earning that PhD

From the mailbag: I have a Masters in Biology (from a 5 year BS/MS program) and for the past 4 years I've been working as a lab manager/technician. I have my own research project(s) in addition to keeping track of ordering/equipment maintenance/mouse breeding/etc. All-in-all it's a sweet gig and I could see myself doing this or something similar for most of my career. The problem is that there seems to be this culture in biology that one has to get a PhD, and my competitive side kind of feels the need to get one mostly just to show that I can. My practical side can't figure out why it…
Can you spare 50 minutes to help out a graduate student desperate for research participants? If so, please read below: Dear all, Within the context of my PhD project at Philips Research and Eindhoven University of Technology, I am developing a questionnaire that will help me to look at the relation between multimedia and feelings about the content. I would like to invite you to help me in validating this questionnaire. The goal of this questionnaire is to gain further insight in the relation between multimedia and feelings, mostly with regard to how your feelings about the shown multimedia is…
I recently got this email from Nikitha Sambamurthy, blogger at Diff-EQ (tweeting here) and undergrad at Purdue who regularly attends my department's seminar series. Nikitha is looking for some advice, and agreed to let me ask her question to teh blogosphere (below the fold). Nikitha writes:I'm currently in the process of studying for the GRE and researching graduate schools and was wondering if you had any advice and tips on what I should do to get the process started. I'm interested in educational technology and am not quite sure how to find schools to apply to since different universities…
ScienceGrandma pointed me to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal. It's titled "So You Want to Be a Professor?" but I think it should have been called "The Perils of a Ph.D." The article begins by citing some examples of graduate schools that are reducing admissions of PhD applicants for next year, in what may be a cost-cutting move. As we all know, graduate assistantships cost $25K or more per year, even if the grad student doesn't see much of it and returns those costs to the university by teaching labs, grading papers, and doing other grunt work. Apparently, some universities…
The theme for this month's Scientiae carnival asks us to talk about a challenging point in our lives and describe how we overcame the adversity. Did we have help along the way, and are we better scientists for having been through the trial by fire? Truthfully, I'd have to say that the last two years have been the most challenging of my professional life. I don't think anyone could be prepared for the combination of first-time motherhood and a new tenure track job. I certainly wasn't. But I haven't gotten past that challenge yet, and I've been blogging about it along the way. Thus, a better…
I've been to another workshop presented by the same group and I highly recommend them. Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences: A Workshop for Graduate Students and Post-doctoral Fellows July 16-July 19, 2009 University of Nevada, Las Vegas Application DEADLINE is March 18, 2009 http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/careerprep09/index.html Preference will be given to those entering or soon to enter the academic job market. The workshop will include faculty panels on academic careers and the academic job search, short presentations on various topics, structured discussions, and…
Despite being the keeper of a very well organized blogroll, I was surprisingly flummoxed by a request from a friend of a friend of a friend. She's decided to go to graduate school in an environmental science field, but she's unsure whether to go for a M.S. first or straight to a Ph.D. Specifically, she wondered whether I knew of any blogs by women environmental scientists who might have written about their decision making process, choosing a graduate school, etc. My first thought was Karina at Ruminations of an Aspiring Ecologist (and not just because she's showing off some Sciencewomen…
One of my graduate students reminded my co-instructors and me of a fun internet tool called Wordle which takes text you give it, and makes a graphical representation of the text based on the number of times certain words appear. We used this idea to summarize the course we've just finished on the history and philosophy of engineering education, and then I wanted to keep playing so I made a wordle of my dissertation. The whole thing. Well, except for the references. It's below the fold. If you want to play along, wordle your dissertation at http://www.wordle.net and share the link with us…
(Okay, I admit this is a pure plug. You've now been warned.) My department is hosting an open house for prospective graduate students September 18-19 here in West Lafayette. If you have been thinking about doing a PhD in engineering education at Purdue, here's your opportunity to: interact with current engineering education grad students chat with faculty about research opportunities and ideas check out Purdue and Lafayette/West Lafayette. come to a departmental seminar that yours truly organizes tour the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering (where our department is located), as an added…
Ages ago people asked me what my research was actually about. Well, here's a synopsis of my PhD work as a starter. I got my PhD in Industrial Engineering at the University of WIsconsin-Madison, and a PhD minor in women's studies. I was interested in how we keep using two ideas to understand women's underrepresentation in engineering - the pipeline, and the chilly climate - and how the programs and solutions that came from those ideas didn't seem to be increasing the number of women going into or graduating from engineering (in fact, the number is actually decreasing). I wondered if there…
Trying 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…
Another from the archives (originally published February 6, 2006). Let it not be said that I don't respond to readers' comments. A few posts ago, I was moaning about my inability to read journal articles in an efficient and non-fattening way. Yami requested that I share my system for organizing journal articles, writing that "Curious people who are finally getting quasi-permanent office assignments and file cabinets want to know." The succint answer: Invest in a copy of EndNote or similar and a thick stack of file folders. As soon after downloading/copying/printing a journal article, add it…
Here's a post from the archives (originally published February 20, 2006). Here's an email I recently received: Dear Science Woman, I am meeting with several of my committee members tomorrow to discuss my data. the data is not totally analyzed and is not looking too pretty so far. The problem I have is that this is my first "data meeting" and I am not sure how to prepare or what to have together....I was just wondering how you've presented [data to your committee] or how formal of a meeting these things are. Here's my stab at a response. What would you have told her? "I think a key thing is…