Academics
pharyngula | May 2, 2006I really want to go to Drinking Liberally tonight—I even said I would go.
It is, however, the end of the term, and there is a horrific pile of grading sitting on my desk. It's the classic dilemma of having to choose between fun and beer and interesting people vs. obligations and responsibility and work.
So I took a look at the pile and carved out a harshly large chunk of it, and I have set myself a goal: if I can get that scary looking subset of it done in time, I'll take off for Minneapolis. If I can't, I'm going to stay here and make lots of furious little red marks instead. I think I can…
pharyngula | May 2, 2006I get lots of hate mail, but it's actually not that often that I'm cc'ed complaints sent to my acting chancellor and the university PR person. Since he's willing to share, so am I…so here's Mr Daryl Schulz's defense of free speech:
I have known a few people through the years that have gone to UM Morris and thought it to be a reputable institution affiliated with the University of Minnesota. But you can't be serious about being proud of one of your Associate Professor's blog winning an award when it contains such hate towards religion or faith of any type (http://www.morris.umn.edu/webbin/…
pharyngula | May 1, 2006OK, this Dean Dad fella substituting for Dr. B got me a little sniffy with his first post (telling little kids easy lies about heaven is a pet peeve. Dead is gone, sugarcoating it is the first step to a life of delusions), but his latest is much more interesting and sparked some cranky comments—is it just me, or are the trolls on a hair-trigger everywhere lately?
Anyway, it's a good snarl.
It's not unusual for downsized or early-retired professionals to show up asking for faculty positions, thinking that we'll be tripping all over ourselves for the opportunity to bask in their reflected…
pharyngula | April 27, 2006This week's collection of carnivals:
Carnival of the Liberals #11
I and the Bird #22
Skeptics' Circle #33
Carnival of Education #64
Anyone else feel that it's a shame CoE hasn't hit #66 yet?
Otherwise, you got your open thread right here.
pharyngula | April 25, 2006Oh, my. Inside Higher Ed has an article that has to be read to be believed: the problem with universities are their faculties, we need to get rid of tenure, hire more part-time, untenured faculty on short term contracts, cut back on those expensive bits of infrastructure like libraries and theaters, increase teaching loads across the board...in other words, turn education into a commodity with universities as the assembly lines that crank out graduates, while letting all those over-educated professors know that they too can be replaced by some yahoo with a mail-order degree. It's a recipe…
pharyngula | April 14, 2006Science fairs usually have a few pleasant surprises, a lot of ho-hum projects done by rote with little thought (sometimes clearly done the night before), and a few stinkers that reveal nothing but the student's ignorance. The science teachers are supposed to screen the project proposals to prevent that from happening, though, so the really bad projects usually don't get through. There's also a hierarchy: local to county or regional to state, and only the best are supposed to progress. State science fairs usually have some very impressive work and some that might be naive, but at least the…
pharyngula | April 12, 2006A Carnival of Education is up! I don't know that the plague theme is entirely encouraging, but as we creep towards the end of the term, it feels like it is entirely appropriate.
Also, tomorrow is the Invasive Species Weblog's fourth birthday (I know, she's really, really old), and Jennifer Forman Orth is celebrating with a contest—send her a link to an invasive species-related post by midnight Thursday and you might just win a prize.
pharyngula | April 8, 2006More details are dribbling out about the decision to deny Francis Beckwith tenure. It's a little bit odd, because these things are supposed to be confidential, and I will note that Beckwith, to his credit, is not commenting on the decision while trying to appeal it. I hope his appeal does not succeed, however. I agree completely with this fellow, Dr Jim Patton, who clearly states a legitimate reason for kicking Beckwith out (warning: Free Republic link):
When tenure time approached, the anti-Sloan [Sloan was the former Baylor president who had hired Dembski and Beckwith] interim president,…
pharyngula | April 7, 2006Sean Carroll (the physicist, not the developmental biologist) is moving on up to CalTech.
pharyngula | April 7, 2006I teach at the university level, which means I've got classes of self-selected, relatively well-prepared, mostly motivated students. That isn't real teaching. This is real teaching.
pharyngula | April 4, 2006Hey, I'd watch it: an an academic police procedural. It also sounds like my life right now. Although I did clear away half the piles of clutter on my desks last week, I once again foolishly scheduled exams in both of my courses for the very same week, so I'm frantically scribbling up exams and planning to field lots of student questions for the next few days, and then this weekend I'll have another big stack of stuff to grade.
Only about five more weeks to the end of this term…
pharyngula | March 27, 2006Way back in the dim and distant past, like two years ago, there was a bit of a disturbance in the blogosphere, a minor contretemps after a certain Harvard law student, Lawrence VanDyke, published a "book note" in the Harvard Law Review. It was rank creationist nonsense, a work of pathetic scholarship, and it got publicly shredded by Brian Leiter, and I also got in the act. The book reviewed was an apologia for Intelligent Design by Francis Beckwith. In a later amusing twist, NRO published a defense of VanDyke and Beckwith by an anonymous "Texas free-lance writer", who it was later discovered…
pharyngula | March 9, 2006My morning was spent at the local high school today, talking to the biology classes about the evidence for evolution. This wasn't in response to any specific worries—in fact, talking to the instructor, it's clear that they're doing a decent job of covering the basic concepts here already—but that my daughter is in the class, and she thought it would be fun to have her Dad join in the conversation. I will say that it was very obliging of the Chronicle of Higher Ed to publish this today:
In a packed IMAX theater in St. Louis last month, a middle-school teacher took the stage and lectured some…
pharyngula | March 3, 2006Spring break starts…NOW. I'm done with classes for the day, and just have to make a trip out to St. Cloud to pick up my son for the weekend and my obligations are temporarily over, sort of.
Way back at the beginning of the term when spring break seemed far, far away, I scheduled an exam for my physiology course (75 students) and my introductory biology course (35 students) for this week; I also had my intro students turn in a writing assignment this week, and because they had done poorly on one rather important exercise, had also assigned an extra paper, also due now. There is a rather…
pharyngula | February 23, 2006I've been racking my brains, trying to come up with a completely inoffensive college curriculum in case some tinhorn prissy-pants decides to pass a law allowing students to opt out of being challenged, and I just can't do it. Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but I think I could turn any textbook and any subject into something both seditious and salacious without trying too hard.
pharyngula | February 23, 2006I'm not even on the list of America's Worst Professors, and Minnesota is completely unrepresented (we must be a very conservative state, I guess)…but Michael Bérubé is. So are Juan Cole and Timothy Shortell and Noam Chomsky (of course!). Go vote for your Favorite Worst Professor.
pharyngula | February 21, 2006Maybe it's Minnesota, or maybe it's me, but this situation with professors complaining about student email doesn't really affect me. It's been my experience here that UMM students are usually friendly and trouble-free with email (haven't you heard? We're all nice up here!), and I even welcome the complaints—I'd rather hear from the students than not hear from them, especially if they're worried about something. I also like my email terse and to the point, so I'm not at all discomfited by a message that would be rudely abrupt if said to my face.
One thing would absolutely drive me nuts, though…
pharyngula | February 21, 2006I can't say that I'm surprised by anything in this except for the length of time it has taken: Summers has stepped down from the presidency of Harvard. I suspect he still doesn't know what hit him, but I think stupidly belittling the intrinsic capabilities of a significant number of successful, hardworking, and intelligent faculty for an irrelevant difference has led to some just desserts.
pharyngula | February 19, 2006Here's the difference between me and Michael Bérubé: he gets labeled a dangerous radical and profiled in David Horowitz's new book, while all I get is amild squeak in our weekly campus newspaper and our local conservative rag.
While perusing the UMM main page, I happened upon the website http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula which belongs to UMM's own Professor of Biology Dr. Meyers. Upon closer inspection I found content relating to my religious beliefs that offended me beyond belief. Not only was this speech sacrilegious and offensive, but it was readily available to anyone who happens across…