Training Professors to be Educators
The Atlantic had an interesting article entitled The Forgotten Student: Has Higher Education Stiffed its Most Important Client? which parallels a recent Op-Ed in the NYTimes on why one former executive left Goldman Sachs because they lost sight of their client. I remember reading the NYTimes Op-Ed over breakfast and I thought to myself, “I really wouldn’t want to work in a place that wasn’t looking out for the best interests of their client.” After reading the article in The Atlantic, I think the veil has been completely lifted from my eyes. I guess I should explain that. This is not to say that everything in the article was totally foreign for me and that I have never thought about some of those things. However, I never really thought of it from the view that administrators might be failing their clients. For example, there’s discussions here and here on college…
Why a Postdoc is basically needed in Academia
I’ve been totally swamped with proposal writing over the past few weeks, hence my erratic posting schedule. Also, right as I was going to sit down and work on a post, I found out that I was denied for another proposal, totally sapping any motivation to do anything useful. For those of you keeping score, I’m 0-5 in the my first 6 months with a bunch pending. That’s not what I would call a stellar start to my academic career. Needless to say, I’ve contemplating career choices and shoulda-woulda-couldas, but I think that’s only natural at points when things aren’t going the way you envisioned. It’s not all bad; I did get very good reviews from my Chair, which means in the Chair’s eyes I’m doing some things right even though I don’t feel like it is. One of the proposals that rejected was in a Young Investigator/Young Faculty category. For those of…
Zero is never a good number
These past few weeks have been insanely busy for me. I alluded to this two weeks ago with my post on how blogging is hard. Obviously, it’s not too hard and you certainly don’t need any credentials to do it (otherwise I’d be screwed) but it is time consuming. And right now, time is one form of currency that I am severely lacking. I managed another proposal submission, which should be my last one for a few months. In addition to that, I was lacking in my classroom preparation and it certainly showed. Plus, I’ve started to take delivery of my equipment for my lab which is very cool but another thing to coordinate. Also, my group is a little bit bigger (one PhD student, one MS student, and now one undergrad). On top of all of that, I’ve had the obligatory “new faculty” events to attend, which is an…
Blogging is hard…
…when you have a lot of other stuff to do. It’s not that blogging is difficult, although I think I’m running low on relevant topics. Rather, it’s more of a time crunch that’s killing me. I started blogging last February over at GEARS (not that I’m trying to self promote…) thinking that 30 minutes per day writing about some of my experiences with the tenure track process will be good for me. I’ll be able to clear my head, vent occasionally, maybe get good advice from more senior readers, and possible help someone else that’s in my shoes. Plus, blogging makes me keep up with other bloggers. I particularly like following Dr. Becca (@doc_becca, Fumbling Towards Tenure Track Tenure) even though she’s a scientist because we’re both at the same stage in the game. When she posted about being paraded around like a new puppy, I totally understand what it means to go…
The Daily Grind
Chris Gammell and I were chatting the other day (well, five minutes ago) about the hours that a professor works. And in that discussion, I was reminded of a post by GMP a few months ago, basically describing how no one cares about your work life balance. Now, I’ll pause for a minute for you to read her post. … Pause for effect… … Ok, so first I’ll hit the hours question and then tie in my little figure in above. The hours that I’ve worked so far haven’t been crazy. That’s probably because it is the middle of the summer and because I’m only supervising one student. My daily schedule is roughly: up at 5:45 am, leave house at 7:15-7:30 (Myself, DrWife, and NanoGEARS), get on campus ~8, work until 5, NanoGEARS in bed by 7, sleep sometime between 10 and 11. Most days, I drop NanoGEARS off and…
Academic Breakdown: The other stuff
Ok, so I was lazy and just cropped my figure from last week’s entry, so sue me. Anyway, last week, I discussed a general breakdown of academic activities for faculty members, focusing mainly on research. Without reliving old glories, quality research at a top university doesn’t happen without money. A reasonable number to think of when you’re considering funding a project, it costs roughly $120k/year/student and that’s with minimal equipment. But finding research money isn’t the only part of it. A good prof has to find money, effectively mentor his/her students, write highly relevant papers, and still teach and perform academic service at their university and to the community at-large. Once again, we’re back to generically looking at the time breakdown: research = 50%, teaching = 30%, service = 20%. Towards the end of semesters or exam weeks, teaching will dominate. When it’s time for committee work or conference organization/reviewing,…
Academic Breakdown (No, Not that kind…)
Last week, I discussed my initial thoughts on submitting my first proposal. One of the comments I received was from Chris Gammell via twitter stating that most engineers never write proposals and certainly not large proposals. I was actually quite shocked for two reasons. The first reason was because I know there are some academic types that read this blog that probably see large proposals on a regular basis. The second reason was because my impression about industry is they have a lot more money to work with than academia and so large proposals should be fairly common. Since there was this misconception, I thought I would discuss and breakdown an academic position (in engineering) to show how each facet works together. The overall breakdown is shown in that nice little figure to your left. Roughly speaking, research topics should consume 50% of your time, teaching 30%, and service 20%. This…