Education
skookumchick | March 18, 2009So the readers have spoken: one more vote for hearing about my PI experience than the weird convo with the deans.
However, I was working on the draft, and then some more work stuff got dumped on me, then SW had her popular deconstruction of one of Greg Laden's posts and I didn't want to interrupt the flow. But it seems to have petered off, and I'm trying to dig out of my work stuff (next post will be RBOC) and so I'm finally getting back to this.
Here you are, then, and caveat emptor or whatever the bloggy-equivalent is:
Even though I'm co-PI on a big grant (>$3M when all is said and done…
oracknows | March 13, 2009Khaaaaan!
No, wait a minute. I mean: Nooooooo!
No place is safe from the invasion of quackademic medicine. No place. As you will soon see.
As you know, I've documented the infiltration of pseudoscientific and outright antiscientific woo into institutions that really should know better, namely academic medical institutions. Specifically, over a year ago, I created the Academic Woo Aggregator, a list of medical schools and academic medical centers that have embraced "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, as it's more commonly known these days, "integrative medicine" (IM). Of course…
drorzel | March 12, 2009
Matthew Yglesias » The DC Voucher Program Has Nothing to Do With Sidwell Friends
"Virtually none of the recipients of the DC voucher program could go to Sidwell Friends like Barack Obamaâs kids. For one thing, they couldnât get in. And for another thing, they couldnât come close to affording the tuition. But the former point is actually more fundamental. Elite schoolsâbe they colleges, high schools, or whateverâare largely in the business of selecting their own students. Sidwell has a lot of interest in having Barack Obamaâs kids as students. Sidwell has virtually no interest in having…
revere | March 4, 2009When I was in medical school it was common to get gifts from drug companies. Since many of us had very little money, the gifts were welcome. One company gave me a Littman stethoscope, at the time, the most advanced stethoscope around. The same model costs about $100 now. I was glad to get it, although I can't tell you the name of the company. I forgot the names as quickly as I pocketed their gifts. We all got lots of free samples, too, and they were often things like tranquilizers sent through the mail and left in the magazine bin in my apartment house common mailbox area. Yes, these folks…
sheril | March 3, 2009I LOVE all things space--arguably more than the next girl. For years I wanted to be an astrobiologist. Infinite possibilities and the ultimate opportunity to explore the unknown. And it's no secret to readers that I adore Carl Sagan and Cosmos, which fostered a love and appreciation of science in so many of us.
All I'm saying is, just perhaps--for the time being--we might be better off spending the kind of figures currently invested in large scale BIG 'what if?' projects on more proximate concerns. No doubt the mission of Kepler is really cool, but why rush to search for planets like…
skookumchick | March 3, 2009It's that time of the year again when folks may be thinking about graduate school opportunities, and what with the current economic climate, maybe more than possible. If you'd be interested in finding more out about what a PhD in engineering education might entail, my school is having an open house at the end of March, and it would be great if you came. More information below the fold.
On behalf of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University, I invite you to attend our open house for prospective PhD students on March 26 and 27.
Our doctoral program, the first of its kind in the…
oracknows | March 3, 2009Yesterday, I wrote about Senator Tom Harkin's (D-IA) little woo-fest in the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which he called Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation. I and a lot of the rest of the medical blogosphere (such as PalMD, Val Jones, and Tufted Titmouse) shook our heads in disbelief and disgust at Harkin's statement (video here) about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM):
One of the purposes of this center was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has…
clock | March 3, 2009One-third Of Americans Lose Sleep Over Economy:
One-third of Americans are losing sleep over the state of the U.S. economy and other personal financial concerns, according to a new poll released today by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). The poll suggests that inadequate sleep is associated with unhealthy lifestyles and negatively impacts health and safety.
Genes Important To Sleep Discovered:
For many animals, sleep is a risk: foraging for food, mingling with mates and guarding against predators just aren't possible while snoozing. How, then, has this seemingly life-threatening behavior…
jstemwedel | March 2, 2009Times are tough all around these days. However, at schools like mine, a large public university with a population that includes a significant number of students who are older than traditional college age, are the first in their families to go to college, and/or were in economically precarious situations before the current economic crisis, the situation feels especially dire.
When I started teaching at San José State University in August of 2002, the U.S. had not yet gone to war in Iraq. By my third semester of teaching here, I was starting to lose students mid-semester because their…
edyong | March 2, 2009I live in London. According to Google Analytics, 96% of this blog's readers make their homes in a different city and 91% live in another country altogether. The fact that most of you are reading this post at all is a symptom of the globalised state of the 21st century.
Through telecommunications, the Internet, free trade, air travel and more, the world's population is becoming increasingly connected and dependent on one another. And as this happens, the problems that face us as a species are becoming ever more apparent, from our relentless overuse of natural resources to the threat of…
oracknows | March 2, 2009Over the weekend, some readers sent me a link to a story that, presumably, they thought would be of interest to me, given that I graduated from the University Michigan Medical School back in the late 1980s. Specifically, it's a report that U. of M. has halted the use of dogs in its surgical training:
Surgeons training at the University of Michigan Health System will no longer use live, healthy dogs to learn drastic surgical procedures that can save people's lives, the university announced Thursday.
The anesthetized animals -- obtained from shelters -- were used to teach tracheotomies, how to…
jstemwedel | February 28, 2009You knew the California budget shortfall was going to have an impact on higher education in the state. But maybe you didn't know that the pain will not be distributed evenly. Last weekend, John Engell, a colleague of mine from San Jose State University (and currently chair of the Department of English & Comparative Literature), examined the pain that may be visited on our university in an opinion piece he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News:
Almost no one knows that this fall, San Jose State University will absorb one-third of all student enrollment cuts in the 23-campus California…
drorzel | February 27, 2009The Dean Dad is annoyed with the New York Times, for an article about how the recession is affecting the humanities. The whole piece is worth a read, but he singles out a quote from the former president of my alma mater:
Some large state universities routinely turn away students who want to sign up for courses in the humanities, Francis C. Oakley, president emeritus and a professor of the history of ideas at Williams College, reported. At the University of Washington, for example, in recent years, as many as one-quarter of the students found they were unable to get into a humanities course.…
oracknows | February 26, 2009"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."
At least, that's what Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part 3, and even though I'm not a mafia don, I can sort of relate to where he's coming from, if you know what I mean. It seems that whenever I try to get away from blogging about the nigh infinite level of stupidity and pseudoscience that emanates from the disease promotion movement (i.e., the antivaccine movement), it seems as though they somehow find a way to pull me back in. Of course, I'd rather like to think of myself as the reluctant gunslinger pulled out of retirement…
jstemwedel | February 25, 2009In last night's address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama said:
The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a pre-requisite.
Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any…
skookumchick | February 25, 2009 Sorry for my blog silence -- I've been swamped in work, and then to top it off, I got sick yesterday and missed a day of work (!).
I'm heading to Arizona State University today to go to a workshop on engineering ethics, and to visit my sister-in-law and her family, so the blogging silence is likely to continue on my part. Looks like ScienceWoman will capably hold down the fort - she's a super-poster!
Until then, I've been walking around with a camera in my bag for the last 2 weeks with some random photos on it. It includes a photo of my office door, which is decidedly more bestickered…
thusspakezuska | February 24, 2009It's certainly a tragedy when anyone takes their own life. I feel very sorry for the surviving family members and colleagues affected by the suicides of two U. of Iowa professors accused of sexual harassment who took their own lives last year.
And yet. I have little patience with this Chronicle of Higher Education article about them. You can file it under the category of "but he was such a really wonderful person! There's just no way he could have done these things!" Or, alternatively, "Those TERRIBLE women RUINED the lives of these WONDERFUL men!"
In the case of Arthur H. Miller…
laelaps | February 24, 2009Am I a scientist? It seems like a simple question requiring little more than a "yes" or "no", yet I am at a loss as to how to answer it. Even though I have been called a scientist by people I respect I cannot bring myself to use the term to describe myself.
It is not that I am holding onto some vaunted ideal of what a scientist is or should be. It is not as if a PhD, a prestigious academic prize, or a paper in Science is required to lay claim to the title. Instead I think of a scientist as someone who actively participates in research (or has done so in the past) and shares the results of…
tfk | February 23, 2009At the AAAS meetings in Chicago two weeks ago, I was privileged to be on a panel with such luminaries as Olivia Judson, David Deamer, Neil Shubin, and this year's winner of the AAAS Award for the Public Understanding of Science, Ken Miller. It was a great occasion, and afterward I got to shake hands with the original Tiktaalik fossil at Neil Shubin's lab, conveniently located catty-corner to my old dorm at the University of Chicago.
I plan to make slidecasts of several of those talks to post on Youtube or Slideshare when I get the time.
Until then, we can anticipate a multi-part series…
dmunger | February 23, 2009One of my most vivid memories from middle school was in English class. The class wasn't paying attention to the teacher -- we were chattering during "work time" and she wanted us to stop and return to a full-class lesson. So she shouted "SEX!" We all shut up immediately and stared at her in disbelief. Then she said, in a calm, normal voice: "Now that I've got your attention ..." and proceeded with her lesson. It worked great -- except for one thing. I have no recollection of what she actually taught us that day.
This brings up an interesting point: Teachers are often tempted to bring up…