Quarter v. Semester

As both a student and a professor, I have experienced at various times both the US quarter and semester systems.

For those unfamiliar with these systems: An academic year composed of quarters involves 3 academic terms (+ a summer term = 4 quarters), each of 10 weeks duration (fall, winter, spring). An academic year composed of semesters involves 2 terms, each ~15 (±) weeks duration (fall and "spring", the former of which may include the end of summer and the latter of which includes the winter season).

Some of my colleagues and students experience the "block plan" (1 intensive course per 3 week period), but I have not, so I will confine my comments to quarters v. semesters.

Both quarter and semester systems have advantages and disadvantages for professors and students, but these pros and cons may shift around from course to course depending on various factors related to course content and professorial teaching ability.

Quarter system:

• Terms are shorter. Boring classes are over sooner, and boring professors can inflict less damage.

• The content and format of some courses, even very enthralling ones, are better suited to a shorter term.

• Quarters typically start later (September in the US) and end later (June) than the semester-based academic year. You may like or dislike quarters owing to this feature; alternatively, you may like this feature in late August and early September (when your semester colleagues have started their academic year) and hate it in May and early June (when your semester colleagues already have their grades done).

• It may be easier for professor to get a research leave for a quarter than it is to get a semester leave.

• Students on the quarter system may be at a disadvantage in the summer because their academic year ends late relative to the start of some summer internships and other jobs.

Semester system:

• Semesters can seem very, very long. Your joy at making it to Spring Break may be a bit dampened by the realization that the semester is only half over.

• You can, however, explore more topics in more depth than you can with a shorter term. You may have more flexibility in course content, owing to the longer term.

• You get to know your students better. You might even learn all their names.
  

• You may start the academic year before you are ready for summer to end, but you are done in the spring.
  

• Depending on your institutions policies re. teaching load, you may have fewer course preps/year.

• You only have to deal with beginning and end of semester craziness twice instead of 3 times. In an academic term, the first couple of weeks and the last week or two can be quite chaotic, but in a semester, there is plenty of time in the middle to get into a routine in which the logistics of the course are at least functioning well.

As a student, I didn't have a strong preference, even once I had experienced both systems. Depending on how many courses I was expected to take at once and what the course offerings were, I may have had a slight preference for one over the other, but overall it didn't matter a lot to me.

As a professor, I think I prefer the quarter system, recognizing that semesters do have some distinct advantages. For most courses, I feel that I can convey the most essential information in 10 weeks. I wouldn't like quarters if I had to create new courses all the time, but for a relatively stable set of courses and only the occasional new course to prepare, quarters are better for maintaining a high energy level and morale from term start to term end.

Which do you like? Semesters or quarters or something else?

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How a dissertation defense (in science) goes down

Last Wednesday, I defended my dissertation. A dissertation is a relatively large written work, consisting of 3 or more original essays by an advanced level graduate student. In science, the essays are actually research experiments and literature review papers about lots of other experiments. To defend my dissertation the professors who oversee my work and other guidance (called a committee) approve my projects from the beginning and monitor my progress along the way. Once, I was told that I collected enough data, I stopped doing experiments and I started to analyze the results (in other words, did lots of math) and wrote up the papers. If they like what they read, they give me the thumbs up to present the research to the university. That’s what I did last Wednesday; and I did something few people dare to do…I did before the entire world wide web. See Science Careers Blog A Dissertation Defense, Live-Streamed and Tweeted (with an Update).

Dissertation Defenses are public events. That means anyone can come, such as your family (mine was there), the professors on your committee, fellow classmates, and other professors and college administrators. I decided to simultaneously live stream my defense online for 2 reasons. One, one of my committee members couldn’t be there so that was the only way to defend or else what until he returned to town in May (no way). Two, I’m an online science outreach evangelist. Of course, I was going to share this part of the scientific process with the public. It’s what I do.
According to all feedback received thus far, the live stream went well. At one point a little over 100 people were tuned in watching the defense, including some local professors who wanted to make it but couldn’t. The feed blanked out for a few moments, you can’t see me at all in the feed (but you can hear me crystal clear), and the recorded portions are in three pieces. Nonetheless you can get a pretty good handle on my dissertation and my presentation style.

If you’re interested in my research, the links to the recorded video feed are below as well as my slides from the presentation. Big thanks to all of the twitter feed contributors and Boing Boing for spreading the word.


Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

An investigation of behavioral syndromes and individual differences in exploratory behavior in prairie voles, Microtus ochrogaster

View more presentations from Danielle Lee.

Oh, and you can call me Dr. now.

Related links:
Wordless Wednesday: Stack of Papers
Countdown to my Defense: T-minus 5 days

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Wasted Time?

Some applications for open faculty positions require letters of recommendation up-front; some request letters only after there has been a first stage of selection based on other information supplied by the applicant. Although I don't mind the first method, I prefer the second because it seems like a better use of time for those writing the letters and for those reading the applications.

I know that things are done in a different way at many non-US institutions, but lately I have encountered variations on this system within the US. In the past few months:

- I received a request for a letter of reference for someone who had already been invited to interview at a US institution. In fact, no letters of reference were solicited until this stage, so my letter wasn't supplementary or an attempt to fill a reference letter quota. The letters were clearly not a part of the interview selection decision. It is unclear what role, if any, they have in the search.

and

- I received a request for a letter of reference after someone had a phone interview but before they were invited for the actual interview. I am glad I am not on that hiring committee, as it seems to involve several extra steps.

I didn't mind either of those requests, although the first case made me wonder why the institution even bothered to get letters if they are so unimportant in the process. Perhaps it is an administrative requirement? Having read thousands of these letters, I must say I can't really blame anyone for not valuing reference letters very much.

A letter request that did annoy me, however, was one accompanied by the information that my letter would not even be read unless the candidate advanced to the final interview stage. In this case, the position is not an academic one, so perhaps I just lack familiarity with how things are done outside academia.

From what I could tell from the instructions, the organization will not read the letters before the final candidates are selected from a huge pool of applicants but wants to have the letters on hand to read as soon as the final interviewees are selected, and hence the request for possibly superfluous letters. I can understand the wish for efficiency, especially given the large number of applicants, but it is a bit of a strange request: Please write this letter even though we are unlikely to read it. We need to be efficient but we are willing to (possibly) waste your time.

Wouldn't such a request lend itself to getting cursory letters or letters that are not focused specifically on the position for which the applicant has applied? I typically take some time to customize each letter depending on what the position is, and in some cases this takes quite a bit of time. Why would I do that if I don't know if my letter will even be read?

I guess I will do it for the same reason we write any reference letters, not knowing if the subject of the letters will get the position.

Despite knowing in this particular case that my letter may be transferred, unread, directly to an electronic trash heap, I think the best strategy is to try to forget about that and write the letter in the hopes that it will eventually be read, the student will get the job, and it will all be worthwhile in the end.

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Drawing the Line

A reader asks:

How long do you typically give 1st or 2nd year grad students to "pull things together" when they struggle in the beginning? Where is the line is drawn and what factors affect the judgments professors will make about their students?

I will consider only PhD students in this discussion.

I should say right away that I do not have a foolproof way of deciding when or where to draw the line on struggling students. I tend to err on the side of delusional optimism, hoping that some solution involving change in project (topics, methods), degree of supervision (more structure, specific goal-setting), or approach to writing will pull us all through the problems. Only in hindsight has it been obvious when this was a bad plan, resulting in prolonged suffering and expense. In other cases, it has worked; by "worked" I mean that the student got their PhD and therefore any difficulties were worth it, I think.

That said, when and where I draw the line depends on the specific things with which the student is struggling and how (or whether) they are making an effort to communicate about and/or deal with the problem(s).

Is the problem motivation? If a student is unproductive owing to a severe lack of interest or motivation in any reasonable research project they can do with me as adviser, that is something that should be quite clear in the second year, if not the first. (though I have had students who started out very energetic in the first year but whose motivation was completely extinguished in the second by the reality of what research and/or working with me involves)

Is the problem that the student lacks the information or skills necessary to do the research? That can be fixed in many cases, and should be dealt with by the end of the second year. The student should be as proactive as possible about learning what they need to know to do their research.

Is the problem the adviser? Is this something that could be fixed by discussing the situation or is it something that can't be changed? If the latter, the student has a decision to make about whether to continue with that adviser. Although it is possible that, with time, the student may understand better what seems like irrational or unkind behavior, it is likely that the adviser won't become more sane or nice with time.

Is the problem beyond the student's control? Examples: Access to facilities? A complex and difficult research project that may proceed in a non-linear way? Lack of clear direction? Research that takes a long time to produce interpretable results? I am impressed by students who find ways to deal with obstacles like these.

In fact, a student who feels like they are struggling, perhaps because they are too critical when comparing themselves with others, may not be struggling in the eyes of the adviser and other faculty.

Other problems, such as those involving finishing a project or writing, may not manifest themselves until later (after the first two years).

In the first two years, it is not too late to change course in a possibly dramatic way, including deciding that there is no point in continuing in the graduate program. There have been a few cases in which I decided in the first or second year that there was no point in advising a student for a PhD; these students got an MS instead. There has to be an obvious, major reason for going this route, though -- e.g., failed classes or lack of productivity owing to extreme lack of effort.

Will a student who has a slow (but not catastrophic) first year or two be at a permanent disadvantage? I suppose this depends on the adviser, but in my opinion, a student who struggles with something in the first year or two, but who eventually surmounts the obstacles and succeeds, should not be at a disadvantage later. In fact, few arrive in graduate school perfectly prepared to leap into the perfect project that goes perfectly from Day One.

If you had asked any of my graduate advisers or committee members what they thought of me in my first or second years of graduate school, the responses would have ranged from a derisive snort to a polite but sympathetic chuckle at my likely future career as a cat sitter. That changed a few years later once I started getting results and writing papers, and my slow start didn't harm my career.

If you (mostly) like what you are doing, and at times possibly even love what you are doing, and you want to keep going with your research, despite initial problems, my advice, summarized, is: Stay focused, know what your goals are (short-range, intermediate-range, long-range), communicate with your adviser and others, if you feel stuck at least make some progress step-by-step (even if the steps seem small), and don't worry so much.

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#LeeDefense Day 3/10/2010

An Investigation of Behavioral Syndromes and Individual Differences in Exploratory Behavior of Prairie Voles, Microtus ochrogaster

Danielle N. Lee

photo credit: flynnroad.net
photo credit: http://images.buycostumes.com/

Okay, it's not wordless. Has it ever been? I'm preparing for my big day and I keep running lists through my mind.

* The talk is ready.

* The tech was been worked out: I've made a successful Skype call to the out of town committee member. The video feed logistics seem to be working. Not only does it live feed, I can record it and folks can check it out later.

* My mom and family are in town and checked into the hotel. (There was some drama there, aaargh! But it all worked out.

Really the only thing I need to do now is get my hair done and pick out an outfit. And rest. Rest is definitely in order.

But I keep thinking I need "to study" for my defense tomorrow. After the public defense, the committee questions me privately about my research, why it matters, and whatever else they like. I keep thinking some one will ask me about quantum physics or neurobiology. Aaaarghh! Panic sets in.

The public defense begins promptly at 10 am CST.

The defense will be video streamed at: http://stickam.com/dnlee5

I'll start streaming around 9:30 to get things set up. Big THANKS to my labmate L. Kent and her husband T. Kent for all of their assistance with the technology.

You can follow me at http://twitter.com/Fetesociety. The video stream should allow twitter feed; however I will not be doing any twitter correspondence during my talk. (Sorry, not quite ready for that much social media accessibility). Please use the hashtag #LeeDefense when microblogging. I can answer questions you post here in the comments, and I'll get to them after the smoke clears.

If you plan to see the defense in person, I recommend arriving on campus no later than 9:30am. This place is a maze and parking is a beast. Link to Campus maps. The building is on North Campus. Link with additional info about the research and defense location.

Thank you all for your support and thank God for his Grace.

DNLee

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Selected readings 3/8/10

Interesting reading and news items.

These items are also bookmarked at my Diigo account.

What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory

I’m trying to understand cosmology, why the Big Bang had the properties it did. And it’s interesting to think that connects directly to our kitchens and how we can make eggs, how we can remember one direction of time, why causes precede effects, why we are born young and grow older. It’s all because of entropy increasing. It’s all because of conditions of the Big Bang. [Wired, 2/26/10]

Black holes and white slopes

It is an incredible feat of observational astronomy to make these movies. It requires adaptive optics on the largest telescopes in the world (the Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea). We used to think of the heavens as eternal and unchanging. Now we watch movies of stars orbiting black holes. [Cosmic Variance, 2/25/10]

The climate machine

For climatologists, models are not just tools that can give a glimpse of what the future holds; they are also an experimental playground – a replica world on which they can test their knowledge of the climate system. Without the ability to conduct global-scale experiments in the lab or in the field, models are the only tools they have. [Climate Feedback, 2/26/10]

Most European males 'descended from farmers'

Most men in Europe can trace a line of descent to early farmers who migrated from the Near East, a study says. However, other scientists subscribe to a different interpretation - that this common lineage arrived in Europe during or before the last Ice Age. [BBC News, 1/20/10]

Esa mission concepts vie for position

The competition to find the next great European space mission has seen three ideas move to the front of the field. ... The concepts include a satellite that would map the "dark Universe" (called Euclid), a probe to study the Sun up-close (Solar Orbiter), and a telescope to find distant planets (Plato). [BBC News, 1/20/10]

Mississippi Delta earthquake: America's Haiti waiting to happen?

One of the strongest series of earthquakes ever to hit the United States happened not in Alaska or along California's San Andreas fault, but in southeast Missouri along the Mississippi River. In 1811 and 1812, the New Madrid fault zone that zig zags through five states shook so violently that it shifted furniture in Washington, D.C., and rang church bells in Boston. The series of temblors changed the course of the Mississippi River near Memphis, and historical accounts claim the river even flowed backward briefly. Geologists consider the New Madrid fault line a major seismic zone and predict that an earthquake roughly the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake (7.0 on the Richter scale) could occur in the area during the next 50 years. [CSMonitor.com, 1/17/10]

Researchers find clues to evolution by studying genes of living people

Scientists seeking to unravel the evolutionary history of human beings are looking not to the past but into the genes of people living today. Researchers at Harvard University have developed a powerful method for identifying genes that have been favored by evolution and have spread rapidly among the population because of natural selection, the process by which organisms with beneficial traits survive in greater numbers and pass on their genes to more offspring than others. The hope is the new tool will cast a light on recent changes in human biology and provide insight into modern-day disease, since one of the most powerful evolutionary pressures human beings have faced are pathogens. [Boston Globe, 1/18/10]

Light and the Age of the Universe - the Cosmic Microwave Background

Our main window to understanding the universe is light and the electromagnetic spectrum. Trapped here on earth, there is very little of the universe that we can actually touch and test with our own hands, but light provides an amazing tool. The Cosmic Microwave Background is perhaps on of the best methods we have of finding the age of the universe. [The Light Side of Science, 3/3/10]

How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

Want to know how Google is about to change your life? Stop by the Ouagadougou conference room on a Thursday morning. It is here, at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the world’s most powerful Internet company, that a room filled with three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives figure out how to make their search engine even smarter. This year, Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm, and each will be determined at a gathering just like this one. [Wired, 2/22/10]

Brain cells' new role defunct?

In the past couple of years, the idea that these non-neural brain cells, known as glial cells, participate in neurotransmission "had been widely accepted," Frank Kirchhoff, a cellular and molecular neurobiologist at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, who did not participate in the research, wrote in an email to The Scientist. "Therefore, the scientific community was rather surprised to see" that calcium levels in glial cells have no affect on neurotransmission in the hippocampus, added Kirchhoff. [The Scientist, 3/4/10]

Female teachers transmit math anxiety to female students

Girls often believe themselves to be bad at math, in accordance with gender stereotyping, and often experience high levels of anxiety about the subject. That anxiety appears to be driven by social influences, and may be vanishing in early education. Still, identifying its causes could help eliminate it at later stages of education, and prevent it from making a reappearance in young girls. A new study suggests that elementary school may be a breeding ground for this anxiety. The study found that when elementary school teachers, who are primarily female, displayed a high level of anxiety about math, that skittishness was transmitted to their female students. [Nobel Intent, 1/25/10]

Speculating about the Universe as a quantum fluid

What really seems to turns Murayama on is the problem of explaining why some forces are long-range and some are short-range. Basically, gravity reaches out over huge distances. Electromagnetism would reach just as far, but because there are both negative and positive charges, forces due to one set of charges tend get screened out by opposite signed charges. This effectively limits the reach of electromagnetic forces. Nevertheless, the fundamental distance scaling for the two forces is the same. The strong and weak nuclear forces are very short range, extending no further than the width of a nucleus. [Nobel Intent, 1/25/10]

Understanding deep ocean circulation and climate modeling

For Europe, which may experience dramatic changes to its regional climates if the thermohaline circulation changes, this represents a very scary scenario, because we don't know where the point of instability is. We also don't know how we would get back to a circulating solution should the worst occur. And the measurements we presently have of the current are so noisy that we aren't likely to see it coming until it has already happened. [Nobel Intent, 1/27/10]

The amazing race for the cheapest and fastest DNA machine

In the past decade, the cost of sequencing an entire human genome has dropped from $1 billion to $10,000. As companies race to crack the $1,000 genome, the contending DNA machines in the marketplace suggest an end is near. [Smartplanet.com, 3/4/10]

Mammoth Achievement: Researchers at the forefront of molecular biology

By successfully sequencing the DNA of a long-extinct species, Stephan Schuster and Webb Miller have helped push back the boundaries of molecular biology. Stephan Schuster was never all that interested in ancient DNA. As a young genomicist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in his native Germany, his forte had always been bacteria. By deciphering and comparing the genomes -- the genetic blueprints -- of various microbial species, he sought to unlock the secrets of these ubiquitous creatures: how they evolve and interact with the organisms that play them host. [Physorg.com, 1/26/10]

Why humans outlive apes

The same evolutionary genetic advantages that have helped increase human lifespans also make us uniquely susceptible to diseases of aging such as cancer, heart disease and dementia. [Physorg.com, 1/26/10]

Neuroscientists making computers smart enough to see connections between brain's neurons

Now a handful of researchers scattered across the globe are tackling a much more ambitious project: to find connectomes of brains more like our own. ... With these technologies, they intend to map the connectomes of our animal cousins, and eventually perhaps even those of humans. Their results could fundamentally alter our understanding of the brain. [Physorg.com, 1/28/10]

Why hasn't ET made contact yet?

He's absolutely convinced. Frank Drake has been scouring the sky for 50 years, looking for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. He's heard nothing... but he's in no doubt they're out there. Drake was a founder-member of Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. [BBC News, 1/25/10]

Channeling your inner alien? Maybe, scientists say

The idea that alien micro-organisms could be hiding on Earth has been discussed for a while, according to Jill Tarter, the director of Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, a U.S. project that listens for signals from civilizations based around distant stars. She said several of the scientists involved in the project were interested in pursuing the notion, which Davies laid out in a 2007 Scientific American article, "Are Aliens Among Us?" [Physorg.com, 1/26/10]

Physicists’ Dreams and Worries in Era of the Big Collider

“I want to set out the questions for the next nine decades,” Maria Spiropulu said on the eve of the conference, called the Physics of the Universe Summit. She was hoping that the meeting, organized with the help of Joseph D. Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan, would replicate the success of a speech by the mathematician David Hilbert, who in 1900 laid out an agenda of 23 math questions to be solved in the 20th century. [New York Times, 1/25/10]

Genetic tests give consumers hints about disease risk; critics have misgivings

Gall's experience illuminates the controversy around direct-to-consumer genotyping. Advocates say these services can guide people toward appropriate preventive medical care, help them choose medications and motivate them to make lifestyle changes. But others criticize the companies for overselling their supposed insights and producing reports that untrained consumers might easily misunderstand. The American Medical Association recommends that a physician always be involved in genetic testing. [Washington Post, 1/26/10]

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Ask a Scientist

The Chronicle Review (the magazine-like part of The Chronicle of Higher Education) recently asked a group of "scholars and experts" to comment on stress in the lives of academics, using the Amy Bishop incident as a springboard for the discussion; i.e., what role might stress related to the tenure process have played in this tragedy?

The scholars and experts included:

• a writer and PhD candidate in English literature
• the chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education
  
• a professor of international politics
• a professor of English
• an assistant professor of public policy and political science
• an assistant professor of sociology and women's and gender studies
• a PhD candidate in anthropology
• a dean of a School of Arts & Sciences
• a professor of management
• a professor of history

Clearly there was an effort to consult a wide variety of academics associated with the US system of higher education: professors and administrators, tenured professors and tenure-track professors, professors at universities and professors at small liberal arts colleges, even some PhD candidates who have no direct experience (yet) with the stresses of being on the tenure-track. Many of these people had thoughtful insights; I was interested to know the opinions of sociologists and anthropologists and others.

Even so, Amy Bishop was an assistant professor of biology. Does it seem odd to anyone else that there were no biology or other science professors in this particular group of academics commenting on the incident? I looked up the chancellor and the dean and learned that their field of expertise is psychology, so perhaps they come the closest, but that's not the same as getting the opinion of someone who has recently experienced the tenure process as a scientist.

I realize that a biology professor would not necessarily have any more insight into the general implications of the incident than those who provided comments in this piece in the Chronicle. And I still stand by my overall view (shared by the PhD candidate in English literature) that the murders were the actions of an imbalanced person with a rage problem (and a gun), and the tragedy was therefore not a direct result of the stresses of academia in general or the tenure evaluation system in particular.

Still, I think it is strange that in an otherwise diverse group, not one is a science professor with direct knowledge of what it is like to get tenure as a scientist today at a university. Consider how bizarre it would have been if an English professor (for example) had committed a heinous crime that may or may not have been related to the experience of being an English professor, and the only people asked to comment (in a particular series of essays) were science, engineering, and math professors.

I also think it would have been illuminating to read, for comparison, the thoughts of a scientist recently denied tenure. With all due respect to the PhD candidates and literary scholars who wrote thoughtful essays for the piece, surely the Chronicle could have found some current or former science professors -- ideally in the life sciences -- to comment?

I don't want to perpetuate an "us" (scientists) vs. "them (non-scientists) mentality, but often when I read about academia, in the Chronicle and elsewhere, the point of view of non-scientists is the only one represented. This gives a very incomplete view of academia and the lives of academics, in general and in extreme cases. Although we have much in common as researchers and educators, there are also significant differences that, at times, merit consideration.

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