A postdoc wrote to me about her discomfort with the fact that her supervisor is "involved" with one of his own grad student advisees, a former undergrad who then became this professor's grad student. Not surprisingly, the situation makes everyone else...
Teach It Again
Someone I know recently had the experience of a not-so-great second time teaching a class, even though the first time had gone really well. However difficult it is to teach (including TA) a course the first time, I think the second (or nineteenth) time...
Favorite Jerk
Last fall, I wrote about a student who was disrespectful to the TA of my course. I decided not to intervene unless the problem persisted. It did not. In the post, I specifically wondered whether I wanted to know the name of the disrespectful student...
Walk on Eggshells, Please
Whenever I write about a topic that involves the possibility of sexism -- or even an unambiguous example such as the one I described in a Scientopia post a few weeks ago -- there is almost always at least one comment from a man who is worried about having...
Grads Moving Midstream
For a continuation of the discussion of the general topic of mobile (or potentially mobile) academics, see this post at Scientopia for a focus on Moving Gra...
Do You Care?
Prof-Like Substance has compiled a handy list of what advisors can and cannot expect of their "trainees" (graduate students, postdocs). Among the items under the CAN'T EXPECT heading is this:3) Trainees to care about your promotion and tenure. Well,...
Urban Wildlife Watch: Mountain Lion in the City
I'm not just pulling your leg here. A Mountain Lion really was spotted in the St. Louis, Missouri Metro area on January 12, 2011. Local news agencies have reported the sightings taken from a hiking trail camera in the suburb of Chesterfield,...
Proposal Yin and Yang
A few years ago, some colleagues and I pitched a 'high-risk' idea to program directors at a funding agency. The program directors were receptive, but funds were scarce (of course) and they suggested that we submit a full proposal through the usual channels,...
MoveOn Faculty
Today in Scientopia I revisit the topc of faculty moving from one institution to anoth...
Guest Post: PhD Rhapsody
Like most bloggers, I suspect, I get frequent random spam-requests from individuals or organizations about doing a guest post. Maybe I am a control freak, but I am not interested in letting someone who sends me a form letter do a guest post on a topic...
Compared to What?
It is not uncommon for a request for a letter of reference -- for a faculty position or as part of an evaluation for tenure and/or promotion -- to include a specific appeal for a comparison of the candidate with othersHere are some examples of how this...
Demographic Shift?
** warning: This blog post contains anecdotal information involving the statistics-of-small-numbers **In my field, it is typical for graduate applicants to indicate which subfield they are most interested in pursuing for graduate research. Most applicants...
What activates a supermassive black hole?
There's good evidence that massive black holes exist at the centers of most large galaxies having a central bulge, and even within galaxies that lack a central bulge, are small, or have an irregular form. Such black holes can range in size up to more...
The Women's League
Today's post is at Scientopia, where I discuss the following statement, from a real letter of reference sent for a recent candidate for a faculty position:[the applicant] is in the same league as other top female graduates [from this departme...
Discussing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Without a doubt, Henrietta Lacks was the most significant contributor to medical science and microbiology. She wasn't a scientist or a doctor. She was a mother and wife and grand-daughter of a tobacco farmer of Clover, Virginia. In February1951,...
What Would John Stuart Mill Do?
This is one of the stranger (but not the strangest!*) anecdotes in Higher Education?, a book by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus:"When faculty members do have power, they often use it to resist. When [Colgate University president Rebecca] Chopp tried...
Dear Andrew Hacker?
This is my blog-reply to an e-mail I recently received from Andrew Hacker, one of the authors (with Claudia Dreifus) of Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids, and What We Can Do About It.Dear Andrew Hacker,You're welcome....
Do Not Reply
An e-mail was sent to me in response to one of my essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education last fall. Before I show the letter, some background:For the essay in question, the CHE editors chose the unfortunate title of "I Did Not Slow Down Once I Got...
The Clock Stops Here
On Friday, I asked readers to name universities that do not have a policy that allows for tenure-track faculty to 'stop the (tenure) clock' for the birth or adoption of a child. There may well be such institutions that are not known to FSP readers, but...
ScienceOnline Bound, Baby!
Happy New Year!Good day good people. I am SOOOOOOOO geeked and excited about the upcoming science blogging conference MLK weekend in Research Triangle, North Carolina. It's one of my favorite meetings: it's science, it's social media and it is definitely...
Where the Clocks Never Stop
In the recent NY Times article on "Keeping Women in Science on a Tenure Track", already noted elsewhere in the blogosphere, part of a report (released last fall) by Berkeley researchers is summarized as follows:"It recommends .. “stopping the clock”...
Research Group Feedback
This post is over at Scientopia, and involves a discussion of how (or whether) to get feedback from research group membe...
Cyclotomic fields, part 2
In our previous article on cyclotomic fields we were talking about why the Galois group G of ℚ(μn)/ℚ is isomorphic to (ℤ/nℤ)×, where n∈ℤ and μn is the group of nth roots of unity, the roots of xn-1=0 in some extension of ℚ. (Check here for a list of...
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