (former summer intern): I'm sending you a draft of an abstract I'd like to submit for the X meeting next year based on the work I did with you. I think it's pretty good and I worked really hard on it, so I hope you like it too! Please send me comments as soon as possible!

FSP: I can tell from your abstract that you have a good grasp of the motivation for the study, but the text doesn't contain any of the data or conclusions from your summer research. I know this is your first conference abstract, so maybe it would help if you looked at some examples of abstracts from recent conferences of this sort, to get a sense for content and style. In the meantime, I've written a few sentences to show you how the abstract might start, and I've listed topics and data items that could form the bulk of the abstract.

FSI: Thanks for the comments but the way that you sent them was not helpful to me at all. The sentences you wrote make things very difficult for me. Please do not write any actual text, just general suggestions. You write better than me so if you write some text I will never learn how to do that myself. I am working really really hard. I am going to work on the next draft between 1-2 pm today and then send it to you, so if you could be in your office then (taking into account the time zones), you can send comments back to me right away.

FSP: I am happy to help you with the abstract, but I am going to use my best judgment as to the most constructive way to do so: a combination of text + general suggestions. The research results are interesting, and I am sure you can come up with a good abstract with a bit more work. Alas, I cannot be in my office at the time you specified, but I will send further comments in plenty of time before the submission deadline.

FSI: OK, here is a new draft. I am going to sleep now but please send me more comments soon so I can work on this in the morning.

FSP: The new version you sent me is identical to the first version. I think you must have attached the wrong file.

FSI [next morning]: Sorry! Here is the new draft. Please send me comments SOON! Please do NOT rewrite the text for me. Just send me general comments!

FSP [afternoon]: This new draft if better, but it still needs quite a bit of work in terms of content and writing. I have provided both specific and general suggestions on the attached draft.

FSI [same afternoon]: Thanks, here is another draft. I took all of your suggestions and I wrote some new parts about the data and results.

FSP [that night]: In the latest version, you have not fixed any of the errors that I noted in my last set of comments. I am sorry that I do not have time to repeat these comments and to go over more drafts with you, so I have made the edits directly in the abstract. You can submit this version of the abstract. I think your summer research results will make a great conference presentation, and I look forward to seeing you again next year at the meeting.

FSI [next morning]: I really want there to be at least a few sentences in this abstract that are 100% my own and not ones that you have changed at all, so I have added some new sentences to the beginning and end. I am attaching a new draft.

FSP: I can appreciate that you want the abstract to be your own, but the sentences that you added contain incorrect or misleading information, as well as new typos. I do not think it is a good idea to cast doubt on decades of existing work unless there is a good reason to do so. It would not be a good idea to submit an abstract with these statements as-written.

FSI: OK, I will submit the version you want. I looked at the submission form and it says that I need your department address and office phone number. Do I really need these? If I do, can you please send them to me? I also need the addresses and phone numbers of the other coauthors. Can you send those as well? I really want to submit this soon so I hope you will send me this information. I may need your help with other things too. Can you be in your office at 2 pm today?

[FSP email not sent: Yes, No/Google, No/Google, No]

...............................................................................

In discussing this with colleagues, opinions are divided as to whether I should have been more helpful with respect to the student's desire to be independent, even if it meant repeating the same editorial suggestions and going through even more than the 4 drafts I eventually read vs. whether I was too accommodating of the student's lack of organization, initiative, and demonstrated ability to work independently.

There is also the issue of whether I should have showed my annoyance with the student's demands about how and when I should provide comments.

Given my quality control freakiness, there was no way I was going to consent to submission of a highly flawed (and in one version, offensive) abstract, but I think I would have let things slide if the only problems were somewhat awkward sentences.

I don't know what happens to a student who needs so much help with so many things so continually and who wants to attend graduate school. There aren't such things as small liberal arts graduate schools in Science, as far as I know. I can, however, recommend to my former intern some smaller programs or less prickly advisors with small research groups, in the hopes that this will be a better environment for her than my somewhat-large research setting was.

Thanks But No Thanks

It is so gratifying to know that other professors (Angry Professor, for example) also get exciting offers of international travel. Here is one of my own examples:

Dear Professor FSP,

I am an instructor at [insert name of university I have never heard of in the most troubled part of a Very Troubled Country in which Americans and others have been kidnapped and killed with some frequency] and I am very interested in your researches. I have followed your papers. I am happy to tell you that this year is the nth anniversary of the founding of my institute.

Sincerely,

A Scientist from a Very Troubled Country


Dear Scientist,

Thank you for your kind email. I congratulate you on the anniversary of your institute.

Sincerely,

FSP


Dear Professor FSP,

Thank you a lot for your reply and good wishes. I would like to invite you to visit my institute and give a speech as part of our anniversary celebrations. The speech will be on [insert date a few months away]. It will be my honor to show you our beautiful institute.

Sincerely,

A Scientist from a Very Troubled Country


Dear Scientist,

Thank for your invitation. I am honored but I regret that I am not able to accept. I have other commitments for travel at the time of your event. Congratulations again on the anniversary of your institute and best wishes for a successful celebration.

Sincerely,

FSP


Dear Professor FSP,

Your name is on our printed programs as the most special speaker of the ceremony and we cannot change this now, the ceremony is too soon. I have told all my colleagues that you are coming and we are happy for your coming. It will be very bad for me if you do not give us a speech. We are waiting your visit. Please tell me of your arrival time and I will be at the airport to meet you.

Sincerely,

A Scientist from a Very Troubled Country


I feel great sympathy for my would-be colleague and the difficult conditions under which he lives and works, but I tend not to respond well to manipulation and deceit, even if accompanied by an invitation to visit an intriguing place.

Is there really anyone who would have replied "Oh well, OK, if the programs are already printed, I will change my existing plans, buy a plane ticket, attempt to get a visa, acquire more life insurance, and jet off to give the speech."?

Indifferent Bureaucracy

On Friday, I discussed academic/non-academic communication issues, and referred to an essay by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar about "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education." The main theme of the essay -- that people who went to Yale can't talk to working class people because Yale didn't teach them how to do this -- does not merit additional discussion, but I wanted to mention a few things about the author's views of non-elite institutions.

His views of non-elite institutions are just as strange as one might suppose from the rest of his essay. He believes that some? most? all? public universities are run by an "indifferent bureaucracy" and his view of students is that:

"At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines."

Non-elite schools are basically factories that churn out oppressed drones to be the cubicle-dwelling accountants and customer service representatives upon whom the elitely educated rely for their quotidian needs?

In the essay, the term "indifferent bureaucracy" seems to include professors as well as administrators, and this is a great disservice to all the hard-working and caring faculty at non-elite institutions. In addition, most state universities, however non-elite, have swarms of deanlets and other administrators whose sole purpose is to advise students, help them stay on track, work out plans for failing students, and send endless email to faculty with instructions on how to provide the best customer service for our student-clients.

There may be indifferent university administrations out there; I cannot argue otherwise. Furthermore, all the state universities with which I have been most closely associated have Carnegie Classifications of RU/VH, Research University/Very High research activity.

I have never been a student or faculty at a school like the author's favorite example, Cleveland State, so perhaps I don't speak from any more experience than the author of the essay, but from time to time I visit schools like Cleveland State. I typically give a few talks each year at regional universities that do not have research/graduate programs and that do not typically have outside speakers visit departments to give talks. This, along with the experiences of friends and colleagues who teach at regional (non-research focused) universities, form my (incomplete) database.

When I give a talk at a regional university, students are likely to ask me "Why are you here?", "Why do you want to talk to us?", or "Are you visiting because you want a job here?" because they are puzzled by the purpose of my visit. As Deresiewicz correctly notes, these schools are not besieged by academic or professional visitors, unlike the situation at elite institutions.

Why do I visit? The organization that pays for my travel has the specific focus of facilitating visits by faculty from research universities to non-research universities, to meet the students and faculty, talk about summer internships, graduate school and other career opportunities in the sciences, and basically just help the faculty get students excited about science and education. An additional purpose is for students to see women professors in a field in which there are few.

Some of my colleagues sneer at these visits. You're going to give a talk at Southwest-central Statename University? Will there be chickens at your talk? But I love these visits. Some of them have been grim, I must admit. When the faculty are relentlessly negative, when no one wants to talk to me outside of my scheduled lecture because they are "too busy", and when I am left on my own in the evening to walk alone down blighted industrial strips hoping to find a Subway, I can get a bit downcast about the experience. These bad experiences have, however, been extremely rare.

Much more often, I visit places where faculty are doing amazing things despite high teaching loads and large classes of students with complex lives, where students are working hard and are excited about what they are learning, and where people ask me lots of questions after my talk, with interesting conversations continuing throughout the evening. That is my experience at most of the places I visit. There are interesting people everywhere. There are bright and motivated students everywhere. Perhaps they are attending a regional university for economic or family reasons. Perhaps they screwed up in high school and didn't get focused and intellectually engaged until college. Some of these students have the same career goals as students at more elite universities, and, if they do well as undergrads, there is no reason they can't have interesting (and lucrative) careers.

My husband said to me recently "You always grumble about going on these trips to Southwest-central Statename University [confession: I do grumble; the trips take a lot of time and energy that I don't always have in abundance], but you always return happy about the trip and filled with stories about all the great people you met."

Yes, there are major differences between the student populations (and the experience of giving a talk) at Regional U and Prestigious U, but I think most students at Regional U's would be surprised to hear that they are doomed to narrow lives of subordination just because they are not attending an elite university. They might not, however, be surprised to find that people at elite universities believe that this is their fate.

She Said/They Said

The other day I was standing in line at a local eatery to acquire some take-out food so that I could have that cherished experience of eating at my desk, when the person next to me in line asked:

Aren't you [insert my real name]?

Me: Yes.

Other person: I work in the Development Office at the university, and we were just talking about you. You have children, don't you?

Me: I have one child, a daughter.

Other person: How old is she?

Me: [insert tween age]

Other person: I remember when my daughters were that age. [insert rambling reminiscence, at some point during which we both acquire our food]. Well, it was great to talk to you. [leaves]


Do I really want to know who "we" are and why the development office at my large university was discussing me and my offspring?


Imaginary scenario #1 in the Development Office:

Person 1: One of our alums was asking if there are any women faculty in the science departments. I know there are some. Do you know anything about them?

Person 2: What about that woman in the X Department? There was something written about her in that boring and crass glossy magazine the university publishes.

Person 1: Oh that's right, now I remember. She seems kind of strange. I wonder what her kids are like.

Preferred imaginary scenario #2 in the Development Office:

Person 1: I am so tired of chasing after big donors who are only interested in the athletics program or having their name on a plaque in a corridor of some biomedical building. I wish we could highlight something different for a change.

Person 2: Perhaps we could try to get more money for physical sciences research at the University. The physical sciences are central to most major issues facing the world today, and some physical sciences faculty at this university are doing fascinating research.

Person 1: That's so true. For example, there's that professor over in the X Department. I was reading about her research and how she manages her career and family life. Maybe that's the kind of faculty we should be supporting.

Person 2: Yes, I agree completely, especially if she can use the prefix nano in the name of some of her research projects.

Talking to the Plumber

Following on yesterday's post about talkativeness, another issue related to communication skills involves the ability (or lack thereof) of academics to converse with non-academics. I suppose some would replace the word "academics" with "intellectuals", but intellectuals (sensu stricto*) can inhabit both academic and non-academic environments, and highly intelligent people are found in all social and economic classes.

There has been much discussion of this general topic, particularly this summer, owing to the publication of the article by William Deresiewicz in The American Scholar, "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education".

In the essay, there are statements with which I agree, e.g. that those who attend elite universities are not necessarily "better" people (or even smarter) than those who do not, and there are aspects of it with which I disagree, e.g. that an elite education renders one unable to converse with anyone who had a different educational experience.

So Deresiewicz is unable to converse with his plumber. I do not believe that that is because Yale brainwashed him to believe that he had nothing to say to plumbers because he is intellectually superior to such people. If he's right, though, I find it puzzling that his subsequent life experiences gave him no conversational fodder whatsoever.

In general, I do not easily converse in a chit-chat kind of way with people I don't know, whether or not they are professors or plumbers, but this condition pre-dates my elite college education. Even so, I am capable of talking about the weather, pets, or children if the situation requires. I am even capable, particularly under torture, of talking about Sports. I know nothing about how any team in any sport is currently doing at any given moment, but I can ask questions, thereby maintaining a semblance of a conversation. Again, this applies to conversations with academics and non-academics alike.

My ability to converse with non-academics also varies depending on the other person's conversational skills. A professor-plumber communication gap is by no means exclusively the fault of the professor. For example, I do not typically have good conversations with home-repair people who patronize me or assume I know nothing about electricity or other "guy things" (e.g. The electrician who was distressed when he realized that he had to talk to me instead of my husband, saying "Oh great, I don't suppose you even know where the fuse box is."). In contrast, I always enjoy chatting with a certain handyman who does random repairs on our house. He is a nice and interesting person (and he thinks my cats are beautiful).

I think that for most people, everyday communication is a complex process that has many variables related to personalities, mood, context, weather, and so on.

So far I have been discussing one's ability to converse across the academic/non-academic boundary. Another (related) issue is one's interest in doing so. I must admit that I avoid certain situations (in fact, two: haircuts and appointments with a particular dental hygienist whose conversation about her church and son easily adds 20 extra minutes to routine appointments) because I find the conversational aspects of them excruciating (literally so in the case of the chatty dental hygienist).

How is this different from Deresiewicz's inability to converse with his plumber? There may be some similarities stemming from an academic/non-academic culture gap, but any conversational shortcomings on my part are not because my educational background has failed me in some way. I think I can take responsibility for this all by myself.

[possible topic for next week: Deresiewicz's comments on the "indifferent bureauocracy" of non-elite academic institutions]


* Use of the Latin in this context represents an attempt at humor.

Does She Have Teeth?

Thanks to all who left nice comments on the post yesterday about science blogs vs. academic culture blogs. I still feel like I don't understand why, given the number of science blogs in existence, some people think that this particular blog should have more scientific content. Does it mean this blog is less rigorous? Scientists should write about Science? And so on.

But today I want to talk about something else. I recently encountered an extremely talkative colleague, and this conversation, combined with an event during my summer visit to the ancestral home, made me think about the issue of Talkativeness.

During my visit to the home of my youth, my father made a brief appearance and gave me a photocopy of a page of notes he took at Parents’ Night at my school when I was in 9th grade.

The only time that parents met teachers was during an evening at the school, typically in the late fall or early winter, after we’d been in school for months. On this one night, parents went to the school en masse (and sans kids) to walk the halls of the school, gaze at our desks, and meet the teachers. Parents talked for a few minutes with each teacher while other parents milled about nearby, waiting their turn.

I don’t know for sure of course, but it wouldn’t surprise me if no other parent took notes at these events. (background info/abridged history of my father’s career: Navy → seminary/ministry → engineering). He had already morphed into an engineer when he took the notes in a little pocket notebook, no doubt using one of the many pens he carries around in his front pocket.

Here is what my father wrote down about me during one of these meet-and-greet events with my teachers in 9th grade:

SCIENCE, 97%: Good work. Gets along with other kids. Doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t appear to be afraid of teacher. Will answer direct questions.

ENGLISH, 99%: Very quiet. Highest grade. Excellent writing. Doesn’t talk much to teacher. Talks to friends.

In 7th or 8th grade, a teacher asked my parents: “Does she have teeth?”, wondering if my reluctance to speak in class related to a dire dental problem.

Seeing these notes reminded me of just how annoying it was that everyone focused so much on my quietness, assuming it was unhealthy. I loved school, I had friends, and I was involved in numerous activities (school sports team, school newspaper etc.). If a teacher initiated a conversation with me, I had no trouble conversing.

I was quiet, but (in my opinion) not in a dysfunctional way. In the opinion of my teachers, however, I was too quiet. I know this from what my parents told my teachers, as duly recorded by my father in his notes, and I know it because my teachers used to try to bring me "out of my shell", a phrase I have always loathed. The attempts typically involved public humiliation, and I found them counterproductive.

My youthful experiences as a quiet person taught me a few things:

- Many people assume that quiet people are stupid and/or disturbed. Quiet people are not necessarily stupid or disturbed; they may be or they may not be, just like people who talk easily and/or a lot. The lack of correlation between intelligence and talkativeness has been important to remember during my experiences teaching and advising, especially in classes that require student participation or when advising a quiet/shy student in a research project.

- As long as someone can communicate at some level, there is no need for extraordinary measures to make them talk more. Humiliation is not a good method for encouraging a student (or anyone) to talk more.

- People who are quiet are not necessarily bad teachers or bad speakers. There may be no correlation between ability to speak in social settings and ability to speak to a class or professional audience. I have always enjoyed public speaking, even during my most intensely shy years. In contrast, some very outgoing people may be terrified of public speaking.

- Being quiet/shy as a child may actually be good preparation for later life, contrary to what teachers, parents, and others typically assume. I think it made me somewhat stubborn, or at least reinforced that trait. In my youth, I preferred to be quiet -- it felt right to me, and didn't seem like something that needed radical alteration. Over the years, I've been told that I needed to change things about myself to succeed -- my personality (not aggressive enough), my appearance (not old/serious/tall/well-dressed enough), my voice (too soft, too female) etc., but I always felt that I could succeed by working hard, caring about my work, and being smart enough.

I have learned that it's OK to be quiet and/or shy, as long as the shyness is not so extreme as to make all human interaction painful and difficult.

Something else I (re)learned on my recent trip to the ancestral home:

- My mother married a man who is even more strange than the men her sisters married, and this gives me pause.

A colleague recently told me that my posts have been rather long lately, so I will stop here for now, but I have more to write (but not say aloud) about this topic.

Where's the Science?

Every once in a while, a commenter remarks that this blog is not a Science Blog but is instead an Academic Culture Blog. Some commenters politely request that there be more scientific content (though some understand that this would be an anonymity-compromising move), and some are rather more rude about it, acidly noting that there is no scientific content whatsoever in this blog, as if this will be painful news for me.

This is not a Science Blog. It is what it is because I don't feel like blogging about scientific topics, however fascinated I am by my research field. There are many science blogs, but this is not one of them. Even if I could retain my anonymity to some extent and blog about science, I would not.

Perhaps my lack of interest in blogging about science relates to the issue I discussed the other day with reference to whether blogging is a good use of one's time. Blogging is sort of a hobby for me, and I like that I have an outlet for discussing academic issues other than those directly related to specific research. I also like that I can contribute my perspective as an academic inhabitant not otherwise well represented in the blogosphere - a senior FSP.

I am fascinated by the academic ecosystem, and am particularly interested in issues that aren't typically discussed much, if at all. Some of these are generic academic issues, some are specific to science (and perhaps engineering/math), some are specific to professors at research universities, and some are specific to Female (Science) Professors -- or some combination of those elements. I also write about random things, mostly about family and cats.

There are some very interesting issues related to research, teaching, and life as a professor in my specific research field, and these I don't discuss because of my wish to remain semi-anonymous for now. Even these issues, though, are related more to academic culture than to the science itself.

Even if I have no wish at this time to write a Science Blog, I'm glad that other people write such blogs.

Maybe part of the problem for me is that I don't have a clear sense of what my purpose of writing about science would be. I have zero interest in blog-lecturing about research topics. I find most explanatory/lecture blogs boring, though I'm sure that others find them interesting and I am glad that this is so.

I would be slightly more interested in writing about Science in the News, but there are many such blogs and other sites that do just that. I'd have to feel rather strongly that I had a new perspective to add to the discussion before I would blog about scientific news.

Maybe someday I will run out of things to say about academic culture and will turn my attention to another hobby, perhaps even Science Blogging .. or emu farming .. or creating designer graph paper (and graph-paper themed apparel). For now, however, I am still finding things to discuss and am interested in reading (most of) the comments and posting random cat pictures.

Watch Your Eyes

The now-famous video of John McCain glancing repeatedly and furtively in the general direction of the backside of Sarah Palin while she gave her VP candidate speech has divided the electorate into those who say he was looking at her teleprompter (though why he needed to read her speech instead of listening to her, I don't know) and those who think he was being a sleazy guy (an impression boosted by his obsessive fiddling with his wedding ring while he was looking at whatever he was looking at).

I don't know what he was doing, but another odd thing about the event is how he keeps trying to kiss her at the end of her speech, and how she keeps moving out of his reach. Maybe this was just an awkward moment, but it sure looks like she doesn't want McCain leaning towards her as he does. Eventually she gives in and he kisses her cheek.

This has happened to me before (though never with John McCain), including an episode a few months ago when I was visiting another university and an American scientist I have met maybe once years ago insisted on kissing me, and not in a European-style cheek kissing kind of way. I stepped back and made it clear I only wanted to shake hands, but he ignored that. He's about a foot taller than I am, and I didn't feel like I had much choice. I wish there were a good way to avoid such experiences, whether or not someone is going to put a video of it on YouTube.

And then there's the issue of the ambiguous glance. This post is not a political rant or a comment on Palin's qualifications or her ability to be a "good" mother and a candidate/VP (I find the latter question abhorrent and cannot be objective about the rest of it). This is a comment on the significance of McCain's glances, no matter what he was looking at:

- If McCain was looking at the teleprompter, he wasn't listening to Palin. If he had to look sideways to see the teleprompter, why not just listen to her? Didn't he know that furtive glances would look strange? And didn't he know that, given the location of the teleprompter, it might not be obvious what he was looking at? Her speech was a rather important moment in his campaign, if not in history.

- If he was glancing at her, does he think that it's OK to look at a woman this way, on or off camera? Zuska and others have written about men-looking-at-women issues recently and in earlier posts, and I will not go over all the reasons why a woman might not want to be stared at in the way that McCain appears to be staring at Palin. I find Palin's political and social views repellent, but I think she should be treated in a respectful and professional way.

If this moment really is going to be historic, McCain should listen to his running-mate when she is speaking, he should look her in the eye, and he should treat her with the same respect that he would have given to any of the men he considered choosing as a VP candidate. And then, if elected, to show solidarity with all the women who are paid less than men for the same work, he should pay her 77% of Cheney's salary. [← joke]

Labor Daze

Every once in a while, a commenter writes that I should spend time on my Research rather than writing this blog. That is, the time I spend writing this blog would be better spent doing my research rather than whining about how difficult my life as a Female Science Professor is. My priorities are askew and/or I enjoy wallowing in victimhood so much that I will never be a truly successful science professor.

It would be interesting to know whether the amount of time spent by these commenters reading blogs and writing comments (rather than doing their research) is at all similar to the amount of time I spend blog writing, but alas, those data are unavailable.

I am unsure of the basis for the assumption that blog-writing time is directly subtracted from research time, as opposed to, say, sleeping or house-cleaning or zorbing time. Of course, we could all spend infinite time on research, and the world would be a better place if we did so [ ← sarcastic font].

I am going to assume that the time I spend with my family is an acceptable use of non-research time, but how is blog-writing time different from time spent on some other hobby or professional service activity?

Do these commenters similarly criticize people who spend time gardening or playing online chess rather than spending that time doing research? Imagine if I said to a colleague “You know, Bob, that time you spend golfing really would be better spent on Research. You’ll never get into the National Academy of Sciences if you keep going off to the links every weekend for a couple of hours.” Would that be a sane thing to say?

Or how about: “Pierre, how can you justify spending all that time writing poems about giant squid when you should be doing Research instead of irrelevant writing that will do nothing to get you into the Academy?”. Even if the squid poems are not so great, why shouldn't my colleague spend his time writing them?

There seems to be something about FSP-type blogs that inspires the patronizing “you should be doing research” (instead of writing a blog) comments from some people.

I guess I could run an experiment and blog about my cats for a few weeks (or months) and see if I still get these comments. Or I could just let the cats write the blog while I use this time to do research.. or golf (which in my case would be mini-golf, at which I excel, if I may say so myself).

Minding the Extraordinary Gap

One of my uncles recently told me that one of his daughters had discovered that a newly-hired man at her workplace (a state institution) was being paid an "extraordinary" amount more than she or other women at the same level. My cousin initially assumed that this man must have some extra credentials or experience, but she did some quiet investigating and found that he did not.

My cousin talked to her boss to ask him why the new guy was being paid so much more than women who were his equals in experience and credentials. She assumed there was a good reason, but wanted to know what it was. It turned out there was no good reason, and my cousin and the other women were given "extraordinary" raises so that they were making the same (or more) than the new guy.

My uncle was shocked that his daughter had questioned her boss, but was impressed with her for getting such a big raise. He said to me "What I can't figure out is why she and the others got such a large raise when all she did was ask why this guy was being paid more." I told him that I thought my cousin and the other women could have sued and won, and that would have cost the state more and gotten the supervisors in trouble. In the end, the women probably would have gotten the big raises anyway. I said "You can't pay men more than women for no reason." Well, OK, you can, but I didn't feel like saying that.

This really surprised my uncle. He said he assumed that the salary you were paid was the salary you "deserved". I don't really know what he means by "deserved", and he couldn't explain it. He said it wouldn't have occurred to him to question why a man was being paid more than some women ("girls").

In many jobs, including some academic jobs, you get the salary that someone else thinks you deserve, and they may think someone else deserves more, but not for any particular reason that makes sense.

The mechanism for determining academic salaries varies widely from institution to institution. For state universities, the mechanism varies from state to state, and may also vary within a state if there is more than one university system. Even in systems that have salary ranges for specific ranks, there are ways that these ranges can be adjusted.

On two occasions I have acquired the salary data for faculty in my department. All of the highest paid faculty are men, but these are all men who have been or are administrators and/or are the department superstar. There is one outlier that makes my gnash my teeth when I think about it.

If you consider my individual salary compared to my department colleagues, there are some senior men who make less than I do (owing to their long-term lack of productivity), and there are coeval men who make more than I do (owing to nothing obvious). In the latter case, the difference is enough to make me annoyed and to point out the disparity to my department Chair, but not enough to make me call a lawyer.

In response to my query, the department Chair gave me a significant raise, in part from supplementary funds provided for this purpose from higher levels of university administration. This raise was nice but not enough to bring me to the same level (or even within spitting distance) as the more highly paid coeval men, but it did close the gap a bit. I think the Chair wants to lessen the chance that I will leave and/or be very unhappy about the inequality, but he isn't about to do anything too daring.

What impresses me about my cousin's case is that her boss brought her and the other women up to salary parity. I think a lot of people in the same situation would toss the women a bit of money to make them less likely to sue but not do anything too "extraordinary".

Rename the Professors Poll

As you may have seen, there is a new poll in the sidebar to the right. The poll will be live for a week. I suppose I can add to it if any new exciting nominations are made. The perceptive reader will note, on reading the poll list, that I have failed to come up with a serious list of viable alternatives, but went ahead with the poll anyway for its entertainment value (such as it is).

As I have been discussing this week (and a few other random times in the past), the motivation for this effort is the unsatisfactory nature of the current terms for professorial ranks. "Assistant Professor" is particularly annoying and kind of demeaning as a term, and "Associate Professor" isn't much better.

I realize that some people think that becoming Chair or Dean or Vice-Assistant Provost represents career advancement, and although I will not argue that Dean > Professor in terms of the academic power structure, becoming an administrator represents taking a different career path and is not necessarily the only way to advance your career as a Professor.

Some of my close colleagues have some extra words they can put in front of their Professor title -- e.g. endowed chairs (either the permanent or the folding chair sort). These titles are nice to have, especially since some of them come with some unrestricted research funds. Even if the title name consists of a couple of extraordinarily long or strange names (+ middle initials and/or nicknames) of the benefactors of the chair -- e.g., the Hildegaard Z. ("Muffin") and Llewellyn O. ("Smurfy") Erlenmeyer-Foo Distinguished Chair -- these are still nice positions to have.

One of my Endowed Chair colleagues has recently discovered that he gets more rapid and positive responses to his e-mails if he put his Endowed Chair title in his sig file than if he leaves the title out. He doesn't want such title-impressed people to exist, but, since they do, he appreciates that he can at least get their attention now.

For the un-endowed and administratively disinclined Professors facing the long stretch between final promotion and retirement, perhaps there are some adjectives we can add to make life a bit more interesting. The poll at right focuses on the Big Three (replacements for Assistant, Associate, and "full"), but some of the categories are versatile enough to permit some fine-scale additions to the Professor rank.

No Assistants Required

Let's do away with the existing adjectives used to describe the professorial ranks. These terms are inaccurate, somewhat annoying, and they do not inspire confidence in our non-academic friends and relations. We need more awe-inspiring adjectives.

Even once you become a Professor (as in, a so-called "full" professor, although "full" is not technically part of the title) and you lose the demeaning adjectives, all is not perfect. When people ask me my title and I say "Professor", I am then asked "What kind of professor? Do you have tenure?", as if I am leaving out some information by not including any adjective. In some situations I am reluctant to say "full professor" because I am quite tired of the "full of what?" question that inevitably follows. We all need better adjectives.

I do not think we should adopt a military style system. Many of the names of ranks are unintuitive in terms of their relative significance. For example, I think my brother's rank sounded more impressive when he was a Commander than a Captain, but I'm pretty sure he was a Captain after he was a Commander. I suppose everyone knows that an Admiral or a General is a highly ranked officer, but the rest of the names are kind of obscure. And I can never keep track of whether my Marine Colonel uncle is more highly ranked than my Army Captain uncle. I don't really care, but apparently this controls who gets what chair at the dinner table.

I suppose we could add 'stars' to our professorial ranks, as that is a simple concept that would instantly convey status. If we are going to keep some adjectives for the pre-full professor ranks, though, we need some better adjectives.

So: Send me some adjectives and I will construct a poll of the top choices.

No Opportunity for Advancement

Recently I returned briefly to my ancestral home and spent time with various relatives. I’ve described these experiences before. The women cook, the men sit and drink and talk about war and religion. All of the men have been in the military and/or are ministers (some both).

I have also complained before about how my family thinks I am kind of a loser relative to my brother, who is in the military. I was reminded of this again (and again) on my recent visit.

Army Uncle: So, you don’t seem to have been promoted in a while. What is the next rank you could attain if you are ever promoted again?

FSP: Professors only have 3 ranks: Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor. I’m a Professor.

Army Uncle: So you have no more opportunities for advancement? You’ve gone as far as you can go with your career? That’s it until you retire?

FSP: I can advance in my career without getting new titles every few years. As a Professor, I'm still doing research and making advancements with that.

Army Uncle: Huh.


I can see how, from the outside, being a Professor (as in, full Professor rank) might seem like a career plateau with no major expectations and no major changes until retirement, and there are surely some professors who coast along from promotion to retirement. Most of us, though, are still interested in our work, pursuing new ideas and research directions, obtaining research funds, advising graduate students and postdocs, and "advancing" in our careers in terms of the discoveries we make and, yes, the recognition we get for doing so.

I am glad that we don't have dozens of promotions and titles, though I am considering inventing some that professors can use in discussions with non-academic family members. For example, I think that given the length of time since my promotion to Professor.

(Un)welcome visitor?

Note: Comment moderation/posting may be intermittent this week.


Those of us who teach at large universities typically teach the 'lecture' part of the course, and the laboratory part is taught by graduate student teaching assistants. The success of the class as a whole involves both parts, so the integration of lecture and lab and the interaction of the professor and TA are important elements of the course.

When I discuss teaching issues with colleagues at peer institutions, one of the questions I ask is: "Do you visit the lab sections for your course?"

I am not talking about the large introductory courses that may have tens of lab sections taught in remote buildings at all hours of the day and may contain students from various sections of the course. When I teach a large introductory level course, I like to know what is going on in the labs in terms of topic/activities each week, but there is no way I can visit the labs.

The courses for which the question about visiting is most relevant are those that typically have 1-2 lab sections that are held in a location not too distant from faculty offices. There may be 1-2 teaching assistants, in many cases the instructor's own graduate students. Most of my courses have more than one lab section (and in some cases more than one TA), so I don't really have time to visit the labs, but it would at least be humanly possible for me to visit the labs. But do I visit the labs?

I have found that there are pros and cons to visiting the labs for my courses.

Pro

If I spend enough time in the lab, I can get a better sense for how the students (individually and as a group) are doing in the class. Who is struggling? Who would like more of a challenge? What concepts are not getting through via in-class lectures and activities?

Students have additional opportunities to talk to me and ask questions, and there is time to answer questions at length.

I can refer to lab activities in a more informed way in class. It is better to be able to say in class "As you saw in lab on Tuesday.." rather than "As you may have seen in lab on Tuesday.." or (worse) "As you were supposed to have seen in lab on Tuesday..".

Students will have additional evidence that I care about the course and my students.


Con

The TA may feel undermined. Am I visiting the lab because I don't trust the TA's teaching abilities or knowledge? Perhaps I am a control freak.

The students may feel nervous if I am looking over their shoulder and popping in at unexpected times. They might feel more comfortable around the TA, but may be anxious if I see them being perplexed by a lab activity. Will I think they are stupid?

I don't have time to visit the labs.


Ideally, the pros will surpass the cons, I will have infinite time to stroll into the lab sections, I will have a comfortable working relationship with the teaching assistants, and the students will all be happy and motivated seekers of knowledge. If only.

I used to visit the labs for my courses, but I found that the cons of doing this were outweighing the pros. Some teaching assistants definitely felt undermined, and thought I was checking up on them or not trusting them to explain things correctly. Also, some students were reluctant to admit they were confused when I asked if anyone had questions. Perhaps they were only temporarily confused, and the moment I chose to visit the lab was just at that time. This caused stress. So, my visits became less frequent, and in some (most?) terms, I don't visit the labs at all. This fact shocks some of my friends who teach at small colleges and who teach both lecture and lab (or make no distinction between these two elements of their courses).

I am, however, very involved in construction of the lab activities, and I try to integrate class and lab each week so that lab is not a random disconnected activity that the students go off and do in another room in the building.

This works OK, and this is also what most of my colleagues do. Most of us don't visit the labs, primarily owing to lack of time. Those who do visit labs do so because (1) there is one lab section that immediately follows or precedes the lecture part of the class, in some cases in the same room, making it easier to be involved in the lab; or (2) the TA really is inadequate. I have never been in situation #1, and, in my experience, situation #2 is extremely rare.

Barely Writing

There is a nudity analogy that describes why some people have trouble writing manuscripts and proposals, hate the entire process of writing, and struggle with this important aspect of academic life despite the dire consequences of not writing well or enough. Note that writing problems apply to those who do not write well and to those who can write well but have difficulty writing.

The analogy/hypothesis is: People who hate writing and are reluctant to write feel as if they are "undressing" in front of other people. By writing, they are baring a private part of themselves, and this is extraordinarily difficult and painful for some people. When they put words in a document, they are standing naked in front of other people.

When I first heard this analogy, I laughed a lot because of the implications of this analogy for people like me who love to write and do it fairly easily.

There are surely complex issues involving brain function and emotions when we write, and it is fascinating how different writing is from speaking and how some people can be good at one but not the other.

Writing involves creating a tangible record of what we are thinking, and, in academic writing, it shows other people what we know (or don't know). That can be intimidating. You can listen to a discussion or a talk or a lecture and understand what is being told to you, but when you write a manuscript or a proposal, it's just you and your computer and a seemingly infinite number of ways to go about selecting and organizing the words. For some reason, although word choice when speaking also has a large array of options, most people are less intimidated by this than they are when writing.

The local environment has to be perfect for some people to write. Imagine what the world would be like if we only spoke once we had the right music in the background at the right volume and we were neither hungry nor thirsty and the cat was asleep in the other room and we hadn't received any interesting email in at least a few minutes.

Scientific writing has certain requirements in terms of style and content, and some people are overwhelmed by thinking about all the mysterious rules that they believe must be followed as you type every word, even in the first draft.

Some people may also be intimidated by the "unknown audience" aspect of writing. A student may discuss something with me and be entirely articulate and demonstrate a complete understanding of the topic, but if I say "OK, now go write that down", they are flummoxed. By writing it down, they are making a record of their words and thoughts in a more permanent way, and what they write might be read by other people -- perhaps a group of very wise and judgmental people somewhere out there in the scientific universe. This group is in possession of a large stamp that says LOSER. If you write something less than perfect, even in a first draft, they put a giant red LOSER stamp in permanent ink next to your name and you are forever labeled as stupid. They might even write to your mother. The only one who will still think you are clever is your dog. By writing, you are baring your soul, perhaps with long-term consequences, and overcoming a fear of that means being willing to "expose" yourself to others.

There is clearly more to it than what I have described. Some of my students have been so impaired at writing that even if I give them a fill-in-the-blanks template (a kind of Mad Libs for Doctoral Students), they can't even do that.

Writing can be highly technical, but writing even seemingly dry descriptions of methods and results involves making decisions about what to include and what to leave out, what logic and organization to use in presenting data, and what words to use. I try to remember this when I encounter someone who has trouble writing even the most basic description of their research methods and results.

I like using writing in many different ways, both technical and non-technical. My major writing activities involve manuscripts, proposals, email, and this blog, and this summer I also did a different kind of writing that I very much enjoyed: writing letters, on paper, to be sent by mail in an envelope with a stamp.

My daughter was away at camp for part of the summer, and our only communication was by letters sent via regular mail (no email, no phone, no fax allowed). Not wanting to write boring letters about how the tomato plants were doing and what the weather was, I sent her newsy notes but I also sent her a piece of a story in each letter, each letter containing the next part of the story in sequence. In some letters, I also sent cartoons I had made using photos of our cats with speech bubbles over their furry heads. Fortunately she is still young enough to really like this kind of stuff.

Doing different kinds of writing flexes different brain muscles, and I found that this letter-story-cartoon writing inspired my scientific writing as well. I didn't start drawing cat cartoons in my scientific manuscripts (though maybe I should), but after writing a story-letter, I often felt like working on a manuscript. I seldom have to force myself to write, so the effect was not dramatic, but there was an effect. It felt like when you've exercised and you feel really good and kind of energized and you want to go out and do something else active.

Maybe I should encourage my writing-challenged students to write short stories and poems, and this will help ease them into their science writing. As long as their manuscripts and thesis chapters aren't haiku or horror stories, this might be a way to make writing less of a difficult obstacle. And as long as our scientific writing doesn't become total fiction, we might all become better writers in the end.

Convergent Evolution or Unnatural Selection?

At the recent workshop I attended, one of my colleagues remarked that all the members (past and present; male and female) of a particular research group resembled each other: they were all fit, attractive, had short hair, and most of them were tall, just like the professor who heads this group.

Over the years I have observed other examples of research group members resembling each other. For example, another research group with which I am familiar is mostly comprised of thin men with beards. Just like their supervisor, all of the students and postdocs are runners, though some became runners after joining the group.

The ones who previously had no interest in running are the ones who concern me. I can see why they don't want to be left out, but what if someone doesn't want to train constantly to run 10k races? Would such a student be less likely to be accepted to work with this group?

As a postdoc, I was in a research group in which I (the only woman) was the only one who did not have an interest in a particular extreme sport. My lack of interest in this sport (and certain death) didn't exclude me from being hired, but I was definitely left out of the reindeer games at which scientific discussion occurred. That's a classic problem experienced by anyone who doesn't share the characteristics or interests of the majority, but in the case of sports or hobbies, in theory you can become part of these activities.

In some cases, research group resemblance stems from the fact that group members dress alike (= convergent evolution). For example, I recall the vivid sight at a conference of numerous turtlenecked male graduate students gathered around their turtlenecked advisor. They all had their hair cut in approximately the same way and none had facial hair. They looked like they were in some kind of dorky cult.

When I was a graduate student, one of my fellow students took to wearing the same kind of tweed jacket-turtleneck combo as our advisor wore (what is it with turtlenecks?), and he attempted the same style of facial hair. I thought this was bizarre. I never figured out the motivation for this type of mimicry, and don't know whether it was done deliberately or subconsciously.

The question is: Do members of some research groups 'evolve' to look like each other (typically by altering their clothing and hair style and perhaps acquiring certain hobbies) or do some advisors tend to select advisees who have certain characteristics and interests?

I think the answer is both, maybe.

If 'selection' occurs, it may involve people with similar interests gravitating towards each other because they feel most comfortable with this situation. The danger of this of course is that 'other' people might be excluded, even if not deliberately, and that many of these other people may be women or members of other underrepresented groups.

I suppose it is natural to want to feel like part of the team if you're working in a research group, and perhaps dressing alike is a benign part of that effort, as long as the team is diverse in other ways.

Some of this type of superficial resemblance can be unintentional. I was once walking with 2 of my grad students, when we suddenly realized we were all wearing the exact same kind of rain jacket. I immediately thought of the Cult of the Turtleneck and felt anxious. It turns out we had all gone to the same sale at a local store. At least we had each selected a different color jacket. In fact, one of my students asked me if I had gotten to the sale late, perhaps in reference to my unusual color choice. And he was right.

I don't think I selectively accept grad students who share characteristics or interests with me, but maybe it is hard to escape from this tendency entirely. I was once taken aback when meeting a prospective grad student at a conference. She was wearing a Winnie-the-Pooh shirt, and I wondered why someone would wear something like that at a conference. But then I thought: Is that any more juvenile than a young man wearing a baseball cap? Why does it matter what she (or a baseball capped guy) is wearing? I had to talk myself into this, though, but in the end I think I convinced myself. I don't want to work only with people who are just like me.

Keeping up with all the angry women

Letter to FSP:

You are an anomaly. Why be so bitchy about that? Give it up. Men AREN'T trying to "hold you down." You are a woman in a male-dominated field.

What is up with all these angry women? Men have it rough too. You think we all are bright enough and have the financing to get a PhD. I am a man and have found life to be very very very very very hard.

Give the hatred a rest.

Anonymous

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

Dear Anonymous:

I have good news for you! Women don't think men are all bright enough. That's part of the problem. Men who are no smarter than we are somehow are respected more, paid more, and given more resources and opportunities in general. When we do attain something (e.g., a job, a grant, an award, a position of responsibility), a common assumption is that we don't really deserve it. That kind of makes some of us angry. So, that's what's up with that.

I am sincerely sorry that your life is so difficult for you. However, although I of course have absolutely no insight into your life, I will point out your tendency to leap to quick and inaccurate judgment about people ("hatred"?), your self-pity, and your complacency about the lack of women in science. These are not good things.

Thank you, though, for providing me with another entry for FSP's Guide to Academic Etiquette:

When corresponding with (or talking to/about) a woman, try not to describe her as "bitchy". It is not a very creative term, and might undermine the point you are trying to make.

Sincerely,

FSP


P.S. - One of my colleagues, who is a bright enough man, thinks your letter is a joke. I hope he is right, but I fear he is not.

Book Preview

If you look at the preview option of the FSP Book on lulu.com, you don't see much, if anything, past the table of contents, so, as requested, here is a preview of some random text -- the introduction to a chapter on being evaluated as a professor.

14 : EVERYTHING IS EVALUATED

Most non-academics probably think that the life of a tenured professor is fairly easy and low stress, and I am certainly not going to complain about having the job security that comes with tenure. However, one aspect of academic life that few people (including graduate students) seem to appreciate is just how often we are EVALUATED.

Our teaching is evaluated. Teaching evaluations may consist only of the anonymous survey that students fill out at the end of each course, but may also involve classroom visits by more senior faculty.

Our research is evaluated in many ways:

• Manuscripts are reviewed and criticized; based on reviews, they are accepted or rejected.

• Proposals are reviewed and criticized; based on reviews, they are funded or not.

• Conference presentations or talks in other professional setting are open to criticism, questions, and comments in a very public setting.

In addition, untenured faculty are evaluated every year or two or three prior to the big evaluation that comes during the tenure process. Associate Professors who are considered for promotion are re-evaluated. Professors are also evaluated, in some departments every year, as part of the post-tenure review and consideration for merit raises.

If you are devastated by criticism, you might well be very unhappy in academia unless you can develop a thicker skin and become receptive-but-impervious to criticism.

Every spring I fill out an annual report detailing my publications, grants, conference presentations, awards, teaching activities, and students advised/graduated. I typically feel pretty good about this, as most years I have a good number of activities to report.

A friend of mine at another big research university told me that in his department, the bar for research expectations is set at a level corresponding to the highest-performing faculty members – the ones bringing in millions of $$ in funding and running big labs that produce a lot of papers. If the bar is set there, most faculty get lower evaluations, even if they are doing really well by almost any normal standard. My friend says this system is bad for morale, especially for Assistant Professors. Hearing that made me feel grateful for my department's more mysterious but more holistic system. By the standards of this other department, I might be considered a failure or, at the very least, underperforming, even though I’m a fairly productive researcher. I definitely would not feel so positive about my annual report.

Teaching evaluations are part of the annual report, and we are also evaluated as to whether we fulfill the ‘service’ part of our job. The former is fairly straightforward, but the latter is more ambiguous because we never really know what the expectations for this are.

It is easy to specify that faculty need to teach a certain number of courses each year, but I don’t know of any place that tells faculty how many committees they should be on. Part of the mystery has to do with the fact that service involves such a wide range of possible activities, each of which requires a different amount of time: department/college/university service (committees), professional service (reviewing papers and proposals, serving on panels, being an editor, holding office in professional organizations), and outreach (visiting schools, judging science fairs etc.). Are all of these equal in value? What about giving invited talks at other universities? Is that service, research, both?

I think these issues are particularly important for Assistant Professors who need to know what the tenure criteria are, and for senior professors facing a negative post-tenure review. For example, should early career faculty agree to serve on administrative committees and teach a graduate seminar in addition to their regular teaching load and is it OK to decline to do some reviews? For early career faculty, department and university service should be minimal, but professional service activities that provide visibility can be important.

If some department/university service is expected, there are some committees that can be more useful and interesting than others. I have found that the graduate admissions committee and hiring committees are examples of service work that can be worth the time and effort.

Everyone has to find their own balance in terms of what they can manage, but the priorities are to be a productive researcher and to be a good teacher. You need to be a good academic citizen, but within reason.

Other parts of the chapter include further discussion of teaching evaluations, including comparing online evaluations to in-class evaluations.

And so on. Thanks to all who left nice comments on the book announcement yesterday.

FSP : The Book

Part of what I have done with my summer vacation is compile some FSP blog essays into a book-like object. I have long had requests to do something like this, but I have ignored all such requests and suggestions because I didn't think it would be interesting, as in not interesting for me to do and not interesting for anyone else to read. But then my fading short-term memory increasingly made me consult the FSP archives to see what I'd discussed before and what I hadn't, and I got interested in seeing what it would look like if I strung together posts on related topics; e.g. publishing, advising grad students, teaching, being an FSP.

So I started organizing old posts, discarding the ones that I didn't like or that were boring, and putting others together. It was sort of like doing a puzzle, but only sort of because if there were any pieces of the puzzle that didn't fit, I changed them. For example, I added text to make transitions between blog posts and included some entirely new material to help pull the main topics together.

I also made the essays more 'timeless'; e.g., I changed posts that were about something that happened 'today' to something that happened in an unspecified or more general time frame.

There are some posts that I would write in a somewhat different way if I were writing them now, so that's what I did -- I rewrote anything that I wanted to say in a new or different way. And somehow it all came together as a book-like object.

The book-like thing is organized into chapter-like parts. In fact, much of the challenge and fun of this endeavor was figuring out what the chapters would be and in what order they would go. Within the chapter-like things are a mixture of old and new text, but mostly the sub-sections are blog-like bits of text.

The order of the chapters and sub-sections has no relationship to any chronological order inherited from the blog. I reordered topics and posts to make the book-like thing as coherent as possible.

I am not sure if this blog-to-book conversion works, so that's why I refer to it as a book-like thing.

At the suggestion of a reader, I used the self-publishing, print-on-demand website lulu.com. If so inclined, you can order a print version of the book (trade paperback, black and white interior, graph paper glossy covers) or you can download it as a pdf. Both of these involve a modest fee (and the printed version involves paying shipping costs to lulu.com). Or you can just read the FSP blog for free.

This all took a lot of time, but the biggest challenge was finding a title. I never did find one I liked, and ended up going with unwieldy and somewhat pretentious (with a colon; something I try to avoid in titles of my scientific articles). I considered various titles involving FSP-type keywords, but only some of my posts are about women-in-science issues, so I decided to keep the title general:

Academeology: Random Musings, Strong Opinions & Somewhat Bizarre Anecdotes From An Academic Life.

For the 2 or 3 of you who actually read this thing, please let me know what you think. Did I leave out anything important? Are there errors? Is it readable in terms of content and format? Is it an evocative and beautifully rendered portrait of life as a Science Professor?

That last question is an unsubtle request for BOOK BLURBS. To be a real book, this thing needs some blurbs. At present, the book is blurbless, though I could add some to a Second Edition. I can also just make some up; e.g.:

If my cat could read, this is the one book I would want him to have!

A Kafkaesque groves-of-academe satirical work of non-fiction written by a gender-lens-wearing anonymous female person!

"Catch-22" meets Strunk & White's "Elements of Style"!

An academic life stranger than fiction! This book makes the goose scene in Russo's novel "Straight Man" believable!

FSP's Guide to Academic Etiquette

From time to time, I find myself giving advice or making strong suggestions via this blog, although I am not much of an advice-giver in real life. As issues arise in the blog, however, I have been randomly numbering snippets of advice and referring to an imaginary guide to academic etiquette. I decided to scroll through the archives and extract some of these, giving them more realistic numbers and lining them up to see what I've suggested in the past.

A glance at the list shows that this is not a comprehensive list of all the things one might want or need to know to navigate through the academic environment, nor is it even a particularly sane list. Some of these items are probably more useful than others. Some are more serious than others. Some are simply strange. In any case, here it is:

FSP's Guide to Academic Etiquette

1. (for academic job applicants) Don’t write about your spouse in your application unless this information is relevant. Otherwise it is obnoxious.

2. (for interviewees) Don’t patronize young people, women, and/or staff during your interview unless you are a jerk. If you are a jerk, go ahead: this is important information.

3. After an interview, send a brief follow-up letter to the hiring committee and/or department Chair to emphasize your interest and to note any updates (new publications, thoughts based on your interview and interactions with students and others). Don't be too schmoozy – just be succinct and sincere and professional. If you don’t send a letter, that’s fine too, but a letter can cement the impression that you are serious about the job.

4. (for interviewers): Don’t ask illegal/unethical questions. If you don’t know what is permissible, find out in advance.

5. (for students and postdocs): If you are paid a salary, you should do the work.

6. (for students visiting a professor in his/her office): If you are going to ask a professor a question and you need to refer to your notes or a book, have these within easy reach, with pages marked.

7A. If someone writes a letter of reference for you, let them know the outcome of your applications.
7B. You don’t have to write to prospective graduate advisors to tell them you’ve decided to go elsewhere, but you should.

8. (for grad applicants) If you wait until the last minute to inform a department of your decision not to attend that program, you are eliminating opportunities for students on the waiting list. If you really didn't decide until the last minute, that's fine. If you know your decision but don't send the official declination of an offer until the last minute, that is selfish, however unintentional.

9. Don’t tell your advisor (or colleagues or students) what your therapist says about them.

10. Run a spell-checker before giving someone a manuscript or other document to read.

11. If you say to someone: "You reviewed my paper", assume that they might not remember this event as well as you do. Provide some supplementary information to help your former reviewer evaluate your statement; for example, ".. and I want to thank you for your useful comments." or ".. and I want you to know that the ignorance displayed by your review is truly staggering." [note: in FSP's Guide to Academic Etiquette, it is permitted to tell someone that they display staggering ignorance, as long as this is said politely and in context.]

12. When writing a review, even if you think the authors are wrong and you think that they have incorrect or inadequate citation of your work and you don’t like their data or their font or their interpretations or the way that they say that your work is flawed, write your criticisms in a constructive and professional way.

13. If you are a co-author, you should respond in a timely way to requests for comments, or at least provide some communication to work out a reasonable timescale within which you can provide input.

14. Before submitting anything for review, notify all co-authors and give them a chance to respond.

15. Only insult people who really deserve it.

16. Don’t be sneaky. Get your own ideas or collaborate. It’s fine to be inspired by someone else’s work, but there is a difference between inspiration and copying.

17. Don’t assume that women are their husbands. [note: that one might be cryptic without the accompanying anecdote]

18A. Don’t threaten or pinch people, even if they disagree with you.
18B. Don’t try to publish after you’re dead. [note: in the original post, these items were actually related]

19. Before introducing a speaker, ask them if they have a preference about what is said during the introduction. Most people won’t, but some may have some general (or specific) preferences about what to mention (e.g., dates, places, awards, crimes).

20. Thank people who help you, even if it is their job to do so.

21. Don’t assume that someone lacks ambition just because they don’t want to be a professor at a big research university.

22. Don’t boast about firing students. It is unseemly. You can of course talk about it, but don’t use these incidents to establish your hard-core credentials.

23. (for teachers) If someone gives you course materials, give some back when you get a chance.

24. Don’t make faculty meetings last longer than necessary unless you have something really important to say.

25. Don’t treat Female Science Professors as a lesser sub-species of Science Professors.

Summer Bonanza

In the summer, some faculty spend a lot of time in the department, some come and go, and some disappear for the entire summer. I am in the middle category: I'm here a lot, but then I travel, then I'm here a lot, them I'm away again.

I have written (complained) before about how those of us who are in the department in the summer get asked to do 'volunteer' service work. The university doesn't pay our salaries in the summer, but administrative tasks must be done and someone has to do them. Those someones are the ones who are in their offices and labs in the summer.

But every once in a while, something good (in the administrative sense) happens to those of us who lurk in our offices for at least part of the summer. In fact, something pretty good just happened to me today.

I was sitting at my desk and the Chair walked into my office. I admit that my very first thought was "Oh no, he's going to ask me to do something." But no. In this case, my cynicism was unfounded, though in 99.57% of cases it is not.

The Chair reminded me that last spring I had compiled a list of requests for teaching supplies that various faculty desired. These supplies were all of a related sort that could be ordered from one vendor and that would benefit a variety of classes. I was motivated to compile this list in part out of frustration with the sad state of some teaching materials I was using and also because a new faculty member will soon teach a class that I have taught for many years, and I was feeling bad about handing over to him some ancient somewhat-wrecked supplies. I thought he should have nice new materials for his first experience teaching this class. It occurred to me that other colleagues might also want some similar items, so I made a spreadsheet/wish-list. Alas, the funds for teaching supplies vanished, and we were unable to order anything.

Funds for teaching supplies have reappeared and must be spent this week or the Dean will take the funds away. The Chair was wandering the halls looking for faculty who had made requests last spring, and he found me. The other people who made requests are not here, so he told me to give my list to an accountant and the items will be purchased.

I am feeling very lucky that this happened this week (when I am in my office) instead of last week (when I was far away). My colleagues who are away this week missed out on an opportunity, but I don't feel too anguished about my random luck because the funds that just fell from the sky will benefit many colleagues, not just me, and because the windfall is for teaching materials, not for a new espresso machine for me office (I will have to use grant funds for that*).


* Note to NSF program officers: That was a joke. Really.

Overcommitteed

August is typically a bit of a feeding frenzy for the forming and filling of committees with participants. I've received numerous requests in the couple of weeks from committee chairs with invitations to spend various amounts of time doing university or professional service work.

I said yes to two. I am cycling off some other committees, so I felt I could take on some new ones. I said no to the rest.

I have a pretty good sense for what I can take on and what would be too much, though sometimes it's hard to tell just how much time a particular committee or other service activity can take. And of course some service activities can fill all the time you have if you let them. Deciding what is worthwhile and learning how to balance time spent on service vs. research vs. teaching are things you figure out with experience (and/or good mentoring early on if you're lucky).

One positive aspect of being such a popular target for committee membership is that I have options. I can pick the ones that look like they might be interesting and a potential good use of my time. And, since I am doing a fair amount of service work, I don't feel (too) bad about saying no to the others, though I sympathize with the committee chairs who are trying to round up volunteers.

In the past 10 years or so, I have been on at least 6 university-level committees, some for 3-year terms, and I just got invited to be on two more; I said yes to one and no to the other. My husband has never been asked to be on any committee above the department level.

Of course there are many Male Science Professors who do a lot of committee work; I have never been on a committee with more women than men. Even so, that's what he gets for being a dime-a-dozen MSP -- he is much more likely to be a committee wallflower, uninvited and uncommitteed.

Science-Wrecking Diversity-Mongers

In the midst of an otherwise bland Chronicle of Higher Education essay by Peter Wood (8 August issue) about why there are more foreign-born graduate students in science and engineering than there are US students, were these amazing statements:

The science "problems" we now ask students to think about aren't really science problems at all. Instead we have the National Science Foundation vexed about the need for more women and minorities in the sciences. President Lawrence H. Summers was pushed out of Harvard University for speculating (in league with a great deal of neurological evidence) that innate difference might have something to do with the disparity in numbers of men and women at the highest levels of those fields.

and

A society that worries itself about which chromosomes scientists have isn't a society that takes science education seriously.

.. a statement that is backed up with this example of awesome logic:

In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert famously drew up a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics .. Notably, Hilbert didn't write down problem No. 24: "Make sure half the preceding 23 problems are solved by female mathematicians."

Presumably these views are why P. Woods is the executive director of the National Association of Scholars, whose website proclaims that the association strives to

.. uphold the principle of individual merit and oppose racial, gender, and other group preferences.

where "group" = any group comprised of people other than neurologically superior white men.

A society that systematically discriminates against people owing to their chromosomes or other irrelevant characteristics, genetic or otherwise, is corrupt.

If the National Science Foundation and other agencies, institutions, and people with power to change things are "vexed" about the lack of some "groups" in science, engineering, and math fields, maybe smart people who don't happen to be male and white will enter these fields in increasing numbers and, in league with a great deal of neurological evidence, make the significant contributions of which we are more than capable if given a fair chance.

And then, if the day comes when the chromosomes of scientists truly don't matter, maybe sad little essays by men clinging to questionable studies showing their neurological superiority will only be published on their own webpages and not in mainstream academic publications.

Semi-COI

There are some clear Conflicts of Interest (COI) that exclude one from reviewing proposals (and, though not enforced to the same extent, papers) by particular people: advisors, graduate/postdoctoral advisees, close colleagues, relatives. These are obvious COIs, but more and more I find myself encountering a COI gray zone: former undergraduate students.

The number of ex-undergrads I have taught in classes or advised as interns or research students of various sorts and who are now proposal-writing faculty increases every year. Of course, not all (or even most) of them are writing proposals in my same field of research, but some of them are.

When asked to review a proposal by a former undergrad I had advised and/or taught, I used to write to the program director who solicited my review and say "I advised X as a summer intern" or "I advised Y's senior thesis" and ask "Do you still want me to do the review?", and they always replied "If you feel that you can be objective, please do the review; if you can't, don't."

So, the decision is up to me.

I don't really see why former undergrads, especially those who did research with me, aren't official COIs. If I work closely with a student on a research project for a year or more, how is that different from, say, a former MS student, which is an official COI relationship? I want (most of) my former students to do well; does this cloud my judgment?

The semi-COI is most obvious in cases of advisor-advisee relationships, but in some cases I have strong, possibly not-objective opinions about former students who only took classes from me. In one case that I can recall, I was placed in a situation of evaluating a former undergraduate student who had been extremely rude and obnoxious in two of my classes. I guess he's brilliant, but he's a jerk, and I did not feel I could be objective in that particular case.

So, I do the review or not, and, if I do the review, I write the potential COI information in the box provided for this purpose on the reviewer website and let the powers-that-be sort it all out. I assume that I am not wasting my time writing a review that will be excluded owing to a semi-COI.

Greasing the Skids

When I arrived at my small but fashionable International Hotel yesterday, I was dropped off by two of the European Professors who were at my workshop. We stood in the lobby chatting for bit before parting ways. The three of us were perhaps a notch or three below the typical level of stylishness of most people who stay at this hotel, and I got a rather frosty reception from the front desk clerk. I was beyond caring about details like that, and was just glad to be in a quiet, relaxing place.

Today the same front desk clerk continued to be politely disapproving when I had a brief conversation with him, but again, it's not exactly going to punch a hole in my day if I don't get a cheery good morning from everyone I meet.

I had to deal with some administrative issues before leaving the country, and this turned out to be somewhat complex. I approached the issues in my usual Scientific way: I collected data on my options, used the internet and made a phone call or two, took notes, and was mulling what to do. Just then, miraculously, a college friend of mine who works at the American embassy here called the hotel looking for me.

I asked her some questions and she said she'd call back in a little while. She did, calling via the front desk of the hotel. She mentioned the embassy, dropped a few names, sort of implied that I might be a relative of the American ambassador (a contention that for various bizarre reasons was plausible), and voila: all my problems were solved.

In addition, the front desk clerk became my best friend. Now he beams at me when he sees me and asks after my health. I think I liked him better when he was terse and glaring.

I had lunch with my diplomatic friend and, in addition to getting caught up on the usual stuff (mutual friends, kids etc.), I asked her about her job. Not surprisingly, a lot of it is 'political'. Academics involves politics of a sort as well, but most of us academics aren't very good at this aspect of our jobs. I am in awe of my friend who gracefully navigates through a political universe. I want to name a scientific object or process after her.

Hooray for college friends. In the years since graduating from college, 98.57% of the friends I have made are academics, and 99% of these friends are Physical Science Professors. With all due respect and affection to my professor friends, I am glad that I also know some interesting people -- my college friends -- who have interesting non-academic lives (and not just because one of them helped me to untangle administrative complexities in a foreign country and to become the recipient of insincere affection from a hotel desk clerk).

Lady of the Workshop

The workshop I have been attending is over. I am in a nice quiet hotel room in a metropolitan area filled with wireless internet connections, and I am feeling completely wrecked after an intense week. Hence a short post today.

The workshop was very focused, and our small group spent a lot of time together, talking and discussing and eating and so on. On the second or third day, I noticed that scientists from a particular country were unable to call me by my first name. Everyone else was on a first name basis, and these men had no trouble calling the other men by their first names, but they only referred to me indirectly as "she" or "the lady".

I tried saying "Please, call me [my real name]", but they just couldn't do it. Since everyone else was on a first name basis, they couldn't call me Mrs. or Dr. or Professor, so they settled on calling me "the lady".

As with the example I described a few days ago, these are all extraordinarily nice people. I got along great with them and we had many interesting conversations. They clearly respect me as a scientist, but they are unable to think of me in the same way as the other (male) scientists. I was hoping that by the end of the week we spent together that they would have made some progress with this, but until the very end, I was "the lady".

Nearly Useless

At the end of each day this week, in the approximately 20 minutes between finishing my day's tasks and falling into a deep workshop-induced sleep, I have been reading an MS thesis. I am on the MS student's committee, and he sent the thesis to me just before I went into an internet-challenged zone for a few days.

I understand the theoretical value of having committee members read and comment on the thesis before the defense, but in reality it is harder to know the best way to proceed as a committee member/reader.

This student has given informal talks in the department over the course of the research, so I have had opportunities to comment on the work long before the thesis is written. Now the research is done, so there is no point in making any more comments about the research design or methods. It is even too late to comment on the interpretations and conclusions. It's August, the student is defending, and unless there some major fatal error is discovered, the thesis isn't going to change much based on committee comments.

I refuse to do technical editing -- the advisor can do that. If I see something that I don't think the student or advisor will catch, I will comment, but I don't think my role as a committee member is to spell-check the thesis.

So, what is left for me to do, other than read it and draw a smiley face on the cover page to show that I approve of the thesis? The most useful thing I can do at this point is comment on places where I think the thesis is not clear in its explanations or logic. Presumably the thesis will soon be a manuscript or manuscripts, so perhaps this type of comment can be useful beyond making the thesis *perfect*.

Will Work For Females

At the international workshop I have been attending, I am the only American person, and as usual, I am somewhat exotic in other respects as well.

When I was introduced to a senior scientist I had not met before, we talked about scientific topics of mutual interest at first (I seem to have reviewed two of his papers, apparently positively, because he thanked me and seemed pleased to talk to me). Then he told me: “I once worked with a Female Scientist.” In fact, I think she may even have been his advisor, or at least on his Ph.D. committee.

It’s kind of hard to know how to respond to that. He was trying to make friendly conversation, and perhaps he feared that I had preconceptions about him based on stereotypes of male scientists from his country. But what can I say?

- Me too!
- How did that go?
- I’ve worked with a male Scientist.
- Do you think it will rain later today?

The challenge was increased when he added, somewhat randomly “She’s taller than I am.” Now what to say?

- Most people are.
- How did you feel about that?

I decided to avoid a direct response and return to discussing Science, including the work he did with the Female Scientist.

In the days that followed that conversation, I have found this person to be extremely friendly and good-natured and happy to discuss scientific topics of mutual interest. Even so, as usual when I have one of these FSP moments, I long for the day when such a statement would be considered too bizarre to occur in sane conversation.

Disconnected

When I asked the organizer of the workshop I have been attending in a somewhat remote non-US location about internet access, he said that when he is not in his office, he never checks his e-mail or connects to the internet, so that is how he has organized this workshop.

Well, OK, I survived being disconnected for a few days, though at times I felt a bit faint and short of breath. I can see the benefits for a small workshop of staying focused and not having people checking their e-mail constantly, but I think there should have been some provision for occasional internet access, especially since phone access, although at least possible, is not easy for various reasons.

Just because the workshop organizer revels in being internetless when away from the office, does not mean he should have imposed this philosophy so completely on the rest of us. Even once/day access would have been fine.

Having internet access isn’t just about checking on things at the office. When I travel, the internet is how I stay in touch with my family and friends. While at the workshop, I could be easily contacted in an emergency, but there are non-emergency but still important reasons to connect to the rest of the world.

The day I arrived at the workshop, my husband’s beloved aunt died. I want to know how he’s doing. I want to check my daughter’s camp website and see if there are pictures of her having fun in a canoe or around a campfire. I want to check on my cat, who, just before I left, fell (or was pushed..) from a very great height in a tree. Yes, he landed on his feet, one of which then spectacularly broke. [They never mention the broken bone part of the cats-landing-on-their-feet thing, nor how much it costs to get cat femurs surgically fixed]. And so on.

I said to Professor I-never-check-email-away-from-the-office: “But don’t you then return to hundreds of e-mails that you have to sort through? Isn’t that very time-consuming and annoying?”. He admitted that this was indeed the case, but still thought it was worth it to have some internet-free days. That’s fine of course, but that’s not my preference. I’d rather stay connected to family and friends, delete the stupid e-mails and department memos day-by-day, and not return to a scary e-mail inbox.

I am still at the workshop, but I have finally managed to find a wireless signal that I can access once (maybe twice) day.