Just this month, my department came into possession of five new faculty offices, owing to the fact that brand spanking new faculty offices were created in the old library building, and some of the faculty from other offices in this building are being moved into them.
Forget that our chair actually had to fight for these additional offices (armed with data on student-to-faculty ratios and such) with another department that still occupies much of this building. Forget that the offices we fought for are old, water-damaged, haven’t been seriously cleaned in years, and are painted in such 1970s colors as orange. Forget that the university looked like it was going to try to stick us with the costs associated with disposing of the broken furniture and piles of trash left by the faculty that vacated the offices (and that we will end up eating the costs of installing internet jacks in the offices that need them).
We have more space!!
Category Archives: Academia
The science pipeline and the overabundance of Ph.D. scientists.
Chad has an interesting post about the scientific job market, in which he notes that his own experience training for and finding a job in academic science has left him with an impression significantly rosier than some circulating through cyberspace. Chad’s discussion of the ways your field (and subfield) can influence what your prospects and experiences will be like is a must-read for anyone prepared to talk themselves out of pursuing science on the basis of the aerial view of science as a whole.
Chad’s assessment:
Online chemistry resources from the Journal of Chemical Education.
Another dispatch from the BCCE:
The Journal of Chemical Education (or J Chem Ed, as we call it in the biz), is, in fact, targeted to an audience of chemical educators. Its website has the online version of the journal, plus some resources for teachers of chemistry at the <a href="http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/HS/index.htmlhigh school and college levels.
But, it also has a passel of goodies that anyone with even a passing interest in chemistry can love.
More from the BCCE: Atkins and Harpp on talking chemistry with the people.
It was another full day at the BCCE, starting with an excellent plenary address by Peter Atkins (who wrote my p-chem text, plus dozens of other books) and David Harpp (of the Office of Science and Society). Each of them spoke about the best ways to talk about science with people who are not scientists, science teachers, or science students. Some highlights after the jump.
Day 2 of the BCCE: some notes.
I’m blogging again from the lovely Vienna Cafe in West Lafayette, Indiana, at the end of Day 2 of the BCCE. I gave my own talk this afternoon as part of symposium session on incorporating ethics in the chemistry curriculum (along with 5 other very interesting talks). I think it went well, but I always enjoy conferences more when I’ve finished my presenting and can be an undistracted audience for the other presentations.
Below the fold, some of the things I learned in todays various talks and events:
Collaboration, competition, and turf wars.
Judging from some of the comments on my latest post about the Tonegawa/Karpova kerfuffle, it’s clear that there is not consensus about precisely what relationship a scientist should pursue (or avoid pursuing) with another scientist working on similar research. Part of the disagreement may come down to a difference of opinion about how important it is for scientists to share knowledge relative to protecting their own interests in the hyper-competitive world of academic science. Another part of the disagreement may come down to standards of similarity (i.e., when can we say that project X and project Y are essentially the same line of research?). Finally, there seems to be some disagreement about what motives we can impute to Tonegawa, especially in light of the recently revealed email exchange between them.
I’ll show you a hostile workplace! (MIT update)
Three Bulls is on top of this, but I want to add a few comments of my own (as is my habit).
The story about Susumu Tonegawa sinking MIT’s attempt to hire Alla Karpova is not over yet. Sure, the Boston Globe (and the MIT News Office) report that MIT has formed a committee to try to get its neuroscientists to collaborate with each other better. But it looks like they’ve got their work cut out for them, judging by the email exchange between Tonegawa and Karpova, obtained by the Globe.
How is your graduate education funded (or not)?
Bitch Ph.D. links an interesting op-ed piece in the Washington Post about the challenges of being a single parent and paying for grad school. Given the academia/parenting discussion we’ve been having here, I figured this was another relevant issue to consider.
I’ve mentioned before that the standard practice in science Ph.D. programs in the U.S. seems to be that students get tuition plus a stipend that, depending on the local cost of living, ranges from barely-adequate to almost-comfortable. There are also a good number of U.S. Ph.D. programs in the humanities and social sciences that offer the same deal to their students, although the stipends are frequently less than those offered by science programs and the number of students admitted to such Ph.D. programs is smaller. (At the same university, my Ph.D. program in chemistry enrolled 56 students the year I entered, while my Ph.D. program in philosophy enrolled 7 of us.)
But, some of the comments on the Bitch Ph.D. post make it look like there are a good number of students in Ph.D, programs who are not getting this kind of support — and thus, are either relying on parents or partners for financial assistance or are going into debt. Also, students in masters programs and professional degree programs (M.D., J.D., etc.) are usually presented with a bill rather than support.
How do these funding patterns (i.e., whether you have to come up with the money to go to school or whether the school covers the costs) affect the choices you’ve made (or are anticipating) about what kind of education and career path to pursue?
Which comes first?
This morning, I finished making the slides for a talk I’m giving at the BCCE at Purdue next week. (Any of you chemists or chemical educators in the audience planning on being there?) I feel very proud of myself for having the slides written and ready to use days before I even board the plane. I’m even sufficiently enthusiastic that I may just start writing a paper-version of the content I’ll be giving in my talk.
That brings me to my question for academics and others who work in the media of “paper” and “presentation”:
Which do you typically write first?
Do you write a paper first and then adapt it to a suitable format for presentation*? Or do you write your talk first and then use it as the basis for a paper (which might be more lengthy, formal, detailed, etc.)?
Is this a pattern you’re happy with, or do you ever think you’d rather do it the other way around? (If the latter, what exactly is stopping you or has stopped you from doing it the other way around?)
_________
*Opinions vary on what counts as a suitable format for presentation. There’s this practice in philosophy where, rather than giving a talk, a philosopher will read the audience a paper. This sometimes happens even in instances where the paper has circulated to audience members in advance — which means you can watch the presenter reading his or her paper while audience members read along on their own photocopies of the same paper.
Maybe it’s my early training as a chemist (since, in chemistry, no one gives this sort of presentation), but I have always found the reading-to-the-audience format offputting. But, it’s one where clearly the writing of the paper comes before the “writing of the talk”.