A-Z-ist

When I was recently serving on an interdisciplinary committee that had to read dozens of CV's, the inevitable topic of authorship order conventions arose. In order to fairly evaluate these CV's from across the entire spectrum of Academe, we had to know what the convention was in each field.

Even when told that the convention in, say, economics is for alphabetical ordering, it is difficult for faculty who are not in alphabetically-ordered fields to overcome a bias against someone whose name is always in the middle of a pack of authors. I have read with great interest about studies that show that even within fields in which alphabetical ordering of authors in the norm, there may be a subconscious bias against authors with surnames late in the alphabet, and therefore negative consequences for hiring, promotion, tenure, and awards.

On my committee, as we evaluated one CV from a professor in a field with alphabetical ordering of authors, a committee member was very frustrated because the article citations listed the CV person's name first, followed by 'with A. Person and B. Person'. This committee member wanted to see the citations written out in the correct order. I said "But we know the correct order because the order is alphabetical." Even so, my colleague insisted that seeing the authorship written out in the correct order was essential. He felt that the CV person was somehow being slightly dishonest by making his name the most prominent in each citation. Well, given that the CV person's last name began with R, I didn't blame him. If he wrote out the citations completely, he would have been last or near-to-last in them all, and this was not a field that valued last authors. It seemed like a lose-lose situation to me.

Regarding fields in which being last author is customary and prestigious, indicating the research group leader: I also saw on my committee that people in fields in which last author implies the least contribution to a paper have trouble overcoming a bias about the (in)significance of last authorship.

In one of the 57 ethics training courses we have to endure at my university, I was told that even if I provide the funds for a particular research project that is conducted in my lab, unless I contribute something else to the study (e.g. ideas, data, writing), I cannot (= should not) be a co-author, not even as a caboose author. Conflicted feelings and ethical issues related to last authorship led to discussion in my committee of whether someone whose CV had his name listed last on every single publication had really done any of the work. I think it was obvious that he had, based on other information we were evaluating, but again, people in fields in which last authorship = the least contribution had trouble overcoming a negative reaction to last authors.

I have participated in both alphabetically ordered and non-ordered authorship cultures and think that there are problems with both schemes. Alphabetical ordering seems simple enough, but if anyone with a surname after D is going to be disadvantaged in their career, then that system is not as objective as it might seem.

Ordering by relative level of contribution has its own complications because in some cases you have to decide the order of authors who contributed at similar levels to the paper. And who should be first author if one author supplied the ideas and one supplied the data?

In some cases, the addition of a third author to a paper means a major decrease in exposure (and therefore name recognition and therefore possibly career advancement) for the second author, who is relegated to being part of the 'et al.' rather than having their name listed more prominently in journals that have such citation formats within the text.

Maybe we should publish more single-author scholarly articles? No, that's not good either because that makes us look like we don't work well with others, and are not multi-, inter-, or even transdisciplinary. Single and few-author papers were, however, important to me earlier in my career because I wanted there to be no doubt that I had played a major role in these publications. I think this is particularly important for early-career women scientists.

These days, I don't care where my name falls in a multi-author paper for which I was a mid-level contributor, though sometimes having my name buried in the et al. of a paper can lead to strange situations. Several times in the past year, I have had people talk to me about a particular paper on which I was a co-author, and I initially assumed that my role was known because my name is on the paper, albeit somewhere in the middle of the author list (which is not long). The repeated use of "they", as in "they said this" and "they concluded that" is a clue that this assumption is flawed. I like to say "Yes, and their paper is so well written, and I particularly love Figure 4" etc. I don't actually mind it if someone doesn't instantly recognize my authorness -- I certainly don't have the author lists memorized for all the papers I read -- but it would not be so entertaining if being recognized for my contribution mattered to my career more than it does at this stage.

Discovered Science

Not long ago, I sat next to a Business Man on a plane and we started chatting about random things. We went through the basics of what we do and where we do them etc., and he was very surprised to learn that people such as me exist -- that is, that there are scientist-professors who spend their time researching things about the world. He said that he often watches the Discover Channel and that he particularly likes shows about science and scientists, but he said that these shows gave him the impression that all the really major questions have been solved already.

Au contraire, as we say in my francophone research group. I reeled off a list of Big Questions in my field of Science, though I was aware as I was doing so that there were at least 2 possible opposite responses to this list: (1) How fascinating that there are still so many interesting and essential things for Physical Scientists to figure out; or (2) What have you guys been doing for all these years that you haven't figured these things out yet?

His actual response was a bit more ambiguous; something along the lines of "Well, I guess you can't believe everything you see on TV." But then he wanted to know more about my research, and he asked a lot of questions as I explained my work. His interest seemed genuine, and my hope is that I convinced him that Science is interesting and that Scientists still have many important things to discover.

I am actually not much of a travel-chatter, and prefer to work or read on planes. I don't mind doing the occasional Roving Ambassador of Science thing, however, especially if it takes my mind off the fact that I am on a plane, one of my least favorite places to be.*

* incomplete ranked list of some of my least favorite places to be, in order of decreasing preference, for illustration purposes only: faculty meeting, airplane, viper pit

Big Invited Cheeses

For various reasons, I have found myself co-convening sessions for some conferences later this year. One of these sessions has so far been a pleasure to organize, as I am working with a congenial, compatible, and international group of colleagues. We have different but complementary expertise, and I think it's going to be an interesting session.

The other session is still in the early stages of organizing, but already I can tell that my co-convener and I do not share the same world view of session organization. I am not going to go into the details of how we came to co-convene this session. Just assume that I had little choice about whether I organized this session and no choice in co-convener.

In any case, my co-convener and I get to select some invited speakers. This is where we diverge in Conference Organizing Philosophy. I personally would prefer to choose speakers who would give the most interesting talks, whether or not they are the most famous people on the planet in our field of Science. Sometimes early career scientists give the best talks because they are doing the most creative work, and -- even better -- sometimes it is work that hasn't already been presented at the last 57 conferences.

My co-convener subscribes to the Invite the Big Cheeses cult of session organizing. Big Cheeses can be very interesting, there is no doubt about that, but this co-convener doesn't seem to be able to discriminate between someone who could either give an interesting new talk or an insightful review talk vs. someone who has not had anything new or interesting to say in n+10 years. When he sent me his list of suggested invited speakers, I was stunned. I would only have come up with the same names if you had asked me to come up with a list of people most likely to give boring talks about the same old stuff.

Yes, I am aware that opinions can diverge and that what is boring to me might be fascinating to someone else, but really.. this list was amazing for its potential snooze quotient.

I suppose the idea is that if you have Big Invited Cheeses in a session, many people will want to participate and attend. I could well be wrong, but I think that is more likely to work if the Big Cheese is someone who gives a good talk and has new things to say.

In the end, I suppose my co-convener and I will compromise and the session will be like most sessions -- a mix of interesting (i) and boring (b). My hope, of course, is that i : b will be high.

Cruel & Unreasonable

In previous posts, I have discussed issues related to working with the extremely non-confident, but today the central question is:

Can a lifetime of lack of confidence be overcome during graduate school?

I'm not talking about routine lack of confidence, as in not being sure you're going to do a good job at something challenging or feeling not as brilliant as the people around you. I am talking about a colossal lack of confidence, as in the kind that leads someone to cry at the slightest perception of criticism, even if no criticism was intended. I am talking about a recent incident that made me realize that, however good my intentions are regarding being a supportive and (mostly) kind professor/advisor, some students are so fragile that the best of intentions are no match for the reality of a colossal lack of confidence.

I suppose a smart but non-confident person can get through college just fine by doing well on exams etc., perhaps with a lot of stress, but without experiencing anything as distressing as what you encounter in grad school, where the level of scrutiny of your abilities is more intense. In grad school, in addition to being judged in exam situations (written & oral), you are also judged on what you say in research group meetings and on how creative you are. And once you've produced some results, you have to justify them -- why you got them, how you got them, and what you think about them.

In addition, scientists discuss things, and discussions involve examining issues from different angles. This can seem like criticism if you've placed your fragile confidence in an opinion that is then discussed by a group of people, each of whom has their own opinions and questions.

In academic life, we are all constantly judged. Grad students, postdocs, faculty - we are all evaluated, and we are evaluated often. I am a tenured full professor, but my manuscripts and grant proposals are of course evaluated, and not always kindly. My teaching is evaluated by students, and not always kindly. My overall job performance in terms of research-teaching-service is evaluated by administrators and a committee every year. I give presentations at meetings and people ask critical questions. I participate in committees and others disagree with my opinions even though I am right.

Being constantly evaluated can be exhausting and at times painful, but overall I appreciate the critical input. Of course there are examples of cruel and unreasonable comments in these reviews and evaluations, but in general the system works, and I feel that it makes me a better researcher and teacher. As long as the negative comments are balanced by positive comments, my self-esteem is not destroyed by the occasional bludgeoning.

Considering the magnitude and intensity of all this evaluating, it's amazing that anyone without an impermeable and titanic ego survives the process, but most people do. If someone is so lacking in confidence, however, that they fall apart during an informal, friendly discussion with faculty and other students, they are doomed in this field unless they can develop more confidence, or at least a coping mechanism for not being devastated by minor incidents.

I am not sure that the methods available to advisors for being supportive and kind are sufficient to help a student overcome a severe confidence deficit. The only way I know how to help a student is to give a balanced mix of praise and so-called constructive criticism, but in some cases this is not effective or sufficient.

It is certainly possible to progress from being unsure of your abilities to being more sure -- this has happened to me over the course of my career, including during grad school. But how much improvement is possible in the time frame of a few years? If you start at a very low level of confidence - as in, unable to be criticized without breaking down - can you improve to a degree such that you can function in an academic environment without feeling continually devastated? Can the improvement come by hanging in there and seeing that the world doesn't end if you make a mistake or if someone disagrees with you? Or it is too difficult to develop more confidence at this point in time and/or in this environment? I wish I knew, but I do not.

Fame, the Sequel

In January, I wrote about how even 'famous' professors aren't famous in a side-of-the-bus kind of way. In that particular anecdote, a childhood friend of my husband's had become name-on-the-side-of-the-bus famous owing to his success as a contemporary artist.

In a strange twist of fate, although my husband and I have not achieved side-of-the-bus fame in the past month, we have nevertheless both recently had unusual experiences involving the intersection of our lives with Art.

In my case, part of my research has been incorporated into a visual artwork. I am pleased by this because something that I find intellectually beautiful is now part of something that is beautiful in a different way.

In the case of my husband, the situation is more complicated: we recently learned that he is a character in book written about another childhood friend. In the book, which is semi-biographical, the author changed the spelling of my husband's name slightly, but phonetically it is the same.

I immediately acquired the book and scanned it for the juicy parts -- i.e., the parts that mention my spouse. Although I did not know him in his youth, various aspects of his personality are quite recognizable, even though he is a 5th grader when he first appears in the book.

My husband refuses to read this book. He doesn't mind if I tell him about an incident or person in the book, but he doesn't want to discuss it or give his point of view on any incident or person. He says he doesn't want to read what someone else's imagination decided he was like as a kid. I can understand that. I would be unnerved if I showed up in someone else's book, especially if, like this one, the book is a roman à clef. And who would want their tween to teenage years enshrined in Literature?

Neither of us actually had a choice about having our life/work incorporated into the Art of others, but overall, I think I got the better deal of the two of us.

ADDing

The other day I sat next to someone with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) for several hours, and it was a fascinating experience. I mean that in a respectful way -- it was kind of startling to observe at first, but mostly I was impressed with the coping mechanisms that this person, who is an adult and a successful scientist, has developed.

We were each working on something different, each on our own laptop. At first, I wasn't really paying attention to my companion, as I was deep into editing a manuscript. Although there are times when I skip around from project to project, there are many times when I focus intensely on writing or editing or reading or thinking for a long period of time without interruption.

After I was finished editing, I glanced over to see what my companion was doing. He had said that he was going to work on a manuscript, but when I glanced at his laptop, he was reading a political blog. Seconds later he went back to his manuscript, wrote a sentence, then checked some news headlines -- then he went back to the manuscript to write another sentence or two, then he checked the weather online, then he went to some journal websites to scan the tables of contents, then he wrote a sentence, then he jumped up to get something to drink, came back and wrote a sentence, and so on. It was amazing. In the course of a few hours, he made progress on the manuscript, and entertained me with pieces of information gleaned from his internet expeditions.

Having ADD has long been a source of frustration for this person. There are times when it has made him extremely upset and angry with himself. The medications that he has tried over the years worked in that they helped him focus, but they also kept him awake for days on end and had other side effects that scared him. So now he just lives with it and, although he hates his inability to focus, if he keeps going back to his original activity, even if he can't sustain that activity for more than a few minutes, he gets things done. In fact, he gets a lot done. He published 10 papers last year and wrote at least 2 successful grant proposals. And he is very well informed about the news and weather.

The Perfect Storm/Classroom Edition

Not long ago, the department chair asked me to look at the teaching evaluations and grades for a class taught last year by a less experienced (and non-tenure-track) professor. The grades were similar to ones that colleagues and I had given to this same group of students in previous classes. The evaluations, however, were a bit on the unkind side, to put it mildly, and the chair was concerned.

When I read the evaluations, my heart sank. Then I kicked myself for not being more assertive about helping my younger colleague. From time to time during the semester, I asked her how things were going with her class, and she always said everything was fine. I should know by now that just asking that question isn’t the best way to be helpful, and it puts a junior colleague in an awkward position.

Our department has no system for peer evaluation of teaching, but it should. If there is a system of peer evaluation for everyone who teaches, there is no stigma attached to having other faculty evaluate your teaching. My previous university had peer evaluation of teaching. Sometimes it helps, and sometimes it doesn't, but surely it is better than not doing anything until it is too late for a particular class? I don’t know if I could have helped this colleague by sitting in on some of the classes, but she made some basic mistakes* that might have been avoided with better mentoring.

* Examples: moving the date of an exam without sufficient notice and/or consultation of students; relying too much on PowerPoint presentations; not dealing well with questions from stressed out (rude, angry) students.

I can appreciate how frustrating it must be for students to be in a class taught by an inexperienced instructor, particularly if the class involves difficult concepts. Even so, I think that some of the students in this class were especially unforgiving. It was a challenging class, and this group of students had struggled in classes that were less challenging. When faced with a more difficult course and a somewhat (but not completely) inexperienced instructor, conditions were set for a really bad experience for all concerned. A subset of the students were particularly vicious in their evaluation of the course.

Based on what I’ve seen over the years, requirements for this particular type of extreme negative reaction seem to be (1) a challenging class taught by (a) an inexperienced instructor who (b) does not project a confident image and may (c) lack authority (e.g., non-tenure track faculty, adjuncts, grad students); and (2) a group of students who develop an unforgiving and increasingly negative attitude about every imperfection in the class. The collision of a group of unhappy, confused students with an inexperienced instructor who is vulnerable owing to a lack of status (adjunct or visiting professor) and/or lack of confidence, creates a perfect storm of negativity and an unpleasant learning/teaching experience for all.

Although I think that some of the students could have handled the situation more constructively during the course, this is not a ‘blame the students’ rant. The department should have done more to help the inexperienced instructor during the course, and I should have done more as the unofficial mentor of this instructor. You can’t infuse someone with decades of teaching experience instantly, but it should be possible to provide logistical or psychological (confidence-building) support to help a course while it is in progress.

Once a bad teacher, always a bad teacher? Certainly not. Some people are naturally great teachers, but many struggle in their first few years of teaching. The challenge is to keep your confidence from being further undermined, as that can create a spiral of disaster experiences from which it becomes ever more difficult to recover. If you stay calm and assess what went wrong and what went right, you can fix the problems and get on track for having a more positive teaching experience in the future.

Said/Heard

Yesterday I worked on a manuscript with a long-time colleague. We work together pretty well, although I stress her out from time to time (where time, t = often). We also have fun and laugh a lot as we work.

After we'd been working and talking for a while, my colleague said "You were right, I was being stupid" (in reference to a minor and temporary technical issue that we easily sorted out together). I said "I never said you were stupid". She thought about it for a moment and realized that I had not said she was stupid, and she said that this was really typical of her. If she's not feeling confident about a topic, she feels stupid. We've been working together for 10 years. Of course I don't think she is stupid. This woman has a Ph.D., a faculty position, and a severe case of low confidence.

Working with me might not help her with her confidence issues on a day-to-day basis, but overall we make a pretty good team. She has some expertise that I do not have, but she does not like to write (and I do). The papers we have written together have been important for both of our careers. So, despite our very different approaches to research and life, together we get things done -- not as quickly as I would like and not as low-stress as she would like.

Last year, I created a cartoon for our research group newsletter. The cartoon fairly accurately depicts this particular working relationship, including how annoying I am to work with and how my colleague effectively neutralizes my insane plans. For this blog, I replaced my photograph with my logo, and my colleague's photo with a symbolic element.

On The Nose

My daughter is at a tweeny age when she is thinking more about her appearance than she did when she was younger. Her friends are also quite self-conscious about issues of fashion, weight, and height. So far, she seems to have a good perspective on these issues, and is willing to talk about them with me.

I hope she holds on to that perspective and her sense of confidence, and that these will also extend to how she feels about her intellectual and social capabilities. It seems like there are so many ways that girls (and women) can lose confidence in themselves.

Most recently, my daughter has become worried that her nose is too big. She doesn't seem too anxious about it, but she wishes her nose were smaller. I think she's beautiful, inside and out, but I'm just her mom.. In any case, the nose situation reminded me of something that happened to me when I was 13, a bit older than my daughter is now.

When I was 13 years old, I went to a family party. An ancient relative was turning an ancient age, and the entire extended family had gathered for a dinner party. Sometime during the evening, one of my aunts sought me out and pulled me aside for a quiet chat.

Aunt: You're probably thinking a lot about plastic surgery these days.

Me: What?

Aunt: But your nose really isn't that bad.

Me: What?

Aunt: It's really not as bad as you probably think it is.

Me: What?
[Note: My complete lack of articulateness was a function of my age and the fact that I had no idea what my aunt was talking about. I felt my nose, testing for injuries.]

Aunt: I wanted to tell you that I think you should wait before having plastic surgery. Some day you may like having such a distinctive nose.

Me: What?


Well, that set me up nicely for spending my teenage years feeling self-conscious about my nose, a part of my face to which I had never previously given much thought.

My nose is neither particularly large nor particularly small (and no, I have not had plastic surgery). No one to whom I am genetically related has a large nose. My nose is, however, not as petite as the typical FSP Family Nose, and there is a slight bump from when I got hit by a flying baseball bat during a Little League game. Despite my lack of nose perfection, I am at peace with having a somewhat distinctive but nevertheless un-huge nose.

But now my daughter is worried about her nose. We recently went to a museum together and looked at the noses of women portrayed in classical statues and paintings. We saw many impressive noses, and we agreed that we'd rather have an interesting face (+ distinctive nose) than a 'perfect' face (+ little nose).

My wish for my daughter is that she not worry too much about her nose (or anything else about her appearance), that she like how she looks (however she looks), and that she not spend any time alone with her great-aunt.

Unceremonious

One of my senior grad students is under pressure from his parents to finish his thesis in time to participate in the spring graduation ceremony. As it turns out, the university doesn't really care if all the official paperwork is done by graduation ceremony time. They will let pretty much anyone put on the silly gowns and caps and march around and listen to speeches, so I think it will work out just fine for him to enjoy the day with his family, even if his thesis is not completely finished.

My student is nicer than I am. He says he doesn't care about the ceremony, but he will do it if his parents really want him to. I had zero interest in my own grad school graduation ceremony, and did not attend. I think it is fine if someone wants to though. After years of very hard work, if you want to put on the academic robes and be part of a ceremony, go for it.

The two graduation ceremonies I have attended were somewhat stressful, although there were enjoyable aspects as well. In high school, I was the valedictorian of my class, and by tradition, the #1 student gives a speech at graduation and at one other end-of-year function, and is the m.c. of the school awards ceremony. I don't know if a female student had ever done this before or if the school administrators were lacking confidence in me in particular, but they were quite anxious about my having such a major role in these festivities. The principal had a private chat with me to try to convince me that someone else should take on these roles in my place because it was very important that the speeches be done well. Unfortunately for the principal, the top 11 students in my graduating class were female. When he told me that his preferred alternative to me was not one of the many outgoing, bright, and articulate girls he could have selected but instead a smart but goofy male student (#12 in the class), I got mad. So I said I was going to give the speeches, in accord with tradition. I endured a lot of "Are you sure you can do this?" from various school administrators in the weeks leading up to the events, but I did the speeches, they were no more or less boring or profound than any other graduation speeches, and the principal later apologized for doubting me.

My college graduation experience was strange in a different way. For any reader out there who has a shred of doubt remaining as to whether my life is more bizarre than is typical, this should blast away any remaining uncertainty. In fact, I think I've mentioned this incident briefly before, so will keep it short: a friend played a practical joke on me, which I sort of deserved, but which resulted in the campus and environs believing that I was associated with a controversial organization that espoused political views that were in fact quite opposite to my own. Apparently these views were also opposite to many other people's, as I soon began receiving death threats by phone and mail. The college president intervened, as did the local media and other groups, and the threats decreased. Even so, not long before graduation, I got an insidious threat that mentioned snipers waiting for me at graduation. I didn't really believe this, but the thought of snipers hiding in the ivy added an extra element of tension to my graduation ceremony, which was held outdoors.

I probably should have gone to my Ph.D. graduation ceremony. No snipers were promised, I wasn't giving any speeches, and I could have just enjoyed the excitement of being one of many people dressed absurdly and marching around. In fact, I have never regretted missing my graduate graduation, but I will support my student's effort to make his parents happy and finish his thesis in the vicinity of this spring's graduation ceremony.

Competition, Survival, and Academic Niches

None of my graduate students graduated in 2006 or 2007. Apparently they were all waiting to graduate in 2008, an auspicious year in which 5 of my students may obtain graduate degrees. This is going to be the biggest year yet for students graduating from my research group.

2008 will therefore be a momentous and exciting year, but it will also mark a huge change in my research ecosystem. I would prefer that my group change more gradually, with intermittent degree-obtaining by my senior students at about the same rate that new students join the group. It's impossible to plan these things, though. I am very fond of my research group now, so my pleasure at watching my soon-to-be-former students move on to new and interesting activities will be accompanied by a hint of melancholy. Perhaps this melancholy will be assuaged by a new group of excellent students.

It is entirely selfish to feel sadness at the graduation of one's students, but I do think that the intermittent-graduating-student model would also be better for the group as well because it would then avoid the situation of people in the same group applying for the same positions. That can be stressful for all concerned. Fortunately, each one of my students has their own specific expertise and skills, and so, if required, I can 'compare' them in reference letters without saying that one is better than the others. Even so, I'd rather not compare them.

When I was a grad student, two of my office mates were applying for the same very small number of faculty positions in their specialty. This was at a time when the number of available faculty positions was exceedingly small, and these two office mates were very stressed out and essentially stopped speaking to each other. Even worse, we all shared a phone, and the ringing of the phone became a very traumatic time for everyone in the office: Was one of them going to get The Call? -- inviting one for an interview but not the other? offering one of them a job, but not the other? For some reason related to stress and their temporary loss of sanity, neither of them would answer the phone. I became terrified of answering the phone because one of these office mates often yelled at me for not answering the phone in a professional enough way, as if my casual phone-answering style would cost him his tenure-track position. (In the end, both got tenure-track positions.) I don't think things are quite at that level of stress in my group right now. Hooray for e-mail and personal phones and staying sane and collegial during a search for faculty jobs and postdocs.

When I was a postdoc, a group of us who had the same supervisor -- including several current and recent postdocs -- were applying for the same few faculty positions. Another postdoc and I had great fun discussing who was our supervisor's favorite postdoc, second favorite postdoc etc., as we tried to imagine what he was writing in his reference letters for us all. We both agreed that the wild-and-crazy brilliant guy who liked extreme sports and long nights in the bar was #1, but we disagreed about who was #2. My friend said it was me because I had the most publications (and our supervisor worshiped publication quantity), but I said it was him. I had compelling evidence: my friend was given the better office, was paid more (for the same job), and spent more time hanging out with our supervisor (beer, sports, science-talk etc.). Also, our supervisor kept telling me rude jokes about feminists and I didn't think any of the jokes were funny, thereby proving to him that feminists don't have a sense of humor. And, as if that weren't enough, our supervisor once somehow failed to notice that I was taking care of a grad student's very large cactus while she was traveling, and, during a visit to my office, he leaned back against the cactus and .. It was like something out of a cartoon, although I did not laugh in any obvious way at the time, probably because I am a feminist and lack a sense of humor. Later, I suggested to my fellow postdoc that he should offer to help pull out the cactus spines, thereby vaulting to the position of #1 postdoc, or at least cementing his position as second-favorite postdoc, but he declined.

If that last paragraph has a point, and I'm not sure it does, it is that members of the same research group can 'compete' for jobs and still have fun and remain friends, even while staring possible career extinction in the face.

Team Player

This semester, I am team-teaching a course. There are many things I like about team-teaching, especially if I like the person with whom I am team-teaching and if the technical aspects of the class (e.g., constructing the syllabus, grading, managing the course webpage) are evenly divided.

In my department, we are supposed to attend all the classes in a team-taught course, not just the ones we are actually teaching. The main reasons for this relate to the hypothesis that this provides the best educational experience for the students.

In addition, in theory, if we fully participate in a team-taught class, we get 'credit' for teaching 0.75 of a class rather than 0.5. This is meaningless in my department, where teaching loads are not strictly assigned, but that's OK with me. I would rather have a flexible system than a rigid one that counted teaching loads down to a fraction of a class.

Some challenges of team-teaching include the following:

1. You and your colleague have very different teaching styles. Similarly, there might be a significant disparity in grading philosophy, accessibility to students, and/or ability to communicate.

At my previous university, I used to teach the second half of a course. The first half was taught by someone I liked a lot as a colleague, but who was very fierce with undergraduates. He was in fact quite scary in class. By the time it was my turn to teach the class, after Spring Break, the students were terrified, hostile, or both. It took them a week or two to realize that I wasn't going to yell at them or tell them they were stupid. I was very nervous about this course because I was an assistant professor and my co-teacher was a full professor, but he respected my teaching and we had some constructive conversations about how we could both improve our teaching of this class.

Some of my most positive experiences with team-teaching have been with graduate courses, perhaps because of the more flexible format of these courses and the fact that I team-taught with very compatible colleagues.

2. You have to teach with a truly loathsome colleague. The incident I described above involved teaching with a difficult but not loathsome colleague. Teaching with a loathsome colleague has only happened to me once and it was very unpleasant. The colleague with whom I was team-teaching exhibited some creepy behavior towards female students and did not respect either the content or style of the classes I taught. He made no secret of his contempt for me, and after many of my lectures, he would slither to the front of the classroom and make some remark about what I had just taught. "How innnnn...terrrr...esting that you taught that concept that way. I have never seen it taught that way. I wouldn't consider doing it that way myself, as the classic way has always worked for me. Do you think the students got anything out of what you just did?"

3. Team-teaching can be as much work/time - or almost as much work/time - as teaching the class yourself. Team-teaching adds some complexities to the logistics of teaching, but you won't really know what these are and how much time they will take until you've taught with a particular person a time or two.

Sometimes team-teaching can take more time than you think it will. A few years ago, my department chair asked me for ideas about how 'we' could help a younger colleague who was struggling with teaching. This colleague had been assigned to teach a large class the following term, and the chair was concerned about how that would go. I had taught the course many times, so I offered to team-teach it with my colleague. I thought that by teaching the course together, I'd be helping my younger colleague have a less stressful semester, and I thought it might be interesting working together on a course. I don't actually know if this would have worked or whether it would have been more stressful for my colleague. I never got to find out because, although I was already teaching another course that semester, the department chair decided that if I had time to team-teach, I had time to teach the entire course myself. He gave the struggling teacher a break from teaching and loaded me with an extra course.

Team-teaching is a great way that faculty with different fields of expertise can together create an interesting course and provide a dynamic learning environment for students. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, it's grisly.

My Grad School Application Essay

The statement that accompanies a student's application to graduate school in Science can be an amazing thing to read. I know that these statements are very difficult to write, and I surmise that some students are not given much guidance about the content and tone of the statements. Furthermore, some students do not yet have their research interests very well focused. These are not fatal errors if the overall application is strong.

I am always impressed when I read a well-written, focused statement that has interesting content. These students are at an advantage not only for admission but also for recruiting scholarships. An applicant can be admitted to graduate school with an unsophisticated statement, but obviously it's preferable to have a good statement. I'm sure that the requirements for a good statement vary from place to place, but here are a few basic things that I like to see (or not see) in an application statement, especially for a Ph.D. program:

1. What do you want to do in graduate school? You do not have to be intensely focused on a narrow topic at the time of application. There is time to figure that out once you start your graduate program. Even so, if your statement gives faculty the impression that you are applying because you don't really know what else to do and maybe you'll give grad school a try.. that's not good. Present yourself as a serious student with sincere interest in the general field of study for which you are applying. This part of your statement should have content based on your experiences thus far.

2. Do not discuss your childhood. Most faculty don't care about your childhood chemistry set or your shell collection or even the telescope your great-aunt set out in a field one summer night to show you the immensity of the universe. Do not describe a walk on the beach with your dad when you were 5. Do not mention your favorite teacher in 4th grade, not even if she let you watch a cocoon being built. Do not talk about how awesome it was the first time you read Isaac Asimov or Carl Sagan or even Richard Feynman.

3. What are some significant academic or work experiences you have had that are relevant to your application for graduate school in Science? Relevant items here would be research experiences and rigorous classes.

4. Make some effort to tailor your statement to the department to which you are applying, but don't go overboard about it. Just show that you have a realistic reason for applying to a particular department. Be sure to check over your statements carefully before submitting them so that you don't send a statement to University Y that says that your dream is to study at University X.

I am not going to take a stand on the issue of whether one should start the essay with a quotation. I personally prefer quotationless statements, but certainly wouldn't hold it against a student, unless they quote Emily Dickinson.

Fortunately, my actual graduate application statement has been lost to the sands of time -- I am sure it would be very embarrassing to read now. I have no idea what I wrote, but it was likely very naive. In the absence of the original, and because I have been reading so many of these statements lately, I just now decided to write my own statement (again). Instead of trying to write a good essay, though, I decided it would be easier and more fun to write an awful essay, ignoring the boring 'rules' I listed above.

Disclaimer: My fake statement is not meant to be contemptuous of actual student efforts, as that is not how I feel when I read these statements, however bizarre, even though I am a curmudgeon.

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

A Sample Essay for an Application to a Science Graduate Program, Inspired by Real Essays
but not quite to the point of actual plagiarism

How many roads must a man walk down, before they can call him a man?

Bob Dylan wants to know the answer to this question and so do I. I have always loved quantifying impossible things, and I want to continue to do so in graduate school. I would not stop at counting roads, though, because counting roads means looking down. I also want to look at the sky.

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?

That's another thing that Bob wants to know, but in this case we disagree about the important question. I want to know how many times must a man look up before he can really know the sky and what is in it. The sky has always been a mystery to me ever since I was a child. What is the sky? We must know this before we can count things in it. I do not like science fiction though. I love science.

In the classes I have taken as an undergraduate, my professors have attempted to teach me many things, but the things I want to know are not in books.

I have always collected things: shells, pebbles, cats. I even tried collecting staplers for a while to try to get over my fear of them, but although that didn't work well, it shows that I am not afraid to face obstacles and at least try to overcome them. Now my passion will be collecting data.

I think that the graduate program at the University of X is the best one for me because you have a lot of faculty who count the atoms in our universe and our planet. Some of these atoms even make up Bob Dylan, his roads, and the sky we both want to look at and know.

REU^2

The comments on the previous post about summer internship programs for undergraduate science majors raise interesting issues:

Typically, REU* students come from universities/colleges other than one's own -- how do you balance working with REU students and working with students from your own institution?
(* REU = Research Experiences for Undergraduates)

Ideally, of course, you work with both, if you have the time and resources to do so. I like having undergraduates from my own institution working with my research group. These are the students we know and love, and I think we also have a responsibility to give our students as interesting an educational experience as we possibly can -- for some students, that involves working with their professors on research projects. In addition, there is a continuous supply of talented and motivated students who are interested in getting some research experience, either for academic credit or for pay. If you start working with students before their senior year starts, they can be involved in more in-depth research projects than is possible in a summer internship. Right now, I've got 3 undergrads working with my group.

Summer interns work on a very focused project for a short amount of time. This limits what you can do, but it is possible to accomplish something interesting and possibly significant in a summer; some of my summer interns have co-authored papers with me based largely on their summer research projects. In addition, some REU students continue their summer projects once they are back at their home institution. Several of my REU summer students have done this very successfully, presented their results at national meetings, and had their choice of graduate schools.

A large number of our REU applicants come from small liberal arts schools. These students want to experience a big research university to see what it's like, and I think it is important that they have such opportunities.

Funding agencies seem to be losing track of the most important aspects of the internship programs.

I don't mean to disparage the importance of learning to work collaboratively and travel around in a herd of science students all wearing the same T-shirts, but I think that the intellectual content of the research programs is the most important element. If a program has a demonstrated record of providing an excellent experience for students, that should count for a lot. We came close to losing our program because the funding agency wasn't sure if we were providing enough of a 'cohort experience' for the interns. Cohort experiences are apparently favored over students being locked in isolated basement labs with analytical equipment that makes strange humming sounds. I don't get that. OK, I do, but..

Grad students and postdocs end up doing a lot of the advising.

This is certainly the case in some instances. I don't think any grad student or postdoc should have to advise an undergraduate if they don't want to and if it is not specifically a part of their job as a research assistant or postdoc. Some grad students and postdocs want to advise or help advise students, and I think they should be given the opportunity to do so, provided that the project is reasonable and so on. I know of quite a few cases in which this advising/mentoring experience was important when the grad students/postdocs were later considered for faculty positions.

********

Involving undergrads in research -- whether in the summer or during the academic year -- is a very good thing. It does not always work out -- I have had my share of negative experiences working with dysfunctional and/or annoying students (who no doubt would say similar things about me) -- but when it works well, it's great.

REU

A week or so ago I went to a talk that wasn't in my field but that was being given by someone who -- a long time ago, as an undergraduate -- had participated in a summer research program that I had created and then directed for many years. These summer internship programs (Research Experiences for Undergraduates, or REU, to use NSF-speak) have been proliferating in the last decade or so, and this is a great thing.

At the beginning of the talk, the speaker credited the internship program with inspiring his decision to go to graduate school in Science, get a Ph.D., and pursue an academic career. The speaker's main inspiration was his internship advisor, but I considered myself to have been indirectly thanked anyway, and that felt good.

Over the last 10 years or so, some of my colleagues and I have tried to track as many of our former interns as possible to see what career paths they have followed. It is not surprising that so many have continued their education and pursued academic careers -- these internships attract students who are starting to think they might want to go to graduate school. Even so, the results of surveys we give the interns indicate that a significant number are unsure going into the summer program, and are using the internship specifically to test the waters and see if research is something they want to do.

It is therefore encouraging that even after a summer of challenging research experiences, so many undergraduate students are interested in continuing on to a career in Science. Undergraduate courses are important and can be inspiring in their own way, but there's nothing like doing research to really see the exciting possibilities.

Going Postal : Reference Letters

The past few weeks have involved much reading and writing of recommendation letters for undergraduate students applying for graduate schools, and writing of letters for graduate students applying for faculty positions/postdocs. I have written before about some issues related to evaluating and writing such letters (and random rants here and here). Today what is obsessing me is just how complicated it has become to keep track of all the different ways that different universities want this information conveyed to them.

It has always been a problem getting students to produce an organized list of the required forms, addresses, and other information well in advance of deadlines (i.e., > 1 week), but that is chaos I can deal with. What I am talking about is additional chaos that makes the entire letter-writing enterprise seem like something out of a novel that parodies Academia.

Faculty positions/postdocs: Some universities want a letter sent by email as an attachment; some want an emailed letter but also need a hard copy to follow at some point (by the evaluation date, at some unspecified time later, or only if the candidate is offered a job). Others only accept a letter on letterhead sent by regular mail. At some universities, the letter goes to the department or head of the search committee; at others the letter goes to an employment office (please include the position requisition number in all correspondence). This is annoying but still a manageable amount of chaos. But then there's:

Grad school applications: This has become an insane process. I hate the online forms with their 57 questions about whether the applicant is in the top 1%, top 5%, top 10%, top 25%, top 37%, lower 12%, or whether I have no basis for judgment of certain aspects of the student's intellectual and social skills. Some online applications have tiny little boxes for written comments, so I have to write a separate letter if I am going to say anything more than that Mary is smart.

Some forms can be filled out online, but only after the student has done their part by entering relevant information and waiving/not waiving their right to see the letter. Others require the student to print out the form with this information and give the paper copy to me, although the point of interactive text-boxes eludes me in these cases. Some of these letters I have to mail; some I have to give to the student in a signed/sealed envelope for them to include with their other application materials, except those that are online.

Some students send me links to reference forms without having filled out their part of the form first. Some of the links they send me don't work or are links to the wrong form. Some students have to send me their social security numbers, date of birth, application number, and shoe size before I can fill out my part of the form. Every place has a different due date.

If the average student applies to 6-7 graduate programs and there is not much overlap in the programs/universities to which they are applying and if you happen to be a professor who teaches required courses for majors and therefore interacts with grad school-bound undergraduates..

At some point during this process in recent weeks, I resorted to the sanity-saving measure of bypassing the online forms and just writing reference letters and either emailing them directly to the relevant departments or printing the letters and giving them to the students to mail in a sealed/signed envelope. I made the necessary communications with departments/graduate programs to ascertain that my students will not be harmed by my failure to fill out all the little interactive text boxes and click on the pull-down menus in the charts divided into random categories.

I did fill out some of the stupid online forms before realizing that the system is broken and that faculty need to rise up as one and protest this insidious form of oppression. If any of the candidates for President of the United States will promise to reform the online reference system for academic letters of recommendation, they just might get my vote unless they don't believe in evolution.

Spaced Out on Beowulf

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while may be starting to get the impression that I do not entirely enjoy faculty meetings. I believe at one point I raised the possibility that they cause brain damage. Or maybe that was grading.

Even so, I try to be a good department citizen and attend faculty meetings unless I am traveling. My level of participation, however, fluctuates quite dramatically from meeting to meeting, depending on the topic and my caffeine intake.

In the most recent faculty meeting, I was doing pretty well in terms of paying attention, participating, not making eye contact with certain sympathetic colleagues when insane and trollish colleagues spoke, and so on. At some point, though, I must have mentally vacated the premises. I was not aware of this, however, until tonight.

Tonight at dinner my husband said "What did you think about that strange episode at the faculty meeting when Colleague X started talking about Beowulf?" [note to readers: I am in a Science department. We are of course all intellectuals and into multi-inter-transdisciplinary studies, but we do not typically discuss literature at faculty meetings.]

I laughed, assuming he was making a joke in a highly oblique way, as is his wont. I said something random in reply, like "Oh yeah, and that was great when Colleague Z started quoting from the Upanishads." [note to readers: I totally made that up. Colleague Z did not quote from the Upanishads, or anything.] My husband was silent for a moment, as is not typically his wont, and then he said "Um, no really.. didn't you think it was kind of strange? He went on and on about it."

I was stunned. How could I have missed a long rambling speech on Beowulf at a faculty meeting? I was there and I remember Colleague X starting to speak about something, but I don't remember anything he said.

Colleague X is a truly excellent example of deadwood, but I don't think that is why I tuned him out. In fact, I will take this opportunity to say that just because a colleague is deadwood, that doesn't mean that they can't be immensely likable. I am very fond of this particular colleague, who is a very kind and amiable person who should retire soon.

In any case, I apparently did space out completely. I don't remember what I was thinking about, but it may have been one of the following:

- Which among the applicants for graduate work in my research specialty should I accept to work with me?

- Why do so many grad applicants start their research statement with a quotation? Is there some Guide To Applications that suggests doing this? Why would a grad applicant for a Ph.D. in Science quote Bob Dylan in their application? (Why isn't anyone quoting Beowulf?)

- I have been doing the most major cleaning of my office in the past decade, and maybe the biggest cleaning ever. I am contemplating throwing out some notebooks and textbooks I have kept since college and graduate school. Should I throw them out after all these years? Why keep them? Why not keep them? If I throw them out, after not looking at them for decades, will I then regret it?

- How do I reply to a stressed out author whose manuscript I am editing and who is trying to get out of doing major revisions without which his manuscript is inadequate in important respects? Should I accept his manuscript just so he will stop sending me emails about his wife's ghastly gynecological problems? No, I can't and won't do that, but I do wish he would stop sending me those emails. I do not know him. I do not know his wife (though I know a lot about her innards).

R1 Reality

Both of the following occurred at the same time in the same Science department at a research university:

1. A senior professor tells a candidate for a faculty position that "teaching doesn't matter" for tenure, only research, so there is no point in even talking about teaching during an interview.

2. The department Chair won't permit online teaching evaluations because of concern that not enough students will fill out the forms and the tenure files of assistant professors will then be lacking critical data on their teaching, thereby jeopardizing their tenure cases. Similarly, some assistant professors are worried that their teaching portfolio isn't impressive enough and that this might tip the tenure decision against them.

Which is reality (such as it is)?

Case #2 is closer to reality (in my opinion, and since this is my blog, I am the Decider). The assistant professors need not panic so much about having an awesome teaching file, but their anxiety reflects the importance of research and teaching.

Case #1 describes the actions of an insecure person trying to impress a young faculty candidate by emphasizing how rigorous the department is when it comes to research. Strangely enough, aforementioned senior professor is also deadwood (in my opinion, and since this is my blog, blah blah blah).

I think it is becoming uncommon for anyone to be promoted at this and many other research universities unless they are at least good at teaching (i.e., not awful). You don't have to be a superstar teacher, but you have to demonstrate that you are a reasonably effective teacher by the time you come up for tenure review. [I am of course excluding from this discussion those faculty who are on 100% research appointments, and discussing only those from whom both research and teaching are expected].

In the last few years, I have not seen a situation in which a research-star-but-lousy-teacher came up for tenure, although I know of such cases from a while ago. This may be because people who seem like they will be bad or uncaring teachers are seldom hired in the first place anymore -- at least not into jobs involving significant amounts of teaching. Of course it is possible for a hiring committee/department to be wrong about whether someone will be a good teacher and/or fail to predict that someone will have an incapacitating crisis that negatively impacts their teaching, but there is at least a sincere effort to gauge teaching ability.

I could be very wrong, as happens from time to time, but despite the increasing emphasis on research and teaching at research-oriented schools, I don't think that brilliant researchers (who can't/don't want to teach) are being driven away from Science, thereby depriving the United States of creative scientists who will lead the way to solutions to major problems facing our nation. Ideally there will be enough research faculty positions at universities, as well as jobs in national labs and in industry.

The "we're so serious about research, we don't care about teaching" posturing of the senior professor in Case #1 might have gone over better in days of yore, but these days it is a deeply disturbing (and inaccurate) thing for someone to say to a faculty candidate.

About 10-12 years ago, I once saw the reverse situation, in which it was the candidate who was doing the posturing regarding teaching vs. research. When faculty compared notes, we realized that the candidate had told me (the assistant professor) that he only cared about research, was not interested in teaching, and would rather hire postdocs than deal with students; he told the tenured professors that he was interested in teaching but only at the graduate level; and he told the Chair and the Dean that he would teach anything they wanted him to teach, as he was deeply interested in undergraduate education. He was not offered the job.

More problematic are situations in which a tenure candidate is an amazing teacher but a mediocre/unproductive researcher. Being an excellent teacher can tip the scale to a favorable tenure decision, but I have also seen cases where tenure was denied anyway, although some of those cases led to lawsuits that resulted in tenure in the end (especially if students mobilize to protest the eviction of a beloved teacher).

Some of these situations are complicated, but the fact remains that professors hired to do both research and teaching at R1 universities these days are expected to be good at both.

Sharing Professors

A colleague of mine at another university is teaching a course that he has taught before, but not recently. This is the first time he has taught this particular course in the PowerPoint Era. I have taught this course more recently and more often, so he asked me if I would be willing to send him all of my class materials for this course. Converting an entire course to a new format is a huge amount of work -- almost as much work as teaching the course for the first time, especially if you haven't taught the course in a long time.

I was happy to help my friend, and I sent him all my course materials. (Long-time readers of this blog may recall a previous mention of my friend/colleague who was a - in fact, the - bridesmaid at my wedding -- this is the same guy). Other colleagues and I who teach this same introductory level course also share course materials with each other. For this particular course, I have shared course material with ~ 7-8 colleagues in my own department and beyond.

Helping each other in this way isn't (necessarily) being lazy; it's a great way to get new images and ideas. Last year, an assistant professor and I shared course materials for the same course, and this worked out well for both of us. He was teaching the course for the first time and I was teaching it for the millionth time, but we have different fields of expertise and so each had zippy images and ideas for different parts of the course.

Similarly, I hope the friend to whom I just sent my course materials will in turn send his revised versions back to me for when I teach the course next year. There are some topics on which he is more expert than I am, and I am looking forward to seeing what he adds or improves for those topics.

Although my presentations get better with time owing to their being rejuvenated by new material obtained by this sharing, there will never be a time when I have the perfect set of prepared presentations for this class. The great thing about Science is that there is always something new and interesting to talk about -- and to figure out how to teach -- so the course material is always changing.

Deadwood: End of an Era?

Some colleagues and I were recently comparing notes about some of the other universities we had recently visited to give invited talks. One thing we talked about was the number of deadwood faculty we encountered. We mused (in an admittedly obnoxious way) about whether there would always be a similar number of deadwood -- that is, a continuous supply of new deadwood will replace the retiring deadwood -- or whether the number will eventually decrease owing to a change in hiring/promotion criteria and decrease in tenure-track positions in the 1980's. Perhaps it is ageist even to ask the question, but we wondered:

Will there ever be a time when there are substantially fewer deadwood professors, or will there always be a pod of them in most departments?

Most departments, even highly ranked ones, have a certain number of deadwood faculty. These are typically older faculty who got their Ph.D. in the 1960's-70's. In the sciences, the vast majority are white males, owing to the demographics of academia at the time these professors were advancing through the academic ranks. (Note to those unfamiliar with U.S. academia: There is no mandatory retirement age. You can be a professor forever if you want).

By deadwood, I don't mean someone who has slowed down a bit in their research productivity with time. There will always be older faculty who do less research than they did in their youth -- this may well be the case for me eventually -- and there are some excellent ways to rebalance the distribution of research - teaching - service to accommodate this in a fair way.

By deadwood, I mean someone who has never been productive but who advanced through the academic ranks at a time when standards were different. Deadwood faculty are professors who, by today's standards, would not have made it as far as they have. The hiring process was very different > 30 years ago, there were more jobs available for at least part of the time when some of these professors were hired, and the criteria for tenure and further promotion were not as stringent.

It's of course impossible to know whether some current deadwood professors would have had a more active career if the culture and standards had been different in their academic youth. And it's difficult to know whether these faculty would be more active now if post-tenure review were more rigorously applied. Nevertheless, given the current situation and considering the hiring/promotion patterns of the last few decades, my hypothesis is that the number of deadwood faculty in most departments will decrease in the future.

In contrast, my colleagues, one of whom would win a gold medal in the Cynical Olympics, thinks that there will always be enough of a supply of new deadwood to replenish the ranks. These colleagues think that, although tenure is still a terrifying process, most faculty at most institutions get tenure. One of them proposes, though, that one difference in the near future might be that there will be more deadwood associate professors, on the assumption that those who barely make it to tenure won't muster enough energy in the 4-6 years after tenure to make it to the next promotion.

It's too soon to tell which hypothesis is correct, but perhaps it's not too soon by much.

Apres-tenure Glow

A younger colleague was recently awarded tenure and is of course very happy about this. In his case, tenure was not such a sure thing, adding additional anxiety to a process that is stressful anyway, and, now that tenure is assured, accentuating his feelings of relief.

This colleague is still basking in the relative security and prestige of associate professorship. One aspect of his basking is to decline to help with some activities that he formerly did as an assistant professor. Recently, if one asks him to help with something, he typically says "I don't have to do that. I have tenure." or "Ask X to do it. He's an assistant professor."

I am happy for him, but I find these comments obnoxious and I hope he gets over this particular phase soon. I don't think he was particularly burdened with university and professional service tasks as an assistant professor, so I attribute his recent behavior to post-tenure exuberance.

That's fine, but his refusal to help with some tasks means more work for others, tenured and non-tenured faculty alike. And if he keeps doing such things, at some point he will no longer be a happy tenure puppy but a slacker tenure dog, and that's not nearly as cute.

My New Material

In a conversation this morning, a colleague and I convinced ourselves that we are a lot like aging rock stars. Perhaps there are some differences, but there is at least one compelling similarity of which we are aware.

We have both been giving a lot of invited talks on our research this year, and in most cases the inviting department or session organizer wants to hear about research we have already done/published. They want to hear our old songs, but we wanna play our new material. Is anyone convinced by this awesome analogy yet?

I suppose I could give the same old talk over and over again, but I would go out of my mind with boredom. I would rather lose my mind in a more interesting way. Furthermore, an oft-repeated talk would become stale and I would be reduced to mumbling through it and sighing a lot, and maybe occasionally flicking my laser pointer at an image.

What my aging rock star/professor friends and I typically do of course is keep some of the old stuff and add some new material to it. The challenge of this approach in terms of giving a talk is that you have to make the entire talk flow -- you can't just abruptly end the 'old' part of the talk and then say "OK, now I'm going to talk about something that interests me."

Also, if you add new things, you have to cut some of the old things -- not cutting anything and therefore giving a longer performance might work for rock stars, but here is where we professors part ways with our musical colleagues. Giving a longer talk is not a good option for speakers, however fascinating the research. Talking extremely fast to cover extra material in the allotted time probably isn't a good idea either.

In some cases, deleting old images creates a problem because this information might be important for understanding the context of the new work. In that case, I make one or two new images that synthesize the information in deleted images. Then I can cover the old information quickly but clearly and move on to my new research/songs.

And that's when I get to pondering just how much work it is to update a talk. I am cranky about it right now because I am deep into making new images and figuring out what I can toss and what new material I can fit in. Once the new-and-improved talk is done, I am pretty sure I will be glad that I took the time to do all this.

Once it is done, I will also feel good about the fact that I have new results to present, and some things to say about the research I want to do in the near future. There is always something new to do, and therefore there is always something new to talk about. I think someone should write a song about it (but never sing it the same way twice).

The Cowardly Professor

Last semester, my daughter participated in an event that took place at the university, and I ended up spending most of the day at the campus center. Parents weren't involved in the event, but we had to be nearby for an undetermined amount of time. Some parents dealt with being in all-day limbo by making tag-team arrangements with other parents. I brought work with me, so I camped out in a lounge at the campus center (for 7 hours) with my laptop.

Spending 7 hours at the campus center was kind of interesting. I wouldn't want to do it every Saturday, but it was actually a pretty good place to work. I had a comfortable chair near a power outlet and I could acquire stimulating beverages from a nearby purveyor of caffeine. I was quite content.

The strangest part of the experience was when a group of students sat near me and studied together for a test in my general subject area of Science. These students were very confused about some very basic concepts. This ignited a raging debate in my head, as I argued with myself about whether to help them.

My first thought was: I'll offer to help them. They might be freaked out that a professor overheard them being clueless, but they clearly need help.

Then I heard them talking about how much they hated the class.

So I thought: Well, I'll help them anyway. It doesn't matter if they love or hate the class, they need help.

Then I heard them talk about how they never went to class and were going to do the absolute minimum to pass. They made crude remarks about students who like the class and who ask questions in class. Then they said rude and rather cruel things about the professor.

So I thought: I will challenge them to a duel.

No, so then what I really thought was: That's still OK.. I guess. When I was a student, my friends and I sometimes had unkind thoughts about some professors, and we expressed these thoughts aloud to each other when we were alone (or thought we were). Besides, if these were my own students, I would help them no matter how reprehensible their attitude or language.

But then I thought: When I was a student, it would have destroyed me if a professor had heard me say even a much tamer version of what they just said about their professor and the class. If I reveal that I am an eavesdropping stealth professor, these students will be horrified. They will worry that I will tell their professor what they said. They will be so distraught that they will develop anxiety disorders and binge drinking habits and then they will fail their classes and their lives will be ruined and it will be my fault.

So then I had the admittedly cowardly thought: I'll just tell their professor that some students in the class are having particular trouble with concepts X and Y, and my colleague, if so inclined, can send out a mass email or deal with the issue in some other neutral and anonymous way before the exam.

Then I moved to the other side of the room, away from the unhappy and confused students.

I felt guilty about not helping them. A braver professor would have cast aside all qualms and just barged in and helped the students, or at least tried to. A braver professor would have cheerfully helped the slacker students and given them the gift of knowledge, instilling in them a love of science and respect and affection for the professoriate. I am not that braver professor. [undergrad readers: What do you think I should have done?]

If I ever have to spend a weekend day hanging out in the campus center again, I think I will wear my special Science Professor hat (and socks) so that it will be obvious who/what I am. Then I would be happy to answer questions from random students studying for an exam in my field, and students sitting near me would know that they can make rude and salacious comments about their English professor, but not about their Science professor.

Newsletters

Upon returning from my Winter Vacation, I waded through the usual stack of holiday newsletters, in which I read with great fascination the names of my nephews' elementary school teachers and the names of distant long-dead relatives unearthed by my geneology-obsessed relative (living relatives were dispensed with much more efficiently), and gazed at collages comprised of hundreds of tiny photos that might contain images of people (or their pets?).

In December 2006 in this blog, I wrote an attempt-at-humor parody of such newsletters and said that that would likely be my first and last newsletter. I am going to stick by my campaign promise, although the statement was slightly inaccurate in that both last year and this year I am in charge of my department's annual newsletter.

Putting together the department newsletter used to be the job of a staff member who only managed to come up with a boring and ugly newsletter-like thing every few years. Last year, the new department chair decided that someone else should be in charge of the newsletter and appointed a faculty member who is not very active in research. This faculty member was offended to be asked to do a task formerly done by a staff person, and did not work on the newsletter.

Question 1: Who should put together the department newsletter?

I don't know, but I volunteered to do the newsletter because I think it is important that the department have a newsletter and I like to write and maybe I have a masochistic tendency to take on ever yet more service activities. Whatever the reason, I don't really know who should be responsible for producing the department newsletter. Some departments hire a technical writer with experience producing media-savvy brochures, some departments have a staff member who puts together a newsletter, and some departments have a faculty member assemble it. I suspect the latter option might be rare at a research university, but I don't really know.

Last year, creating the newsletter was a huge task because (1) I had never done it before, and (2) It had been so long since the previous newsletter that there were many things to write about and there was a huge pile of unsorted data to sift through and organize (alumni/ae news, donations, scholarships/awards etc.). I had a lot of help writing the newsletter (various faculty, students, and staff wrote parts of the newsletter), but it was still a lot of work.

I have agreed to be the Newsletter Editor again this year, but only for this year. I think that this job should rotate around the department every year or two so that different people are involved in it.

Last week, the department chair asked to speak with me. Here is a transcript of our conversation:

Department Chair (DCh): Now, I know that you think that someone else should take over the newsletter next year, but to be honest, when I consider all the faculty in the department, the number who have the appropriate skill set to produce a great newsletter is very small.

FSP: That's OK if the number is small, as long as the number isn't one.

DCh: The number might actually be one, and that one is you.

FSP: As I recall, last year you initially assigned this job to Another Professor. You must have done that because you thought that Another Professor was capable of this task. [<-- I thought this was a fairly clever response, as it left the chair the choice of admitting that there are non-me options or admitting he had been wrong in his initial choice of newsletter editor, and I was betting he'd do the former. Alas, I was wrong.]

DCh: I was wrong.

FSP: No you weren't. I think Another Professor would do a great job with the newsletter. Creating a good newsletter is not a 'skill set' that I alone possess.

DCh: Let's talk about this more next week.

(FSP thinks: We can talk, but .. no means no)

Question 2: How many professional service activities can one person do and remain sane?
(or is even too late to be asking that question?)

Grateful Data

A colleague visited this weekend to do some research, and I spent a lot of time helping him. This was a pleasure because this type of research is something I greatly enjoy and because I like this colleague very much. I was also happy to help him because he has been such a great help to me over the years, although we have never collaborated directly in research.

We had the same grad advisor, although not at the same time. My weekend visitor was already a professor at another university when I was a student. He visited his old grad department from time to time when I was a student, and he was one of the few people who took me seriously as a researcher at the time. I remember very clearly how much I appreciated this, and I will be forever grateful to him for his kindness and respect.

He has continued to be a kind and supportive colleague over the years, providing cheerful advice and assistance whenever needed. He has been particularly helpful to me (and many others) in terms of the teaching aspects of being a professor.

There is much talk about the importance of mentors and others who support younger scientists. For those of us who are now at mid-career or later, the most typical way for us to 'give back' is to try to be good mentors in turn and support the next generation(s) of scientists. It is nice, though, when the occasion arises to help the specific individuals who helped us when we most needed it, and that's why I am so glad that I could help my colleague this weekend. In addition, we got some very excellent results, and that is thrilling in its own right.

They Couldn't Have Done Better

By coincidence, two different male colleagues emailed me about two unrelated issues today. Both commented on something I had written and both made the exact same comment that both intended to be a compliment:

I couldn't have done it any better.

Thanks, guys! Is that the ultimate compliment, or what?

Women Over Forty

The NY Times today has an article about how older women (> 40 years old) may be more supportive of Hillary Clinton than are younger women. The author of the article attributes this split to the fact that younger women have "grown up in a world of greater parity " and therefore "seemed less likely to allow gender to influence their vote".

The article quotes a 73 year old former professor of women's studies; she is a Clinton supporter. Her 39 year old daughter, who works for a "nonprofit feminist organization", is not because, as she (the daughter) says: “Senator Clinton’s struggles are not my own, and they are not those of my generation of women,” and “The idea of a woman being president just does not seem to be as powerful or as revolutionary to me as it does to feminists of my mother’s generation.”

This blog post is not about Clinton vs. Obama vs. anyone, and I am not proposing that women vote for Clinton because she is a woman. Nor I am implying that I will vote for her. I am writing about this article because the quotation above from the 39 year old woman made me wonder whether I somehow missed an important event in American history: has there been a woman president before? I am quite sure there has not been. How would it not be revolutionary to have a woman president of the United States?

And why would a "nonprofit feminist organization" even exist if the US were really a society in which the gender of politicians truly didn't matter? I wonder what this organization does. I wonder if this woman ever reads the news. Is she aware of all the sexist comments that have been made about Clinton? Methinks these indicate that gender is an issue in this election.

The part about Clinton's struggles not being this younger woman's "own" and not of her generation really annoyed me. I am apparently showing my age by my reaction, but is it only the > 40 year old women who still struggle to be taken seriously, to be paid the same fair wage as men for the same job, and to have the same opportunities? This younger woman can vote for whomever she wants, but if she thinks that the struggles of oldsters like her mother and me are confined to our generations, then I hope she gets a clue for her 40th birthday.

Price Check: Faculty Meetings

Although faculty meetings can be hazardous to one's emotional well-being, they are nevertheless a seemingly necessary evil. Attendance is not mandatory, but it's best to go if you can. Sometimes, however, professional travel and other responsibilities conflict with faculty meetings, and it is not possible to attend. In these cases, you can typically give an opinion by email or leave a proxy vote if something of significance is being decided.

In some cases, it is possible to arrange your travel so that you don't miss a faculty meeting, but an itinerary that allows faculty meeting attendance might be more expensive than one that involves missing the meeting. A colleague and I were discussing this situation recently, and wondering what price we would put on attending a faculty meeting.

Assume that a meeting is not a momentous one at which a hiring or promotion decision is being made. Assume that one is a reasonably good department citizen and tries to attend faculty meetings if possible. Assume also that the various possible itineraries are basically the same other than their cost, but the cheaper one requires missing a meeting and the more expensive one allows attendance at a meeting. How much is a routine faculty meeting worth?

This is what we decided through the first round of intense discussion and bargaining at a local cafe: (the prices listed indicate the differential between the hypothetical itineraries)

$25: definitely pay the higher price and go to the meeting
$50: pay the higher price and go to the meeting
$100: think about it for a few minutes, but then pay the lower price and skip the meeting
> $100: don't even think about it, just pay the lower price and skip the meeting

So, it seems that my colleague and I would place the value of a routine faculty meeting somewhere between $50-100, though perhaps on the lower end of that range. I propose that routine faculty meetings are worth $57.25, but I would be willing to bargain.

Women Drivers

A friend of mine from college is worried that she is being a bad role model for her preschool-aged daughter because her daughter thinks that women are ‘just’ moms and don’t typically work. Her daughter has already decided not to have a career when she grows up. My friend plans to resume her career after her daughter starts school, but for now is a so-called stay-at-home mom.

I wish she wouldn't worry about this. Over the years, her daughter will see many women doing many different jobs, and will come to understand her options and choices.

This conversation reminded me of an incident from when my daughter was in preschool years ago. One day as I dropped her off at preschool, one of her friends said to me “You drove a car here.” I replied “No, actually we came by helicopter today. We always take the helicopter on Thursdays.” The little girl was not to be deterred from what she knew to be a fact, and she said again “You drove. In a car. I saw you driving.” Having little choice, I admitted to this, and, since it was not particularly interesting, tried to change the subject.

But the little girl persisted. “You drove.” Yes, I drove. “You drove a car.” Yes, I drove a car. I asked her why she kept talking about my driving. Lots of parents drove their kids to preschool. It would be a very long walk from our home. The little girl said “But moms don’t drive.”

Aha. Her mother didn’t drive, a fact of which I had been unaware, so in her universe, moms didn’t drive. Until she happened to see me driving that day, she had never noticed that some (in fact, most) moms drive cars. It had not occurred to her that any moms drive. I was stunned and she was stunned and my daughter seized the opportunity to try to convince her friend that her cats also drove cars.

Today, this little girl would probably be very surprised if I reminded her of this story. Of course women drive! Her universe has expanded, as will that of my friend’s daughter.

Fame

The FSP family has returned from its annual winter expedition to an interesting place. We went to see “the most beautiful floor in the world” and it was amazing.

Before visiting the most beautiful floor in the world, we spent some time in a big European city. The city was festooned with banners for a contemporary art exhibition at one of the city’s museums; it was impossible to miss these banners. The exhibition featured the work of a childhood friend of my husband’s, and it was strange to see this person’s name everywhere we went.

One day as we waited to cross a street, a city bus went by with a large advertisement for the exhibition and the name of the artist in gazillion point font. My husband remarked My name will never be on the side of a bus.

Our daughter wanted to know why his name would never be on the side of a bus, even if he does really really well in his professor job and becomes as famous as it is possible to become as a scientist. So we discussed the concept of limited fame, and types of fame other than that involving movie stars, presidents, and artists with exhibitions in big European cities. She was particularly intrigued by the concept of academic fame – i.e., that you can be internationally known (in your field) and technically be famous, but not in the name-on-the-bus kind of way. Then she wanted to know exactly how many people read our papers.

We are emotionally prepared to answer many difficult questions from our daughter about life and the world, but not this question. Her dad replied “4”, but that’s not right, except for maybe a few papers. He’s got some papers with citations in the triple digits, and presumably there are also a few people who’ve read but not cited his papers. I asked her Would you be impressed if the number were in the hundreds? She said no.

Then she wanted to know who is more famous: her mom or her dad. We argued about this for a while. My husband says I am because I’ve coauthored a book that is presumably more widely read than a typical paper and because I've written papers on a wider variety of topics than he has, but I think he is because his papers have more citations. We also argued about the sizes of our respective academic ponds and whether one is more likely to be famous in a small pond or a large pond. If your pond is small, are you more famous because everyone knows your work, or are you more famous if your pond is large and therefore more people might know your name?

We never agreed on the answers to any of these profound questions, but after that conversation, every time a bus went by with the artist’s name on it, my daughter and/or I poked the semi-famous MSP in the family and said Loser!, and then we all laughed.