academic adventures
sciencewoman | June 3, 2008I've blogged before about my difficulties in getting adequate and unrestricted start-up funds from my university. Where we left the story, I'd been awarded about 2/3 the start-up funds I needed, with an oral promise that I would be "first in line" for money when I arrived. I also had to spend every cent of my start-up funds before I ever arrived on campus, leaving me literally penniless as I tried to get my lab set-up. The net result of all this is that I bought a big fancy piece of equipment (BFPE) and didn't have enough to buy the doojab to actually make the equipment run.
As soon as I…
sciencewoman | May 21, 2008I've just come out of a general positive annual review meeting with my departmental chair and it seems like an appropriate time to take stock of the year and think about where I am heading. At the end of my first academic year as a faculty member, I'm way ahead of where I was nine months ago, but I still have a lot to learn.
This year has seemed like a whirlwind, at times over-whelming, at times exhilarating. Everything has been new: new teaching duties, new colleagues and university structure, new research requirements and direction, new geographic location, new toddlerhood. I often felt…
sciencewoman | May 7, 2008It's finals week here at Mystery U and I am noticing perceptibly different reactions on the parts of the students and the faculty. The students walk out of an exam joyful and free, while the professor gathers up yet another stack of papers to grade and thinks longingly of the research she *still* doesn't have time to do.
But there is a common thread in these exam experiments...the nightmares about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's probably a variation on the classic nightmare about suddenly finding yourself naked in a public place.
My two exams are two days in a row at the same…
skookumchick | May 6, 2008I got back into town at about 1:00 pm on Monday from a weekend at my other house. I ate lunch from leftovers in the fridge from at least 1.5 weeks ago (ack), and proceeded to waste much of the rest of the afternoon. While I did call some landscapers for help with our blank-slate back yard, and go to the grocery store, and make risotto and sauteed cauliflower for dinner (with leftovers!) and eat it outside, I did no *real* work - ie, work for which I am being paid. And while I should indeed have time without work in order to recharge for the next day, I don't yet feel enough on top of work…
sciencewoman | May 2, 2008Yeah, yeah, why is she blogging about Thursday, when it's already Friday?
Well, folks, it's gonna take me more than one night's sleep to lower the cortisol levels that shot up in my body yesterday. Lemme share the highlights.
An 8 am meeting with the dean.
A meeting in which the dean turned the whole organizational structure of the department inside out and left some of us wondering about our professional futures at Mystery U. I'd love to say more, but I think it's probably unbloggable for now.
An apparently missing $2000 piece of field equipment purchased with my start-up funds. 45…
skookumchick | April 29, 2008No, really! My first meeting of the Three Days of Meetings that I thought started at 8 am, does in fact start at 8 am, but I don't have to be in it! So I get an hour back!
Just thought I'd share. :-) I take the good things where I can get them, even if they're little.
sciencewoman | April 19, 2008Dear PhysioProf,
You're wrong. Here's why.
In the comments on a post about a forth-coming paper and it's possible impacts on my own, you said:
Getting completed work out the door should always be at the absolute top of the to-do list of junior tenure-track faculty, without exception. It should come before teaching, administrative, doing new studies, eating, sleeping, or even taking a ... whizz.
In the comments section, I defended myself by playing the mommy card...my previous paper was submitted mere days before Minnow was born. And I'll grant that you conceded that babies come first. But I'…
skookumchick | April 11, 2008
Today our new president, France Cordova, was officially inaugurated. I got to carry the banner for the College of Engineering - how cool is that? And I didn't even fall over.
Thanks to the police officer who took this photo, as we waited to go in the hall. More photos of the inauguration are here.
Now heading back to Illinois for the weekend. If I can finish getting myself packed, that is, and maybe beat back the regular let-down headache. But it's a beautiful day here, and will be a lovely drive.
skookumchick | April 3, 2008Oddly enough, I've just come from my annual review this week, which, in my department, is a little interview one has with the department head to help him determine merit pay. Even though I prodded my academic family members for advice on how to go in to this, I found myself unprepared. So I started this post to let me share some thoughts for other newbies heading in to their review, and solicit advice from the more senior folks on other ways to prepare and strategize. And then ScienceWoman requested this post. :-) So now I had better finish it and share.
About two weeks before our…
sciencewoman | April 3, 2008In the first week in January, I turned in a vita and accompanying statement for calendar year 2007...so essentially for the first 4 months of my faculty appointment. The materials have now been reviewed by a group of senior faculty in my department and a letter has been sent to the chair. The chair is looking things over and then will write his own letter. All of these things will go in my "permanent file." This annual review process is also used to provide a ranking of faculty members in the department and the ranked list is used to determine raises.
Sometime soon, I'll be getting a copy of…
skookumchick | April 1, 2008Oh lord, what fools these mortals be. Especially that one down there named Alice.
I've had two particular moments of foolishness in the last few days that have smacked me upside the head. And because the Scientiae theme for April (shockingly) is "fools and foolishness," I feel compelled to share them with you.
There will be drama, politics, famous names, remorse, public humiliation... I tell you, it's worth looking below the fold.
Yesterday, the president of our university came to visit our new building. She spoke with all kinds of people throughout the college from NAE members to recent…
sciencewoman | March 27, 2008It's really hard to talk about what I do and how my research relates to other people in my department/field and the challenges of inter(sub)disciplinary research, while maintaining any pretense at pseudonymity. Inspired by Bright Star and her roller-blading analogy for her research, I decided a while ago to think of science with a sports analogy. I'm a far cry from an athlete, and endless baseball talk bores and frustrates me, so I apologize if the sports analogy antagonizes some of you. (I know FemaleScienceProfessor has ranted about them before.)
In my sports analogy, I study skiing. My…
sciencewoman | March 14, 2008A few weeks ago I challenged the readers of this blog to join me in reading Paula Caplan's "Lifting a Ton of Feathers: A Woman's Guide to Surviving in the Academic World." This weekend we're set to discuss the book - and we'll see where the conversation goes from there.
If you've read the book (and you have a blog), I'd encourage you to post your thoughts on your blog and then put a link in the comments here. I'll make this the first of three posts where I'll pull out what I think are highlights of the book and try to add my own two cents.
Below the fold, you'll find my thoughts on "The…
sciencewoman | March 9, 2008What do you do if you are the mother of two young children, have an academic spouse, and have just been denied tenure because of what appears to be upper-level university politics?
It sounds like some sick joke, right?
Only it's not. It's the situation that MommyProf finds herself in this weekend. Give her some sympathy and outrage.
skookumchick | February 28, 2008I just got home from work about half an hour ago. It's been another long day, although it really started at about 10 am in a coffee shop even if it ended at 9 pm in my office. Anyway. I came home after an hour and a half of talking with a colleague about our respective experiences in our department. She gave me a lift home, and I confess I was pretty worn out by the whole day, including our conversation.
But then an amazing thing happened, and I want to tell you about it.
I made up my little dinner (leftover spaghetti with feta and artichokes, and sauteed brussels sprouts with pine nuts,…
skookumchick | February 28, 2008Trying to recruit grad students into a PhD program where the PhD is BRAND NEW can be tough. In fact, I need the Internets's help.
So here I am, a new faculty member in a new department (sorry, sorry, SCHOOL), eager to do cool research and with startup money to burn.
Okay then. Where are the graduate students? Lemme get my hands on some graduate students. I just was a grad student, you can bet that means I'll treat them nicely.
Oh shoot. There aren't any who want to work with me.
The first challenge has been that I started my job after all the graduate students who were starting in the…
skookumchick | February 19, 2008I realized this morning that I had no meetings scheduled for today. HOORAY!!! In addition, my department (recently renamed a School) is all in an uproar because our academic advisory council is arriving tomorrow, and our open house to the university is Friday. So I decided that I could take the day at home to catch up on all the email I've been ignoring avoiding unable to get to recently. Here's a sampling of my inbox (currently at 400 messages):
umpteen million tables-of-contents for journals I want to read but don't have time to. I try and scroll through the email TOCs when they arrive…
skookumchick | February 15, 2008I'm going through the training that Purdue requires before I submit any research protocols to the Institutional Review Board. It's good to care about your faculty doing ethical research, but I confess it is taking FOREVER.
So I'm reading the part on the problems with peer review, and I come across this chestnut:
Gender bias may occur in reviewing.
Okay, so far so good, I think. Maybe this is an enlightened group of folks writing this who are aware of the research that says that reviewers are biased against manuscripts authored by people with identifiably female names. I continue to read…
sciencewoman | February 14, 2008Today is Happy Woman Professor Day and the associated mandate is to blog about the good aspects of our jobs. It's the end of my teaching week, and I'm up for the challenge, because I always feel a little giddy when I walk out of the classroom on Thursday afternoons. In fact, I'm going to try to write this post without any qualifiers (no buts).
I like being a professor for the sheer variety of things that I get to do over the course of a day or week. This morning I had a search committee meeting, then I lead a class where I lectured and we discussed a paper. I had a quick lunch with colleagues…
skookumchick | February 14, 2008Guess who we've been invited to have dinner with on Tuesday night? Think super famous American scientist who the administration tried to muzzle...
The answer below the fold... tee hee!
It's James Hansen! Yeah, that James Hansen, the top scientist at NASA who the Bush II administration tried to silence on global warming, but who then went and called the New York Times instead!! OMG!!!
A snippet from the New York Times article from January of 2006:
The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the…