He did it! Hub applied for a job here in town.

Hub applied for a job at the big school here in town. It's hard to tell how competitive he is for the position. I'm impressed by his CV, but they may want another sub-specialty.

He had recently given a talk there, which apparently went very well.

When asking for a letter of reference, Hub's PI suddenly became very apologetic as he realized he had not properly mentored hub for the next stage in his career. He had not assured Hub a stream of publications, primarily because they have one big project which has taken years and years to get ready. There are lots of abstracts but no official publication. The project will probably go *CNS, though.

Send us your good luck wishes. Our two body solution could be nigh. Or not.

*CNS = Cell, Nature, Science. High impact journals.

Good advocate, you!

My response to a student who couldn't finish an online lab because some links were broken. I graded her harshly, but then she reminded me we talked about it the next day.

I corrected your lab. It's not visible, but I simply made yours worth 10 points instead of 15, since you had fewer points to answer. In this case you have 804/1017 = 79.0%, which is a C+. Previously you had a 78.7%, which is a C+. Thanks for holding me to the highest standards. You will do well advocating for yourself in other aspects of life, too.

Adjusting to weaker students

In order to survive, my institution is expanding enrollment across all tiers (Tier 1: strongest students, Tier 5: weakest students). Tier 1 students are very expensive since we have to compete for them with scholarship dollars, so the expansion seems to target the lower tiers. So, in essence, we are getting more students, and more weak students.

Having weaker students is especially time consuming for faculty for unexpected reasons. No, they don't really take more time in direct instruction, because often the ones that need to show to office hours aren't coming. It's the ancillary issues, such as

• answering more e-mails regarding learning software issues "Prof, I can't get this to upload right"
• spending more time clarifying instructions "I don't understand what we are supposed to do"
• providing an unprecedented level of support for studying 
• from learning objectives: "Be able to describe the molecular mechanisms of such and such"
• to question by question instructions "Be able to answer questions 4, 5, 6B and 6C"

Not only time but psychological factors are counted in

• Have thick skin when blamed for student's poor grades in the course
• Have thick skin when faced with pervasive disengagement despite herculean efforts to be student-centered
• Have the wisdom to not let the "it's because our students are weaker" become a self-fulfilling prophesy