Academia
drorzel | January 10, 2007The last time I talked about our job search, I got a lot of comments of the form "Why does the process take so damn long?" As the first of our short list candidates shows up today for a campus visit/ interview, I thought I'd go through a sketch of what we do, and why it takes so long. I'm going to be vague about some details, because it wouldn't be appropriate to disclose too much of the process, but I'll try to give you an idea of what goes on and why.
I should note that, for all my bitching about the current search (mostly to Kate, but a little bit here), this has actually been about the…
omnibrain | January 10, 2007Ahhh modeling... gotta love it - especially when it models something like procrastination - or "Temporal Motivation Theory" as Dr. Piers Steel from the University of Calgary business school calls it.
He find these interesting things in his paper, "The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure." published in Psych Bulletin:
* Most people's New Year's resolutions are doomed to failure
* Most self-help books have it completely wrong when they say perfectionism is at the root of procrastination
(He spent time reading self help…
drorzel | January 10, 2007PhysicsWeb provides me with yet another blog post topic today, posting a lament about the death of letter writing, which makes life more difficult for historians:
Now that e-mail has replaced letter writing as the principal means of informal communication, one has to feel sorry for future science historians, who will be unable to use letters and telegrams to establish facts and gauge reactions to events. In addition to the Copenhagen episode, another example of the role of letters is Stillman Drake's startling conclusion, based on a careful reading of Galileo's correspondence, that the…
catdynamics | January 9, 2007Shri Kulkarni is the McArthur Professor at Caltech.
He has about 300 refereed publications, and is in the close vicinity of a major numerological birthday anniversary.
Of his papers, about fifty are in Nature!
PS: I just saw Shri at the AAS.
He did it - fifty Nature papers before the deadline...
that is quite something.
ADS lists 54 Nature publications, of which I count 4 which are non-refereed, so I'm counting 50 refereed Nature papers (and 3 Science papers!), with about 5000 citations in total.
It is possible I missed one of the N&V articles or unrefereed correspondences and am…
catdynamics | January 9, 2007Dr Alan Whiting writes some advice to young astronomers
He also offers interesting commentary on doing astronomy.
He can order marines around, navigate a cruiser through the straits of Hormuz, break Iranian crypotgraphy and do a PhD in theoretical astrophysics under Lynden-Bell's supervision. And he is a fencing instructor.
What have you been doing?
evolgen | January 8, 2007The NYTimes reports on the impending budget crunch at US science funding agencies. The last Congress only passed spending bills for the military and domestic security, leaving nine others at the same level as the previous year. If we take inflation into account, the stagnant budgets result in a decrease in funding of 3-4% for most federal science and engineering programs.
Congressional Democrats do not plant to update the unfinished spending bills, and will extend them in their current state through September. (To learn how to petition your congressional representatives to increase funding…
omnibrain | January 7, 2007Hmm.... I don't know about this:
Schools should use episodes from Doctor Who to teach children about science rather than technical and "boring" textbooks, according to the new science minister.
Malcolm Wicks, who was appointed in November following the resignation of Lord Sainsbury, believes that too many pupils are put off science during school.
He claims that popular television shows such as the hit BBC science fiction series and the Star Wars films provide children with an insight into real science that teachers can use to kick-start lessons. Science education campaign groups have warned,…
catdynamics | January 4, 2007Steve explains why Caltech Rules!
Undergrads... sheesh!
It may sound good, but then you have to deal with the weirdo roommates...
drorzel | January 4, 2007One of the standard elements of most academic hiring and promotion applications, at least at a small liberal arts college, is some sort of statement from the candidate about teaching. This is called different things at different places-- "statement of teaching philosophy" is a common term for it, and the tenure process here calls for a "statement of teaching goals."
I spent hours and hours on this, because I get a little obsessive about written work. It did get read closely by the ad hoc committee, at least-- at my first meeting with them, they asked a couple of questions about details of…
drorzel | January 4, 2007Inside Higher Ed reports on an impressively bad idea from the upper midwest:
"If we can't lure them here, let's tether them here," said Mark O'Connell, executive director of the Wisconsin Counties Association, a lobbying organization, and a member of the Commission on Enhancing the Mission of the Wisconsin Colleges, a group created to advise the network of 13 two-year colleges in the state.The commission, appointed by the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges in August, submitted a report late last month calling for an investment in new scholarships pegged to residency…
drorzel | January 2, 2007Classes start tomorrow, so I spent some time last week filing papers and cleaning off my desk. I've been here just long enough to fill up the file drawers in my desk, so I went through and pulled out a few old papers:
That stack is a collection of graded exams and lab reports from the 2001-2 academic year. I spent about half an hour feeding them into the shredder this afternoon (even though the students involved have all graduated, we can't just throw graded work into the recycling bin).
There was a weird sort of nostalgia involved in this. Shredding these papers reminded me of a bunch of…
catdynamics | January 2, 2007'Tis the season...
...to write dozens of recommendation letters.
And, may I say, to the graduate program administrators around the country; the commercial on-line application services universally suck.
Having to enter and re-enter the same information about myself, as a recommender, on poorly designed piece of crap websites is a waste of my time and a source of enormous irritation.
If this continues I will start boycotting electronic grad school application services and send good old fashioned paper letters directly to the departments.
I expect someone will then have to scan them (into…
drorzel | December 29, 2006A few weeks ago, the Modern Language Association released a report calling for changes in the tenure process for language and literature faculty. The report was a stirring call to action, and the members of the MLA quickly sprang into action, doing what faculty do best: arguing about stuff.
[A]lthough no one is challenging the main approach of the MLA panel, there are serious quibbles. At a session Thursday, for example, a dean questioned a proposal to give tenure candidates more of a say in which outside experts will analyze their work. And there was grumbling from some rhetoric and…
catdynamics | December 28, 2006I am doing an NSF study on career outcomes for NSF applicants and grant recipients.
The above is, verbatim, a question.
I guess the survey writer either has a very good sense of humour, or none at all.
drorzel | December 28, 2006Having spent a couple of posts on the infamous Duke lacrosse case back in the early part of the year, I should make a note of the fact that the case against the lacrosse players has pretty much disintegrated. There's a piece in Inside Higher Ed today giving an overview of the situation, albeit with an annoyingly self-congratulatory tone.
I haven't been following this closely in the past several months, but since I was fairly quick to post about the allegations, I feel some obligation to make a public acknowledgement that many of the allegations now appear to be badly exaggerated.
catdynamics | December 26, 2006What's a time in your career when you were criticized extremely harshly by someone you respect? Did it help you or set your career back?...
When I were a lad we used to have to walk to grad school, barefoot through the snow, up-hill both ways.
Not. I actually lived 1.5 blocks from my office, in sunny Pasadena So Cal and had a leisurely stroll through the immaculately groomed Caltech campus.
But...
...bear with me.
How I got there has some relevance to the story.
I did my undergrad in the UK, double honours in Mathemtical Physics ("Q" in the old UCCA classification). I came out of that knowing…
evolgen | December 25, 2006
The University of California, Berkeley and Texas A&M University will square off in this year's Holiday Bowl football game on Thursday, December 28. While not quite as complex as last year's national championship game pairing, there is a nice dichotomy when one considers the stereotypes of Cal and Texas A&M. In general, Cal is home to a bunch of liberal, tree hugging, pinko hippies, whereas the Texas A&M student body is made up of gun wielding, warmongering good ol' boys (and Nick). The tale of the tape is laid out in this article from the San Diego Union-Tribune -- San Diego is…
evolgen | December 21, 2006
The Public Library of Science (PLoS), an open access, web-based publisher, has launched its newest venture, PLoS ONE. PLoS ONE aims to bring scientific publishing into the Web 2.0 era, with a simple interface for commenting on published research articles. This feature is not unique to PLoS ONE, as the Nature blogs and BioMed Central both allow commenting on articles. What makes the site unique are the annotation features, personalize alerts, and rating of journal articles. Whereas the previous implementations of commenting on journal articles were an accessory to the publishing process, PLoS…
tsmith | December 20, 2006After the discussion here and elsewhere in yonder blogosphere about women and stereotyping, Cornelia Dean in the New York Times writes about recent meeting aimed at helping women advance in science, where bias still rages.
This fall, female scientists at Rice University here gathered promising women who are graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to help them learn skills that they will need to deal with the perils of job hunting, promotion and tenure in high-stakes academic science.
"The reality is there are barriers that women face," said Kathleen S. Matthews, the dean of natural…