Month: November 2015

A lot of scientists are kind, careful and caring

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I just returned from a tremendous meeting of the Entomological Society of America. I experienced a lot of moving moments.

I attended my first EntSoc meeting twenty years ago, as an early grad student. I’ve skipped the last few years (because family). This return brought a flush of friends and close colleagues that I don’t see on a regular basis. I got to meet PhD students who are being advised by my own former undergrad students. When I was in grad school, my advisor had two small kids. At this meeting, I got to see his older daughter, now in a MD/PhD program.

There are so many scientists who made a difference in my life — professionally and personally —  and having so many of them gathered under one large roof was overwhelming. Continue reading →

Costs and benefits of attending conferences as a student

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Recently I attended the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of Canada, which this year was held jointly with the Société d’entomologie du Québec, in Montréal. While chatting with a (professor) friend at the conference it came up that we both don’t really like attending conferences for a lot of reasons, but attend anyway because we think it is important to do so. At the time I remarked that I thought there were few tangible benefits of attending conferences as a student. Since then I’ve been thinking a bit about the costs and benefits of attending academic conferences as a student, and here I will summarize my thoughts.

The obvious costs of attending conferences are time, money, and energy. Continue reading →

The sabbatical isn’t what it used to be

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Before I was a professor, I had heard of sabbaticals. That’s when a professor spends a year away from the university and visits a distant land to gain new skills, build new projects, and make new connections.

Then I became a professor and learned that (most) universities don’t pay for a full year of sabbatical, they only pay for one semester. They’ll let you take a year, but at half of the pay. So finding a half-year of salary from grants is needed for a full sabbatical.

Then I became eligible for a couple sabbaticals, and experienced how the travel-to-far-lands part isn’t necessarily what happens either. Continue reading →

Recommended reads #64

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If you haven’t been watching the news lately, you might not have noticed that the United States is in the midst of a national moment in which university students are speaking and acting out in response to the perennial marginalization of minorities. I imagine more things will emerge, but here is the rundown from a few campuses:

At Mizzou, years of administrative disregard for an environment that minimizes and threatens black students came to a boil with a particularly hateful action that was met with the same do-nothing attitude by the President and the Chancellor. The football team went on strike, and then, in a jiffy, the President and Chancellor stepped down. Since then, protests have grown. Here’s a clear take on the strike at Mizzou this from Dave Zirin, who writes about the intersection of sports and politics. (also, HK and I talk about the Mizzou situation at length in the Not Just Scientists episode coming out this weekend) Continue reading →

Why I avoid lecturing

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Academic freedom is glorious. Despite pronouncements to the contrary, university faculty — including most contingent faculty — enjoy tremendous freedom in what we teach and how we teach it. Most professors teach however the hell they choose to teach.

Academic freedom enables change, but resists rapid change. Faculty have the liberty to stand aside as change happens. We can stand by and snark as fads wash by. We also can fossilize as the landscape truly changes. I think it’s hard, in the moment, to distinguish between a fad and a change in the landscape. Continue reading →

Choosing between “head of lab” and “independent scholar” models

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When people ask how I run my lab group, I don’t know how to respond. It boggles me because these perfectly normal questions often have assumptions baked into them, about my university, my students, and the kind of work that happens in my lab.

It’s only natural that folks might compare my “undergraduate research lab” to the template of major research institution lab, most of which also feature undergrads in substantial roles.

The way I run my research program, and the students involved, is probably different than you might imagine unless you’ve spent a bunch of time at an underfunded regional state university like mine. Continue reading →