New Faculty Life: All in the Details

You know how some people prefer Coke to Pepsi? A similar preference exists in the higher education community: The Chronicle of Higher Education versus Inside HigherEd. I've been a Chronicle reader for some time at Stanford - a weekly newsletter highlighted articles on faculty life, academic disputes, grad students, and general whining from the Ivory Tower. However, I have now turned off that newsletter and subscribed to Inside HigherEd. Why? Well, Chronicle is not free and Inside HigherEd is. Stanford had an institutional subscription to the Chronicle, so I didn't have to pay. Agnes Scott doesn't seem to have an institutional subscription, so I'm happy to give the free one a try!

I got to speak with a student today. It was very exciting! She is doing an internship here on campus this summer that involves writing faculty profiles. We were supposed to chat for 20 minutes, but it became (over) 90 minutes. It was great - we discussed quantum physics, philosophy, literature, and my research. See, this is why I'm here at Agnes Scott: the students. This "summer gig" of course planning and reviewing papers is not entirely what I signed up for. It is just the appetizer to actual teaching and interacting with students.

I've sent my first "professor" e-mails - asking my Electronics students about how they would like to procure the textbook. I'm usually overly thoughtful in my e-mails (ie, I overthink the details), but I felt it would be important to get a number of things right this time: my excitement to teach them, sufficient information, and not too long... I had a small crisis when I realized I didn't know how to "sign" the e-mail. Here at Agnes Scott, students tend to refer to their faculty as "Dr Lastname". But, it feels very strange for me to sign an e-mail as "Dr. Ackerman". I'm concerned that if I sign the e-mails "Nicole" that they may think I want them to call me by first name (which I don't). Because it is the culture here, and because I am relatively young, I would prefer the students to call me Dr. Ackerman. See - I overthink the details.

I'm getting better at requesting free textbooks. Visiting a publishers website, I noticed a message about the "free return postage" on books that are no longer needed/wanted. What? Who would not want a book anymore? I understand that they don't want the free instructors' copies floating around and being sold. But, they don't actually expect me to send any of these books back, right?

Life as a New Faculty Member: Should I freak out about tenure yet?

I'm having a pretty great week. I'm thrilled with the progress I have made on laying out my classes. I have amasses a significant number of resources to use in my teaching. I've reviewed two manuscripts this week. As far as I can tell, I'm much better at being a faculty member than being a graduate student!

So, should I be documenting my competency? Should I be keeping a log of all of the work I am doing to plan for classes? Would it be valuable to keep a list of all of the books I have evaluated for class and rejected? This would all have potential value - boosting my confidence, being a resource for future course planning... but would it help me with tenure?

Ah yes, I have hit the first level of craziness of a new faculty member. I'd like to think I'm not doing too bad (regarding the tenure crazies). I'm not panicking about whether I am doing the correct things to get tenure, I'm just not sure how to best document the things that I am already doing. I know there is some yearly form about professional activities, so I should be keeping track of concrete things like reviewing manuscripts. But what about the less concrete things, like evaluating a pile of textbooks? I know that it is an expected part of my job, but the whole point of tenure documentation is to show that you have been doing your job!

This has helped me realize (remember?) that I should find some mentors. The other physics faculty members are great and have been a huge help with many things - but it has been a while since they have gone through the tenure process, which constantly changes. Hence, I need to find some science faculty who have more recently gone through the tenure process who are willing to mentor me. Ideally more than one, in case my chosen mentor ends up being one of my tenure evaluators!

I expect that I may find out some helpful information during new faculty orientation (though that isn't just for tenure-track), but since I find myself ahead of schedule on everything else, I might as well try to get the ball rolling on the evaluation process. As easy as it is to put tenure out of my mind, I have a third year evaluation as well!

Week 4: One month to go!

I've made progress on almost everything in the past week. Most importantly, I feel like the fall courses are beginning to come together. I've laid out the topics for 2 out of 3 of the classes and have pulled together a number of resources for all three classes.

Electronics is the course I was most worried about, since I wanted to revamp the labs and the textbook. I've now been able to examine a number of textbooks from different publishers - I dislike so many things about them all! I'm still struggling to know exactly how much material we can cover in a week since I have so little classroom time with the students. It is difficult to reference other courses that have 2 labs a week and 1-3 lectures, when I'll only have about 1 hour of contact time a week. Luckily I've found a great resource for helping students to "teach themselves" electronics, which I will rely heavily on.

The labs are still a challenge for electronics. I can't easily recycle the labs that were previously used here since I want to cover the material in a different pace/way. There is a lab manual with the textbook that I plan to use, but it is extremely specific regarding the equipment (which is, of course, different from ours). At this point, I'm planning on modifying labs from the Art of Electronics Student Manual. I'm trying to avoid falling in to the trap of "I'll make this course just like the one I took", especially since the course I took was a graduate course! But I remember the labs being good, and the "graduate" level challenge primarily coming from the calculations and final project.

The next step is to get in to the electronics lab and start drafting up the first few labs. I know what content I want them to cover, so I need to verify that we have the correct equipment and that what I have in mind won't take the students 20 hours to do. I don't yet know the "conversion factor" between how long it will take me to do something, compared to the students. A factor of 3? I've already gone into the lab to play with the oscilloscopes. I consider myself pretty good with a scope, but these kicked my butt! They are analog scopes and the menus are far from intuitive. I was, of course, trying to start by looking at a very complicated (and unknown) waveform that I couldn't trigger on. After deciding the problem must be the scope, I tried the function generator and discovered that the scope was fine. I think I figured out most of lab 2 in the process!

I also have the topics laid out for Modern Physics. This isn't too hard, since I am sticking very closely to the way that the class has been taught in the past. Of course, there are multiple ways that it has been taught in the recent past, so I need to decide what type of projects I want the students to do. The labs for this course are also a challenge - I have documents for about 6 different labs, but a few of them haven't been done recently. I'm going to simplify my life by planning on incorporating about 3 labs into the course this year. I have a list of everything I want to do for next year, and it includes trying more labs and inventorying the equipment to see if there are other labs we could do. Originally, I had hoped to do all of these things this summer... but I'm starting to run out of time.

This week, part of my times has still been taken up with house-related issues. Yesterday the washing machine was fixed. While that was great, I had to be home to wait for the mechanic to show up. On Monday, a Tech came to fix the internet. Of course, the internet was working when he came, but stopped shortly after he left. I suppose this is a lesson from moving, in general, but I didn't expect to still be spending 20% of my time dealing with house stuff right now. I suppose it wouldn't be as bad if I wasn't living by myself. I feel sorry for the new faculty who are arriving in August!

Unfortunately, I put off reviewing the two papers. Last night I started to tackle one of them, which had originally looked pretty good. The science is fine... but had this been someone's lab report, I think I would have given them a B-. I need to finish up those comments and start on the second paper, ideally getting the comments in today! This is a good lesson for me: don't try to review a manuscript in one sitting, because I'll get too angry at the authors after about 2 hours.

The biggest lesson from the week is that I'm working too hard. I think I'm still going at the same pace that I went this spring - finish the thesis pace! I get up in the morning (not that early, typically), eat breakfast and get ready and go in to my office. Sometimes I come home for lunch, but if I'm going in after 11 I tend to just pack some snacks. I've been coming home for dinner around 6 or 7, and then usually going back to work. One day this week I went to a great restaurant downtown, but took a book on teaching physics with me. Because of internet problems I haven't been able to do much computer work at home, but I've been doing the refereeing at home.

Because I've made so much progress this week, I shouldn't feel too worried that I won't be ready to go on the first day of classes. I need to try to set up a little balance in my life. I shouldn't feel bad if I don't work 10 hour days, or if I actually don't do work one (weekend) day. The question is - what do I want to do instead of work? The weather hasn't been particularly conducive to biking or walking around the city. I'd like to have a paycheck in the bank before I do more shopping or eating out. My kitchen isn't set up well enough for me to have people over for dinner (and I am lacking a dining table).

I have a lot to look forward to in the next week. My mom is coming for a few days, which will result in the house (hopefully) being completely set up! Yay! It will be great to show her all of the cool things around Decatur. Of course, I won't get (much) work done while she is here. That might be good practice! Next Sunday, I will pick up my kittens. I've already bought supplies for them, so I just need to do some cleaning right before they come.

Week 3: Time to do work!

The past two weeks have brought to me everything I need to get work done.

1. My crates arrived from California! Wonderful people helped me unload them. I prioritized getting them unloaded, so at this point, almost of my "stuff" at home is unpacked and set up. It seems as if everything survived, which is great.
2. I brought my science books to campus, as well as the equipment I brought with me from California. Hence, my office feels like I've "moved into" it. It is still more messy than I would like, and my incredibly large number of books barely made a dent on the bookshelves. Awesome!
3. I ordered office supplies and received them quickly. There was a small delay because of transitioning fiscal years. This is an interesting lesson: ordering things at the beginning of July will have the most delays. Now I can make folders! My need to color-code things is perhaps a little over-the-top...
4. My office computer showed up! This is, of course, the most important thing. Originally IT (or ITS, as it is called here) had a delivery date of 7/31, but they were able to knock a few weeks off that for me. I'm now struggling to learn Windows, but it isn't going terribly.
5. I'm now trying to get my needed software/tools on the work computer. I've managed to copy (most) of my backed-up files onto it. I've installed Dropbox and Chrome and the main Chrome extensions that I use. Now the big challenge: emacs and LaTeX and all of the Linux goodies I'm used to. I'm trying to follow the steps listed here to get my Ubuntu toys working inside Windows. Unfortunately, it looks like the VMWare "unity" feature won't work with newer versions of Ubuntu.
6. I've gotten a crash course in using Moodle, the internet-based course tool that is used at Agnes Scott. It has a lot of great functionality, but I have to do a lot of work to do the initial set up.
7. I received two manuscripts to review! I like reviewing papers, and it is a nice reminder right now that I do have some sort of expertise.

I'm still waiting for the textbooks that I ordered during the first week of July. I think I know what textbook I will use for Electronics, since it is available as a PDF I have been able to preview it already. Of course, the book is just a detail. I still have a lot of work ahead of me to figured out the labs for electronics.

I have fewer obstacles preventing me from planning Intro Physics and Modern. Now that I have my office supplies, I can use the complicated technique that I learned in the Course Design Course - color coded post it notes! I can start laying out many parts of the Syllabi for both courses. Because I use LaTeX for documents like that, I need to get that working first.

I'm not feeling super rushed for time yet, though rationally I know that I am. It seems like I make progress every day, but I also keep having a number of stupid delays and distractions. I hoped to have a productive evening last night, and packed dinner. But, the fire alarm was going off at the Science Building. I was mildly productive at home, but certainly did not achieve what I hoped to.

Life as a new faculty member: Week 1

I've reached the end of my first week at Agnes Scott College and have mostly been pleasantly surprised. People here - perhaps it is a 'Southern' thing, or particular to Agnes Scott - are amazingly nice and helpful. This has made the week be very fun and not too overwhelming.

The biggest frustration so far is the timescales involved. I need to be ready with 3 different courses by August 28th. This is a very fixed deadline! For one class, I'm trying to find a new book. I'd like to get 'examination' copies of a few different textbooks to determine which one best meets the goals of the course. To request exam copies, I must have a registered profile with the publisher. I've started that process, but they must verify that I am actually a faculty member teaching a relevant class. I don't know how long that will take, and *then* they send the book and I can start reviewing it. So I might not be choosing the book for one of my classes until the end of July, which feels way too late for me.

I've been positively surprised by how much has already been done for me. I met with IT to discuss computers - they've already been ordered! Unfortunately they were aiming to have them ready at the end of July, but they said they would try to accelerate the process for me. My phone line has already been set up and my profile information is visible on the website. Things rarely happened this efficiently at MIT or Stanford, especially little details like website updates.

I've been challenged by juggling the 'personal' and 'work' things I need to take care of. I feel like I must start on course planning, but I also need to set up furniture and do shopping trips. Living across the street from campus had led to a lack of compartmentalization - I've spent afternoons at home and evenings at work, occasionally popping to the other for 5 minutes. I'm trying to cut myself some slack - now is the time to spend all day at Ikea, because I won't be able to do it when classes have started.

I have some panicked moments where I think that I won't have my courses together or that I don't know enough to be teaching these classes, but those moments are few. Mostly I've been excited about discovering aspects of my new life here. There are fireflies here! I haven't seen fireflies much in the past 10 years. My office comes with a (second) lab space! My house has so many closets! There are ginormous butterflies! I'm having great conversations about teaching with my colleagues that help me feel like a peer and that I will be ready for the fall. Only once has someone said I look like a student...

Next week: Will the publishers really send me a bunch of free books? Will I succeed in ordering office supplies? Does anyone know what my password is to get to voicemail?

The Joy of Collegiality

There have been a few instances lately where I have grabbed a meal or beverage with someone I have met through classes. I would quickly call them friends, but they are also more than that. They are my academic colleagues. With them, I discuss science, teaching, and how to improve the university/field. Sure, music and movie and politics and food also get discussed - the conversations I would have with friends. But, the academically-oriented conversations are special and accordingly make my relationship with these people special.

What is the difference between discussing movies or science? Discussing science is both likely to be more memorable and to actually make a difference in my life. Not only might I learn something - that I could later teach or use in my own work - but new research directions and collaborations can come out of those conversations. This is, after all, part of why the scientific community has conferences. We need the input from others, both direct response to our work, and new ideas that are unexpected. Scientific colleagues can be good friends, but they also have the potential to a collaborator on your next great paper.

While most academics value an exchange of ideas with their peers - certainly it was part of my undergraduate education - I am now learning the benefits of colleagues from outside of one's own department. I also have friends from outside my department, people I have met through dance. With them, I talk about dance and work, but only in general terms. From my Fellowship I know a number of people outside physics, and even outside science (do any humanists dance Rueda?), and I would consider a number of them colleagues, rather than just friends.

With colleagues outside of science I can discuss academia, the university, and the state of higher education. But the magical aspect of these conversations - what makes them worth blogging about - is that they aren't little chats on common ground. These talks have the potential to turn into change. We are the future members of the faculty senate. We are future Deans. And when it is just us, we sometimes forget that we aren't people with power yet and start thinking about how we can make changes at Stanford.

It is exhilarating to momentarily forget that I am a 'student' by speaking with a peer about science and institutional policies. To not just discuss these aspects of my professional life, but to fully analyze, participate, and plan. I think this is what it is like to have good relationships with colleagues, and I look forward to many more.

GMO corn: a scientific study

A recent study from France (paper is here but not free) showed that genetically-modified corn negatively affected the health of rats. The press is reporting on this in a variety of ways, and I think there is a lot of bad information in the articles I am seeing. Science is messy, so it is impossible to have a straightforward take-away (like "GMO's are bad") from this study. I'll try to clarify what I can...

1. What is this GMO corn? Why does it exist?

   This corn is a genetically modified organism (GMO) that was made in a laboratory to be immune from Roundup, a weed control chemical. If a farmer plants a field with this corn the entire field can be sprayed with Roundup to control weeds. Normal corn would be hurt by Roundup.

2. What experiment was done?

   Scientists in France fed rats different food for 2 years. The different groups were:

   • Normal water and non-GMO corn (not treated with Roundup)
   • Normal water and a mix of normal and GMO corn in 3 different fractions (not treated with Roundup)
   • Normal water and a mix of normal and GMO corn in 3 different fractions (Treated with Roundup)
   • Water with different levels of Roundup in it and non-GMO corn (not treated with Roundup)
   This means that the researchers should be able to see if the presence of Roundup is having an effect and separately they should be able to see if the GMO corn alone has an effect.

   The researchers took blood samples from the rats periodically to study their health and studied the rats' organs after the rats died.

3. Did the GMO corn have an effect?

This is where science is hard. The answer isn't a clear yes or no - it has lots of caveats and statistics. Female rats died earlier from GMO corn (with or without Roundup) and earlier from Roundup alone. Male rats don't show as strong of an effect. Tumors usually developed earlier in female rats, especially when drinking roundup directly.

But not all of the data make sense. For instance, blood chemicals were used to look for evidence of kidney failure. The results look bad for GMO corn only and Roundup only, but the GMO corn with roundup doesn't show a measurable effect.

Bottom Line: The data presented in the paper cannot exclude a hypothesis that Roundup and GMO corn does not affect the health female rats.

What about the criticisms and responses? Many of the responses particularly frustrated me:

1. Each group was only 10 rats. That isn't big enough to see anything!

Biology is really hard, and it is super expensive to take care of and monitor 200 rats for 2 years. This is a HUGE study compared to what I see in pre-clinical cancer research. This study could be used to get funding for a much bigger study, but studies don't get much bigger than this.

2. These were a special type of rat that gets cancer easily. Of course they got cancer!

These are the epitome of white lab rats. It made perfect sense to use these.

3. The health problems didn't increase with increasing dose. So this is just random variation, not causality.

It could be a threshold effect - there is a dose window where it increases, but above that there is no change. This is relatively common and makes sense - after all, taking 10 times a normal dose of medicine won't make you 10 times better...

4. Other studies have shown that GMO's are safe

This is true. But, this study has gone longer and looked at more variables than some other studies have. Additionally, you should ask how many of the "other studies" were funded by Monsanto or other groups that want to show GMO's are safe. I'm not saying the other studies are all bad, but each study needs to be evaluated individually rather than counting the number results that say "effect" versus "no effect".

Apparently the French Prime Minister has released a statement saying "I have demanded a fast procedure, about a few weeks, to verify the scientific value of the study". Unfortunately, the best way to verify scientific value is to repeat the study. That will take more than 2 years! It is possible for other scientists to review the data from the study. Also, further statistical analysis could be done on the data.

These types of GMO crops are relatively new and it is possible there could be health effects we don't yet understand. This study shouldn't cause you to panic and not eat corn, but more study is warranted.