Academia
jstemwedel | September 7, 2006It's been cool to see my ScienceBlogs sisters Sandy, Shelley, and Tara represent in our little nerd-off. I'm inclined to say this offers at least some evidence that women can get as geeky as the geekiest men. Sadly, there seem still to be many people -- including people selling stuff -- who just can't wrap their heads around that idea.
The most recent commercial monstrosity demonstrating the belief that females have a fundamentally different relationship to technology than males is the "Digi Makeover", descibed in horrifying detail by Kyso Kiasen at Punkassblog. The short version: it uses…
catdynamics | September 6, 2006Sometimes one just knows that certain issues are better left to others.
"... students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities"
The Dangeral One Strikes
Darn tootin'.
drorzel | September 6, 2006The Female Science Professor offers some thoughts on institutional hiring:
Only one graduate in the past 10 years from my research group is now a professor at a small liberal arts college, and that person attended a SLAC as an undergraduate. When I was in job-search mode, I got interviews at SLACs, as did my fellow job-seekers who had attended SLACs, but it was very rare for a SLAC to interview someone who had spent their entire career at large universities. Colleagues at small schools admit that they discriminate in this way because they think that someone who hasn't been part of the culture…
jstemwedel | September 6, 2006This was asked on a listserv I'm on, and I decided that the question is interesting enough to share here -- largely because I'm interested in how you would answer.
In an article titled "What is a Generally Educated Person?" in the Fall 2004 issue of AAC&U's Peer Review, Jerry G. Gaff asks readers to list 5 answers to each of these questions:
1. What are the ideas and skills students should learn?
2. Who are the people (living or dead) students should know?
3. What are the places students should visit?
4. What artistic or musical performances should they see or hear?
5. What are the books…
evolgen | September 5, 2006As I was working on my computer (in my office) this afternoon, a small critter was flying around my head. Based on my current location (in a building housing at least 3 Drosophila labs) and my previous whereabouts (our lab's fly room), I surmised that this was most likely a member of genus Drosophila. My suspicions were confirmed when, at 7:45pm (about 3 hours after I first noticed the pest), she (I think it was a she from the quick glance I got) landed on my computer monitor. Upon closer inspection (although not long enough to adequately surmise the sex) I noticed the fly was too lightly…
drorzel | September 5, 2006On Inside Higher Ed this morning:
The University of Florida has distributed several thousand T-shirts in which Roman numerals intended to indicate 2006 (MMVI) in fact indicate 26 (XXVI). After discovering the mistake, the university will have many thousands of other T-shirts redone, The Gainesville Sun reported.
But, hey, the football team is supposed to be pretty good.
jstemwedel | September 4, 2006I am, as usual, late to the party reacting to the news that UCLA neurobiologist Dario Ringach has given up research on primates owing to "pressure put on him, his neighborhood, and his family by the UCLA Primate Freedom Project". As reported by Inside Higher Ed:
Ringach's name and home phone number are posted on the Primate Freedom Project's Web site, and colleagues and UCLA officials said that Ringach was harassed by phone -- his office phone number is no longer active -- and e-mail, as well as through demonstrations in front of his home.
In an e-mail this month to several anti-animal…
drorzel | September 3, 2006Today's New York Times has a story on the new SAT, particularly the writing test. The print version has images of the opening lines of three essays that received a perfect score, while the on-line version includes images of the full text of three perfect-score essays.
The essays themselves are kind of interesting to look at. The question was one of those hideous, vague college application things: "Do memories hinder or help people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present?" The three answers presented in full take different approaches. Essay #2 (there is no #1 on the…
clock | September 1, 2006Teaching Carnival is back from summer break and the edition #11 is up on WorkBook.
jstemwedel | September 1, 2006Since Julie blogged about a call to her home from a student who wanted to add her class, I thought I'd add a story of my own, from waaaay back:
I was in the second year of my chemistry graduate program, TAing the thermodynamics course for chem majors. One of the students in the class had been a friend of mine for five years -- we taught together at math camp. That was a little weird (grading someone with whom I was a professional equal only two summers earlier), but not impossible.
Her boyfriend was also taking the class. And he got the bright idea, the night before one of the problem sets…
drorzel | September 1, 2006Articles have been piling up in my Bloglines feeds as I keep saying "Oh, that'll make a good blog post..." and then not getting around to actually writing anything. In an effort to clean things up a bit (in much the same way that I clean my desk off every September, whether it needs it or not), I'm just going to throw a bunch of them out here with mininal comments. This post is a collection of links from academic bloggers.
The Dean Dad has absolutely been on fire for the last month. He's got good posts up on institutional inertia, strategic planning, measuring outcomes, and academic…
evolgen | September 1, 2006I'm slowly turning into a cyclist. I currently own three bikes, but that number may change when I buy the fixed gear I've been longing for. I bought a mountain bike a couple of years ago for commuting to and from campus. It's a little over a mile from my front door to my building, but I lost the patience required to walk that distance and driving was out of the question. I was now riding a bike regularly for the first time since the eighth grade. Last summer I picked up a used Cannondale CAD3 road bike from a guy who had only ridden it indoors on a trainer. The bike was in near mint condition…
drorzel | August 31, 2006Classes for the Fall term start next week, which means that things are starting to gear up on campus. We've been sent our class rosters, and lists of new freshman advisees, and have started to have meetings about team-taught courses and department policies and the like. And, of course, the new faculty hired for this year have shown up.
There was a meet-and-greet last night with the new faculty, which was fun (though as usual, I got to talking to people, and wound up coming home an hour later than I had said I would...). This also reminded me that I should dip into the archives for a Classic…
drorzel | August 30, 2006OK, they dumped the analogy questions ages ago, but for oldsters like myself, those are still the signature SAT questions...
Inside Higher Ed has a piece today on the new SAT results, which expresses concern over some declines:
Mean scores on the SAT fell this year by more than they have in decades. A five-point drop in critical reading, to 503, was the largest decline since 1975 and the two-point drop in mathematics, to 518, was the largest dip since 1978.
Gaps among racial and ethnic groups continued to be significant on the SAT, including the new writing test, for which the first mean…
drorzel | August 30, 2006So, you're interested in discussing politics or religion or other Deep Issues with other people. What do you do?
You could go on the Internet, but you end up talking to, like, freaky physics professors and stuff, so you'd prefer to talk to real people face to face. You could randomly approach strangers, ask their political affiliation, and refuse to talk to Republicans or Democrats, but that's kind of weird. So what's a would-be conversationalist to do?
Inside Higher Ed has a suggestion: tie an orange rag to your backpack:
Shruti Chaganti, an undergraduate at James Madison University, loves…
neurotopia | August 26, 2006On the heels of an earlier paper review comes another journal submission. This one was substantially worse than the other paper; the last was overall pretty good but came with some obvious inadequacies of choice. Not so with this one, and I was forced to reject it outright. Hopefully I can help people with their future submissions by supplying a few more tips.
If English is not your first language, and you are publishing in an English language journal, get the best translating service possible given your budget. If you an afford to pay, pay. If not, have multiple bilinguals assist you…
jstemwedel | August 25, 2006Thanks to all readers who responded with suggestions as to what my students should call me. As a number of you pointed out, what I choose here isn't just a matter of local custom (there seems not to be a unified custom on this at my university), nor of personal comfort (for me or my students). After all, the form of address is going to play a part in setting the tone for my interaction with my students.
And here, maybe my indecision about the right form of address reflects the fact that I have aims that are potentially in conflict with each other.
On the one hand, I am working very hard to…
catdynamics | August 25, 2006Janet asks...
Or, was it Sir, Professor, Doktor, Herr... I forget.
No I don't.
This was a real question for a friend of mine visiting Germany a few years ago...
Round here in Central PA, the students are excessively courteous, and I frequently find myself wondering who this "Prof Sigurdsson" is and why they keep trying to get his attention. (That is when they're not being incredibly obnoxious and rude, but that is rare and was a different blog topic)
It is simple, see: I am Icelandic - my name is Steinn
Sigurðsson, is a patronym, I am the Son of Sigurð:ur, literally. There is no such…
evolgen | August 25, 2006As a fledgling scientist, I am not privy to the process of grant view. It may as well occur behind a green curtain, and all I get to see is the hologram of the intimidating wizard in the form of an email announcing that I did or did not get the tiny morsel of cash I so politely requested (sorry for the bad Wizard of Oz metaphor). But real people review those grants, and those real people have personalities. Some are surly and dominant. Others are polite and passive. In fact, we can draw parallels between reviewers and American Idol panelists, as this Correspondence to Cell cleverly does:
A…