FYI

Is there actual research showing a person that has a post-doc will do better at being a professor at a small liberal arts college? I am seeing an increasing trend in the biological sciences of such colleges requiring post-doc experience. In talking with faculty members (many of whom are great teachers at said colleges & didn't post-doc) they have said a traditional post-doc is preferred over a post-doc at a SLAC where you teach as well as do research. I look at the post-docs in my lab and in other labs and they do not seem to be getting additional skills that will make them better teachers. I can understand the importance of having more lab experience especially in a subject matter that is different than what your thesis was on. I think though more teaching experience would be more beneficial. Teaching is an art, it takes time to develop your skills at it. The more you do, the better you become (assuming you want to improve). The point of research at a SLAC is to teach undergraduates how to approach questions, how to work and think in a lab setting, getting results should be secondary. As an undergrad progresses in her/his research experience the push to get results should be increased to prepare them for what they will experience in grad school & beyond but only after a good foundation has been laid. My experience in research universities and talking with a variety of post-docs is that their focus is to build a nice CV by generating as much data and churning out as many high quality publications as they can. The mindset between a post-doc and a SLAC professor when it comes to undergrads in lab is very different. Just doesn't seem to make much sense.

Schenectady NY is latitude 42.8 N. Sweet! Would the Department of Physics enjoy performing an empirical falsification of the Equivalence Principle? It is an appropriate undergraduate independent study project.

Prep the raw material - $16 for benzil, $50 for MeOH/iPrOH denatured alcohol solvent to grow 3 mm diameter crystals. Borrow two differential scanning calorimeters for two days. 05 January is the optimum date for performing the experiment, 04 July the worst (93.5% of maximum signal). 42.8 latitude gives you 99.4% of maximum signal.

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm

If it fails you are out $100 and labor for hauling the calorimeters. If it works there is a free trip to Sweden in early December plus spending money and a golden souvenir. Fast track tenure, too - anywhere. Is that a satisfactory cost/benefits ratio?

Full documetation and literature support available on request. (Everybody's bet was on Golaith. David found a loophole. Yang and Lee, too - and their loophole is still open.)

Is there actual research showing a person that has a post-doc will do better at being a professor at a small liberal arts college?

I think that the reason a post-doc is desirable for a liberal arts college job is that (a) most people in physics do one anyway, and, mostly, (b) having done a post doc gives you some momentum in your research that will hopefully carry over into your first few years as an assistant professor.

Grad students come out to a greater or lesser degree independent-- but few are as independent as they are capable of being after a few years as a post-doc.

Even small liberal arts colleges are asking professors to show some research productivity nowadays. Given that research is less "structured" than teaching -- the deadlines are more of your own making, and since it's research it's open-ended whereas teaching is on a fixed schedule -- it's important that a pre-tenure professor at a small liberal arts college *have* some research grounding. Even at a R1 institution, if you care about your classes the smaller load can take over your life, especially as you have new preps.

Chad: are you on the search committee? As you may know if you've been following my blog, I *am* in fact seriously considering trying to move from Vanderbilt to a small liberal-arts college, and came very close to doing so last year. If you're on the search commitee, you'll probably see my application at some point....

-Rob

Regarding post-docs, pretty much "What Rob said." The point of the post-doc is not to improve teaching, but to improve research. Even at the liberal arts college level, faculty are expected to do research in order to get tenure, and a couple of years as a post-doc can be a real boost for that, both in terms of gaining experience in a slightly different sub-field, and also just getting some more publications in the pipeline.

If it's possible to do some teaching as part of the post-doc, that probably doesn't hurt anything. But the main advantage of a post-doc is in the research area.

As for the search committee, we're a small enough department that the practice for the handful of searches (for visiting positions) since I've been here has been for the "committee" to be the whole department. Given the sheer number of applications I think we can expect for this, I doubt everybody will read every folder, but probably everybody in the department will participate.

I expect this to be the highlight of my Winter term, really. Shoot me now.

Maybe being in the biological sciences but I do not see many post-docs getting that much better at doing independent research. Many labs I have seen put post-docs on quick strike missions to churn out papers & data rather than really developing as scientists. What many of them learn seems to be within the first year or so and then they stagnat. Are those that do a post-docs before starting a tenure track position really doing better research once they are at SLAC than those in the past who did not post-doc? Are they turning out better prepared students? The latter is most important especially at a SLAC.

For me, I also worry about the focus on research will have on SLACs. I went to one and had a fantastic education because my faculty were first and foremost teachers, the research was a means of teaching. If SLACs get caught up in the cycle of getting grant money that potentially could be lost, as research becomes more & more important with teaching being a nice topping.

At the research university I am now, teaching does take away from grant writing, paper writing, research and faculty members even those who do put effort into their courses tend to view it a burden & have called it that in front of students & TAs. It is the nature of the selection. They were hired because of their research. They get tenure because of it. That is the selection.

My question where is the evidence this is better for students at SLACs. I know a few grad students who would love to be a professor at a SLAC & would be great ones but who don't want to put up with being a post-doc because well post-docs getting treated like garbage way too often. I worked before going to grad school as a tech. Starting all those years ago, I made more than what I will as a post-doc & worked far fewer hours. The selection becomes for those that can put up with being a post-doc and not for those that would make good teachers. It is selecting those that are passionate about science relative to other things in life. I am not sure that makes for good teachers in the long run.

I expect this to be the highlight of my Winter term, really. Shoot me now.

Heh. Three years ago, Vanderbilt did three or four searches simultaneously. Every single colloquium was a candidate.

The bonus was lots and lots of free dinners. The whole department doesn't go out, becuase there are 28 of us, but with that many candidates, it's a lot of meals.

I was on the astronomy search committee, and indeed it is a lot of work.

-Rob

Re: post docs and teaching and research : in Physics, post-docs are not very often treated like garbage. Sometimes, but it's not the rule. Indeed, a post-doc is a nice era. You get to focus on your research (part of the fun stuff), and don't have a lot of committee, grant writing, and other BS stuff to do.

My own reasons for being in this are the research and the teaching. I love them both. All the rest are the things I have to do that I wish I didn't have to do. Being a post-doc is nice, since there isn't much BS, but it only lasts a small period of time.

It's very true that teaching "takes away" from research-- on the ohter hand, I view teaching as part of scholarship and one of the rewarding things about being in this career. Thus, the "taking away" terminology doesn't seem quite right.

Re: research at SLACs, I agree that if they get caught in the cycle of demanding outstanding researchers who are funded and damn all else, it's bad for the students. On the other hand, research is a very important part of an undergraduate Physics education nowadays. It's nearly de rigeur if the students want to go on to graduate school-- but I'd love to see even "terminal bachelors" students do some research, so that they have some idea what it's all about.

Given that research is an important part of a physics education, you need faculty who can do research with undergraduates. It becomes part of their "teaching" mission.

-Rob

Maybe being in the biological sciences but I do not see many post-docs getting that much better at doing independent research. Many labs I have seen put post-docs on quick strike missions to churn out papers & data rather than really developing as scientists. What many of them learn seems to be within the first year or so and then they stagnat. Are those that do a post-docs before starting a tenure track position really doing better research once they are at SLAC than those in the past who did not post-doc? Are they turning out better prepared students? The latter is most important especially at a SLAC.

I just want to note that the acronym "SLAC" for "Small Liberal Arts College" threw me on first glance. In the world of physics, "SLAC" is the "Stanford Linear Accelerator Center," and I spent a few seconds thinking "But... people do post-docs lots of places. Why is he only worried about SLAC?"

That said, I'm certainly familiar with the problem of post-docs doing quick-strike work-- in my field, it tends to manifest itself mostly in hastily cobbled together experimental apparatus, that only has to work for a year or so, and will probably fail spectacularly once the post-doc in question has moved on.

I don't think that applies to all post-docs, though, and those who do have that attitude probably trip themselves up in other ways when it comes time to find a job, particularly at the liberal arts level.

I think the research enhancement is a very real and positive effect, as well. While you can argue about the relative weight, research is a very important component of the tenure process at any high-level liberal arts school, and a post-doc provides a sort of a leg up on that process.

It's also increasingly an important part of physics education-- we require all of our majors to do a senior thesis research project, and the majority of our majors do at least some research before their senior year, either spending a summer in a lab, or doing an independent study of some sort. I did summer research as an undergraduate, and it was extremely important in convincing me that I wanted to do what I'm doing now, and I think it's a valuable experience for our students as well.

Not denying research experience in undergrad is very valuable. It is a great learning experience. My concern is that the selective pressure might becoming too great on research to the detriment of what makes SLACs great. It takes a very disciplined board and administrators to keep the eyes on the prize and not on the dollar signs grants can bring. My major question is what is the proof that a traditional post-doc leads to a better faculty member at such a college. And if top level SLACs are looking for traditional post-docs to become faculty members why are many developing post-doc positions that combine teaching & research when that is not what they are looking for themselves? One might & I do wonder if the schools are unknowingly developing a cheap labor force for themselves with the best of intentions.

As a grad student right now, I have been supervising undergrads and rotation students. My desire to teach comes into conflict with the desire of my PI to produce data especially as grant money isn't coming in as great as it did before and mine to wrap things up and graduate which is frustrating. Ideally it should go together but the day to day is another story.