Relief.

I have to tell you a secret about a course- I have blogged about this course before. That blog post complains about students from another department, but I am happy to report that this year they are really good and engaged. I have also changed my attitude to where I really enjoy teaching them. Hooray for victories!

This blog post is about the same course, but a different attitude problem of mine. In this course, the other faculty member has the majority of the course, becuase the course is designed for hir majors. However, that other instructor is not really trained in this subject. Despite hir best efforts at studying and preparing, the lectures (in my mind) reveal the lack of training. He/she sat through all my lectures, and now I feel obliged to sit through hirs, and frankly, I find it painful. Mistakes, lack of full understanding of the topic, intellectual short-cuts... "farming out" topics to marginally-related videos. Cringe, cringe, cringe. I have my twice-weekly vents to my husband (who is also in the same field as this course) and he listens carefully- and repeatedly entreats me to just vent to him and keep my mouth shut otherwise. He's right. Oops, blog!

This is probably a small-PUI problem: reaching too far in the generalist domain. My maternity leaves have caused my department to temporarily reach also, but I have a lot of confidence in my colleagues' competence, so THAT has never bothered me.

Today my co-teacher said, I wanted to tell you in person before you hear otherwise: I'm leaving. I'm going to another institution where I can teach graduate students in my field. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I just don't want to teach courses like [ours] for which I'm not adequately trained.

I will miss my colleague because he/she is a very, very enjoyable person. But I feel relief in two ways: 1. the course could be taught by someone more qualified, and 2. My deep dark secret wasn't so deep and dark after all!

Tenure App countdown- 4 days

See here and here for more about my upcoming bid for tenure.

I need to:

1. Update my CV
2. Arrange for two colleagues to sit in on a class and evaluate your teaching. I did, they haven't visited yet, though
3. Find my statement of faith and revise at applicant's discretion.This is an essay I wrote during the hiring process to see if I was a good "institutional fit", aka one of their denomination or somebody who doesn't thoroughly disagree with it. Not revising; too low on priority list.
4. Include my annual progress reports from the last three years. We have to write a "Did I meet last years' goals? What are this year's goals?" report every spring. I have only found two, had to embarrassingly ask the Provost's office to scan the third. I must have saved over it in using it for the following years' update.
5. Finish my "How I include my faith in my teaching" paper (UGH)
6. Collate all of my course evaluation summaries. What a hassle! They're all paper except for the last year. So that's six courses a year, three sections for some of those courses, and six years of courses... I'll need to photocopy (or delegate) all of those. Update; a work-study student did it for me in about 20 minutes.
7. Rank myself and justify my rank on a rather squishy scale from incompetent to outstanding. This is tricky, since you don't want to shoot too low, but your colleagues must also review your rank and agree or disagree to it, so you can't be arrogant.
8. Write a cover letter
9. Accumulate any supporting evidence at my discretion, such as syllabi, pubs, letters of recommendation, etc. We'll see what I have time for.

My goal is do do the best I can with what I've got (energy-wise) in the time I have. And be satisfied with what I hand the evaluation committee. I may have mentioned this before, but I'm not afraid to lose my job (see this article about tenure at a PUI), but I do not want to negatively impress my colleagues, the dean or the provost.

 

 

Fatalism Epiphany

Please see here and here for backstory. I am trying to triage the help I give to floundering students because I need to know for whom my help will be effective and for whom my efforts will be wasted. I don't want to give up on anyone, but this work must be personally sustainable.

Wednesday was the students' first exam. I busted butt and got the exams graded and back to them on Thursday, their lab day. During lab, I noticed that the students whose grades were the worst on the exams had turned in the worst work on the labs. No surprise there. I also noticed that of all the students who were doing poorly before the exam but were able to pull their scores up after my warning had a qualitative difference in the details of their lab work. If you asked a student who didn't improve their score, "Why is the sky blue?" they will answer, "Because it is blue", which will get them a poor score in lab.  A student who could at least answer, "That's the color of the light coming through", would still get a poor score, but would be trainable to learn more in depth --- that "the atmosphere filters all colors of light except around 470 nm, which enters your eye and strikes your retina where it is converted into neural impulses that is perceived by your brain as blue", which is the expectation for a good grade.

This is my new working hypothesis; that students who can do the lab write ups (which are open book) to a minimum degree are trainable, but that if they are failing the lab write-ups, AND they avoid my help otherwise, I cannot spend enough effort to rescue them from their own failure. I know that in the large state school where I got my undergrad, there would be no such discussion because there would not be any "chasing" of the struggling student by the Prof. But here I do a little. The standards are very high to pass, but the support is there for students who want it. Not all students want it, and the students who need it the most are unwilling to seek it. I want those non-seeker students to succeed too, despite their fears or background. But you simply can't do it for them.

Fatalism Followup

This is a follow up to this post in which I e-mailed students in grade trouble in my freshman level course. Several of the students I e-mailed "snapped-to" and showed up to office hours, signed up for tutors, and asked for study tips. That was rewarding. I paid special attention to one of the students I did not hear back from in lab. Though I did not explicitly address her by saying " Did you get my e-mail?", I sat down with her and directly but kindly offered her a critique of the work she was doing at that moment, saying she could improve her grade by doing such, and this, and adding more detail right here. She basically said "mmn, hmm, sure, whatever". And made no changes at all.

You hear these stories about students who achieve despite difficult circumstances because "they had a teacher that believed in them". The weighs on my mind though the easy route would be to classify this student as "uncorrectable". I am especially concerned because she is of the demographic that has poorer outcomes in college and I want to lessen the achievement gap in my own tiny little way. So I don't want to "give up on her" but the practicality of the matter is that I have limited time, and those who ask for my time will get it. I won't be able to chase the students who don't come to me. I really am rooting for her, but she'll have to do it on her own.

Keeping Young

This morning I got dressed and put a scarf on. I thought, how should I tie this scarf? My MO is to tie a scarf like I learned in the 80's, but today I remembered that many of the students are wearing scarves and they tie them in a circle with the ends hanging down symmetrically in the front. So that's how I did it.

Who knows how many little behaviors of mine are influenced by being around 18-24 year olds all day. Luckily I haven't, like, picked up the "like" interjection.  Otherwise I hope the students' influence serves to keep me "young".

I saw that coming update

Read the previous post first. The animal perished. And though Stula seemed upset, she didn't apologize. She said "That's unfortunate that it happened" So either Stula didn't do it herself OR she has some interesting ideas about apologies or guilt or fault. Fine, there are a lot of worldviews that are acceptable to me. Hopefully it will come out soon what she is thinking. I won't push it now, but at a more comfortable time perhaps.

Addendum; Sept 8. Stula didn't do it, her partner did. No funky things about apolgies or guilt, just trying not to obviously point the finger.

Faculty Congress

Somehow I got elected to be on the faculty congress, which is only a few years old.  The first meeting of the year was today. The thing that amazes me is that the faculty went so long without any representational form of governance. Apparently all decisions were made at the administrative level or with the ENTIRE faculty involved. Wow.

The second thing I find amazing is that it has really NO power, but everyone buys into it. Apparently the administration does listen to the issues brought up by the congress, but the congress cannot override any decisions that the administration makes that go against the faculty congress' recommendations.  

Some issues we are tackling

• get REAL tenure (with review) see here
• not stating "tenure track" on job ads eliminates good candidates
• not having a "tenure track position" makes it harder to apply for certain grants 
• make explicit grievance procedures in the case faculty are let go
• policies for faculty personally fired
• policies for faculty grievance in the case of serious institutional financial hardship
• try to get resources for more scholarship (time and money)

Interdepartmental conflict blowup surprise

I advise a lot of pre-health science majors. Today was advising, and I was sitting with a pre-med freshman who wanted to double major in music. We've had people do this successfully but there are a lot of conflicts in the schedule. This year, our foundational first year class for our majors and their foundational first year class for music majors were scheduled at the same time. By foundational I mean a pre-req for nearly everything else. As in, if you don't take it this semester, you won't take your MCATs in time to matriculate into med school after you graduate.

I tried to convince Stu that they can do the double major if they decide to do a "gap year", take a year in between graduation and med school. Stu looked at me like a deer in headlights. Then I thought, I'll just go over to Music's advising table with Stu and try to work this out.


BIG MISTAKE.

Apparently I found a music faculty who must have a huge beef with our department, completely unbeknownst to me. I asked basics about which of the music courses could be put off and what her options were as far as delaying which courses, etc. Next thing I know, the music faculty lets it rip.

"Stu can't put that course off, its absolutely required for all other music courses!" And then 3 minutes about you couldn't possibly learn to read without learning the alphabet first. I joked and said "Too bad Studette isn't here, she did this successfully", still in a friendly tone, as I was not yet upset. "Studette did it because she never showed up to class. She had to learn everything on her own. You wouldn't just unlock a laboratory and tell Studette to go in there and do it by herself!" And more about specifics of what she will learn in what class an how that class depends on the class I'm trying to get Stu to delay. All in the tone of "How dare you propose that she doesn't do this properly."

OK, now I'm upset, not only because she is ranting, but because she is doing so in front of this poor freshman, and moreover referring to Stu in the third person as if they aren't even there.

I got quietly more and more upset because there was no discussing with this faculty member, and mostly because this was entirely inappropriate. I warmly looked the student in the eye and said, I'll be right back, and got the hell out of there for a few minutes, letting Stu talk to her alone (yup, I'm a conflict avoider). I went back to my advising table to take on a different student giving myself a two minute break. I thought, I'll settle down for a bit, and go back and check on Stu.

Stu 2 sits down in front of me and says "Hi. I want to double major in pre-med and music."
*THUNK* I drop my forehead directly on the table.

Put another strike in the "way too casual first interaction with your prof" column

Hello [mangled first name],

So like I am in your class and I ordered my textbook and I got it today and supposedly its an international edition and it has a pic of a [object] on it but its the Xth edition and its by [Same Authors].  Will this book work?


Thanks
--Stu Student


Let me add; I find these annoying, on occasion amusing, but completely inconsequential. After I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, especially the section about Chris Langen, I try to treat all of my students as if they are budding geniuses, savvy or not.

Syllabi Specifics.

When I first started teaching, when making syllabi, a left a lot of things vague. I was under the impression that it was unnecessary to list everything we were going to do at every moment. In my mind, this would allow some flexibility for the class to pursue its own interests. I also was confident in my ability to "wing it" and make unplanned details work. I realize now that it was more of my weakness as a thorough planner.

The syllabus should contain some flexibility, of course, but what its purpose really is (to me, now) is to make sure that I have a solid enough of a plan that any "winging it" or departures will take place at a much higher level that transcends the basic foundations of the course. It also forces me, against my nature, to plan details MONTHS ahead. I draw comfort now in having it all in place. 

One area that a syllabus should not be overly detailed (IMHO) is in the risk management and consequences section. I had a colleague that would basically use her syllabus to forbid- in writing- all of the things she found annoying the last time she taught the course. Yes, you need to have sections about academic integrity, but surely you can refer the reader to another place where the policy is written in detail. Please don't elaborate how students should NOT write in their lab notebooks.

Addendum; On the first day of class I explain to the students that this is not a packet of information that they can find elsewhere, but that it is a contract between me and them. If I say I'm grading you on this, I cannot add assignments. Also if we have an exam on this day, that day is when we have it. I am obliged to you to do this, and this, and this... and you have the following ways that you will be assessed with no surprises.

Faculty Search

We are starting a graduate program. For this, we will need to distribute the graduate load among the current faculty and hire a new full-time person. We are a department of 8-9 and are therefore all generalists, by necessity. I found it quite humorous today when discussing how we are going to advertise this position.
"We need somebody biomedical."
"Probably an infectious disease person, yeah."
"A real live microbiologist, as opposed to someone who uses microbiology as a tool  for other questions." "Especially someone who studies disease transmission particularly in humans, not just a cell biologist."
"Yes, but we also need someone who is doing quantitative work, since the MCAT will change soon to be more about quantitative methods."
"And we need someone who can teach our anatomy and physiology courses."
"Yes definitely. And Developmental Biology"
"You folks mean we need a human developmental microbioinformatoanatomist?"
"Sure. And they need to be Christian, too."
"!?!?!"
"Hey, the job market is really poor right now. We might find one!"

Useful for Newbies- Textbooks

It's that time of year again, syllabus making time. It also involves me making calls to my textbook reps to get any final desk copies and ancillary materials. So if you are new to teaching I would make this suggestion:

When you choose a textbook, get to know your rep. They often will make themselves known to you, and will show you all of your options as far as custom books, e-books, online materials, online courses etc.


Textbook reps are to professors as drug reps are to physicians. You'll be showered with attention from them especially if you alone choose the books for your course. You will get free samples (trial copies) and ancillary materials in an effort for you to choose to "adopt" the text and require the students to pay up to $300 for a hardback copy. I had a colleague say once, "I haven't paid for a text since I became a professor".

The ancillary materials are my favorite. I just love getting a folder of CDs that has all the PowerPoint lectures for every chapter together with quizzes, game shows, clicker questions, and test banks. I actually rarely modify the PowerPoints for my introductory courses according to my unresearched hunch that seeing the same figure on the screen and the book helps the students retain the info. Other colleagues spend hours modifying or making new the PowerPoints (or God forbid, not using them ;-) ). Advanced courses are different. Would love to hear your opinion on that.

Of course, at the end of the year, the textbook buyers come around and you could sell your trial copy to them for up to $100. You could even ask your rep for another one the next year. I don't feel right about that and I don't. (I also hope there isn't a parallel here with the drug reps!)

Power to choose speakers

Been on vacation. Was nice.

The year's science speaker series has been just released. Every year we have a special speaker on a Saturday morning for Homecoming festivities, and my colleague who sets up the series tries to find the best speaker for this day.

Because of its prominence, the Donor Relations department has been weighing in on choosing the Homecoming speaker lately. In a heavy-handed way sometimes, I hear. The speaker used to be an alum or alumna of whom we were particularly proud, now this person is a potential donor. Sometimes the two overlap, of course, but sometimes they do not. We had a Donor-Relations-pushed speaker a few years back that gave a really terrible talk. I think the department now eyes suspiciously the speakers that DR suggests, but we are pretty much powerless in the decision-making process.

More Science Camp Reporting

Science camp concludes at our institution today. My last group was good in general, with a caveat. It had a group of guys who sat in the front who were pre-community college students. They were pretty rough in appearance and language, and I have to be honest that I didn't expect that much from them. They goofed around during our experiments and were messing with equipment which wasn't to be used at that time. After a bit I realized that they weren't just "goofing off", they were going on curiosity- based rabbit trails. They were investigating creatively the concepts I had introduced to them. I told them (without blowing sunshine, 'cause I DON'T do that) that I really enjoyed working with them because of their curiosity.

It also "fell to me" (to paraphrase a foreign expression) today that I had gotten used to teaching a relatively homogenous group of students, and that for that reason I appreciated being exposed to the other students in this program. To become a better teacher, I need to learn to meet students where they are, and to have more "ares" than I do, on both ends of the range.

Toxic Lab Group; Intervene

It Summer Science Camp again, so I have had mixed groups of about 12 pre-freshman from all the institutions in the area to do a lab. I wrote about this last summer and must say that I found the institutional differences again.

But in this case I was wondering what your thoughts were as to how much a prof/ teacher is to intervene when lab groups aren't working well together.

My example from yesterday is as follows:
Group D entered and arranged themselves in the chairs and lab benches. After an intro they were asked to divide themselves into small groups or 2 or 3. In a front corner were two individuals who did not get included in any other groups. The young man, "Stu" was by appearance unattractive, socially awkward, and had some pretty "icky" habits, such as grabbing his crotch from front and back regularly. I overheard his potential partner, "Sue", an otherwise unremarkable young woman say to me and him that she would rather work alone. As we did not have enough equipment for any student to work alone, I suggested that, no, they really needed to work together, please (Intervention 1).

The lab involved something that is shared between the students' mouths and so each student was given a mouthpiece of their own. Stu set his mouthpiece down on the bench by Sue's place, and it was covered with saliva (OK, a LOT) and left a samll pool of saliva on her bench. Sue looked at me and him and declared in a loud voice, "There is SLOBBER on.my.bench" and then everything halted until I came to intervene with a simple paper towel wipe and alcohol spray. I assured Stu and Sue that this was no big deal, and just keep plugging along, everything is fine. (Intervention 2) As the minutes went by, Sue's body language became more and more hostile, and everything on their bench would stop as she requested more and more assistance from me to intervene with equipment and instructions instead of trying to work it out together. At one point she said "Is it normal for him to suck this bad?!?" referring to the low readings he was getting. I looked at her in the eye and said, "That's just mean."

After about 30 minutes, she stopped acknowledging his presence, tuning her back to him completely even though the equipment was in from of him, trying to do as much of the lab as she could alone. When she was snippy with me asking for help with instructions of the next step, I said, "I'll be right back".

 At this point I found the director of her program and reported that I had someone who was just miserable in the lab and was making everyone else miserable around her. The director said to send her to her office, and so I did (Intervention 3). I actually sent her away out of lab. I've never had to do that before.

I'm a little shook up by the whole incident, and ask you,

Should I have made those two work together in the first place (Int. 1)? I didn't know their history, they ma have had issues before they walked into the lab. On the other hand, the other groups were settled and it would have been a big deal (shaming for him?) to rearrange other groups to accommodate her request. On the other hand, I can see where she was coming from if she found him repulsive, BUT I assumed that "adults" could work together in a professional manner in a lab setting despite these things.

Should I have stopped everything I was doing to clean up after his mess because she was paralyzed by the body fluids on her bench (Int 2)? I do feel it is my job to look after the safety of the students and typically will glove up and take care of these things. But my perception was that part of her motivation was to get out of the pairing and/or to embarrass him. She may have been just very angry and lashed out in that manner.

Should I have removed her from the situation (Int 3)? I did not personally tell her to go take a walk. I might have done this if she were one of my regular students that I had a relationship with. Instead, I sent her to her Director. Was this cowardly? Did I just lose my temper and not try to find a more creative solution? Was I projecting my feelings of empathy with the "outsider"/ tried to protect him and therefore became too impatient with her too quickly? Was I not giving him a chance to defend himself? His reactions varied between being self-deprecating and agreeing with her to taking it seemingly in stride. Should I have just let them work it out?

Have you every kicked anyone out of your lab or class for attitude/ unprofessional behavior? What were your thoughts?

Charity case = technique-based research?

There's a pharma concern here in town. They plow through materials like any Pharma/Biotech/R01, and they have a policy that the moment that said materials expire, they must be immediately removed from the premises. Lucky (?) for us, someone there calls the universities in the area to see if they want the stuff, and being the poorest of the bunch, we top the charity list. Today we received cases and cases of water filters and isolator plates. Thanks. I think that we got hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of stuff. I think (?!?) our Micro teacher or our water-sampling chemist can use it.(Can you tell I have hoarding tendencies?)

In any case, what this leads to is the designing of labs / research projects around the materials we have instead or designing labs de novo to fit the course exactly. Is that SO bad? The other option is to say no, or keep the stuff until we realize we can't use it- and end up wasting our time (scarce) and storage (plentiful) on the stuff until we throw it away ourselves.

When I was being trained as a scientist (both PhD and post-doc), I was always taught that we do HYPOTHESIS-driven research, and that technique-based research was always uninteresting and for the dull of mind. But what if your resources are scarce such that you can't set up an entire new lab "set-up" each time you get a new idea?

My analogy:
You can pick a recipe out of a book and go shopping for each of its ingredients- to hell with whether they had to be flown in from Peru for you. Strawberries in Feb? That's what the recipe calls for!

Now, more and more people are buying CSA boxes, and learning to design a meal around what is in season. The produce is extremely fresh, and the cook is stretched and must be creative in preparing a meal from the produce in the box.

Why is this such a no-no in science?

I bought more equipment in my 3 year post-doc (that isn't being used anymore) than I will buy here until I retire.Yes, the fact is that I am running a research lab in which all the students I ever have will learn two major techniques. I'll never get the equivalent of my start-up again to retool. We will march through all the simple things to be found from doing exactly what I do. So I must be creative in finding interesting questions to ask with the set-up I do have.

Fly on a private jet to a fundraiser or feed my kids spaghetti?

Have been invited to participate in an all-day meeting far-ish away to help raise funds for the University. Donation of private jet time will allow several faculty to go, I have been selected. Sounds exciting.

Problem is, its in the middle of the week and on music lesson day, no less. I am normally solo parenting that day. So I would have to find coverage for my labs that day (pffft. no problem.), find a babysitter that will pick the kids up at their day cares, take then to music, feed them, and put them to bed (uhhhh...) and find time to pump among all the male administrators and the packed schedule (*sharp inhale*).

What thinks my bloggy friends? Just say no? Go? Suggestions?

Non-majors course

I'm really vacillating about how I feel about this non-majors' course I'm teaching. My colleague from another institution loves hers (she is extremely energetic). But my departmental colleagues keep cautioning me, don't expect too much. I know that its not just about jumping around and making things affective (telling gross stories, stories about people), that I must engage them in process. But honestly, I'm a little afraid of really pouring myself into it and having my heart broken by a bunch of hostile and disengaged students. I get the impression that this is where my colleagues are.

I know that some teachers specialize in teaching science to proclaimed science-haters, such as my friend from another institution. I want to do a really good job, but probably won't end up specializing in it. I wonder just how much I can give this course with my current lifestyle. I wonder if I can forgive myself if it doesn't go as well as it could. I wonder if it will reflect badly for my long-term contract review. Fill-in-the next segment of this blog with nervous angst.

Does anybody reading teach (successfully) a non-majors course? Is keeping their interest as delicate as I imagine? What do you do? What is your attitude going in? That you are going to help that "one" starfish? Or that you are going to be able to engage everyone with your time-proven techniques?

starfish story

Homogeneity = Happiness? Outline

I have a lot to say about this subject, but will probably need to take a multiple short posts to hammer it out.

Here's a brief outline

Culture at SRU (Small Religious U, a pseudonym for where I teach) very similar to culture of religion/sect/subgroup
Relatively countercultural
Very anti-hierarchical; ramifications multi-fold. Decision making inclusive to the point of being cumbersome. Custodians very happy at SRU.
Also "insider" difficult for others to feel fully welcomed.
My personal feelings
Unintentional discrimination.
Intentional discrimination.
Diversity among faculty- desired but difficult
Diversity among students- ditto.

F/S conference and pregnancy

These last two days have been faculty staff conference. I have a lot to report, especially on the theme of homogeneity. But I am utterly exhausted. Along those lines, my baby dropped Sunday night while I slept (STOP HERE IF EASILY GROSSED OUT). Which means all the "upper symptoms" difficulty breathing, stomach full easily, heartburn are lessened. While the "lower sypmtoms" frequent peeing, loose bowel movements, have gotten worse. And then today at my midday bathroom trip, I passed my mucus plug.

It could still be potentially weeks away, or it could be tonight.

In the next few days would be preferable simply because Hub will be home. If not, then how about NEXT weekend? Just don't want to go into labor while Hub is away... please please!