Academia
neurotopia | June 9, 2006...you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started
sittin' in your little room
--The White Stripes
Welcome to the second incarnation of Neurotopia! The old incarnation can be found here, although lately it has just been a collection of posts where I complain about how Blogger stinks. But no more! Now I'm here on this slick new platform! The SEED overlords pulled a mean trick on me: they set up the new blog launch mere hours before I'm supposed to hit the road and celebrate my 8th anniversary by accompanying Mrs. Evil Monkey to Fallingwater for the weekend.…
evolgen | June 9, 2006
A poll of 1,200 undergrads at 100 colleges in the United States found that 73% of the students think iPods are "in". One tenth of all old people know that "in" means "hip". Half of all old people think "hip" means "the thing I just got replaced". Drinking beer and stalking Facebook tied for second most "in" thing -- scoring affirmative amongst "71%" of the students. Sorry, got a little bit too aggressive with the quotes; I promise it won't happen again. Given my infatuation with alcohol, I figured this problem needed to be addressed. By problem, I mean the 29% who don't think beer is the…
drorzel | June 7, 2006My Quantum Optics class this term is a junior/ senior level elective, one of a set of four or five such classes that we rotate through, offering one or two a year. We require physics majors to take one of these classes in order to graduate, and encourage grad-school-bound students to take as many as they can fit in their schedule.
Students in all majors are also required to take five "Writing Across the Curriculum" classes, which are intended to be courses with a strong writing component that should build their writing skills both in their discipline and out. As you might imagine, the bulk of…
tsmith | June 7, 2006So, this week's Ask a Science blogger question is:
Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it?
Others have already put up some excellent posts, so I'm going to take a bit of a different approach after the jump.
First, as Chad points out, this question is really made up of a number of other questions. Since I'm rather new to the faculty side of the issue, I can'…
jstemwedel | June 6, 2006I want to note three recent articles about science education. They may be dots worth connecting to each other, or they may not. I welcome your hypotheses, well grounded or tentative.
Via Michael Berube: "Women Gaining on Men in Advanced Fields". It seems like we've heard this kind of result recently but here again, you have your choice of how to spin the story: are women catching up, or are men falling behind? From the article:Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate - from biology to business - and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other…
evolgen | June 3, 2006This post is a bitch-fest. Don't read any further if you have no interest in hearing me complain. The only reason I'm posting this is because I figure some of the people who read this blog find themselves in the same boat as me.
This summer, I will be attending the Society for the Study of Evolution annual meeting for the first time. I figured the meeting is in Long Island, New York so I may as well check it out when it's in my neck of the woods (last year it was in Alaska and next year it will be in New Zealand). The Evolution Meeting has a reputation of being less work and more play than…
tsmith | May 31, 2006You've probably seen this floating around the other Seed blogs this week:
Since they're funded by taxpayer dollars (through the NIH, NSF, and so on), should scientists have to justify their research agendas to the public, rather than just grant-making bodies?
I'm late to the game, but like others, my answer is "no"--with caveats. Elaboration after the jump.
First, it depends on just what one means by "justify", which is a bit of a loaded term. Scientists are already commonly accused of arrogance (admittedly, at times rightly so), and suggesting we need to "justify" our research programs…
drorzel | May 30, 2006Two news stories today relating to students' intake of various substances, and the people who want to control them:
First, an essay in the New York Times about misguided anti-obesity measures in the public schools. It's got the requisite list of dodgy medical statistics, and some shots at the BMI as a measure of "obesity."
At a higher educational level, there's an Inside Higher Ed piece about debates over the definition of "binge drinking." Some people think that the current definition of 4-5 drinks in a two-hour period is too restrictive, and that efforts ought to be focussed on people who…
drorzel | May 27, 2006A couple of link-worthy posts dealing with the true nature of academia:
Over at the Little Professor, Miriam Burstein addresses the movie cliches of academia (spinning off a post at Michael Berube's blog).
Meanwhile, Dr. Free-Ride discusses the finer points of tailoring academic regalia, which is useful information as graduation season approaches. (My own cheap robes came with a zipper in the front, and I use a safety pin to hold the hood in place...)
And the Dean Dad has a nice discussion of the permanence of temporary solutions in the academic world.
As for my own glamorous academic life, I…
jstemwedel | May 26, 2006I have a soft spot for commencements. And, as I get on in years, that spot gets even softer.
Part of it, undoubtedly, is because recognizing the hard work and accomplishments of the new graduates is so much more fun than the grading that immediately precedes it. But for me, part of what grabs me is the feeling that what I'm doing -- the notion of education and its larger value that I'm trying to impart -- connects me to a tradition that is hundreds of years old. One visible sign of that connection is the academic regalia that graduates and faculty alike wear to commencement ceremonies. In…
evolgen | May 17, 2006PLoS Biology has an article with data that supports the hypothesis that open access articles receive more citations than articles hidden behind a toll (summary available here). The author compared open access and non-open access articles in PNAS, controlling for any confounding variable he could think of. The article is open access, of course, so you should check it out.
My own exercise in open access -- publishing some original research on this blog -- has been put on the back burner as I take care of some other research. You can read the background here. The next step involves a bit of…
drorzel | May 15, 2006On one of the occasions when I called the gastroenterologists to complain that my heartburn wasn't getting any better (there were a couple of rounds of such calls, before I went back to my regular doctor), the woman I spoke to asked "Are you experiencing stress at work?"
"Yes," I said, "and before you say anything else, there's nothing I can do about that." Which is absolutely true-- if stress is the real cause, then I'm stuck with this until at least December (which is about the earliest my tenure decision could come through).
College teaching is an extremely stressful job, as this Inside…
evolgen | May 13, 2006
The Wannabe Biologists are bragging about all the expensive toys physicists get to play with . . . and break. Philip scratched a 2.5" diameter gold mirror. I guess glass isn't expensive enough for physicists. I don't think I've ever broken anything really expensive. Sure, I cracked some glassware in freshman chemlab -- which I had to pay for at the end of the semester. I've broken my share of vials, and I've even broken a few bottles. But none of those things are very expensive.
The only real expensive thing we have in our lab is an automated sequencer. I've never done any damage to the…
drorzel | May 9, 2006Woke up, got out of bed
Ran a comb across my head...
8:40: Leave home, bike to work.
8:50: Arrive at work, stow bike in lab
8:55: Download electronically submitted papers to be graded. Determine which students haven't handed papers in yet.
9:15: Change into teaching clothes, review lecture notes.
(Continued...)
9:35-10:40: Teach class on basics of quantum computing, logic gates, supeerpositions and entanglement.
10:45: Let class go five minutes late. Run to bathroom.
10:50-11:55: Second class, review for Tuesday's exam. Answer questions about right-hand rules, magnetic fields, and Faraday's…
drorzel | May 8, 2006Timothy Burke, my go-to-guy for deep thoughts about academia, had a nice post about student evaluations last week. Not ecvaluations of students, evaluations by students-- those little forms that students fill out at many schools (not Swarthmore, though) giving their opinion of the class in a variety of areas.
(Probably not entirely coincidentally, as this is the time of year when semester-school faculty fret about evaluation scores, Inside Higher Ed offers yet another RateMy Professor.com article, showing a positive correlation between "hotness" and positive evaluations there...)
Those…
drorzel | May 4, 2006Dr. What Now? has a nice and timely post about helping students prepare for oral presentations, something I'll be doing myself this morning, in preparation for the annual undergraduate research symposium on campus Friday. Of course, being a humanist, what she means by oral presentation is a completely different thing than the PowerPoint slide shows that we do in the sciences:
She did a run-through, and then we sat down together and reworked the first three pages to set up the project more clearly and helpfully for her listeners, and then we designed a handout to help her audience situate her…
drorzel | April 25, 2006Monday is the decision deadline for accepted students to decide whether they're coming here next year, and we've had a slow parade of people getting tours of the department and suchlike over the last few weeks. We've also had a couple "Open House" events, where accepted students and their families are invited to campus to see the school, sit in on classes, and have lunch with members of the faculty.
In talking with the students at these events, I'm always struck by how apparently random the college decision process is. We spend hours and hours and thousands of dollars trying to draw the best…
drorzel | April 24, 2006I've found myself in the weird position of giving career advice twice in the last week and a half. Once was to a former student, which I sort of understand, while the second time was a grad student in my former research group, who I've never met. I still don't really feel qualified to offer useful advice-- I haven't even come up for tenure yet, after all. I might have something useful to say next year at this time-- that, or you'll know not to listen to anything I have to say.
Anyway, since I'm thinking about this, and since I'm otherwise afflicted with motivation-sapping medical crud, I'm…
evolgen | April 21, 2006Janet has a post up on communications between students and faculty. My opinion -- as both a student who must communicate with faculty members and a teaching assistant with whom students must communicate -- is that it's most important to be clear, concise, respectful, and polite. You should always observe proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling or you're liable to misunderstood. It doesn't do much good if your instructor can't answer your question because they can't understand what the hell you're saying. I have a few other comments below the fold.
One big concern for students is how to…
evolgen | April 21, 2006Nature has a news article on the resignation of Teri Markow from her position as president of the Society for the Study of Evolution. I don't know much about what happened other than the stuff in the Nature piece, but apparently Markow was frustrated by the treatment of women within the administrative ranks of scientific professional societies. I have some quotes and comments below the fold.
I hardly know Markow -- I have met her and a few of her students briefly -- so I am in no position to evaluate her personally. She does excellent research in a top notch department. She is also the…