care and feeding of graduate students
skookumchick | October 14, 2009I had a realization over the weekend, as I contemplated the enormity of the amount of work I had to do, and the scant allowance of time in which to do it. I have suddenly realized why (at least junior) faculty can be so horrible to their graduate students and post-doctoral staff. It comes down to a complete gridlock of their time.
I have so many people who need to meet with me (I know! Lowly me!) that my days are filled with meetings, or getting to meetings, or class. This means there is really not enough time to get any work done, such as prep for such meetings or such class time. So I…
sciencewoman | October 5, 2009Remember this summer when I was working on the course design for my new prep on Experimental Design and Data Analysis? We're now a month into the class, and while it has had its rough moments, I think it will ultimately be quite useful to the students enrolled in it.
I'm currently avoiding grading, so I thought I'd take a moment to show the results of an exercise we did the first week. I gave groups of students two sheets of paper. On one I asked them to diagram the scientific method as they understood it. On the other, I asked them to diagram their experience with how scientific research is…
sciencewoman | September 15, 2009Yesterday I wrote a post where I laid out reasons why I am opposed to night school courses in my graduate program. As I said yesterday, "I am against accommodating our full-time worker, part-time graduate student students by moving a significant number of our classes to evening hours." That post sparked a number of wonderful comments providing a variety of valuable perspectives on the role of night classes in serving various student populations. I didn't mean to come across as down on part-time grad students or the over all concept of night school. Let's see if I can lay out a more general…
sciencewoman | September 14, 2009It has recently been brought to my attention that a subset of my department's graduate student population is unhappy with our course scheduling. Some of our part-time graduate students feel that we are not doing a sufficient job of offering evening courses to meet the needs of people who work full-time during the day and complete their graduate degree one course at a time. I imagine the disgruntlement has been brewing for a while, but I suspect things are likely to come to a head soon, so I thought it might be worthwhile to spend some time laying my thoughts out here before it comes up in…
sciencewoman | July 24, 2009To recap, I'm prepping a new graduate level course on experimental design and data analysis (EDDA) that will serve MS and PhD students from geosciences and civil and environmental engineering. I've been working through the SERC course design tutorial, and so far I've figured out context and constraints, over-arching goals, and ancillary skills goals. It's finally time to add content to my course.
(Note that the material that follows is a bit outliny, because I'm thinking out loud (on blog paper) here and looking for feedback)
First, according to the good folks at SERC, I need to bring it back…
sciencewoman | July 23, 2009Now that things at ScienceBlogs have returned to normal, and I've drawn down my stash of reader emails, it's time to get back to work on my series on course design. For those who haven't been playing along (1.1, 1.2) I'm prepping a new graduate level course on experimental design and data analysis (EDDA) that will serve MS and PhD students from geosciences and civil and environmental engineering. I don't envision this course as a purely statistics course, though EDDA necessarily incorporates statistical concepts and techniques. Similarly, I don't envision this course purely as a proposal…
sciencewoman | July 15, 2009As introduced yesterday, I'm blogging my way through the SERC tutorial on course design, for a new graduate-only course on experimental design and data analysis. Yesterday, I explained the context and constraints on the course, and today I'm mulling on the course goals. I'm supposed to identify 1-3 over-arching goals for the course and 1-2 ancillary skills goals. Below the fold, I'll share my overarching goals and how I got to them. But I'm struggling with the ancillary skills goals, dear readers, and I'd love your help.
Task 1.2c: Set one to three overarching goals for your course.
The SERC…
sciencewoman | July 14, 2009After articulating that my most dire need is to get funded, it may seem disjointed to embark on a series of blog posts about teaching, but there you have it, the life of a professor at a place that requires both research and teaching. I still contend that I will get fired from my job much more quickly for failure to teach a course than failure to get funded, so I must do something about the new preparation I have for the fall.
The new course, "Experimental Design and Data Analysis," is a graduate-only course with only a loose definition in the course catalog. It hasn't been taught for the…
skookumchick | March 3, 2009It's that time of the year again when folks may be thinking about graduate school opportunities, and what with the current economic climate, maybe more than possible. If you'd be interested in finding more out about what a PhD in engineering education might entail, my school is having an open house at the end of March, and it would be great if you came. More information below the fold.
On behalf of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University, I invite you to attend our open house for prospective PhD students on March 26 and 27.
Our doctoral program, the first of its kind in the…
sciencewoman | February 19, 2009Dr. Ashanti Pyrtle is an assistant professor in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. She's a chemical oceanographer who studies the fate, transport and retention of radionuclides in aquatic ecosystems. Her PhD work investigated the marine distribution of radioisotopes from the Chernobyl accident, and she's currently doing work in Puerto Rico, off the Florida coast, and in the Savannah River. She's one of the first female African-American chemical oceanographers, and the first African-American to earn an oceanography Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.
Dr. Pyrtle…
skookumchick | February 17, 2009A colleague of mine sent around this link to the Chronicle (behind firewall, boo!) for some advice on how to stay healthy, even perhaps happy, while working on your dissertation. See the ideas after the fold.
By author Piper Fogg:
Learn to recognize the signs of depression and anxiety and don't be afraid to seek medical evaluation and treatment. Consider various options -- such as therapy, medication, relaxation techniques, and other forms of alternative medicine. Familiarize yourself with the campus counseling center as well as off-campus options.
Follow your mother's advice: Eat a…
sciencewoman | April 9, 2008For the past several months, I've gotten almost weekly emails that read something like this:
Dear Professor,
I am Stu Dent from NotThisCountry, and I would like to study with you in Fall 2008. I have a BS in -ology from NotThisCountry Regional University, and I have an MS in -ology-subspecialty from NotThisCountry National University. (Optional: additional details about Stu Dent's background.) I have looked at your web page and I find your research interests very exciting. I am interested in (something that isn't my research interest, say snowmobiling) and I would like to study in your…
sciencewoman | April 8, 2008Before I even arrived at Mystery U, I was contacted by a student already in our PhD program. The student was about to start his third year in the program, and wanted to know whether I would be willing to advise him. The problem, he said, was that there was no faculty member who had his research specialty. When he told me what he was working on, I was aghast. I couldn't possibly advise him! I know nothing about his specialty either! But after meeting with him and learning more specifics about his situation, I agreed to be his advisor.
Now I just needed to advise him well enough to for him to…