academic politics
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* Travel sucks. Sucks balls, sucks a$$. Sometimes it also sucks scabs, nose hair, warts, and bunions. I got a grand total of 3.25 hrs of sleep last night, got up early to catch a flight; I would not be this comatose even after jet-lag, and I am still in the US. * Being at conferences is always
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A colleague once told me this great Chinese proverb: “Time is like water in a sponge; if you try really hard, you can always squeeze out some more.” So very true. People will always find the time for the things they want to do, end of story. If you can’t find the time for something,
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Here’s a pretty common scenario in regards to coauthorship on papers from my group. Student A works on a certain project for which I have funding from a federal agency, grant GR1. I, Prof X, also draw some salary support from that grant, so you can say that I am funded for my work on
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One of the things that annoy me most about collaborating are collaborators who operate on the timescales much different from mine, usually because our priorities aren’t well aligned. I have already written about this particular issue before, but as it periodically resurfaces, I periodically get re-irritated and thus have to periodically re-vent, and reposting old
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Over the decade that I have spent in my home department, I have witnessed several faculty colleagues retire. A number retired in their 60’s or 70’s; they had been active in research and faculty governance till the very last day, but were forgotten soon thereafter and are hardly ever mentioned today. Their labs were given to
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A Chemical Imbalance — a film, a book and a call for action The movie (below) and project are about women in STEM and their continued under-representation. The movie illustrates the issue through historical data and interviews with several faculty from the University of Edinburgh School of Chemistry (recipient of the Athena Swan Gold Award).
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By psykadamnit I want to follow up on xykademiqz’s posts on job search strangeness. I’m in a STEM discipline at an undergrad-oriented school. My department has no graduate program, and those departments that do have graduate programs usually only have small MS programs. The focus is on undergrads. For some reason, most of our candidates
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We have been interviewing and it’s been quite exhausting. But, the process reveals more about the colleagues with whom I interact in regards to the search than it does about the candidates. My school is a large and reputable public school and the department ranks about 15th in the discipline. We are no MIT or
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I have been thinking recently about what we, as professors, owe the department and the university where we work in terms of service. Let me start by stating that I understand we all have to do service, and that doing very little is extremely uncollegial. With teaching, it is clear that we have a duty
xykademiqz 