Education
catdynamics | March 7, 2007Chad has an interesting riff on tenure and academia and the "business model" for universities.
He touches some buttons.
Several things came together today for me, one was a website that required me to pick an occupation that "best fit" what I did. I reluctantly selected teacher, because I am not an administrator, certainly not an engineer and nothing else was even close.
But I am not a teacher, although I do "teach" classes. Nor am I that abomination of a neologism, the "educator". I do interact with students, I present material in a structured manner (I like to think). I guide students in…
jstemwedel | March 5, 2007In a private communication, Sciencewoman asks:
Just out of curiosity, how have you been able to blog under your real name? Has your department been supportive? Are you post-tenure and immune from some of the pressures that the rest of us feel? Or is it that a philosophy department views outreach/education differently from a strict science department?
In the same communication, she also suggests that I might answer these question in a blog post, so I am.
Some of you will recall that I've written before about issues around using one's own name or a pseudonym as a blog author. In one of those…
pharyngula | March 3, 2007Some of you may recall that I got rather cranky with some sensitive Catholics who wanted to cancel a play — "The Pope and the Witch", currently playing on the Twin Cities campus. Unfortunately, although we'd hope to go, we had this succession of snowstorms that made traveling impractical this past week (I may still go at the end of this coming week, since the last day of the play coincides with the last day of classes before spring break and my birthday). Anyway, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press picked up on it. I put the article below the fold to preserve the fact that they quoted me, and to…
cortex | March 1, 2007Last week, I criticized David Brooks for his conservative interpretations of modern neuroscience. This week, I'm happy to report that Brooks' policy recommendations are much more interesting (and scientifically accurate, at least in my opinion):
If we want to have successful human capital policies, we have to get over the definition of education as something that takes place in schools between the hours of 8 and 3, between the months of September and June, and between the ages of 5 and 18.
As Bob Marvin of the University of Virginia points out, there is a mountain of evidence demonstrating…
jstemwedel | February 28, 2007Over at BlogHer, Marianne Richmond has tagged everyone with a meme on personal media consumption. Given that I've already self-identified as a Luddite, I figured a little self-examination of my media habits might be worthwhile.
Web: Until last week, I didn't use a feed-reader. I'd get my daily fix of the blogs by clicking around (or typing the start of my regular reads' URLs into the nav bar and letting Firefox complete them for me).
Then, with the release of the spiffy new ScienceBlogs Select feed, I finally got around to setting up some subscriptions with Google Reader. I still click…
sb admin | February 28, 2007By David Michaels
This is how it always works. A leading medical journal publishes a study saying a commercial product may be dangerous, perhaps even killing people. The trade association representing the manufacturers quickly attacks the study (preferably in the same news cycle), accusing the scientists of incompetence or worse.
The latest issue of the Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA) includes a study that links that use of antioxidants (beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E) with increased mortality. The issue was published today. Yesterday, the Council for Responsible…
oracknows | February 28, 2007Another one has fallen.
Yes, another prestigious medical school has given in. First I lamented the decline in basic science education in medical schools. Then, I lamented even more the infiltration of woo into the curricula of far too many medical schools, spurred on by patient demand, a desire for a nice, high profit cash-on-the-barrelhead set of treatments, and, most depressing of all, the misguided and highly credulous advocacy of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). Worse, my own alma mater, the University of Michigan, has infiltrated serious woo into its curriculum. But at…
petnoyer | February 28, 2007
Your definition of what's deep and what's not depends on your perspective. If you're an oceanographer, 200m is deep. If you're a snorkeler, 50 feet is deep. If you're a reef-building coral, 50 meters is deep.
Craig and I forego our usual definition of deep (200m) this week so we can alert you to live feeds forthcoming from the Secrets of the Gulf Expedition March 3-9 with the US Navy NR1 nuclear submarine (pictured above) and Bob Ballard's Argos tow sled as they survey the Flower Garden Banks region for paleo-shorelines and deep octocoral habitats at 100m depth. Tell your classmates,…
jrosenhouse | February 27, 2007If there's one good thing about spending an extra night in Buffalo, without access to a computer and with a rather limited selection of channels on the television, it's that you get a lot of reading done. I managed to plow through all of Edward Humes' book Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul. It's mostly a blow-by-blow account of the big Kitzmiller v. Dover case. It also provides a fair amount of historical context.
Overall it's an excellent book, difficult to put down. The trial scenes are especially compelling. I was following the trial…
j7uy5 | February 26, 2007There is a whole field of
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology">evolutionary
psychology. Let me get this out of the way: I
remain
skeptical of the entire endeavor, even though there is now a
href="http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/">Center for
Evolutionary
Psychology.
But when it makes it into the mass media, it deserves some
comment. The LA Times reported a few days ago on how the
formulation of psychiatric disorders is changing, in part because of
evolutionary theory.
href="http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-evpsych12feb12,0,3649492.story…
tsmith | February 22, 2007 As I mentioned, I spent the latter part of last week and the weekend in San Francisco at the annual AAAS meeting. Unlike most meetings I attend, this one wasn't a research-heavy meeting, so instead I went to hear more about science education (and of course, how to improve it), as well as to find out the latest in anti-science circles from those on the front lines. My old friend Professor Steve Steve tagged along as well, meeting new friends and old and discussing evolution and challenges to its teaching. Much more after the jump.
Of course, no trip to San Francisco would be complete…
oracknows | February 19, 2007You know, I'm really tired of this.
I'm tired of my fellow physicians with a penchant for spouting scientifically ignorant "attacks" on or "doubts" about evolution. It embarrasses the hell out of me around ScienceBlogs, and I really wish they would stop it. Sadly, it seems to be an increasingly long list. Although I first noticed it when former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who is a cardiac surgeon) voiced support for "intelligent design" back in 2005, this tendency among my fellow physicians to pontificate on their distaste for evolution didn't start to irritate me really seriously…
terrasig | February 17, 2007If I live to 93 and someone holds a mirror up to my life, I wonder how proud or embarrassed I would be.
In my weekend reading, I realized that I never commented on the passing last month of former Florida Democratic Senator, George A. Smathers. He was 93 and left this world largely revered by today's Floridians.
I bring up Smathers because of my educational links to the State of Florida, my previous writing on Florida civil rights leader Stetson Kennedy, and the melding of Smathers and Kennedy by Woody Guthrie in a song written to drum up votes during Kennedy's unsuccessful write-in campaign…
scientificactivist | February 14, 2007Last year's Valentine's Day entry was quite a hit, so here it is again.
(13 February 2006) We all know how normal people celebrate Valentine's Day: either going out on a hot date or, more likely, sulking alone at home and possibly crying themselves to sleep. Many of you, though, may wonder how scientists--those mysterious folks who drape themselves in white lab coats and lurk in the shadows, hidden away from the rest of society--celebrate this dubious holiday.
You've wounded me, dear;And how can it be?You've reached in and disabledMy p53.
Something is growing,You've heard the rumourLove grows…
thusspakezuska | February 12, 2007This is the first of three discussion posts for Week 1 of Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science. You can find all posts for this course by going to the archives and clicking on "Joy of Science" under in the Category section.
This post deals with the readings by Eisenhart & Finkel and Brainard & Carlin.
"Women (Still) Need Not Apply" by Eisenhart and Finkel and "A Six-Year Longitudinal Study of Undergraduate Women in Engineering and Science" by Brainard and Carlin seem to be in conflict with each other. Can "compensatory strategies" like women in engineering (WIE) programs make…
oracknows | February 7, 2007I happen to be in Phoenix today, attending the Academic Surgical Congress, where I actually have to present one of my abstracts. That means, between flying to Phoenix last night and preparing for my talk, I didn't have time to serve up a heapin' helping of that Respectful Insolence⢠you know and (hopefully) love. Fortunately, there's still a lot of stuff in the vaults of the old blog begging to be moved over to the new blog; so that's what I'll do today. I'll probably be back tomorrow, given that the conference will likely produce blog fodder. (Conferences usually do.) And, don't worry.…
pharyngula | February 2, 2007It's that time when universities get on their knees and beg the state for continuing support (hey, isn't that all the time?), and my colleague Pete Wyckoff gave some testimony at the Minnesota capitol the other day. It's good stuff that summarizes the financial dilemma students are facing everywhere as tuition climbs and the government cuts back.
Testimony for the House Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee, 1/31/07
My name is Pete Wyckoff and I am an associate professor of biology.
I represent the University of Minnesota, Morris, a special campus that seeks to replicate the…
jstemwedel | February 1, 2007The faculty where I teach is at a bargaining impasse with the administration of our university system over our contracts. We are hoping that the administration will come back to the table for a real negotiation*, but in the event that that doesn't happen, there are plans for a system-wide "rolling strike", with staggered two-day walkouts at each of the 23 universities in the system.
This prompted some opinion pieces in the school newspaper, including this one. There's a lot I could say about the claims in this piece (the university is going to hire replacement teachers or drop courses from…
revere | January 31, 2007Lecturers, even at a university like Harvard, are pretty far down the food chain. Even if, like Linda Bilmes an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School, you were once an Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Clinton Administration and co-authored a paper recently with a Nobel Laureate economist. Lecturers are the kind of vulnerable faculty a call to their Dean might harm. At least the Pentagon seemed to think so, because after chewing her out over the phone they called her Dean to complain about a "pretty dry" paper she gave at the Allied Social Sciences Association meeting in Chicago. Maybe…
jrosenhouse | January 29, 2007The stereotype about acedmics living in ivory towers does have a germ of truth to it. For the latest example, have a look at biologist J. Scott Turner's take on the ID situation. He was writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
He begins:
I'd never had a heckler before. Usually, when I'm asked to give a talk, I discuss my research on termites and the remarkable structures they build. Usually, I'm glad just to have an audience. x But what I'd learned from termites had got me thinking about broader issues, among them the question of design in biology: Why are living things built so well…