Not a Monster

In the discussion on the Scientopia post yesterday there was a comment about whether professors worry that having some "failed" (possibly fired) students will affect recruiting of new students. I think the answer to that for many professors is Yes (but leave a comment/explain if you are one of those who does not care).

I know I have written about this before and there are relevant anecdotes deep in the archives, somewhere, so some of this is a re-discussion of this topic. I am going to assume for most of this discussion that the advisor is not evil or otherwise highly dysfunctional (but will get to that near the end of the post). I am also not going to make a distinction between failing and firing; for the purposes of this discussion, it might not even be widely known exactly why a student left.

The impact of failed/fired students can be an issue in recruiting because you can't really explain to potential students exactly what happened with a failed/fired student, especially if there are sensitive issues involved. I know one student (many years ago, not at my current institution) who had to leave a grad program owing to a cheating incident. I don't know what that advisor told prospective students, if anything, and I don't know how open the departing student was with fellow students about the reason for having to leave, but as an advisor, I would be very reluctant to explain such a situation to a prospective student. And yet, it wouldn't be fair to the advisor, who had only a few advisees at a time, if such an incident had a negative effect on their ability to recruit new students.

I have also mentioned before that I have advised or otherwise worked with students with major substance abuse problems (that pre-dated their working with me, in case you are wondering). Some of these students eventually finished their degrees, but at least one (the most severe case) did not. He told people that I had "fired" him, but in fact he was forced by his parents to try rehab (again). Mostly it was a human tragedy for that particular student, of course, but it was also a low point for me as an advisor. 

There was another interesting comment on the Scientopia post yesterday: a description of a student's point of view and a professor's point of view, as told by a third person who had talked to both about a certain difficult advisor-student situation. Based on what I read, I would say that both sides are "right"; in some cases, personalities and priorities just don't mesh between student and advisor.

So, even if a student has run-of-the-mill problems with grad school (nothing involving cheating or drug addiction..), there are still complex issues and different points of view. A student could complain "My advisor never checks on me to find out what I am doing and see if I need help ", and the advisor could complain "My student never comes to see me to show me what s/he has done recently and ask questions." Of course both should be talking to each other, but if that doesn't happen and the student flounders to the point of failing, should prospective students be cautioned about the advisor (uncaring, lets students sink then fails them) or just told about their advising style (works best with students who take some initiative and don't mind being a bit independent)?

The advisor can also tell prospective students about their advising style. I have been having this conversation more and more with prospective students in recent years. In fact, some ask me directly: do you have an open-door policy or do you prefer to have scheduled meetings with students etc.? I think these conversations are very useful, and can be a way for the advisor to signal in advance what won't work (implying past problems without discussing individuals).

Here is my hypothesis o' the day, for discussion:

I think that if the advisor is overall a reasonably good, well-meaning advisor and just has the occasional advising disaster (for whatever reason), there won't be a major (long term) negative effect on their ability to maintain a good group of successful advisees. This may be more true for senior professors with a track record of advising success, and more of an issue for early-career professors.

But this is the part that I am less sure about: the case of not-good, perhaps even evil advisors. I have seen some dysfunctional advisors lose their grad program entirely, but I know of others (mostly via e-mail from readers) who somehow keep getting students. I think the difference might involve the overall success and funding record of the advisor: if you have money, you can have students (??). In those cases, I would think that word-of-mouth cautions from former and existing students would nevertheless make recruiting new students difficult, and that this would be a way to try to force a change for the better, but I don't know of any cases in which this was tried and worked (do you?).

I Used to Be Nicer

In Scientopia today, an angsty-message from the grad-advising trenches.

Sorry Professor!

From time to time, I peruse online reviews of various things: books, hotels, restaurants, etc., and am sometimes reminded of teaching evaluations, but not necessarily in a good way. For example, I recently read two highly negative reviews of two different books, and found that the negative reviews were motivated by technical problems with the e-version of the books, not the writing/plot etc. Is that fair to the authors? No. It reminded me of some negative teaching evaluations I have seen in which a professor was severely criticized for things the students hated about the physical classroom space.

I don't know why I even read reviews of hotels anymore. I guess I am looking for systematic information that will indicate whether a place has a major problem or is a good place to stay. Typically, though, reviews are mixed, indicating more about the review-writers than the hotel. Particularly when reading reviews of small, charming hotels outside the US, I must admit that I am not shocked to the core to learn that there was a crack in a tile in the bathroom, a strange stain on the carpet by the window, or even a front-desk clerk who was not super-friendly.

Sometimes I wonder if the ease with which we can all review almost everything* in our lives affects how some people approach teaching evaluations, either the writing or the reading of them.

* Did you know that you can review rivers and other natural features? For example, the River Seine in Paris currently has 611 reviews on TripAdvisor, has an overall rating of 4.5 stars, and reviews ranging from Average to Excellent. Hooray for the River Seine for not getting any ratings of Poor or Terrible! The River Danube, perhaps owing to its length and the fact that it flows through so many major cities and you can review it in each one, has more variable ratings.

Here is an example of a review of a small hotel in an international city (review modified slightly from original version but retaining its essence):

We are college students from [country that is not the US] and used to traveling but even for the low price and good location we won't be back to this hotel. The staff don't really speak English even though this is a "hotel". The breakfast wasn’t anything special but we didn't really mind because it was cheap and we are young! However the elevator is really small and has no door and that is very unsafe! Again we thought it's not that bad and we are young. The rooms are really small but again I thought it's cheap and we’re young and don’t care but it got worse because the room was NOT made up every day. By day 3 we had no clean towels! It got even worse because of the language barrier but we are young and cheap and don't mind most things, but the staff stared at us when we walked through the lobby and this even creeped me out and I’m a guy. This place is just not worth it, even for less than 30 euros a night for 2 people.

Is it just me, or do you get the impression that the person who wrote this is young? Despite my advanced age, I personally could probably go 4 or 5 days without clean towels. When I first read the review, I wondered if this young man has similar expectations of his classes and professors, and if he writes similar reviews of his professors, if there are student evaluations of teaching at his university.

Maybe he would write something like this:

I am a student in Professor X's class but even considering the convenient day and time of the class I can't recommend this class. Professor X uses words I don't understand, even though she is supposed to be a "teacher". The lectures weren't anything special but I didn't really mind because this is a required class I have to take. However the chairs in the classroom are really uncomfortable and this is unsafe! Also the classroom is really small but that's OK too except that it is not cleaned every day and sometimes I see writing on the white board from other classes and once I saw a candy bar wrapper on the floor. It gets even worse because sometimes Professor X makes eye contact with me during class, when asking a question, and this creeps me out. This class is not worth it, even if it only meets for an hour on Tuesdays at 11 AM.

I think this could be a very fun game (or creative writing exercise) for academics: converting real teaching evaluations into hotel/restaurant reviews, and converting real hotel/restaurant reviews into teaching evaluations.

The game will need a zippy name; something even better than ratemyprofessorsandhotels. Like the various versions of the game Monopoly that involve sports, animals, movies, and New Jersey, we could perhaps propose an academic version of the game Sorry!: Sorry Professor! (other suggestions welcome, although note that all suggestions will be subject to review by everyone).

TQ

Many years ago when I was a non-tenure-track professor, I was taken aback when I learned that the quality of teaching by people in my position -- that is, all non-tenure track instructors -- was considered a priori sub-standard by my institution because we had no long-term investment in the college.

The Dean said this aloud in a meeting and repeated it in a memo. At the meeting, I thought I misunderstood the Dean, but the memo was unambiguous. Tenure-track and tenured faculty had a commitment to the college and the rest of us didn't, so their teaching was, by definition, of higher quality than ours. I doubt if this conclusion was supported by any data; it seemed to be more a belief. I didn't see the point of stating it so explicitly, as a generalization, but of course the focus was to make the the 'real' faculty feel good.

I found that somewhat demoralizing. I cared a lot about my students and my teaching, and I was working extremely hard at my teaching, as I also had in a previous position as a non-tenure-track instructor. Some of my tenured and tenure-track colleagues were doing the same, and some weren't. I channeled my annoyance into targeted loathing of the Dean (but not the college, my colleagues, or my students), and focused on my work.

Later, when I was a tenure-track and then tenured professor at a large university, I learned that the quality of teaching by people in my position was considered by some to be a priori sub-standard because we spent so much time doing research, we couldn't be as good at teaching as those who are entirely dedicated to teaching, including non-tenure-track (adjunct/contingent) faculty. This was the view, not so much of the institution itself, but of a broader community (and in particular those focused on college-level science education).

The reason both statements could be made and thought possibly true by some is that the first one involved a small liberal arts college and the second a large research university.

These generalizations are meaningless. There are good, bad, and mediocre teachers in all the possible types of jobs involving teaching at the different types of colleges and universities in the US and beyond.

Here is my own (possibly meaningless) generalization, or belief, based on no data, just observations in the past 30 years as an undergraduate, graduate student, instructor, and the various stages of tenure-track/tenured professor:

Teaching quality (TQ) for an individual or even a group of individuals in similar jobs does not correlate with type of institution or with job title.

If that is the case, then TQ is more a function of an individual's teaching skills and dedication, both of which are somewhat fluid concepts because they can change with time and circumstance, but are still more important than institution type of job title. There may well be some 'environmental' factors such as teaching load, support from the institution etc., but it is not useful to make assumptions about whether someone will be a good, bad, or indifferent teacher based on whether that person is employed at a small college, a large research university, a private institution, a state institution etc. or whether that person is an adjunct or a senior, tenured professor. I don't think this is a controversial statement, but I am still surprised when -- to this day -- I encounter these stereotypes.

The issue that is relevant to students is whether they are likely to encounter more good teachers in certain circumstances than in others, but I am not going to wade into these larger issues, including debates about how we measure TQ, the value of student evaluations of teaching, whether students are at a disadvantage (or advantage) if taught by large number of adjunct faculty, and so on (I have discussed these in other posts),

My point today is a small one, inspired by a recent experience in which someone from the small-college world expressed surprise that teaching excellence could be found at a large university, bringing back some memories and triggering this post.

Happiness Index

There are many ways to measure happiness in one's life and career. For example, I recall learning, as an undergraduate, that one's happiness could in part be calculated from the distance of one's home to the take-off and landing flight paths of major airports.

Anyway, for academic persons involved in research, happiness these days may derive in part from the number of times a publication is cited. In this case, the h in h-index does not refer to happiness, but for some people it might as well.

What I am wondering is, for any individual -- at whatever career stage, in whatever academic discipline, and with whatever personality traits you may have -- what is your personal minimum number of citations for you to feel happy, or at least moderately satisfied?

That is, when you look at your citation numbers for each publication, is there a particular number of citations that make say (to yourself, if not to anyone else), "OK, I am happy with that number of citations"? (leaving open the possibility that you would be happier if it were cited even more)

Is that number = 1? 5? 20? 37? 50? 100? 300? 1000? 7326? more?

What are the most important factors in deciding your personal minimum number of citations for happiness? I expect that the culture of each field plays a role. Is there are particular number that is considered pretty good in your field, and can you say what that approximate number is? For example, I have seen letters in support of tenure/promotion cases (not in my field) in which the letter-writer has asserted that the n < 10 citations of a paper is considered a very good number in that field. In my field, that would be considered not so good.

I expect that one's happiness with a publication's citation count experiences a bit of an uptick when that publication reaches a number that causes your actual h-index to go up, but is that your minimum number, or is your personal minimum number >> your h-index?

I don't want to give many details about myself, but my absolute minimum citation happiness number is indeed the one that makes my h-index go up (so this is a (slowly) moving target), but that milestone just causes a flicker of citation-happiness. For me, the true minimum citation happiness number is quite a bit higher, and therefore more elusive.

That's not to say that I am disappointed in or depressed about publications that don't exceed my citation-happiness threshold -- in fact, some of my all-time favorite papers are among my least cited ones. It's just that there is a certain bonus satisfaction that comes from having papers with (relatively) large numbers of citations, even for tenured professors whose careers don't hinge on these numbers.

The reason I have been thinking about citations recently (again) is because the other day, a (very) senior professor told me that he was upset about another colleague who doesn't cite his (the senior professor's work) when he should. He said that he wants his citation numbers to be as high as possible by the time he dies because "that's all we have" (as a legacy). I thought that was sad and disturbing, particularly coming from someone who has a large number of papers that have been cited more times than any paper of mine will ever be. I hope I don't feel that way when I am his (near retirement) age, even if it does make me happy when my papers are cited.

You're Asking Me?

Earlier this year, I gave a talk at another university. Much later, I encountered the head of the department that I visited, and he apologized for missing my talk, explaining that he'd been out of town that day. He said "I heard your talk was very good", a nice thing to say, but not necessarily sincere, just a common pleasantry. But then he said something that surprised me. The very next thing he said was:

Was it?

I was surprised and just said something inane like, Well, I hope so. I got a lot of good questions. I enjoyed it blah blah blah.

Then he said I really did hear that it was good. OK... so why ask me?

Anyway, that was strange, but it made me think about how we feel about the talks we give, and whether this feeling (positive or negative) has anything to do with how most of the audience felt about the talk, at least during the times when they were awake. Of course there is going to be a range of responses in any audience to any particular talk, but I think we can still get a general sense for whether a talk went well or not.

I know people who always feel terrible after they give a talk, even if the talk was great (in my opinion). For some, the experience is such an anxious one, that is is difficult to enjoy the experience of giving a talk, even if the talk is interesting and presented well. I hope that for most people, this anxiety fades with time and experience giving talks.

Other people will give a range of responses when asked (by a friend or close colleague) how they felt about their own talk, depending on their perception of how the audience was responding. You can give very similar talks to two different audiences, and in one you feel like you totally rock, and in the other you feel like your talk fell flat. And sometimes you don't really know and just have a general sense that the talk went pretty well, but you don't really know.

The same talk can be a different experience in different places because there may be differences in your presentation style, your energy level (perhaps related to whether cookies and coffee were served just before the talk), and/or time of day (or day of week or month of year etc.). However, the experience is also greatly affected by whether the talk was on a topic and at a level that was appreciated by a significant number of people in the audience. I mostly use the number and type of questions during or after my talk as a guide to whether the audience is interested and if my talk is making any sense at all. I haven't found the facial expressions of the audience during a talk to be a very useful guide. And I am not offended when some people fall asleep, as long as most people are awake.

So: How do you feel your talk went? I think it is a strange question to ask someone you don't know well, but it is an interesting question to discuss among friends and colleagues.

Promote Yourself

Today in Scientopia, a discussion of how and whether to promote your work (and therefore yourself) without (necessarily) alienating everyone in your field, from the point of view of a non-extroverted mid-career science professor.