Academia
drorzel | July 20, 2011One of the standard education reform proposals that gets suggested every time somebody brings up the condition of American public education is that teachers should be offered some form of performance incentive, whether in the form of "merit pay" programs on a continuing basis, or bonuses for reaching particular targets. This is one of those ideas that economists swear ought to work, but a new RAND Corporation study found that, well, they don't. This is based on a three-year pilot program run by the New York City school district, which offered selected districts bonuses of up to $3,000 per…
jdupuis | July 19, 2011Trust me, I really tried to come up with a cool, funny title for this post.
Anyways...
We have a new reference assistant starting here next week. As somewhat typical for such a position, the new staff member has a science subject background rather than a library background. In this case, Maps/GIS.
So I thought it might be a good idea to gather together some resources for helping our new hire get acclimatised to reference work in an academic science & engineering library. After all, we're not born with the ability to do good reference interviews!
With the help of the fine folk in…
drorzel | July 19, 2011A lot of pixels have been spent discussing this study of grade inflation, brought to most people's attention via this New York Times blog. The key graph is this one, showing the fraction of grades given in each letter category over the last fifty years:
Lots of effort is being put into trying to explain why the number of A's given out has increased so much over this time span, with most of it focussing on the last twenty years or so (see Mad Mike for a plausible but wrong explanation-- the fraction of students going on to graduate school isn't big enough to drive this). I think this is…
drorzel | July 17, 2011As many a thoughtless person has observed when learning what I do for a living, physics is really hard. But you may have wondered just how much harder is physics than other subjects? Well, now, we have a quantitative answer:
This is a shelf of books at the Burlington, MA Barnes and Noble, clearly showing that while it is possible to learn all about politics and philosophy in thirty seconds, understanding Einstein takes three whole minutes. So, relativity is at least six times more difficult than philosophy.
(This presumably explains why there are so many physicists who dabble in philosophy,…
drorzel | July 14, 2011Via Jessa Crispin on Twitter, there's a really excellent article in the Paris Review about Harvard and Class:
When I applied, I thought it would be great because I would get to meet lots of smart people. Those were the kinds of people I liked to be friends with, and I thought there would be more of them there. That was the main reason I thought it would be a fun place to be. I don't think I was super ambitious or professional minded or even a very good student.
The thing I figured out soon after I applied was that, on Gilligan's Island, it wasn't the Professor who went to Harvard, it was Mr.…
catdynamics | July 12, 2011House subcommittee on Science etc has reported out and full committee is scheduled to vote on the 13th.
JWST cut is formally in as are various other interesting snippets.
The subcommittee report (pdf large) - ie the appropriations by agency recommended to the full committee
Summary Table (pdf) - handy dandy difference between 2012 actual appropriations vs 2011 actual and 2012 requested, respectively.
Remember: this is the subcommittee recommendation to the committee, that gets voted on, then sent to House, then Senate does its thing, then it goes to conference to reconcile.
Change can…
drorzel | July 11, 2011(Note: This was not prompted by any particular comment. Just a slow accumulation of stuff, that turned into a blog post on this morning's dog walk.)
It's been a couple of years now that I've been working on writing and promoting How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I've had a lot of conversations where the subject of writing a popular audience book on quantum physics comes up. I've had enough of these now that I can recognize a few different categories of responses, one of which drives me up the wall. I suspect that the same is true for most pop-science authors, so as a public service, let me…
jdupuis | July 8, 2011I chose this one more for the humourous title of the post since the content itself is very seriously intentioned.
I almost see this as a double sequel to both the social media evilness post and to some of my recent ramblings on thought leadership.
The post in question is We Don't Need No Steenkin' Social Media Gurus by York prof Robert Kozinets.
After I had left the stage and assumed a position within the audience, beer in hand, a woman began talking to me in the crowd. Let's call her "Jennifer." Jennifer told me that she knew nothing about social media even a few weeks ago, but that her…
catdynamics | July 6, 2011Well, it was a good four centuries or so, but after a good run, one of the older watches on the Rhine is coming to an end.
Word came in mid-June that the Dutch government cuts were going to lead to some "consolidation" in astronomy, and that Utrecht would be cut.
We were asked not to kick up a fuzz about it, for local political reasons, but soon enough the story spread:
One Small Step broke the story,
with the e-Astronomer also chiming in.
Official response of the Astronomical Institute is here.
So, Dutch academia is facing "austerity" - 20% cuts in particular for Utrecht University, and,…
jdupuis | July 5, 2011Yet another science blogging community. The more the merrier.
We've had another quiet period in the science blogging universe these last couple of months. It seems that the rapid evolution that kicked off with the founding of Scientopia in the wake of Pepsigate is continuing.
And this is the big one: Scientific American Blogs. This is easily the biggest and most important science blogging community launch since ScienceBlogs itself launched back in 2006.
Of course, it was engineered by the master of us all, Bora Zivkovic.
Here's what he has to say about the makeup of the network:
Diversity…
jdupuis | July 2, 2011Libraryland is sometimes plagued with a civility problem.
We disagree but we want to be nice about it. But sometimes, being nice isn't a great way to express disagreement. Life and the world is messy and unkind and difficult. And sometimes our commitment to our ideas and passionate disagreements need to reflect that.
But the temptation for those in power -- those at whom the anger is often directed -- need to keep a lid on the very human anger and resentments that often boil over in what might seem like minor disagreements. It's hard to control those kinds of deep feelings and the best…
jgoldman | July 1, 2011I'm on Google+.
After a couple days of playing with it, I haven't quite identified what it is for, or at least how I'm going to use it differently from twitter or facebook, but so far I am generally impressed - it's easy, intuitive, and fast. It also allows you a level of selective privacy that - while possible to achieve - is very clunky on Facebook. It only took me 10 minutes on the web interface and another 10 minutes after downloading the Android app to figure out how it all worked. And Google+ is already far better integrated into the mobile user experience than Facebook is (though this…
drorzel | June 29, 2011Out in Minnesota, Melissa expresses some high-level confusion over the preference for people with a small-college background:
In the past few months, I have been involved in several conversations where someone mentioned that a particular faculty member or administrator was or was not an alum of a small liberal arts college (SLAC) in a manner that seemed to suggest their status as a former student of a SLAC (or not) clearly explained why the individual took the particular action or made the particular decision being discussed. (Generally the tone of the discussions has been that "good"…
jdupuis | June 25, 2011As you read this, I'll be at TEDxLibrariansTO helping out with registration. And having a great time talking about librarians as thought leaders!
As I've done for the last few days, here is my answer for yesterday's TEDxLibrariansTO Countdown Question:
Question 1: What means should librarians choose to encourage their institutions to embrace change?
I'm not sure I know how to approach even beginning to answer this question other than to just say 42!
However, I was lucky enough to attend Drew Dudley's amazing keynote address at yesterday's York IT Day conference. He really talked about…
drorzel | June 24, 2011(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of S.M., a Canadian government employee who would prefer not to be identified by name. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.--post-doc--academic-job track.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I work for one of Canada's three federal granting agencies (one, two, three). We get money from the federal government which we give to university resesearchers (i.e. professors). We…
jdupuis | June 23, 2011Following on from the last three days, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Countdown Questions:
Question 1: What are the similarities or characteristics of thought leaders that you know? Tell us about the attributes that your ideal thought leader would have.
I don't think any one person could actually have all the qualities of the idea thought leader but there are some commonalities across the ones I've encountered.
Originality. A thought leader needs to bring something new to the public sphere, or at very least take an established idea and present it in a fresh, original…
jdupuis | June 23, 2011The Library Chapter of the York University Faculty Association has released the following unanimously approved letter:
York University Faculty Association, Library Chapter
240 York Lanes, York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, ON
M3J 1P3
June 2, 2011
Dr. Patrick Deane, President and Vice-Chancellor
238 Gilmour Hall, McMaster University
1280 Main St. West
Hamilton, ON
L8S 4L8
Dear President Deane,
We write in support of the librarians and archivists at McMaster University. In particular we express our grave concern over the recent downsizing of professional staff, the casualization of labour…
drorzel | June 22, 2011p>(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Brad Holden, of the University of California Observatories (which, OK, is affiliated with an academic institution, but this is not a traditional faculty-type job). The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.--post-doc--academic-job track.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I am an astronomer at an observatory, specifically the University of California Observatories. Our…
jdupuis | June 21, 2011Following on from yesterday, here are my answers for today's TEDxLibrariansTO Coundown Questions:
Question 1: What should we expect/demand of our thought leaders?
I'm not sure I like the way this question is phrased, preferring something like, "What do thought leaders actually do?" We certainly shouldn't demand anything of our thought leaders, it's not like we're paying them to do their jobs. Even "expectations" seems like a strong word.
To a large extent, thought leaders just are. I'm not sure we can speak of "followers" having "expectations" of leaders in the same way we could in a…
drorzel | June 21, 2011Via Inside Higher Ed, a professor in New Jersey took the whole social media thing to the next level:
A Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor is in custody for allegedly running a prostitution website involving about 200 women and more than 1,200 johns, police said Monday.
David Flory of New York City, who teaches on the FDU-Metropolitan campus in Teaneck, was arrested Sunday while sitting in a Starbucks in Albuquerque, N.M., said Lt. William Roseman of the Albuquerque police. Flory, who ran the site mostly from New York, owned a vacation home in Santa Fe, N.M., Roseman said.
Flory…