academia
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Google Scholar is a wonderful service that tracks citations of individual artricles around the web. In contrast to the ISI Thompson Web of Science Citation Index, Google Scholar is not only free, but it collects citations from a much wider variety of journals, as well as from sources like books, arXiv, PhD and MS theses,…
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Dear colleague on sabbatical, I hope you are enjoying the time with some relief from teaching. For many of us with small kids or working spouses, traveling for extended periods of time is not an option. But even an at-home sabbatical is more than welcome, as it helps us catch up on all the papers…
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The powers that be have recently started “encouraging” us to adopt “novel paradigm-shifting teaching strategies” (doesn’t the bullshit syntagma make your skin crawl?), specifically the flipped classroom. While I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea, the zeal with which the concept is being pushed is making me want to dig my heels in, in protest,…
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I am on a faculty search committee again this year. It’s a lot of work, but as far as faculty service obligations go, this one is really worth it because you have an influence over who your future colleagues will be and where the department will go in the long run. Here, I will be…
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We often read about the trials and tribulations of academic job seekers. But it’s not until you are on the other side and a few years into a professorship that you start seeing how a faculty search looks from the standpoint of your future colleagues. The first aspect is what goes on in the department.…
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The brief answer is: I am an academic who happens to like science fiction. Spouse and I have been watching Battlestar Galactica, which starts with the demise of the 12 colonies settled by the tribes from the ancient planet of Kobol. Note how it’s Kobol, with a “K”, and not Cobol (as in one of the…
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